Collin pinched the bridge of his nose and grumbled, “I can handle five minutes in the produce.”
Whether it was from feeling dizzy with relief that Collin hadn’t seen me with Knox, or if it was simply from seeing Collin so out of sorts just being at a grocery store, a laugh bubbled past my lips before I could stop it. I slapped a hand over my mouth and stared at Collin wide-eyed. The last time I’d laughed at him, we’d still been engaged. I’d learned quickly not to do that, and couldn’t believe I’d done it just then.
He moved his fingers away from his nose, but didn’t put his arm down, and I was shocked to see that the expression on his face was the exact opposite of what I’d been expecting. Collin’s eyes were full of confusion and surprise, his lips were parted, and one corner of his mouth was pulled up like he was about to smile. He took a step toward me, but rocked back on his heel and looked around us at the empty aisle, like he’d forgotten we were in public.
When he was sure we were alone, he stepped close and said, “I didn’t know how much I missed that sound until I heard it just then.” Collin trailed his fingers along my waist. “Come on, let’s finish this and go home.”
I let Collin lead us out of the aisle, and although I kept my head down, I couldn’t stop my eyes from peeking up to look around the front of the store for Knox. A faint sigh of relief escaped my lips when I only saw a few women in the brief glance I’d allowed myself, but soon died when I felt that familiar energy. It took all my strength not to turn around. No matter how much I wanted one more glimpse of him, I knew I couldn’t while I was standing next to Collin. Not only would my husband notice, but it would kill me to see that same look of betrayal and pain that Knox had worn the night of the fund-raiser when he’d watched me with a man he hated.
Keeping my eyes trained to the floor, I held my body stiff and once again forced myself to walk away from where I’d left my heart.
Knox
Present Day—Richland
MY BODY TENSED as I watched them walk out of the aisle a couple of minutes later. A growl came from low in my chest as her husband wrapped his arm around her waist, and without giving myself a second to think about what I was going to do, I took three steps in their direction before a strong hand came down on my shoulder to stop me.
I jerked to a stop and my head whipped to the side to glare at whoever had stopped me, and found Pete laughing so hard, no sound was coming out. I started to step away from him, but those few moments were what I’d needed in order to breathe and remember what could happen to Harlow if I were to try to approach her in front of her husband.
I forced my body to relax—a process that took longer than it should have—and plastered a smile as I turned to look at the other guys, who were laughing as hard as Pete was. I was just glad they hadn’t seen Harlow with her husband; I didn’t need that shit from them. “What did I miss?”
Everyone sobered up when distinct tones went off on our radios, followed by a dispatcher’s voice calling out which engines, ladders, and battalions were needed to go out to a structure fire. Before the dispatcher had even finished, we were already hurrying to the front of the store. The rest of the guys ran toward the truck, but Pete and I went to leave the cart containing bags of the vegetables and fruits we had managed to grab in the short time we’d been in there with an employee.
As we turned to head out, I caught a glimpse of Harlow walking toward the checkout lanes. Her face was filled with pain—not the kind I would expect when she was near her husband, but a kind I knew and felt deep. Pain because we were so close, but there was still so much separating us. Pain because we’d lost years, and didn’t know if we’d ever be able to make them up. Pain because I had always loved her, and knew she still loved me, and even after seven years, she was still technically untouchable.
Chapter 14
Harlow
Present Day—Richland
FLIP EGGS; DON’T burn the eggs. Flip eggs; don’t burn the eggs—they have to be perfect. Flip eggs; then grab the toast. Coffee . . . coffee comes last, I chanted ceaselessly to myself two days later. It was the only way to keep myself composed at that moment.
I slid the spatula under the edge of one of Collin’s eggs, and after checking the bottom of it, flipped it over, then did the same with the other. Don’t leave them long; they need to be perfect. Put away the bread. Grab the toast and butter it, then check the eggs again. I took a step away from the stove and reached for the loaf of bread, but my hand stilled on it when I finally noticed the unpleasant feeling moving through my veins. He’d come in silently, but I knew he was there.
