“I smell like throw up,” I whine, but I really couldn’t stand the thought of him touching me right now. After what I saw, after what he did.
His eyes soften.
“I’ll go get the car and say our goodbyes. Is there anyone you want me to send out here?”
I shake my head unable to speak for fear that my sobs, carefully contained, will escape.
“Here are the keys.” He puts the keys in my hand then walks back the way he came with a swagger of someone that just got away with murder.
I stand there and stare at his back until he disappears. My vision fills with waves of tears.
“No,” I say out loud to myself.
“Rebecca, why’re you lying?” I whip my head at the sound of Seaver’s voice.
“Oh, that’s rich,” I counter and start moving toward the other side of the building where the parking lot is located. Venom fills my veins one at a time making sure I move forward.
“Listen, I know you hate me.” He’s following me. I walk faster. “You have every right to, even after four years, but tell me why you look like you’ve seen a ghost or your dog just died. It’s your wedding night.”
“I know it’s my fucking wedding night, but undoubtedly men don’t really care about that, just like graduation.”
His steps stop behind me and I turn to face him. Warm brown eyes widen in recognition of what my words mean, lips I kissed countless times open in an apology.
I run. I run from the reality that may sink in if I say anything else out loud.
I run, bear hugging the sham that my life may become.
I blink away all the tears because maybe this is just how things work. Maybe I’m just a woman that men cheat on. It seems to be the pattern.
I can do better. I can make things untainted by tonight. I can do that. I will be more sexual, we’ve been separated for so long and I made him do the no sex until wedding day thing...my mind spirals with how I caused my groom to fuck my best friend in the bathroom during our wedding.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Everything is Happening
My phone rings as I’m packing. Sweat breaks out on my upper lip, only four people have this number, five if you count Sebastian. I turn it on for a few minutes at a time just to make sure I haven’t missed something important.
“Hey, Christy.” My voice is calm, my breath is even. I’m ready for this.
“Holy shit, I almost had to call the cops on him.” She’s breathless with worry.
“Are you okay?” Breathe. I want to contain the madness that Sebastian turns me into. I hadn’t meant to...well, I knew it could happen.
“Yes, he found your phone and Bash’s iPad. I think his head almost exploded.” Christy’s voice was high pitched. “If Jason hadn’t been here I don’t know what he would’ve done.”
I glance to where Bash dances in the waves crashing on the shore. A smile washes over my face with the knowledge that I’ve done the right thing. The only thing I could think to do to protect my son.
“I’m sorry to have to involve you Chris.”
“It’s fine. I’m glad you’re finally leaving, even if it has to be like this.” She clears her throat. “Seeing Jason protect me was pretty hot too, so two birds with one stone and all that.”
I sigh. My old friend has no idea what I’d done to leave and hopefully never would. I hope no one ever had to know.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
More of Man
“Hey, you want to go grab some dinner before I have to leave?” I call to Bash from the back porch of the house I rented for the month.
“Okay, where are we going?” Bash hedges. Sherlock, the American Bulldog he’d found wandering on my mom’s property, chases the tennis ball on the beach and runs with abandon.
“Well, I thought we’d hit Fat Hen’s. Does that work?”
“Fine,” he agrees and starts walking up the wooden deck that leads out to the sand behind the house. He claps once and Sherlock runs to him immediately.
“That dog is enamored already.”
He smiles and pats the brindle dog behind the ears. “I don’t want you to go.”
I gaze past him into the horizon. “I know, but I have to go. If we want this to be over, I have to go.”
“I’m scared.” My eyes find his and I examine him. I’m puzzled.
“Don’t be scared. If anything happens, you and your grandmother will be okay.”
“I won’t be okay without you. I won’t.” This melts me because he’s never said anything like this to me before, after he turned seven that is.
He walks inside, Sherlock jumping at his side, and I’m comforted with the fact that I’ve taken every precaution to keep him safe. It may be too late, but I’ve done what I can. My mother looks up from her magazine.
“I actually agree with him. There is no reason for you to go back.”
“You don’t know what I need to do. It’s complicated. I need to finish this.” I dig into my purse for my keys.
“Isn’t it finished?” She takes a sip of her wine.
“Nowhere near finished,” I answer as I follow Bash out the front door of the house. I hop the steps down to the driveway and slide into the driver’s seat.
The drive takes about five minutes and a comfortable silence fills the car.
“So should we start calling each other by our new names?” His question breaks the solace of the car and I turn to face him.
“Well, you’re still going to call me Mom, so are you asking if I’m going to start calling you Steve?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll try. Steve.” I don’t like it. Steve sounds like a forty-five year old man, not a 13 year old boy.
“It sounds weird when you say it.”
“It sounds weird when you say it,” I counter. Although I’ve gotten new identities for us for this little bit, I don’t foresee us needing them forever.
“Steve is a man’s name,” Bash says, his lips curved up at the ends.
“You’re not a man,” I comment.
“I’m more of a man than Dad.”
