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I’d never go back. I’d sworn it. I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
He stood over me, waiting for it, waiting for the simpering. Instead, I looked up at him and snarled, “I’d rather fucking die than go back with you, you crazy, evil fucking bastard.”
I saw his haze of rage and I tried to get up and run. I tried to grab for a chair to throw at him, but I’d barely gotten my hand around the bottom rung of the back of it before his next blow was landing.
It was a serious one, his fury unleashed. I’d known it was coming. I’d known there was no real escape even as, for once, it felt good to give into the fight response, to not just lay there and take it.
I looked up at him and laughed, tasting blood between my teeth. Thunder shook the house and as I looked up at my murderer, I laughed, feeling liberated for the first time in my entire goddamned life. “When you get to hell, I hope the devils roast you over an open spit.”
His next blow made the world go black.
Chapter Eighteen
I woke up to pain. My shoulders were wrenched above my head. Rain hit my face so hard I coughed and sputtered against it.
Only to realize Jeff was dragging me across the front yard on my back, a dead weight, by my wrists.
Ow, fuck, ow. It hurt. And my face. Pain, God, fucking ow— Everywhere, it was blinding. My back scraped across rocks as he dragged me through the yard.
Did he know I was conscious? Would he have cared?
He yanked harder at my wrists, heaving me step by step even as the storm raged overhead. It made the yard slick and muddy, but with each wrenching step it was like he was trying to pull my shoulders out of their sockets. Maybe he was.
I’d hoped he’d finish it off in the house. That he’d go into such a rage…
God, I just wanted the pain to end.
But if he was trying to take me back…
An entirely new horror hit me. Oh God, if he got me back in that house…
I blinked up at the sky, through the rain. Or tried. The storm wasn’t quieting, only getting worse. It felt like the world around me was churning, growling, roaring to echo my own fury and grief.
The wind howled around us and bits of tree branches and other debris flew around the yard. I tipped my head back and saw Jeff was having to bend his body into the wind, his hair flattened against his head.
But he didn’t stop, his face was still mottled with that anger I knew so well, and there was his car, parked behind a stack of hay bales to the right of the property.
I could try to pull away, a stupid instinct for self-preservation fighting its way to the forefront in spite of what I knew was reality. Jeff, mad as a bull, would never let me go. Come hell or high water. Or roaring storm.
I went lightheaded, my eyes shut against the rain, bright spots dancing.
Pain.
Bright lights.
Drift away.
Reece’s face, smiling at me as dawn light filtered through the window. A gentle caress of his finger tracing down my cheek.
Pain splintering my shoulders.
Blackness.
Wet.
Rain.
