Excerpt:
“Where were you?” Jared asked as I came into the apartment, my arms
loaded with plastic grocery bags.
He didn’t offer to help. He
never offered to help.
His tone was congenial, but after six months of living with him, I
knew him well enough to recognize that he was looking to trap me, to start a
fight. To back me into a verbal corner
where he could accuse me of some misconduct and there would be no way to argue
rationally with him.
“The grocery store.” I
staggered to the kitchen and heaved the eight bags onto the counter.
“It doesn’t take that long to go to the grocery store, Aubrey.” He stood up, rising slowly, unfurling himself
like he had all the time in the world.
My palms started to sweat.
Nerves. The cat-and-mouse game
had begun, just like it had more and more frequently, where he berated me and
shamed me and frightened me.
“I left work at five, sweetheart.”
Sometimes, giving him a smile and using a term of endearment helped to
diffuse his anger, but it was getting harder and harder to make myself
smile.
It was also hard to believe I’d ever looked at him and thought he
was gorgeous. Thought he was so sweet,
so charming. There was nothing charming
about him at all now. He was cruel and
insecure and sadistic, and I was afraid of him—yet even more afraid to leave
him.
He moved towards me, his arms crossing over his chest. “You fucking the bag boy, babe? Is that it?
You can’t come home on time and cook me some dinner because you’re too
busy in the backroom blowing some loser.”
I shook my head, saliva thick in my mouth. I took an involuntary step backward, but the
cabinets halted my progress.
There was nowhere to go.
“Of course not. Why would I
do that? I love you,” I said even though
I didn’t. He’d killed every genuine
emotion I’d ever had for him. “You’re
the only man for me.”
The only man I even dared to look at for fear of the
repercussions. The only man whose touch
I granted, even when I wasn’t in the mood or I was tired or he purposefully
degraded me. I knew that if the fear
could be peeled away, there would be nothing there but pure hatred for Jared,
but the terror was too overwhelming, an octopus ink that covered, hid,
camouflaged all my other emotions.
“What do you want for dinner, baby?” I asked, despising the tone of
my voice. It was wheedling,
desperate. Pathetic. I didn’t even recognize that voice anymore—or
who I had become.
I reached out to put my hands on his chest, to halt his steps, but
under the guise of affection. I tried to
kiss him, but he grabbed my hands and yanked one up to his face, the motion
jerking my shoulder. I winced then tried
to cover it. He sniffed my hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked, appalled.
He had leaned in and was smelling my neck, my clothes, my hair. It was discomfiting, and my hand trembled
before I could try to control it.
“Seeing if you smell like a man.”
I didn’t smell like a man.
But I was sure I did smell like sweat.
It was August, and even in Maine, the days could heat up. It was almost eighty degrees outside and we
didn’t have air conditioning in our apartment.
Plus, fear always made me leach that sour anxiety sweat and I was truly
afraid. I knew what he was going to do
and I knew it was going to hurt.
The girl I used to be would have spit in his face, kneed his nuts,
stomped on his foot. But for eighteen
months, Jared had been grinding me down one day, one hour, one minute at a time
until I was merely a powdery dust beneath his boot. I wanted to fight back. I wanted to flee, but I had left him three
times before, and each time, he’d brought me back with first his tears and then
his fists. He’d threatened my mother, my
father, my brother, my best friend. He’d
gotten me fired from my job, kicked out of my sorority house, and he had
convinced me that no other man would love me.
So this me, the one with no money and no car and self-esteem that
had been fed through the industrial shredder, just tried to keep the
peace. To make the moment pass without
repercussion.
“I’ll smell like a man once you kiss me,” I said lightly. “I missed you.” Lie.
Total lie. So untrue that I
actually felt bile rise in my mouth.
He saw it. Somehow, he always
saw it. It was like he’d perfected the
evil art of stripping me naked emotionally in front of him and he thrived on
the humiliation.
Jared suddenly gripped my chin hard in his hand, jerking my head to
the side.
I gave an involuntary cry.
“What’s wrong? What are you
doing?”
His lips came up to my ear.
At first, he lightly nibbled on my earlobe. Then he whispered to me, his tender tone at
complete odds with his words. “If you
even so much as look at another man, I will break every bone in your body. I won’t even use my hands because you’re not
worth it. I’ll stomp on you with my
boot, the one I use to go riding, the one covered in horseshit. I’ll beat you so bad you’ll wish you were
dead, and no man will ever look at your busted face with anything other than
total disgust. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, a shiver rolling up my spine. He was big and he surrounded me, his
shoulders tense, his grip on my chin so hard I knew it would bruise. He had played lacrosse in college, but he was
broad and muscular enough that he could have gone out for rugby. I would never be able to overpower him,
outrun him, escape him.
“I understand,” I whispered.
“I am not interested in other men.”
I wasn’t. I never wanted another
man ever again. All I wanted was to be
left alone.
He bit my earlobe. Hard.
I gasped in surprise.
“Ow.” I hadn’t meant to say it
out loud, but it’d slipped out involuntary.
Pulling his head back, he jerked my chin so I was facing him
again. “Shut up. You are the whiniest
woman I’ve ever met. I swear to God, all
you do is complain.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside me and escaped before I could
stop it. Was he insane?
