“I know, I know and I’m sorry I promise I’m clean.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about Nathan,” she says taking a step closer.
“I’m not on birth control.”
I shake my head and run my hand through my hair.
“But last night-you said you haven’t been touched in a long time and now you say you’re not on the pill. That makes no sense if you’re engaged, do you not sleep together?” I can’t wrap my head around all this.
“It’s complicated.”
“What the fuck does that mean? Are you trying to tell me he doesn’t fuck you? Because if that’s the case then he’s fucking insane-”
“No, no, he fucks me.”
I feel my blood boiling now.
“Me and every other woman he sees,” she adds quietly. “But we always use condoms.”
Hell no, no fucking way. What the fuck is wrong with this dude and why is he treating her like anything less than a queen?
“Like I said, it’s complicated.”
She raises her hand to tuck some hair behind her ear, and the cuff on her wrist slips down, revealing a bruise. I step closer and take her hand, my eyes locking on hers.
“Does this have anything to do with it being complicated?” I ask, running my thumb over the discolored skin.
Her eyes glass over as she lifts her chin, her hand slowly falling from my grasp.
“Or how you flinched when I took you by the arm last night.”
She’s looking at me and her eyes are full of pain, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Tell me,” a growl emanating from my throat, “just tell me Skye-”
“No!” she says loudly and covers her mouth with her hand, the sound explosive in the small room. “I can’t.”
“You can,” I say, moving closer and cupping her cheeks, my voice lowering.
“No,” she sobs. “Do you think I like having everyone looking at me and how terrible I look now? It’s embarrassing that I let someone turn me into this. I don’t want you to look at me with pity, I got myself into this.”
My hands are stroking her hair, not believing the words and hearing the despair in her voice.
“You can come with me, you can come stay with me, and I will help you get on your feet again.”
The whole time I’m speaking she’s shaking her head.
“I have nothing; he took everything from me. All I have is my car and three changes of clothes.”
She wipes her cheeks, as my thumbs clean the moisture from her face.
“I need to be on my own for a minute, I can’t bring all my problems to your door. I want to, trust me I do. I’ve wanted to for years, to come back and be with you…but I need to end what I have in Lancaster and get myself back first.”
I feel my jaw ticking, my mind racing.
“I can’t let you go back to him knowing what he does to you,” I state.
Leaning forward she rests her forehead on my chin, and my arms wrap around her shoulders, her face nuzzles into my neck and she breathes deeply. I want to protect her, to take her away from this shit, from this asshole who I want to hunt down and fucking kill with my bare hands.
“If I go to see him, I promise I will take Missy,” she says, lifting her head to look at me. “But there’s nothing I need to go back to that house for,” she adds.
We stand there in each other’s arms until I hear Wyatt calling for me and running down the hallway towards us.
“I’ll be out in a minute, buddy,” I say over my shoulder.
Skye steps back and runs her hands over her face, her fingers swiping under her eyes. Her hand takes mine and she squeezes lightly, I lean in and kiss her forehead once more before turning and heading out of the laundry room. By the time I return into the house after playing with the kids, Skye is gone and the sinking feeling of dread clings to my bones. This night is not like I planned it to be, and the last place I want to go is home, so I get on my bike and head out to nowhere.
10
I can’t wrap my head around my visit to Plantain, it was better than I thought but also worse. I didn’t imagine in all my daydreams that I would actually have sex with Nathan. But just like always when he got into my space I couldn’t resist the pull. Not using a condom weighed on my mind, it still does. I can’t believe we did that, but then again I can, the electricity between us is too strong. Everything that happened at the wedding, seeing him playing with the kids, the things he said to me, he was unlike I ever remember him being before.
He wasn’t a smooth-talking womanizer like I’d seen before or maybe that was just my perception of him. I watched him the entire time that night and not once did I see him looking at or talking to any of the single women there. Just like at the party years ago, when the twins were fucking right there in front of us but he only looked at me. Of course, this realization had to come at the worst time, here I am running from my fiancé unsure what the fuck to do, and then Nathan comes along and jumpstarts my heart and I know that I can’t be with Tyler.
The rest of my life can’t be spent with someone who I barely register when they walk in the room, I mean I notice him of course, but not because I can’t wait to see him. The things I told Nathan at Missy’s shocked me, that I could be so open with him and the things he said to me, that he would take care of me melted my heart.
It’s been three weeks since the wedding and I’m at my parents’ house. I haven’t spoken with Tyler at all since I left him, but he calls me every day and leaves terrible voicemails. I feel a comfort though that he doesn’t know where my parents live and for that I am grateful; I can actually have some breathing room to think. But since leaving Plantain, I’ve decided I will move back there, ask Dornan if he can give me any job and I need to find a place. Maybe Missy will let me stay with them while I save some money for an apartment.
Both my parents are at work and since I arrived unannounced, they haven’t asked me why I’m there or anything about Tyler. They know I’m engaged but would never ask me if we’re still together, which is another reason I’m glad to be here and not have to deal with the questions. I turn down Oasis on the stereo, about to call Missy and tell her my plans when I hear a loud bang come from the front of the house. I get up from the patio chair in the sunroom and head towards the sound, when I round the corner I stop dead in my tracks.
