making Peace by Jenn Howlett (books to read now .txt) 📕

She was tired. Tired of broken promises and shattered dreams. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No white picket fence, no warm embrace.

It was supposed to be their new life, but instead, she found her life in the bottom of his empty bottles. She wanted to be held and kissed. She wanted to be loved. Instead, she was lonely. She went to movies and dinner, she went hiking and skiing. She did it all alone. She was tired of being lonely in a relationship – a three way relationship. Him, her, and his demons.

She didn’t set out to change him, but she didn’t know he whole truth. The man she fell in love with was not the man she got; instead she got a damaged man who didn’t want to be healed. More than twenty years of damage done, and he wasn’t willing to undo any of it.

This has been four years in the making, but the last year was the worst. They went to a party, where he ignored and ridiculed her (the brief time he spent with her). She watched all the happy couples on the floor, locked into each other’s embraces, while she sat – alone. Afterwards, he wouldn’t let her into their room. He frightened her. He frightened her children. He drained the battery of her car and she couldn’t leave. He slept it off, while she sat up in a chair and watched her children, wondering what she had gotten them all into.

Three weeks later, he still wasn’t speaking to her, and he couldn’t remember what the argument was about. When she told him, he didn’t believe her. But the drinking was getting worse. Two nights a week he would sit alone in the garage, drinking anything and everything. Two nights a week he would creep into her bed just before dawn and pretend that he’d been there the whole night. But she knew.

She knew it was getting worse when he began calling her names. He took her biggest insecurities and turned them against her. But she took it. She cried herself to sleep, but pretended that it didn’t matter, when it did.

There was no Christmas, that last year. He, on a drunken rampage, told her how awful, how fat and lazy she was, and how useless she was to him, and everyone else. Then he left. For a week, she had no idea where he was, or if he was coming back. When he did return, on the 28th, it was like nothing had happened – he was his old self. But she had changed.
Early in the new year, she decided that it was enough. He would have to decide – her or the bottle. For three weeks, it was her. Then it wasn’t…

She’s been making her peace with it all, the possibility of having to move out of her house again, of having to start over.
She wants to be loved and appreciated. She wants a man to wrap his arms around her as she sleeps. She wants someone to kiss that spot just under her jawline, halfway between her throat and ear. She wants passion and love. She wants someone to love her, not just the IDEA of her. Someone to sit across from in a restaurant would be nice too, as would someone to tease her when she cries at a sappy movie. She wants someone to dance with, she wants to be in the embrace of a man who knows when she needs him to be gentle, and when she wants him to be rough.

She needs a fresh start. And her time is now…

Publication Date: 02-11-2010

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