Maybe he was. Maybe he was
actually totally certifiable. Because I
never complained. Ever. About anything. He had knocked that out of me months ago, had
silenced me almost from the beginning with his verbal disapproval. I walked on fucking eggshells now and I was
exhausted.
But even though I tried to clamp my lips shut, he heard the weird
giggle and it enraged him. Before I
could even prepare for it, the back of his hand came up and nailed me on the
cheek. I stumbled from the force of the
blow, tears springing up. Pain
reverberated throughout my face and I caught myself with my palms on the
kitchen counter, my hands falling into the grocery bags. He yanked me back by the arm and slammed me
against the cabinets so that my hip connected hard with the lip of the
countertop.
Then he went for the hair, grabbing a big fistful of my blond
strands and jerking it so viciously that I cried out in pain. He did it to blur my vision with tears so I
couldn’t see him clearly. It was his MO. First the hair. Then a few blows. Sometimes the face, but usually the arms so
no one would see bruises later.
“Give me your phone.”
I dug it out of my pocket, thrusting it at him. There was nothing incriminating on it. But that wasn’t why he wanted it. He hurled it at the cabinets, denting the
wood. The phone fell to the floor and he
stepped on it. I heard the crack.
This was going to be a bad one, the worst in months. I could feel it. When I blinked and my vision cleared, I saw
the fury in his eyes, the flare of his nostrils. He looked…murderous.
“Why are you doing this?” I demanded, more of the old me left than
I’d realized. “I didn’t do
anything.” I tried to bend down, to get
away from his hold on me.
A survival instinct that had been lying dormant kicked in. This wasn’t going to be a time where I could
placate him, and I was suddenly frightened—but not of pain. Of dying.
If he hit me too hard, I could die, and I wasn’t going to let him do
that without trying to protect myself first.
“You’re a fucking slut, that’s why.
I know you’re screwing around on me.”
With one hand still holding me, he used the other to pull his belt out
of the loops on his jeans.
I clawed at his hands, trying to get myself free. No. No
way in fucking hell was he going to hit me with that. When I couldn’t break his grip on my hair, I used
my arm to strike at the belt as he raised it, knocking it out of his hand. The leather stung and I let out a cry, but he
was shocked that I’d deflected the blow.
I used that sudden pause to my advantage, twisting out his reach and
finally freeing my hair.
“Don’t you dare hit me with that,” I warned, catching my breath and
backing away from him.
“Are you giving me orders?” he scoffed. “I’ll hit you with whatever I want. Pull your pants down. I’m going to beat your ass with this belt
like you deserve.”
There was no way I was going to voluntarily take my pants off so he
could humiliate and abuse me. Somewhere
deep inside, I found my strength despite the fear, and the line I couldn’t let
him cross before I lost myself entirely.
“No.”
“Then I’ll take your pants off.”
When he started towards me, I bolted, knocking my shoulder into his
as I took off for the front door of our apartment. My keys to his car were still in my
pocket. Or I could make it to the
neighbors if I couldn’t sprint to the car. But he shoved me and I fell back against the
wall. I tripped on the lamp cord and it
crashed off the end table onto the floor.
I put my hands up, but it was too late.
The belt, buckle end first, hit me square in the jaw, and the pain
was so shocking, so excruciating, that I fell onto my knees and straight onto
my face. I rolled on my side, grabbing
at my mouth, my nose. Everything was
radiating an agonizing throb, my fingers wet, the scent of my own blood
clogging my nostrils. I tried to speak,
to scream, to cry, but nothing came out but a gurgling mewl of panic. I dropped my bottom lip and blood rushed
between my fingers, down my arm, puddled onto the floor.
“Oh, fuck, Aubrey. Look what
you made me do.” Jared sounded
frustrated.
The belt clanked down onto the floor next to me, and I winced,
scooting away instinctively. I scrambled
to sit up, to grab the belt so he couldn’t hit me again. There were tears in his eyes, and that enraged me.
How dare he. How fucking dare
he.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Shit.
If you weren’t such a bitch I wouldn’t get like this. But you push all my buttons.” His hands went up into his hair. “You’re going be fine. Just go rinse your mouth out. Where are the car keys? I’m going to the bar. I need a drink.”
On my knees, gripping my split jaw with one hand, I started to dig
in my pocket, loathing him with every bone in my body. Every single bone that he wanted to break
hated him and his pathetic limp-dick need to beat on a woman half his
size. When he bent over and made to root
around in my pocket, clearly impatient, I swatted his hand.
“Don’t touch me! I’ll give
you the keys.” Blood sprayed across his
face with my words and he reached up and wiped it away in disgust.
“Jesus, Aubrey. That’s really
gross.” Then he took the keys and left
as I glared at him in complete silence.
I spit out two of my teeth into my palm and put them in my
pocket. Then, with shaking fingers, I
packed a bag with my wallet, my cell phone with the now shattered screen, and
some of the groceries I’d just bought.
The rest of the food I left on the counter to rot.
Without even bothering to clean myself up, I went out the front door
and knocked on the apartment immediately to the left, where an elderly couple
lived, my bag on my shoulder.
When the wife opened the door, I choked back tears as her eyes
widened in horror. “Please help me,” I
said, my words garbled from a swollen lip and the whistle of air where my teeth
used to be. “Before my boyfriend comes
back.”
