Page 24 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“You’ve gotten bold,” he says.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Then don’t start now.”

I get in my car because I need the illusion of movement even if I’m not driving yet. The seat is hot from the sun, and my hands are slick on the steering wheel.

“I can’t stay long,” I say.

“You’ll stay as long as I want you here.”

The phrasing is so familiar that it makes me feel sick.

I stare through the windshield at nothing. In the silence, memory starts doing what it always does at the wrong moment.

I think about the bruises on my ribs. About biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to keep from making a sound. About explanations nobody asks for, and the relief I fake afterward, because admitting any of it out loud makes the whole thing more real. I think about Luca’s face in the locker room when he almost saw too much. I think about Eli trying to figure out fatherhood and legal paperwork while I sit in a parking lot, letting some fucking predator talk me into submitting to him again.

I hate that part of me still responds to his tone before my brain catches up. Hate that fear and habit have started to braid themselves together so tightly I can’t always tell which one is steering.

“I need to go home,” I say again, weaker now.

He lets out a soft breath that carries a smile I can’t see and don’t want to. “You know what happens when you make me repeat myself.”

I lower my head and rub my free hand over my mouth, then finally concede because survival with him is picking the least catastrophic option in a room full of even worse ones.

“Fine,” I say.

“Good.” The voice on the line goes softer, and that softness is the cruelest thing in the world because it means he knows he’s won. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

The line clicks dead.

I keep the phone in my hand long after the call ends, staring at the black screen that does nothing more than reflect my own face back at me.

Then I reach into the glove compartment, pull out the cheap mints I keep in there, and shove two into my mouth because I already know the drill.

Don’t show up smelling like practice.

Don’t show up looking reluctant.

Don’t show up with too much of your real life still clinging to you or he’ll decide you’re distracted and punish you for it in one of a dozen ways that leave no easy mark but still ache for days.

My reflection in the rearview mirror is somebody I’m beginning to hate on a cellular level. I look tired. Older somehow. Hollow around the eyes.

With a final sigh, I pull out of the lot and head in the wrong direction.

7

Eli

Sleep doesn’t even pretend to come near me.

The room is dark except for the weak yellow glow of the night-light near the bassinet, soft enough not to wake the baby and bright enough that I can still see the outline of her tiny body through the mesh side when I turn my head.

I’m flat on my back on top of the covers, one arm behind my head, the other over my stomach, staring at the ceiling hard enough that I could probably map every damn crack in the paint by morning.

The house has gone mostly quiet now. The Sin Bin is never truly silent, but tonight it’s close. A tired hush that settles over a place after too much happens in too little time.

Julian still isn’t back.