It wasn’t at all like the feeling I had when I was in a room with Knox. That kind of energy left me feeling like I was floating—like his presence, or even just the sound of his voice, was giving me the greatest kind of high. This energy that filled the room whenever Collin was near had a pit forming in my stomach. It left me shaking, and I would often find myself holding my breath—as if somehow that inane act could help me get in control of my body again. Or maybe because I was secretly hoping that it could help me disappear from his radar.
Child . . . my husband had reduced me to a chanting, frightened child.
Forcing myself to continue making Collin’s breakfast and not acknowledge his presence, I failed to stop my shaking even though my lungs were protesting the lack of oxygen.
Tie the bread off; put it up. Grab the knife; stop shaking. Stop shaking. Stop shaking. Damn it; stop shaking! Butter the toast; grab a plate. Check his eggs . . . they need to be perfect. You can’t make him mad again.
I’d woken up to my monster this morning. No. Not my monster. My new monster . . . the unpredictable one—even more terrifying than the one I’d been living with for the past two and a half years. The rest of Tuesday and all day Wednesday, he’d been strange. He’d tried to be loving and attentive, but had moments where he’d lash out, only to rein it in just as fast. He’d also told me not to work so hard. The house is already spotless, Harlow. Why are you cleaning? I can make lunch for us. Why don’t I take you out to dinner tonight; you do too much for me. Just make sure to cover up that . . . thing, he’d said as he gestured to my throat.
This morning, however, had been different:
I’d woken up with his hand covering my nose and mouth; my arms and legs were flailing before I was even fully conscious.
“Two days of spoiling you, and suddenly you just sleep through alarms?” he’d yelled.
A deep, warning growl soon followed when I’d finally connected with his stomach. It had been the wrong thing to do, but it was instinct when he was making it impossible to breathe. He’d released my face, and I’d immediately began dragging in air. But before I could take in two breaths, the back of his hand had come down across my right cheek.
A shocked cry escaped me a second before my air was cut off again, and his face was directly in front of mine. “Do not show your pain,” he’d snarled, forcing each word out in short, staccato bursts.
I’d clawed at his forearm, but he hadn’t so much as flinched. It wasn’t until I’d stopped fighting and my vision started to darken that I noticed a spark in his otherwise lifeless eyes. He’d snatched his hand back and sat up on his knees, and his chest had moved roughly up and down as I pulled in air as fast as I could—like he was having as much trouble breathing as I was. The sound of our joined ragged breathing had been uncomfortably loud in the room.
“You are selfish,” he said moments later, his lip curled up in a sneer. “You are spoiled, and you don’t deserve all that I do for you when you can barely give me anything in return.”
I’d pressed a hand to my aching chest and rolled to the side, just wanting to get away from his crazed stare, but he had flipped me back. His hand had been up, this time in a fist, but instead of releasing it on me, he relaxed the fist and flexed his hand a few times, then dropped it to his side.
“You have no idea how lucky you are that I love you, Harlow.”
I had nodded, knowing
at the time that even if I could speak, I would most likely say the wrong thing.
“I want my breakfast ready when I get out of the shower. Surely you can’t screw that up, too.” With that, he’d moved away from me and let me climb off the bed.
START KEURIG. SET the plate on the table. Grab silverware and mug; go back to the table. Don’t spill his coffee.
“Now you don’t look at me?” Collin asked in a dark tone, but there was no mistaking the humor in it.
After I set the mug and fork down, I turned to look up at him. A very small part of me was happy that there was some light in his blue eyes; the rest of me just hated him. Hated that he could be the way he was—hated that he could switch from Collin to the monster so quickly, and then back again like it was nothing at all.
His eyes drifted to the kitchen table, then back to me. “Eat it,” he said simply.
I glanced at the food, just to confirm that there wasn’t something else there that I might have missed. “I don’t—you know I don’t like eggs.”