“Skye,” Tyler growls.
He’s at the opposite end of the hall and I have never seen him look so enraged before. I don’t know what to do, he’s just standing there with his chest heaving and his hands in tight fists by his sides, the front door hanging off the hinges.
“I told you if you didn’t come home that I’d come for you,” he says.
“How did you find me?” I whisper.
“Cellphone records,” he replies as if that’s a completely normal thing to do.
“I…I”
Fuck what do I do?
“I’ve decided I’m not coming back. We’re over.”
I get a quick lift in confidence because I picture Nathan beside me, replaying the words he said to me in the laundry room.
“What?” he asks flatly.
“There’s nothing you can say, or we can talk about that will undo all the things you’ve done to me. I refuse to be a helpless victim and stand by as you take and take and take from me.”
“I treat you how you deserve,” he replies.
“Excuse me?” I ask in disbelief
“It clearly wasn’t hard, you wanted everything I’ve given you. I didn’t hear you complaining when I filled your closet with the best clothing, or when I bought you a new house-”
“What I wanted was you…I didn’t say anything because those are things you wanted, and I could never talk to you because you’d get mad. I tried to make you happy, but I soon realized you didn’t give a shit about making me happy. You molded me into a pet to have at your side, you wanted to keep me locked in a cage.”
My hear
t is pounding in my chest, finally telling him the resentment I’ve been feeling for years. So far he hasn’t moved from his position but I can see he’s getting angrier the more I speak.
“Skye, if you leave me, you will never be anything. I won’t give you a fucking thing.”
“I don’t want anything from you, just my freedom back. I know you can’t give me that and us stay together.”
“You are making a huge mistake,” his tone menacing.
“Why are you even here? We both know you have girlfriends, am I really that important, or you just don’t want to train another dog?” my voice coming out stronger than I feel.
In a flash, he comes at me and I turn towards the bathroom, it’s the only room on the main floor with a lock. I get two feet from the bathroom when my arm is yanked back and pain shoots through me. He turns me to face him and slaps me with the back of his hand, feeling my skin split on my cheek before it begins to burn and sting. Raising his hand as he punches me on the other side of my face, causing me to fall to the floor with the force of it. I raise my arm that he had grabbed to try to block my face, but I can’t lift it, and it hangs limply at my side.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” he growls through gritted teeth.
He keeps pulling my arm away and punching me, my face already feels swollen, and the taste of blood in my mouth makes my stomach churn. I fall to my side and bring my knees up to shield my body and I try to kick at him, but he just keeps punching me, spitting awful words at me as he assaults me. He stops for a moment and stands and for a brief second, I wonder if he’s done, but then he starts kicking my ribs then my chest and anywhere that I can’t block him.
I wonder how much more I can take, he has never beaten me this badly and I’ve never been hit like this by anyone. I’m small compared to him and even though I’m trying to defend myself, I’m no match for him. My body can’t find the strength to move anymore, to protect myself. My eyes are swollen almost shut but the little I can see is splotchy and clouded with red.
“You think having friends like that bitch Missy who make you think you’re something…but we both know you’re nothing.”
Tyler grabs the back of my hair tightly as he pulls my body through the kitchen. I can feel the warm wetness of blood under my legs, my hairs being pulled out, but it doesn’t compare to the pain in my face. He loses his grip and my head hits the floor hard. Please God make him stop, I repeat over and over in my head.
“The whole reason I got back with you, was because I needed someone to pay my way through law school. I knew you worked and didn’t spend your money. When I talked you into moving with me you were so willing, you didn’t make the rest of it hard.”
So now not only did my body hurt, but also now my entire being, he had been playing me from the beginning and stupidly I went along.
“When I proposed I never thought you’d say yes, I knew you wouldn’t leave me, but I didn’t think you’d agree to forever. It became a game for me, to see how far I could push, what I could take from you and you just let me…dumb bitch.”
Tyler is leaning down over me, his hands clearing the blood from my eyes as I lie there half dead. My chest hurts and I can’t breathe. I’m not sure if it’s from the blood draining into my throat from my broken nose, or if he’s damaged me internally. He cups my cheeks and stares down at me, his thumb roughly presses along my lips.
“You were so beautiful Skye. Since I can’t have you, no one will want you after what I’ve done to your face.”
He taps my cheek playfully before he rolls my body over, positioning my cheek on the cold tiles so I can breathe. My hair is matted and covers my face, I am waiting to pass out, to end this fucking torture. Vaguely I recognize he’s pulling my pants down, having a hard time getting them down my thighs due to the blood I imagine.
Finally, he gives up and leaves them just below my ass, he’s not touching me and again I wonder if it’s over, he wants to leave me looking like this for my parents to find me. But then I feel him, his cock actually and I moan as he shoves himself into my rear. My vision goes white for a second before instinctively my body begins to pull away without my mind being involved. His forearm pressing into the back of my neck, and his hot breath pounding against my hair is the last thing I feel before falling into blackness.
