The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be Book 2)

His alarm goes off at five, like every other morning. Except he doesn’t wake up to it. And he’s not holding me like he was when we fell asleep. He’s facing away. I reach across him for his phone and snooze the alarm.

I whisper his name and touch his shoulder, run my hand along the side of his face. Nothing. “Josh?” I repeat, slightly louder.

He flinches awake. “Oh, what, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing. Your alarm went off.”

He takes a deep breath in and rolls onto his back, at least a little closer to me. “How is it morning already?” he groans.

“I know.” I prop myself up next to him and look down at his face. My eyes travel to the cuts on his neck—they look even worse. I lean in and kiss the red lines as softly as I can.

He reaches up and touches my face, my hair. “It’s okay,” he whispers, reading my mind.

I lie against him, and he kind of tenses up before he puts his arm around me.

“I technically still have the day off,” I tell him. “So I’m gonna try to get a call with my therapist today.”

“Okay, that sounds good.”

“Would you—no, never mind.”

“No, what?” he asks. The alarm goes off again. “Dammit,” he says, reaching to turn it off. “Would I what?”

“Would you…?” I was going to ask if he’d be on the call, to tell her what happened, to tell me what happened too, but I feel like it’s not fair to ask him to relive it. “Would you just hold me for a few more minutes before you go?” I ask instead.

“Yeah, come here,” he says—of course he does. He rolls onto his side and wraps me up in his arms.

“Tighter,” I say.

He pulls me closer, kisses my hair, and whispers, “I love you.”

And for nine blissful minutes, things feel okay.

But then the alarm blares again.

He sighs. “I gotta get up, baby.”

I watch him as he gets out of bed and turns my lamp on. He reaches into his bag for clothes, and even as he takes his shirt off, I notice he’s keeping his back to me. “Josh?”

“Yeah?” he answers, still turned away.

I get out of bed and step around to the front of him. He quickly picks up a pair of joggers and sort of holds them in front of his body like he’s trying to cover himself.

“What are you doing?” I ask, reaching for the pants.

“Eden, don’t—” he says, but then lets go of them.

And then I see what he’s hiding.

“Oh my God,” I mumble, my hand over my mouth. “Did I—” I swallow hard. I feel the tears already swelling up under my eyes as they take in the dark purple bruises all over his arms, chest, stomach, even his legs. “Did I do this to you?”

“Come here come here come here,” he says, pulling me in and holding me tight. “Shh, it’s not your fault, okay? I’m fine.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head back and forth. Because this looks too familiar, the bruises up and down his body, just like my own bruises the next morning. I reach for my chair and have to sit down because my legs feel weak.

“Please look at me.” He kneels on the floor in front of me. “You had no idea what was happening, okay? You weren’t here; you were there.”

I slide down to the floor too, touch the bruises. “What did I do?”

“You were just trying to get away from me—from him, I mean,” he explains, but I still can’t believe it.

“How could I have done all this?” I say out loud. But the other part of the sentence that I don’t say out loud is: How could I have done all this to him, my love, the one person I feel safe with, when I couldn’t do anything to defend myself against Kevin that night? And then I realize the difference, as he watches me with those soft, dark eyes. Josh wasn’t fighting me off. He was just taking it.

“I grabbed you. I was trying to help, but I didn’t know what to do, Eden. So, I grabbed you because I…” He let his hands float down my arms, to these reddish-purple rings around the forearm on my right side and my wrist on the left. “Eden, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you. You were falling, and I was afraid you were gonna hurt yourself, and I know I made it worse.” He looks at me, his eyes filling with tears now. “I’m so sorry,” he belts out quickly as he hunches forward and covers his face with his hands.

“No, I’m sorry, Josh. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” I tell him over and over. I pull him toward me, and I know I will never forgive myself for this. We collapse onto the floor in each other’s arms, both of us crying now. “I’m trying, I swear,” I tell him.

“I know,” he says. “I am too.”