Call Me Noona

Chapter 17 - Her Previous Life (MATURE)

We talked... we kissed... we cuddled. I was leaning against him with my legs curled up beside me and he had one arm around me. This must be what heaven feels like, I thought. Minhyuk was stroking my hair as my head rested against his chest. He asked me who I had been expecting when I opened the door.

"I thought it was my ex-husband, who we will refer to as 'Jackass' from here on out." He snickered a little thinking I was making a joke, but when I didn't laugh, he sobered his expression. "Jackass paid a visit to the gallery tonight. I thought he had followed me home."

"You told me he cheated on you, but I know there was more than that. Will you tell me?"

"Are you really sure you want to hear all this?"

"I want to know everything about my Princess," he said softly as he stroked my hair. "If you are not ready, then I can wait until you are."

I did not want to ruin the night with talk of my ex, but Minhyuk deserved to know the full story instead of just the highlights we had talked about. I sighed and settled in to tell him the story. I closed my eyes and began pulling out memories I had tried to bury. I took a deep breath and began my story.

"At one time I thought Jack, excuse me Jackass, had hung the moon. I was young and he was successful, good-looking, and paid attention to me. He took me to parties, bought me gifts, and showed me off to his colleagues. I was naive, grieving the loss of my parents, and thought I was in love. I was good for his business parties because the executives' wives loved me and that kept him in their favor. Over the years I gradually realized that it was all for show and I was stuck in a loveless blackhole of a marriage.

"There were signs for years, but I was just too blind to see them. He was always working and never wanted to spend time with me. He did not like me hanging out with Nikki or my other friends. My other friends gradually fell away. On rare occasions when we were... intimate... it was almost robotic. No passion, no emotion. He insulted my art. He said hurtful things to me all the time. It was like that for several years." I paused again because the one thing that I could never bury, the thing that I could never get over the pain had to come out. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

"Then I had a miscarriage. I was only 8 weeks along and had just found out that I was pregnant," Minhyuk held my hands and I could see tears forming in his eyes. "I was excited and thought maybe this would be the thing to repair our marriage. I told him and he got angry... not the reaction I had hoped for. He said that he never agreed to having a baby and he did not have time to be a father. He was trying to get ahead in the company, and it would only hold him back. He pulled further away from me, if that was even possible, and I was devastated. I think the emotional stress was a huge factor in losing the baby.

That was when I lost myself. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. I did not have the confidence in myself to think that I could do anything on my own, so I just stayed there, dead inside." Minhyuk pulled me close and kept stroking my hair. He whispered that he was sorry I had gone through that. I smiled up at him, a little teary-eyed from the memory, but steady.

"What happened to make you finally leave?" he asked softly.

"I came home early from the gallery one day for some reason, and ran into Janice, his assistant for several years. She had forgotten something and came back to get it, so we walked in together. Jackass had her 17-year-old daughter pinned to his desk. His tongue was down her throat and his hand was under her shirt." Minhyuk's eyes got huge and he could not believe what he was hearing. I continued, "Janice started shrieking at the top of her lungs. She lunged at Jack, kicked him in the hoo-hoos, and drug her daughter out of there. I just stood there, looking at him as he doubled over in pain. I felt relief. Not anger, not pain... just relief. I did not say a word to him. I just went upstairs, packed my suitcases, and left. He did not come after me to defend himself or try to convince me to stay. He was sitting in his chair with a glass of scotch when I came back downstairs. The only thing I said was 'my lawyer will be in touch soon'. Then I went to Nikki's.