“Eat it.”
“I’m not hungry, Collin.”
“Eat it!” he snapped.
I jerked at the boom of his voice and hurried over to the table. After scooting everything over to my place, I went to sit in my chair, but Collin just moved the food back to where it had been. He held out his chair, and after watching him warily for a moment, I sat in it.
“Now eat it.”
I was shaking so hard, I wasn’t sure I could. Most meals I could hardly stomach, and that was when I was eating something I enjoyed. I held back a grimace and reached for the fork, but Collin’s hand beat me to it.
He slammed the prongs onto one of the eggs to pick it up whole, and with his other hand, he squeezed my jaw so that my mouth popped open.
“Ah do eh!” I forced out, knowing he understood what I was trying to say, but he didn’t stop.
I pushed toward his chest, trying to escape from his grasp, but he just gripped tighter and stood behind the chair so it wouldn’t move. Collin shoved the entire egg into my mouth, flung the fork onto the plate, then used both hands to shut my mouth. And just like I’d found myself this morning, he was soon covering my mouth and pinching my nose so I couldn’t breathe.
“Swallow it,” he demanded. When all I did was scream against his hand and scratch at his arm, he took a step back, kicked the chair out from under me, and then followed me onto the floor. “Swallow it, Harlow!” Tipping my head back, he kept everything blocked off so not only was I still unable to breathe, but I was now choking on the food. “Chew!”
I thrashed against him, but it was only making things worse for me. Forcing myself to calm, I focused on trying to chew and swallow, even though those actions felt impossible when my body was screaming for air—screaming to get away from his hands. My eyes widened and I slapped furiously against the floor when I’d finally choked the egg down, and when Collin released me the first breath I took sounded like an inverted scream. But the scream didn’t last long. Collin reached onto the table and shoved the next egg into my mouth before I could get a full breath in.
“Which one did you poison? This is really how you planned to kill me? You thought I wouldn’t know?” he yelled while I continued to choke, but that egg I’d been somewhat prepared for.
Once the second egg was gone, Collin sat there with me on the floor until my breathing sounded somewhat normal, but his eyes never left my face.
“You’re insane,” I rasped. Saying those words out loud for the first time felt so good, like a sweet release. I wanted to say them over and over, but I let myself be content with once. “What poison?”
His dark blond eyebrows pinched together in confusion. Any other day, I would have been thrilled that he didn’t look angry after what I’d just said to him, but after today, after what I’d endured on Monday, after the kind of monster he was turning into now . . . I no longer cared.
“Why aren’t you dying? I watched you,” he said angrily, and pointed up to the counter. “I watched you pour something into the salt shaker before you sprinkled it onto the eggs. And then you refused to look at me even though I know you knew I was there. You couldn’t have been more obvious than a child who’d gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar!”
My face fell and my heart pounded in my chest. I had rolled onto my side at some point after he’d released me and was curled into a ball now. I had to swallow back the forced food that was trying to make its reappearance now that I knew what all that had been for. I’d just been choked and nearly suffocated because I’d been trying to keep myself busy while waiting for his eggs to cook. “Salt,” I whispered as heavy tears fell onto the hardwood. “I was refilling the salt shaker with salt.”
There was a pause, then Collin sighed and reached out for me. Before he could touch me, my stomach lurched again, and I scrambled up and took off for the guest bathroom to get rid of the eggs.
Collin was standing near the front door when I finally emerged from the hallway with an apologetic look on his face. “You don’t have to make dinner tonight. My parents’ anniversary party is this evening.”
“I know.”
“Try to be ready by the time I get home. I, uh . . . I need to get to work.” When I nodded, he gestured to his throat and said, “Find something that will cover that for tonight. I can’t have you going anywhere today, Harlow, and after—well, after this morning, I can’t have you calling anyone. You understand?”