11
I spent eighteen days in the hospital, seven of those days in a medically induced coma. When I woke up I vaguely remember my mom telling me the list of injuries Tyler inflicted on me.
“Shoulder dislocated, cracked and bruised ribs, head contusion, brain swelling, minor contusions to the face, attempted suffocation.”
I know there were other injuries but those were the ones that stuck out to me and hurt the most. It wasn’t until the cops came to question me that I actually registered that Tyler had committed a crime. They showed me a photo of him, asking me to confirm he was the one, of course that face would be something that haunted me forever. I wished, like my attack, that his face would be something that seemed like a dream, and that I wouldn’t be able to remember him as crystal clear as I did.
One of the detectives told me Tyler wasn’t at the scene of the crime when my dad came home that evening, that he also wasn’t at the house we shared, but they had alerted the surrounding states and there was a manhunt looking for him.
I asked why he didn’t kill me, if something had startled him and he left. The detective replied that he was sure Tyler thought he’d killed me. My mom told me that when my dad found me, there was a plastic shopping bag over my head. Tyler had wrapped tape around my neck to secure it, but I must’ve torn it because there was a hole in the bag near my mouth. Two days after I woke up is when the counselors started coming to see me, one was for domestic violence and the other was for the sexual assault. I almost wish that doctor never came because until she brought it up, I’d forgotten that part. Maybe my mind was blocking that he’d gone that far, protecting me from dealing with that part of it.
It wasn’t until the following week that Missy and Maven came to see me and by the looks on their faces, I did not look good. I still hadn’t managed to look at myself in the mirror, and didn’t think I would for a long time. Not because of fear of seeing what my face looked like, but because I didn’t want to be aware that I was where I was. That the man I thought was going to be my husband brought me down to what he always said I was…nothing. Without thinking I asked the two women where Nathan was, before correcting myself and asked for Drag. They both looked at one another for a moment before Missy said, “He’s out on a run to Wyoming…I can call him-”
“No,” I weakly replied, my voice and throat still raw.
I don’t want him to know what’s happened to me, and I don’t know why exactly. Part of me feels like he doesn’t need my shit piled on top of his own life, and because I’m ashamed that any of this ever happened to me, that Tyler ever happened to me.
Missy came to visit me several times a week and she tried her best to take my mind off everything. Bringing me magazines and ice cream, even a tablet that she had downloaded movies to. On one of her visits, I asked her to take the engagement ring from Tyler I’d put in my wallet. I told her she could do whatever she wanted, sell it even, it didn’t matter to me, I just wanted every single thing that tied me to him gone.
Three weeks after being awake, my mom told me that I was pregnant…pregnant. At first I was confused, maybe I had heard the counselor wrong and maybe Tyler had vaginally raped me too. But then I remembered Nathan, and the woods. Panic took over but only for a moment, I had a baby inside me as Tyler unleashed hell on me and it survived, and I knew I could survive too.
Immediately the doctors removed me from all pain medication, except for an over the counter pain reliever. Even when I went in for plastic surgery to correct the scarring on my face, I was given the minimum dosage of medicine. It was also around that time the nightmares started.
Twenty-two days after being b
ack at my parents’ and I was barely sleeping, memories of Tyler’s face that day when he attacked me constantly waking me. I even started hallucinating he was in my room at the foot of my bed when I was about to fall asleep. It didn’t help I was at the house that the incident happened, and it also didn’t help that talking to someone daily and reliving the incident over and over, was causing more damage than good. I wasn’t given a single moment to just breathe, to just take joy in that I was growing a new life inside me.
I wanted to wait until I knew I wasn’t going to miscarry before I told anyone, the doctor told me it was still a possibility since my body had received major trauma. Deep down I knew Nathan needed to be the first person I told but, what if he didn’t want a baby? What if he wanted me to get an abortion? I can do this on my own, I don’t need him or anyone to help us and if those are the feelings he has about it, then we certainly don’t need him around.
It’s been two months that I’ve stayed at my parents’ house and today I’m heading to Plantain. My parents gave me enough money to rent a place I found online and I know is in a great area. I didn’t ask for the money, but they felt so devastated that I was attacked in their home. I think the money was their way of telling me they were sorry, even if it wasn’t their fault. The house I’m going to is in the outskirts of Plantain, the houses are further apart and most look out onto the desert and mountains in the distance while being surrounded by lush greens and massive oak trees, making you feel like you’re almost in the middle of nowhere and it’s just what I need.
Pulling my Subaru up the driveway, I see a minivan already parked there and a woman gets out as soon as I turn my engine off. The house is just as it appeared online, white wood siding with a massive wrap around porch, navy colored shutters, flower boxes, and hanging baskets of greens hang along the banisters and swing from the overhangs.
“Hi, I’m Alexandra,” she smiles, walking over to me.
She’s in her late thirties or maybe early forties with short brown hair and dark eyes, and by the way she’s been waiting in her van it appears she doesn’t live here. Although I swear on the listing it said there was a permanent resident.
Come as you Are: Plantain Series Book Two Page 8