Hard

by S. R. Jones

  Now though, her hair is pulled back, and she wears no make-up. Her bone structure is flawless, but it’s her eyes, and that sad, pouty mouth that make her stunning. She sighs, and pushes away from the wall.

  She heads into the kitchen first and puts her gym bag on the counter. Then she takes a long drink of water. After she’s done re-hydrating, she opens a cabinet, takes out a bottle of vodka and fills half a glass, knocking it back in one smooth move.

  Does she have a drink issue? I don’t remember reading anything about that. Then again, it might not be public knowledge. Her mother does, and maybe it runs in the family? I turn to Don, my brows raised.

  “Only does it on Thursday’s,” he supplies. “When this little ritual happens.”

  I nod and turn back to the screens.

  Nick is still humping away in the lounge, but he’s heard his wife come in and his movements are more erratic now. More excited. So, he definitely gets off on being caught.

  Abi doesn’t like it, if the vodka is any indication. Weird.

  People are so weird and fucked up. I had enough evidence of that from witnessing my parents’ marriage. And this sort of shit right here, is the whole reason I don’t do relationships. Why hand your beating heart to another person to rip to shreds?

  Abi walks out of the kitchen and into the living room, and each step she takes her face grows tighter, By the time she walks into the lounge and sees her husband her face is like marble.

  Nick, on the other hand, appears unbearably excited by the appearance of his wife. His hips jerk wildly and he begins to groan. Fuck me, I don’t need to see this. I pick up my phone to scroll through Facebook or some shit. But Don knocks my shoulder with his.

  “You don’t want to miss this, trust me.”

  I look back up, and Nick suddenly pulls out of the prostitute, and tears off the condom. He stalks over to his wife, who he pushes to her knees, and proceeds to masturbate in front of her for a few moments before coming all over her face.

  “Take that, you fucking bitch. Take it all.” He grunts and groans as he comes.

  Not much in life shocks me, but this shit? I stare, mouth slack at the scene in front of me.

  Abigail’s face is still set like stone, but when she opens her eyes, I make the mistake of looking. The desolation has ramped up, and there’s disgust there too. Maybe hate.

  “Fucking hell.” Don laughs. “Told you. He’s a freak. Still, wouldn’t mind coming all over Abigail Madison’s face myself.”

  I see red. I don’t know why, but his words make me ragey as hell. Shooting out of my chair, I haul him up and slam him against the wall. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re as bad as that sick fuck on the screen.”

  I jab my finger to where Nick is paying the hooker. His wife hasn’t moved from where she’s knelt on the floor.

  “Get your hands off me. You’re not my boss. You don’t get to tell me anything.”

  Don’s face has gone bright red and I sense he wants to fight back, but his instincts are telling him not to. Good instincts there, because in my current mood I could happily throttle him.

  “Don’t fucking move.” I point a finger at him and grab my phone, dialling.

  “Yeah.” Rick answers on the fourth ring.

  “You’re on speaker. Tell your boy, Don, he’s finished here or I walk.”

  “What?” Rick sighs down the phone. “Liam, I need him on this. You can’t stay awake all night. You need to take it in turns.”

  “I can,” I tell Rick. “And tomorrow Reece can come share the shifts with me. If I have to sit here for one more minute listening to this guy of yours fart and burp, I swear to God...”

  Rick knows me, and he’ll know I mean it. I don’t know if Don’s a friend of Rick’s as well as an employee, but I know he didn’t work in the military, so he’s not going to be someone who has ties as deep as I do with Rick. We’ve faced death together. That creates a special bond.

  He sighs again. “Don. Go home. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “But—” Don starts to say.

  “Tomorrow,” Rick cuts him off. “And you fall asleep and miss something and I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands,” Rick adds to me.

  “I won’t. Don’t worry.”

  Don grabs his stuff and shuffles to the door, shooting me a disgusted look as he leaves.

  “Thanks, Rick,” I say.

  “Don’t thank me, just don’t miss anything. You can’t even take a shit now until your boy Reece joins you.”

  “Yeah. Got it.”

  I hang up. One eye has been on the screens all this time. The hooker has gathered her stuff and gone, and Abigail Madison is still knelt on that fucking floor. I want to march out of this room and go to that fancy apartment and kill Nick Madison, and then I want to hand Abigail a tissue to wipe her face clean with. I don’t understand my urge to do either of these things.

  Normal human compassion maybe, but it feels deeper than that. Something about this woman has got under my skin and I’ve only seen her for two minutes on a screen.

  It’s her eyes. I know it is. The emptiness there isn’t something new to me. I’ve seen it before. In the mirror.

  I sigh and scrub a hand over my face. I need coffee if I’m going to stay awake, so I head to the small kettle and coffee maker in the corner and start to brew one. Finally, Nick heads over to his wife and gives her his hand.

