Page 193 of Lucky Mother Pucker

“No.”

“Has he been to your place at all?”

She shakes her head. “I get an alert from my Ring camera anytime anyone comes through the front door, and I haven’t gotten anything. He hasn’t come to the house.”

“Good.” I ball my fist at my side, remembering the moment I saw him grab my sister last night. The anger resurfaces instantly, but I swallow it back. “I don’t want you going over there alone. Not for a while. Just in case he tries to come back. We need to get the locks changed too.”

She’s quiet as she stares down at her mug of tea. “He still needs to come over and get his stuff.”

“No, he doesn’t. I’ll move all his shit out of there and leave it on the street. He can come get it then,” I mutter.

Zoey looks up at me. “Leo.”

“He’s not getting in your house, Zoey. That piece of shit isn’t going anywhere near you ever again.”

Her eyes go teary, and I instantly feel guilty for sounding so mad in front of her. That’s not what she needs right now.

I step over and sit on the stool next to her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off so angry.”

She wipes her face with the sleeves of her sweater. “I just…” She lets out a shaky breath. “I just can’t believe I was so stupid. I can’t believe I let him treat me like this for so long. I can’t believe I didn’t break up with him sooner.”

That protective feeling hurtles through me once again.

“You’re not stupid,” I say gently.

I grab a box of tissues from the end of the island and slide them over to her. She grabs one and dabs at her eyes.

She shakes her head, but I gently touch her arm. “Zoey, look at me. You’re not stupid.”

She looks at me, then focuses back on her lap. She’s quiet for a long moment.

“I never thought I’d ever put up with an abusive partner. I’m such a cliché.” She stares ahead. “For a while, I thought he just had a bad temper. Lots of people have a bad temper. But then our fights got worse. He’d corner me and yell at me. He’d call me names. He’d grab my arm so I couldn’t leave the room until he was done screaming at me.”

I swallow back the bile in my throat, hearing my sister tell me all the awful things Jeff did to her. But she needs this. She needs to talk about what happened. She needs to process it in a safe setting.

“Whenever he’d grab me, it would leave bruises on my arm or my wrist,” she says in a sad voice. “He always apologized. And I thought that made it okay. I told myself that wasn’t the same as hitting, so it wasn’t abuse. But deep down, I knew it was wrong.”

She lets out a shaky breath and blows her nose.

“He started getting jealous. He started accusing me of the craziest stuff.” She wipes her nose with the tissue. “If a male barista or male server was friendly with me when we went out, he’d accuse me of flirting with them in front of him. I’d never do that.”

I give her arm a gentle squeeze. “I know that, Zoey. That’s not like you at all.”

“He accused me of sleeping with my boss at the daycare because he got me a gift for Christmas,” she says. “He got all the employees gifts. I told that to Jeff, but he wouldn’t listen. He flipped out, then showed up there last week and yelled at my boss.”

“Jesus,” I mutter.

“I was asked to quit after that.”

“What? That’s not fair.”

“I don’t blame them. There were kids around when it happened, and they have to put their safety first.”

“Zoey, you love that job. You love those kids, and they love you. It’s not fair that you lost it because of something Jeff did.”

She shrugs. “They did what’s best for the kids. That’s what matters.” She looks down at her lap again. “I’m embarrassed that wasn’t the last straw. I really thought I could make him understand, and he’d go back to being the sweet, funny guy I met.”