Page 105 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

He unzips the plastic Ziplock bag, unlocks it, and hands it to me. It has 2% charge left, so I work quickly. I open his email and thumb out the name of a Minecraft server I play on sometimes, hitting send right as the phone blinks a low battery warning and then turns off.

“Find me there.”

“I can’t wait around all day, folks,” the driver says from up front.

“Right,” I say hurriedly, and put in another request for a ride back to Jake, so the driver can accept it.

“You’ve gotta go,” I say to August.

He shakes his head, but I push him towards his door.

For a few more moments, he stubbornly refuses.

“I’m not changing my mind. We’re doing this my way. I’ll send out a Bat Signal if I need you, okay?”

Finally seeing I won’t change my mind, he grabs the door handle and pushes it open.

Then turns back to me, grabs my face, and kisses me so furiously, it takes my breath away. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him desperately back. Because this might be the last time for…

No more thinking.

Just being present in this kiss.

The drugging feel of his lips against mine. The warm feel of his chest underneath my palm and his heart beating so hard I can feel it all but syncing up with mine until?—

I have to pull away, because I know he never will.

“Go,” I say, panting for breath. “August.Go.”

“Lennon,” he says, almost glaring with intensity of all the things he’s not saying, and I nod, my own throat too choked to say all thatIcan’t say.

Then he pulls swiftly out of the back seat and slams the door shut like if he doesn’t do it fast, he won’t be able to force himself to do it at all.

I sob the entire drive back to Austin.

TWENTY-SEVEN

LENNON

The drive is icilysilent on the way to church the following morning. As it was when I arrived home last night.

Jake’s face was red with rage as he stood by the door with the porch light like a guard waiting to escort me back to jail.

And as much bravado as I’d put on for August’s sake, I was scared.

Not that Jake would hurt me.

Not likethatanyway.

The only words he said to me, through his teeth: “Aggravated assault has a five-year clock, Lennon. Fiveyears. You will not disobey me again or I’ll press charges. There’s a police report and hospital records.”

But the scales had fallen away from my eyes enough to see that Jake had been psychologically abusing me for years, maybe even without either of us ever knowing it.

That shouldn’t be a thing. The person doing you wrong should know they’rebad.

But maybe the problem has been mine, unable to believe that people really do contain multitudes, and that the kindness I was seeing from him meant he couldn’t also be causing me pain. Still stuck in the black and white good and bad binaries of my childhood.

I walked straight to the guest bedroom last night and locked the door, glad of the little private ensuite bathroom. Where I could shower and ready myself for church this morning with the toiletries stocked in the guest bath, and an old dress I stored in this closet because I thought it too dowdy and ugly. Jake’s mother gave it to me not long after the wedding.