  “Good girl. You did good. You love it, don’t you?”

  She nods, and he smiles. “Go get cleaned up.”

  She nods again and heads off out of the living room. Down another long corridor, until she reaches what I know is their master bedroom. She goes straight through into the bathroom and starts to run the tap in the sink. She takes down a flannel from the rack with the towels laid out all fancy, and starts to scrub at her face. She scrubs and scrubs until her skin is red.

  I realize she’s crying as she keeps at her face. When the water is so hot it is steaming, she plunges her hands into it and splashes it on her face. She repeats this five or six times, and then grabs a towel and goes back to the scrubbing routine.

  Finally, she’s done. She leaves the bathroom, goes into the bedroom, and curls up on the bed in the fetal position.

  She’s not crying now, and she closes her eyes, and doesn’t move at all for the longest time.

  I keep checking on her husband, who I now want to add to my list of people to kill, but he’s messing around with some video game now as if he hasn’t just done one of the most fucked up things I’ve seen.

  His phone rings and he answers it with a lazy. “Yeah,” putting it on speaker so he can keep playing.

  “Yo, bitch.” A voice echoes from the phone. “You ready for this weekend.”

  Nick’s mouth forms a tight line. “I don’t know, man. I don’t want to leave Abi for so long.”

  “Dude, it’s three nights. Don’t be so fucking whipped.”

  Nick laughs. “Oh, I’m not whipped, don’t you worry. I just don’t like leaving the bitch alone. I’ve made sure my housekeeper is going to work the weekend. Given her the last couple days off.”

  “The trust in your relationship is inspirational.” The guy on the phone drawls. “So, the plan is, we’re meeting tomorrow, at the airport at seven. We’ve got hookers lined up for Saturday night. Friday we’ll take it easy, some drinks. Some cards. Wes won’t know what’s hit him come Saturday. Fucker will be all about being faithful, cause he reckons he’s promised Rhi and so he has to be a good boy. But we’ll get him so wasted he’ll be eating hooker pussy by the time the night’s done. Plenty of leftovers for us boys, too.”

  “Great.” Nick doesn’t look very enthusiastic at the idea. Maybe he can only get off when he’s humiliating his wife.

  “See you tomorrow at seven, fuckface.”

  Ha, even his friends think he’s a fuckface. So, tomorrow he’s leaving for Vegas. From what I’ve learned he hardly ever lets his wife out of his sight. And now he’s going to be gone for a few da
ys. Gives her some peace at least, I think.

  After a few boring hours of watching Nick play Grand Theft Auto, and Abigail reading her Kindle, Nick gets up and heads for bed. As soon as he opens the bedroom door, she drops her Kindle as if it is on fire, and closes her eyes.

  “I know you’re awake, darling.”

  Nick has that upper crust accent I can’t stand. He makes me seethe. He’s British born and bred like Abigail, like me, but we come from wildly divergent backgrounds. While she got dragged up by an alcoholic mother in an ex-mining town and I grew up fighting with local gangs, Nick went to a top private school. He topped this off with an Oxbridge degree, before getting the first in a string of great jobs. He’s made a lot of money, but most of his cash comes from his trust fund. Now he’s living and working in the States, but he’s such an arrogant fool, he’s got his fingers in the till, so to speak, and might even be involved in money laundering.

  The family are old, old money and I can’t wait to see them cut him off when he falls from grace.

  He climbs on the bed behind Abi and grabs her hair, yanking her head back. “Now, I am sorry but I have to leave you for a few days. I don’t want to go, darling. Truly, I don’t. But if I don’t the boys will think there’s something wrong. And we don’t want them thinking that, do we?”

  She shakes her head a miniscule amount, and he smiles and kisses her neck, before letting go of her hair. “Good girl.”

  He heads into the bathroom and comes out twenty minutes later. I don’t bother to watch what he’s doing in any detail, because I’m basically too busy watching his wife. She’s listening carefully to the sounds from the bathroom, to the shower running, and she reaches deep under the mattress of their huge bed and pulls out a phone.

  Fuck, she’s got a burner. Heart in my mouth for her, I watch as she starts to type a text. I want to see what it says, but no matter how I mess about with the monitoring equipment, I can’t see even when I zoom in. The camera isn’t quite in the right position.

  This shit is high tech, but not good enough to let me read what she’s writing. Once she’s sent the message, she turns the phone off, and pushes it back under the mattress.

  She gets out of bed to push it even farther under. Then she gets undressed. As she peels her sweatpants off, I wince at the bruises on her legs. She takes her top off, and in her underwear scoots back under the covers. Curled back up, she pulls the duvet up to her chin and closes her eyes again.

  When her husband comes out of the bathroom, she doesn’t move, and he doesn’t say anything more to her.

  What secrets are you hiding, Mrs. Madison?

  I’m determined to find out.

  Because for some reason, I’m determined to save her.

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