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19
KAYLA
It was hard to quantify the horror that filled Monty’s expression.
I sat there and watched it myself—his devastation as he looked at me—and it was that more than anything that told me I was injured.
Other than that, I barely felt the cut on my head until the blood began to flow down the side of my face and into my eyes.
I wiped it off and then looked at my fingers, almost surprised by the dark rouge that coated them. I had read somewhere that head wounds didn’t hurt, but it sure as hell left a messy result.
My head snapped up as he walked toward me and suddenly reached out his hand. He stopped short of touching me, his face twisting into harsh, palpable remorse. He jerked his hand back, shaking his head and then opening and shutting his mouth several times before the words came out.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, and the guilt in his tone broke my heart. It had me standing up, desperate to assure him.
“It’s okay,” I said, moving quickly to him. He flinched when I touched his bicep, but I rested it there regardless, running it down his arm in soothing circles. “It’s okay. I’m okay. It was just an accident.”
“I hurt you.” He continued staring at nothing and shaking his head in abject horror. “I hurt you,” he repeated again.
“It was an accident.” I had noticed the change in his body and heard him telling me to get off, but it was too late. He had thrown me off in his effort to escape, and before I could steady myself, I crashed into the table and toppled the glass on my way down.
But it wasn’t his fault, and he needed to understand that.
He said nothing again, but his expression changed as he seemed to work something out in his head.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” he said all of a sudden. I squealed as he instantly swept me up into his arms.
On the way out, he gestured for me to grab a clean cloth from the cabinet, telling me, “Hold it over your wound to stop the bleeding.”
His voice was strict, his demeanor frigid, but there was a slight tremble in his clenched jaw that showed emotions he couldn’t express. I reached up to caress his cheek, wishing against wish that I could remove this misery from him. I knew he was blaming himself for this whole thing, and I needed to convince him that it wasn’t his fault.
“Monty—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head, the tortured expression on his face intensifying and making me pause. His face convulsed as he caught sight of the wound once more when he placed me in the passenger seat of the vehicle. He shook his head without another word and went around and got into the driver’s seat.
I was perfectly capable of walking, but I didn’t think he wanted to hear that right now. I knew he was finding some solace from taking care of me now, so I let him take charge of everything, even carrying Hunter from his crib and putting him in the baby carrier in the car so we could all go to the hospital together.
The drive there was completely silent. Monty focused all his energy on the drive, although his expression appeared to be deep in thought. I reached out and touched his hand that wasn’t on the wheel, trying to offer him some level of comfort. I thought he might reject my touch, but instead, he turned my palm over, grasping my hand in his.
After we got to the emergency room, Monty gave a rundown of what had happened in a flat voice that offered no defense or blame. The doctor noted that the wound was shallow and, luckily, would not need stitches. I was thankful for that, at least, although Monty kept insisting on the stitches and telling the doctor in detail how much I had bled, eventually frustrating the doctor enough to do his bidding.
But the worst part came when the social worker came over and asked if she could speak to me in private. Monty glanced at me, then nodded as if he knew exactly what she was coming to talk about. After Monty stepped out, she then went on to ask me a series of questions, including who Monty was, how I met him, and whether I had been hurt before. By the last question, it finally started to make sense to me what this was about, and I looked the woman in the eyes and plainly stated that Monty was in no way abusive.
She didn’t look like she believed me, and she pursed her lips doubtfully. “Ma’am, to be blunt, in these situations, a lot of times, the victims are not yet aware that the actions of their partner are abusive.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But this isn’t one of those situations.”
“Mm.” The woman noted something down on her notebook, then looked up at me. “Explain to me how you met this man again.”
I sighed, then began telling the story of the one-night stand, leaving out the fact that I ran away and hid from him for the better part of two years. I simply said we lost touch because I did not know how to contact him, but after we ran into each other again, we began our relationship.
The woman kept interrupting the story to write down things in her notebook, and at some point, her incessant questions began to irritate me so much that I finally snapped.
“He didn’t hurt me, okay? It was an accident. We were sleeping together on the couch, then he woke up, and I accidentally fell off. The glass was right there, and it cut me! Okay? That was all that happened!”
“Did he tell you to go with that story?” The social worker gave me a sympathetic look and said. “You know you don’t have to keep defending him. A lot of these cases usually start as accidents, but it always eventually escalates into something more.”
I took a deep breath, trying not to give in to the frustration. “That’s all well and good, but I’m not an abuse victim, and that is not what this situation is. Believe me. If he were abusing me, I would leave. I’ve done it before with a previous boyfriend, and I would do it again. Okay?”