Of course I understood. My throat was still bruised an ugly shade of yellow and purple, and he thought I would call the police. He’d hidden my purse before I woke up on Tuesday morning, and I figured from his words that he was going to keep it for a while longer. I tried to keep my face blank, but I hated the fact that now he wouldn’t be with me, and he would have Knox’s phone.
“Your keys, phone, even the house phones. I can’t risk it.”
My eyebrows shot up, but I kept my mouth shut. He’d never taken the house phones with him.
Aggravation replaced the apologetic expression. “I need to—”
“I understand,” I said before he could finish.
Collin took a step toward me, but then rocked back and sighed. “I love you,” he whispered, turned, and left.
Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall until I heard his car start. Once he was gone, a strained sob burst from my chest, and I stood there staring at the front door like I didn’t know what to do. I felt lost. This wasn’t my monster; this wasn’t my husband. My monster didn’t leave visible marks on my throat. My monster didn’t cut off my air until I passed out and point a gun at me. He didn’t try to stop me from breathing multiple times in one day, or force me to eat food while choking on it.
I glanced to the left to the knocked-over chair, forgotten toast and coffee, and bits of egg on the floor, and a part of me wanted to finally give up. To say forget everything, warn my family, and just leave. But before I was able to understand the movements, I was walking into the kitchen and cleaning.
He’s trained me well, I thought disdainfully, then pushed that thought out of my head. I wasn’t cleaning this for him; nothing I did was for him. Everything I did was to hopefully spare me from more pain. I might have learned what to do and not to do to make Collin happy over the years, but that was simply because I’d slowly realized that it was my greatest form of self-defense from him.
AFTER CLEANING THE house and doing a load of laundry, I stood in the shower for forty-five minutes while sobbing and trying to figure out what to do, then finally pulled myself together and stepped out.
I grimaced when I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d been trying to avoid it lately, but now that I was looking, I couldn’t stop. Large, fading bruises along my ribs and hips, little dots along my arms that looked like everyday bruises if you didn’t know differently, and the monstrosity on my throat. If it were possible, I looked thinner. Looking at my reflection made me feel sick even though the bones that jutted out weren’t anything new.<
br />
I ran my fingers over the bones, then the bruises. When I got to my throat, I leaned closer and noticed that the area around my mouth looked red from where his hand had smashed down, and it looked like I was blushing on only one side of my face where he’d backhanded me. I pressed the tips of my fingers against my cheek and winced. I’d wondered which was worse, the beatings I’d always endured, or how he’d been this week. But one look at myself, one painful reminder of how it had felt to not breathe, and I knew I had my answer. I would gladly go back to the beatings, because I knew in my gut that with this new monster, one day soon he was going to kill me.
“Over something as simple as salt,” I whispered to my reflection.
Tearing my eyes from the mirror, I grabbed a towel and walked out of the bathroom so I wouldn’t be tempted to look again.
Once I finished dressing, I walked over to my side of the bed to grab the towel where I’d left it after drying off, and paused. Peeking out of the bottom shelf of my nightstand was my mini iPad. I’d taken it out of my purse to charge last week sometime, and I knew that if Collin had known it was here, he would have taken it with him.
I must have spent half an hour holding it and weighing the options before pulling up the iMessage app and typing in Knox’s number, only to let another fifteen minutes pass as I tried to figure out what to say—and if I should say anything at all.
Collin had my phone. If he checked it, he would see it. But as far as I knew, he left my purse in his trunk. Then again, right now, after everything, I didn’t care. I’m sure in a couple of hours when I came to my senses I would, but at the moment I had so much excited adrenaline coursing through my veins, only one thing mattered.
Knox.
I could still feel his hands and lips on me—phantom touches from Tuesday that left me trembling. That left me needing more of him, more of us. But more than that, I needed his energy; I needed it to feel like I could make it another day with my new monster. So after typing out a message to him, I let my finger hover over the SEND button for only a second before tapping on the screen. Then I waited.
To the Stars Page 18