His Greatest Pain by Jenika Snow

face.
    “Oh,
Ace.”
    He
hated that she felt sorry for him. Even when he’d first told her about the
abuse she was his strength, his rock, and she’d never given up on him. “It was
only once when he was on a bender. When I hit him hard enough to have his eyes
swell shut he backed off. He had been so drunk he hadn’t even remembered what
he’d done, or tried to do the following day.” Ace started shifting on the
couch, extremely uncomfortable with how this was going. He felt like honey
covered his flesh, thick, suffocating, and like he would never be clean.
    “Why
do you think he only did it the once?”
    He
looked at the therapist and shrugged. “I don’t know, don’t really care. I was a
teenager when he tried it, the same size as him. He didn’t even know how he’d
gotten the black eye when he woke the next morning.” He scrubbed a hand over
his face. “I honestly think he was just so drunk that he didn’t know what the
fuck he was doing.” He dropped his hand to his lap and stared at the therapist.
“He’d never done it previously, and never did it
again. For all I know he could have thought I was a fucking woman.”
    Lauren
squeezed his hand again.
    “Sorry
about the language.”
    “ It’s okay, Ace. This is an open, honest room. You speak
however you feel comfortable,” the therapist said and wrote something down.
“Lauren, is there anything you want to say in response to what Ace just said?”
    Lauren
stared at him, licked her lips, and stared down at where their hands were
entwined. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I knew Ace had a shitty life,
and I’ve tried, throughout the years, to be there for him, and will continue to
be here for him.” She stared at him, and he felt his heart in his throat. “I’ll
always be here, because without him in my life I’d have this big chunk missing,
and it would be unbearable.”
    “Ace,
you said that Lauren is someone you want to make happy no matter what. Can you
explain that a little more, and how you think that helps you control your anger
and the violence you have built up over the years from the abuse?”
    Ace
stared out the window, trying to put into words what Lauren meant to him. He’d
told her, in so many ways, that she was important, but he didn’t know if she
truly understood the role she played in his life.
    “If
you’re uncomfortable we can move onto something—”
    “No,
I’m not uncomfortable.” He looked at Lauren. “She knows that without her in my
life, without her there for me all these years I would have gone off the deep
end.” He stared into her blue eyes, got lost in the color, and wanted to kiss
her right now.
    “Why
do you see Lauren as a lifeline, Ace? Do you think you wouldn’t succeed without
her in your life?”
    He
stared at the therapist, really thought about what she’d said, and knew without
a doubt that if not for Lauren he’d be in a much worse spot in his life then he
was now. “She is my life. She was the
first person, aside from a childhood friend, that accepted me for who I was.
But after I moved I didn’t have Toby in my life.”
    “Hmm,
continue.”
    He
looked at Lauren, saw her full attention was on him, and so he talked right to
her. “Before I met you I felt like my life was nothing but a waste, felt like I
had nothing to look forward to. Do I feel weak that I rely on your presence in
my life to make me stronger, to make me feel whole?” He squeezed her hand. “No,
I don’t. I feel stronger when I’m with you. You make me want to be a better
person, to strive and not let my emotions and past make me the monster I can
be, even if I still do monstrous things.” He took a deep breath, baring his
soul for this woman and a virtual stranger that was probably taking every word
he said and his body language and analyzing it. “Everyday you’re in my life has
made me a better person, stronger inside, even if it seems like I haven’t
healed.”
    “Ace,”
Lauren said softly,