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Throwing on a pair of loose jeans and a long-sleeved baggy t-shirt that covers the bruises on my wrist since Jace doesn’t like looking at the evidence of his rough hand, I head into the kitchen.
Damn, I wish I would have brought some food home from the diner. These guys could probably use something to soak up some of the alcohol they’ve been drinking all night. I search through the fridge but come up empty. Opening the freezer, I find a couple of frozen pizzas.
“Hey, you guys hungry? I’m gonna throw some pizzas in the oven.”
“Sure, sounds good,” one of the guys replies.
The way Jace is staring at me when his friend answers sets off those familiar warning bells in my mind. He’s waiting for any indication he can use to convince himself I’m flirting with them. Like that would ever happen. I hate these guys with a passion. They’re not the same friends we had in high school. Most of them moved away after graduation, and the ones who stayed never come around anymore, not that I could blame them. This new Jace isn’t the same likable goofball he was in school. This one is angry and mean. So fucking mean.
Jace’s ringing phone sounds through the tiny trailer as I’m putting the pizzas in the oven.
“Yeah,” he answers, and listens for a moment to whoever is on the other end. “About time. I’ll send Mike and a couple guys to grab it.” He hangs up and turns to his friends. “Tre came through. Go grab the shit so we can really get this party going.”
His friends heft themselves from the couch and stumble to the door. The second they’re out of the trailer, Jace ambles into the kitchen and smacks me across the face.
“I saw the way you were looking at Mike, bitch. How dare you embarrass me like that, panting after my friends?” He grabs me by the hair and yanks my head to his. “They’re gonna think I can’t keep my woman satisfied.”
“No Jace, I swear I wasn’t looking at him like that. I just wanted you guys to have something to eat,” I cry, my scalp burning from where his hands are yanking at my hair. That earns me another slap, cutting my lip open before he shoves me away. I don’t know why I don’t just keep my mouth shut. It’s not like defending myself when he’s like this has ever done any good.
I try to leave the room, to get to my bedroom and to some sort of imaginary safety, but Jace isn’t finished. He grabs me by the back of the hair and throws me to the ground, my head smacking against the coffee table when I go down. The entire time, I’m wondering how I’m going to cover the marks he’s leaving for my next shift at work. Not how to stop him because I know that’s going to be impossible when he’s so full of rage, but how am I going to pull off looking like my life isn’t the horror show it’s turned into?
I’m begging him to stop as blood pours into my eye, tingeing everything a murky red. A sharp kick to the ribs has me curling in on myself, trying to prevent any more damage. It’s terrifying not looking at him when he’s raging like this, not being able to see what he’s going to do next, but I know sometimes catching his eye sets him off even more. I’m not sure if it’s because he hates himself for the fear he sees in my gaze or if he takes it as a challenge, probably the latter. Either way, there are times it makes the beatings worse, so I don’t dare look at him now. I feel him standing over me, breathing heavy but not moving. After a few moments, he lets out a sound of disgust and moves to the kitchen.
“I don’t know why you make me do this. Maybe one of these days you’ll learn.” He walks back into the living room, stepping over my balled-up form like I’m just a pile of dirty laundry he doesn’t want to deal with. “Get up and go get cleaned up. You’re a fucking mess,” he sneers, opening another bottle and sitting on his ratty recliner.
I gingerly stand up from the dirt-stained floor, minding my bruised ribs, and make my way to the bedroom. In my little bathroom, I check myself in the mirror. The cut on my lip has stopped bleeding, but the wound on my forehead is still oozing. Grabbing some bandages from under the sink, I attempt to cover my eyebrow, but within a minute, the blood seeps through. I take the bandage off, throw it in the sink, and stare at my reflection. I’m going to die here. Maybe not tonight, but there is no doubt in my mind this will be my life until my last breath if I don’t find a way out.
While staring at my hollow eyes in the mirror, I hear the door to the trailer bang open. Jace’s friends are back. One of them tells him they scored some “good shit.”
Good for who?
When music starts blaring from the living room, I hear the telltale signs of them snorting whatever it is they showed up with. I know if I didn’t get out now, I’m dead. It won’t be long before Jace kills me. He doesn’t even pretend to care anymore about the damage he does to the person he’s supposed to love. That was made more than apparent tonight. Shit, it’s been more than apparent for more than a year. I have a choice to make. I can stay until he’s sober enough to have a conversation, or I can run. Tonight. Right now.
Without thinking about anything other than getting the hell out, I quietly open the window in our bedroom. There’s no way I can grab the cash I have stashed away in the laundry room Jace never visits. The day he washes his own clothes is the day I win the damn lottery. That’s women’s work, he’s always told me. All I have is the money from the tip Linc left me and a few extra dollars in the pocket of my uniform, which I haven’t thrown in the wash yet.
I can walk to the rundown motel on the other side of town and come up with a plan. If I leave now, I’ll be there before Jace thinks to come look for me tonight. They’ll be up snorting lines and drinking for hours.
It’s a small jump from the window. When I land, the pain in my abused ribs from the jolt nearly makes me cry out, but I suck it up like I have so many other times. Running out of the trailer park, I sprint from shadow to shadow, knowing there will be no sense of safety until I make it to the motel. Hell, probably not even then. I can’t think of that now. I just need to get as far away as quickly as I can.
A sigh of relief escapes me as soon as the lights from the entrance of the trailer park are no longer visible every time I look behind me. He hasn’t figured out I’m gone yet. Otherwise, he would already be dragging me back to the trailer, high or not.
After half an hour of walking, the rain starts coming down hard. My clothes are stuck to me, and my shoes are soaked through, but I keep walking. No cars pass, not that there is ever much activity on this stretch of road late at night. That brings me some relief. The only people who would be driving down here would be someone who lives in the trailer park. Jace and I know most everyone there, and I doubt it would take long for someone to go knocking and ask him why they saw me on the side of the road in a rainstorm.
That relief is short-lived when I see headlights approaching through the curtain of rain pouring down. Anxiety fills me, but I keep my head down, praying if it’s someone from the park, they won’t recognize me.
The truck slows, and I briefly consider running into the woods and hiding, hoping they’ll pass without stopping. I don’t have any sort of flashlight, so all it would take is one wrong move, and I’d break my ankle and be stuck there.
The truck slowly rolls past, and I think I’m in the clear until the diver turns the truck around. When I hear the rumbling engine pull up next to me, they roll down the window. I chance a glance at them and immediately recognize the man’s face from earlier. Linc.
“Do you remember me from the diner?”
I nod, barely able to look him in the eye. I know he saw the bruises on my wrist from a week ago. That time, it was because I was making too much noise cleaning when Jace was trying to sleep. He decided to stop me by nearly breaking the bone.
“Get in,” he says, opening the door from the inside.
I pause because, although he and his friend seemed nice enough at the diner, he’s still a stranger. Not that he could be any more of a monster than the one I just left in that dingy trailer.
When our gazes meet, I see him cataloging every visible injury. He now knows the bruises he saw on my wrist earlier couldn’t be from anything other than what they were, what I’m sure he suspected. Shame overwhelms me—complete and utter shame. He’s probably wondering why I stayed with a man who beats on women, or worse, what I did to deserve this. There’s no time to worry about what some stranger thinks of me. Not when Jace could come looking for me any minute. That fear is enough to make my decision for me.