This statement cuts me more than anything Sebastian could have done to me. This opinion makes my insides disintegrate and disappear into the utter darkness that has crept onto the island with no warning. The absolute lack of any light on the island at night is one of the things that calls to me. It’s in stark contrast to the ever present lights of the city. The stars here are so bright you can walk to the beach solely by their light. His voice turns to a murmur and I can’t decipher the words.
“Mom?” Something in his voice makes me look at him. The rage in him is so apparent that I know he’ll need therapy. I recognize it. It looks like his father. I need to make sure he’s okay, that I made the right decision.
Bash’s words shake me from my own brain and I nod. I don’t remember what I’m nodding at, but I nod like I agree with whatever it was that stopped me from talking and sent me back into the recesses of my brain that no longer works properly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
You Owe Me
Bash is staying with Samantha for the next week, while I was hoping for my mom to keep him this seemed to be a better fit after meeting her kids. I don’t want him to be involved with what happens next.
Standing in Jessica’s cheery blue and yellow kitchen, my hands clench at my sides. Jessica, her hair swept off her face swollen from tears, is sitting at her table staring into the marsh outside. I’m not quite sure why she’s crying, her life is fine. It’s my life that’s a nightmare. She’s not entitled to cry. I hate her.
“No, I can’t. I won’t do it.” Seaver’s eyes have lost their fight though and I can tell he’s caving.
I shift all my weight on my right leg and search for something to convince them both this is the only way. “Remember I used to make jewelry?”
“Yes,” Jessica nods.
“Well, sometimes I would get lost in it, you know. I loved it so much I would lose track of time and... w
ell, I wouldn’t have dinner ready when he got home or didn’t clean the way he felt like I should.”
They are both staring at me not knowing where my story is going. These two naive people I used to know who think life and love are normal, that you can’t mix things up, your love with your fear, your desperation with lust.
“So, he came home one day and I had made the most beautiful bib necklace with a matching cuff and earrings. They all looked like branches wrapping around my neck, wrist and ears. It’d taken me weeks to come up with the design and the entire week to make the set.” I smile at the memory of my passion while making it, that passion was extinguished pretty quickly after that set.
“Okay,” Jessica prodded.
“Well, anyway I was so proud that I showed Sebastian. Not only did he not care about what I’d made, but he became enraged that instead of cooking for him that I was making jewelry.”
I blink and look at each of them separately.
“At first he just yelled at me, it was really the first time I’d seen that side of him. It was also the first time I realized his eyes were empty of any emotion whatsoever. I mean, I guess I’d always seen lust and what I wanted to see in him, but this was like a cold shower and I got really nervous about my decisions.”
Jessica clears her throat.
“I was crying and he left me to get take out. I was so scared I started packing my and Bash’s clothes, he was just a baby. It wasn’t so much what he said, but the way he was looking at me. Like I was useless to him, like I was a bother. When he got back and saw that I was leaving he apologized. I mean, on his knees, head against my belly remorse. Then he told me to take everything off except the jewelry and he made love to me, he worshipped me that night.” I remember those tender kisses on my face kissing away any worry that I felt. “He told me how much he loved me and how proud he was of me for the beautiful jewelry. I fell asleep that night wrapped in him.”
Their faces were blank, not having any idea why I’m talking, thinking maybe I’ve lost my mind.
“When I woke up I couldn’t breathe. There was a sharp pain around my neck cutting off my airway. I clawed at my necklace, which was killing me.” I gaze at the floor as my vision fades in and out with the memory. “I remember trying to get my fingers just inside my necklace. I tried so hard my fingers were bloody, then everything went black.” I remember my feet kicking out and nothing.
Jessica gasps.
“Fuck,” Seaver muttered under his breath.
“I woke up in the hospital under a suicide watch.” I’m still standing very still so I can just get this out. I’m mortified of what I succumbed to in my life. I’m admitting to the failure that my life has become.
“Suicide watch?” Seaver asks.
“Sebastian had fashioned the closet like I attempted to hang myself with my necklace. He put a stool kicked over in the doorframe and a hook.” I close my eyes. “I have no idea where he got the hook.”
“Oh my God,” Jessica comments.
“He’d told everyone that he got home and found me like that. Naked and hanging by my own necklace. Sebastian told them he got me down from the hook and started mouth to mouth.” I open my eyes and look at Bryson. “So he saved me.”
“Holy shit, he’s fucked,” Jessica opines.
“Yes, but he’s smart. He wins at everything. He plans for everything. He had me committed for several weeks to support the fact I tried to kill myself with my sleeping baby in the next room. So that would be on my record.”
Jessica couldn’t look at me. Seaver suddenly found the marsh very interesting too.
“I need to beat him at his own game. He’s done other things.” My eyes find Jessica’s, she looks away again quickly. “I won’t get Bash if I leave. He’s made me a prisoner. I can’t find a job because I haven’t done anything other than my jewelry and I haven’t made anything in over a decade.” This is a lie, but it won’t hurt anyone. They don’t need to know all the money I’ve saved over the years. I have a following around Portland and I’m hoping to make it bigger. I work in cash only so there is no trace of what I’ve been doing.
