We really were a pair. Which was why I knew that the only real way to save a person like that was to love them anyway. It’s what she had done with me. I could do the same for her. I always would.
“Fine,” I said as gently as I could manage. “I won’t call. Yet. But, Nina…you need to tell me exactly what happened in the elevator. Not because you’re a burden. You won’t be. But you deserve truth, baby. I will love you. No matter what. Do you understand that?”
She blinked, tears caught in the generous sweep of her eyelashes. “I—yes. I do.”
I pressed my forehead to hers. “Good. Now tell me the truth, Nina. What did he mean, ‘again’?”
Nina slumped into my shoulder. “Matthew, you don’t want to know.”
I tipped her chin up, forcing her to look at me once more. “I really do. And you really need to tell me. Nina, I love you, and you love me. I’m going to marry you, no matter what you say. I think I’ve earned your secrets. Haven’t I?”
Her eyes welled again, and her lower lip trembled. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, my love, yes, you have.”
“Then tell me, Nina. Tell me everything.”
Slowly, she pushed my hand off her chin, then leaned back against the wall. With a quick glance at Calvin, she took a deep breath, and started.
“It was my first time organizing the gala,” she said, speaking more toward her hands, now clasped in her lap. “Olivia was four. I was twenty-four. It was the first time I had anything resembling a job or anything close to it since she was born.” She shook her head. “Calvin…he didn’t like it.”
I stayed quiet, keeping my eye on the slumbering giant in question. Above us, the party raged out of sight, quieted by the heavy steel doors at the top of the stairs. We were still alone. For now.
“It happened about a month before the gala,” she said. “I was working late a lot, and he didn’t like it. It made me…unavailable. In those days, he liked having me around, you see. Sometimes he would bring people back to our apartment just to show me off. To men he was trying to impress. Business investors or people he was trying to start some business with. You can imagine.”
I could, yeah. Way too clearly. Nina, at twenty-four, tall and queenly, young and bright—relegated to being literal arm candy for a bunch of slobbering, middle-aged hacks.
I swallowed. Maybe I needed to pray again.
“One night, he was throwing an impromptu salon, you might call it. Several investors were there—I honestly don’t know who. But I couldn’t come, because we were busy here. And he was so embarrassed—you remember how he gets about being embarrassed. I don’t know, maybe something else happened that day…”
“Hey,” I said gently. “Don’t justify it. Whatever that motherfucker did is on him. I don’t even have to know what it is to know it’s inexcusable.”
Nina inhaled deeply, then exhaled again. “Perhaps.”
I hated that she could even doubt it.
“Then what happened?” I prodded.
She sighed. “He came here to find me and bring me home. He was waiting for me at the elevators when I came out of the institute. It was late, around eight, but we still weren’t finished. He said I had to come home. I said no. And when I was going up to the exhibit to go over some things, he followed me into the elevator. And just like that day with you, it got stuck. And I was trapped there. With him.”
She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Usually he would wait until he we were home,” she whispered. “Until we were behind closed doors. But that night...oh, God, Matthew, he was so angry.”
She leaned forward and buried her face in her knees, unable to say anything more. I could easily imagine what had happened, though I wasn’t sure it was entirely accurate.
“Nina,” I said carefully. “I need to know the truth. I understand if you can’t talk about it, but, baby, just nod your head, yes or no. So there is absolutely no misunderstanding. That day in the elevator…did your husband hit you?”
She bit her lip, then slowly, she nodded.
“Multiple times?”
Another slow nod.
I inhaled deeply and exhaled through my nose. Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Yet.
“Did he…” I shook my head as I reached down and fingered the rip in her dress. God, I could hardly think it, let alone say it out loud. But I had to. I had to in order to do what needed to happen next. “Did he rape you?”
She bit her lip. Two more tears fell down her porcelain cheeks. And then, so slowly it followed the crack in my heart, she nodded one last time.
“So it wasn’t claustrophobia that day, was it? That’s—that’s why you’re afraid of elevators. Because of what he did to you in one.”
It made sense, now. She wasn’t afraid of any other confined spaces. Cars, planes, trains. Crowded rooms, balconies. None of them made a difference. But it was elevators—especially that elevator, I realized—that made her jump into a terror because of this.
“I couldn’t get out,” she whispered. “Matthew, I couldn’t get out!”
It was then I finally pulled her under my arm, stroked her hair until she started to calm again.
“Was that the only time?” I asked. I had to.
Her face buried in my shoulder, she shook her head silently.
“And was it...was that the first time?”
She paused. And again, shook her head.
“The last?”
Another pause. One more shake, side to side.
“Usually…I would just let him take what he wanted. After a while, it was easier than fighting him. Except for the times I just had to.” She touched her wrist with one hand.
“And after you and I started—”
“No,” she interrupted vehemently, sitting up in a fury. “Oh, Matthew, please believe me. I never cheated on you—”
“Cheated?” I said with disbelief. “Do you really think that if your husband raped you, I’d consider it cheating? As if I,
