Noah was fighting the most important fight of his career tonight, and I had just made the most important decision of my life.

I'd taken him back.

Never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined myself to be one of those women who fall into their husband's arms as soon as they apologized, but that's exactly what I did.

My prodigal husband had finally returned from his eight-year – and some change – hiatus, and I had welcomed him with open arms.

Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly, and maybe Jordan was right in saying I was rushing into this, but what could I do?

Stand back and watch him walk out of my life again?

No.

No freaking way.

That wasn’t a viable option for me. Not one I could live with anyway, and not after his revelation.

My husband was abused.

He was raped.

The pain I knew he had to be carrying was unimaginable to me. I couldn’t begin to empathize with how he must be feeling. I only knew that if I let him go now, after telling me his deepest, darkest secrets, he would never feel safe enough to trust me with anything again.

Throughout the course of his entire life, Jordan had been let down and abused by the people that were supposed to take care of him. He was raped when he was a child and he was raped when he was my husband.

By his stepfather.

By the man who was supposed to love him and take care of him.

It had happened right under my nose, over and over again.

And I had done nothing.

I had said nothing.

All of those times I had just known something wasn’t quite right about him; all of those times when I'd seen the bruises on his body, I had done nothing!

The memories I had of the childhood version of him entered my mind and I was filled with a screwed-up concoction of guilt and happiness. Guilt for not being able to save him from him demons, and happiness for how he'd been the most important part of my life back then.

I couldn’t remember the first time I met Jordan Porter.

In fact, I couldn’t remember a day in my life when he wasn’t around. I couldn’t pin point the exact moment in time I knew I was in love with him, the same way I couldn’t pin point a time when I knew I wasn’t.

For me, it felt like my entire existence had always been entwined and interloped with him.

At first, it was an innocent kind of love between two children; young, kindred spirits thrust together because of circumstance, embarking on a slow burning love.

Over the years that followed, that love ignited into something much more, much deeper. Like white, hot fire rinsed with desire and scorching teenage hormones.

I did always remember one specific thing though, one niggling complication that had played on my vulnerabilities since puberty; deep down inside, I had always had the distinct feeling that I loved him more than he loved me. I had always cared more, invested more, worked harder for us. I had always been the one in the drivers seat of our relationship and, to my deepest chagrin, it had sometimes felt as though Jordan was an unwilling passenger.

He had always been hard to make out, hard to crack, and hard to truly read. But I had grown up believing that true love existed. I felt it in our home every day of my childhood; my brothers and I had always been surrounded by love. I watched it unfold every day when my parents looked at each other. Because of this, being a believer of love and fate and happy ever afters came naturally to me, almost like a preset inside of my body. Which was why, when Jordan proposed we elope in my senior year of high school, I jumped at the chance.

We married in secret. I was eighteen years old and that day I gave him everything I was; my heart, my soul, my youth, my body. Everything I would ever be. I offered my entire existence to him without terms or stipulations. I was wholly his. Forever and always.

But then he left me, and everything I'd ever known to be true had been turned upside down. Which was why, at twenty-six years old, I found myself struggling deeply with my torrent emotions, drowning in a pool of uncertainty, and feeling like everything I had ever known and believed in to be true just…wasn’t.

And now, I felt like my life hung in the balance of a few short questions.

Did I still love the man I vowed to share my life with when I was eighteen?

Without a shadow of a doubt.

Did I understand his behavior now I had full disclosure?

Undoubtedly.

Could I forgive him for abandoning me all those years ago?

…

Did I still see a future with him?

…

Those were much harder questions to answer.

Putting aside all of the pain and betrayal I had endured and was still feeling because of his abandonment, I knew that I had to go with him. I had to. I loved the man, and if I'd learned anything from my parents, it was you didn’t run away from the person you loved when things got hard. You stuck it out and fought for them. You fought for them when they weren't fighting for you. That was true love. I knew he was capable of giving me that. I just had to stick it out and do the fighting for both of us.

Jordan didn’t have the childhood I'd had. He wasn’t coated in layers upon layers of unconditional love and support to help him grow into a confident and self-assured adult.

I had.

The way our parents had raised us had a lot to do with how successful all four of us had been as adults. Cash and Casey were still young, but I had no doubt they were receiving the same great childhood Cam, Colt, Logan, and I had been given. Our home had always been a safety net for us to fall back on – a safe haven. I had always known I was loved by both parents. They wanted every one of us, even Cam, and they were always in our corner.

I could do that for Jordan.

I could give him the unconditional love he'd been deprived of.

I didn’t allow the niggling doubt inside of my heart to take ahold in this moment, nor did I listen to the voice inside my head when it screamed, 'you've been the only one fighting these past eight years' or the even more depressing voice that whispered, 'I'm tired of fighting for this…'

Instead, I did what I'd done every day of my life for the past twenty or so years; I closed my eyes and placed my blind faith in Jordan Porter.