Dare to Love by Penny Dixon Read Free Book Online Page A

silence stretched out like a long road before us. Finally I asked the question I knew the answer to.
    ‘So you let him give you a blow job?’
    The pain of the moment was carved into every line on his face. His mouth twisted into a strange contorted mask from which escaped the muted, almost indistinct ‘Yes’.
    The pole was yanked from his spine as he crumpled into the settee, folding in on himself like a detonated building, collapsing from the inside.
    I got up and went to wash my face. When I came back he hadn’t moved, looked like he could have stayed there forever, drained of the will or the means to move. I imagined if I lifted his hand it would flop like a rag doll. I sat in his silence for a while before eventually asking, with a little more compassion than I expected, ‘And the photos?’
    It took him a while to focus, like he was dragging himself up from a very deep dive and had to wait till he could breathe normally again. That too quick a return would give him the bends, wrack his already ravaged body with more pain. I waited till he returned to the room and asked again.
    ‘And the photos?’
    ‘They arrived a week later. They must have got the camera set up somewhere in the room because no one came in.’
    ‘Richard. Look at me.’ It came out as an order, harsher than I’d intended. I needed to see his eyes when he answered the next question. I saw the slight film of tears which magnified the blue of his eyes threatening to spill over but I still asked, ‘Did you enjoy it?’
    I didn’t feel good seeing the pain drift across his eyes, like so many storm clouds building and dissolving and building again. The pain that said, ‘I don’t know how you could ask me that?’ Although I could see the answer in his eyes, I still needed to hear him say, ‘No, Josi. I didn’t enjoy it.’
    He found his will to move. Said he felt claustrophobic, needed some fresh air. He was gone for over three hours. When he returned, I was in one of the spare rooms, told him I needed some space to work out what I felt and what I needed to do.

    In any relationship we accept there’ll be things we don’t understand but will accept. I tell my clients if they have eighty percent of what they want in the relationship, in the person, then it stands a good chance of being successful; if both parties are prepared to put in the requisite effort, at worst to keep it at eighty percent, but better still to keep increasing the percentage.
    At the point we got married we were on a workable eighty-five percent, with the anticipation of building and increasing our fraction. Now there’s a big dent in that sum. This wasn’t just something we could ease into over time. Like new shoes, rubbing along with each other till we found a good fit. The shoes are too tight now, not fitting either of us. We could shoe horn ourselves into some form of fit, but from experience I knew that ill-fitting shoes eventually deform feet, necessitating major remedial surgery. A good number of my clients come to see me when, after years of shoe horning, their relationships have malformed them, squeezed then into smaller and smaller lives, crushed their dreams, shrivelled their hopes, withered their plans, twisted their soul and desiccated their spirit.
    I felt cheated. I’d waited so long, eleven years to know him, to uncover his skeletons; to be sure I wouldn’t be in for any nasty shocks. How could he have kept this skeleton so well hidden? It was like hiding Mount Vesuvius in a pothole. Now the volcano had erupted. I’d poked about in the pothole and it had blown up in my face. Now I had to deal with the fall out.
    That night I cried tears of anger and resentment. There was a rage in me that would dwarf Mount Vesuvius, would darken the skies, snuff out all life in its path. I felt betrayed. I’d been sold shoddy goods; sows ears packaged as a beautiful silk purse and I’d accepted it without looking below the wrapper.
    Yet I had looked below the