Seaver runs his hand over his unruly hair and for a few seconds I’m drawn into him. He’s so different than I remember and a memory flashes in my mind of us lying on the beach and laughing about the images we see in the clouds, his hand caressing my belly as we stare into the sky. When I blink again I’m seeing his tongue down Melissa’s throat at my graduation and my world tilting in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
“Bryson, she’s not lying. He’ll never let her go. She’s been his perfect wife from the outside. He won’t lose.”
I don’t even look at her because I know she knows a part of Sebastian that she shouldn’t. I also know she saw through him when I didn’t.
“I can’t,” he whispers, but he’s clenching his fists at his sides.
“Please.” I beg. My voice is full of desperation; this is the only fall back I have. I hold out my hand with the new phone I bought. My hand shakes and I don’t try to hide it. They need to see this to believe this is the only plan.
“Becs,” he shakes his head.
I look at Jessica. A ginger ringlet has fallen out of her ponytail and she tucks it behind her ear without turning her eyes toward me.
“You owe me,” I utter the only words that I believe will force their hand. These people I believed in with my whole heart who at one point fucked me over. They do owe me.
Seaver’s tanned fists are clenched and pressed against his legs again.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Fall Back
My body is sprawled on the floor in Jessica’s kitchen. Blood drips from my mouth or eye or nose, I’m not sure which part of my face is bleeding. My face is tight with pain. The crimson pool of liquid on her porcelain tile distracts me, but I can hear voices. The blood seeps into the creases in the tile. It’ll be hard for her to clean—I know, I’ve had to clean blood off tile before. The voices aren’t close, it sounds like they are yelling at me and I’m underwater. I look up and see watery versions of them.
“Rebecca, are you okay?” Jessica leans over me.
“Oh God, I can’t believe she talked me into doing this. Oh God.” Seaver is pacing in and out of my vision. He’s outside the pool, he’s inside. Outside. Inside.
I reach out and smear my blood with my fingers. I look at them now.
My life is shit. I’m shit. I’m sunk into an abyss from which I will never return. I put my knees under my weight and try to sit up, but the world spins a little. My vision is dark around the edges.
I reach out for Seaver, but he’s outside the pool. My fingers graze Jessica’s leg, blood staining her skin. She leans down and pulls me up.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
No one says anything.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The Definition of Wrong
“When did you become this?” Seaver’s voice bounces off the walls in the kitchen.
I’m slouched against the wall, feet splayed in front of me, my sandals discarded in front of me. Laughter bubbles up through my gut.
“You used to be…”
“What? Naive? Sweet? Innocent?” I laugh again. “Seeing my boyfriend with his tongue down someone else’s throat and then hearing about you fucking after graduation ended those things. Not to mention...”
His shoulders fall, tendrils falling out of his manbun. I close my eyes and put my head against the wall. His skin is warm as his shoulder brushes mine.
“I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. Obviously I have problems way worse than a high school boyfriend cheating on me.”
“Becs…” he starts.
“No one calls me that.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried about myself.”
“I want you to know that I think about us every day. I know I broke us. I just wish I could’ve dealt with Laney better.”
; Laney.
Laney.
Laney.
“For a long time…” I start, my voice breaks. Words come up and get stuck in my throat. I clear it. “I assumed maybe that’s what I was made for. To be the girl that men cheat on. The girl whose body didn’t work right. To be the girl who gets what she deserves. I did everything for Sebastian so I thought maybe he wouldn’t cheat on me like you did, but I was so very wrong. I mean...that was the definition of wrong.”
“Fuck,” he mutters. Then he looks at my face like it was the most interesting piece of artwork he’s ever seen.
“Completely fucked. I’ve been totally isolated and ingratiated in evil and didn’t even realize it was evil until finally I did and by that time it was too late for me. He had me. I had to try to figure out how to protect Bash.” Once this realization spread I felt the need to do something, something to protect myself.
“You had to’ve left before.” His southern drawl makes me smile, despite the circumstances.
“This will be my sixth time trying to leave. I’m hoping this time it’ll stick.” I wipe my hand across my forehead smearing a bit of blood. “He may kill me though. If I don’t come back that’s what happened.”
“Then why?” He brushes an errant hair from my face. “Why go back?”
“He’ll find me eventually and I want to protect Bash from that. I see the way he looks at me sometimes, Bash...it scares me because it reminds me of his father. His eyes...and I just want to make sure he’s okay.” I stare at anything but Seaver. This is not something I’ve ever told anyone. I don’t want anyone to know my fears about Bash, but it’s hard not to think that by staying with Sebastian I’ve put Bash in a sort of situation where this is normal. It’s normal to do whatever you want to a woman, the mother of your children, and it’s okay.
It’s not okay. I don’t ever want him to think the way his father treated me was okay. Can I fix this? Did I fuck this up? What can I do?
“How is going back going to help Rebecca?” He lets his hand find mine and threads his fingers through them. His hands are calloused, rough and I love the feel of it in my palm. A blue collar hand, I haven’t felt one of those since…this is hard to take in though because Seaver is anything but blue collar. I wonder in the back of my mind where he’s been for the last fifteen years. I don’t ask.
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