Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

Until I’d gotten involved with John and had lost all of my friends. I’d been so sure they were the people they’d been when I’d first met them, but…

That was the past, though, and what I was going through right now was my future. My broken, beaten, soulless future.

Kicking me hard in the ribs again, John circled around me. He’d been waiting for me to get home with a fire lit inside him for some reason. The moment I’d walked through the door, he’d grabbed me by the hair and had dragged me into the living room, far away from where the neighbors would be able to hear what was going on.

“I don’t believe you,” he spat, pressing his toe into the area he’d just kicked.

I was reasonably sure he’d broken some of my ribs, and the overwhelming pain that resulted from what he was doing pretty much confirmed it. There was no way bruises would feel like that, was there?

The reason for tonight’s attack was down to the fact I’d been five minutes late after the bus I’d caught home had gotten stuck in traffic due to an accident that’d been all over the news. He knew this, the news was still playing at that moment, but it was tonight’s motivation for beating me.

“You were fucking someone. Who was it this time, Jacie? Who? Your professor? The janitor? The fucking garbage guy?” he roared, leaning down, so his face was only six inches away from mine.

I was so focused on how much I hated that nickname coming out of his mouth that I never saw it coming, the next swing of his fist, but I felt it when it collided with my face. I also heard the crack of something break inside it.

With the pain and the exhaustion, mentally and emotionally, everything went black. The pain disappeared, the fear, and so did the sight of my supposedly devoted boyfriend as he reared his fist back to hit me again.

I never felt it when it landed, and I had no idea the damage it’d done. But I’d know it when I woke up.

Maybe I’d get lucky, and he’d kill me while I was out cold?

It was the beeping sound and the pain that registered first as I tried to make my way out of the deep sleep I was in. When the pain hit, though, and I replayed the last thing I remembered, I begged my body to put me back to sleep.

I couldn’t go through this anymore. I was beyond drained, and I wasn’t strong enough to endure any more of it. I wish I’d never met John in the store and that I’d never given him my number when he’d asked for it. God, I’d even held off replying to his text for two days while I thought over how smart it was responding to it when I didn’t know the guy.

The problem was we all needed to take leaps of faith, and I’d just leaped in the wrong direction.

“Jacinda?” a voice I recognized said gently next to my head. “You’re safe, honey. Can you open your eyes and let us all know you’re okay?”

Mom.

Knowing what John would do to her, my eyes snapped open, and I whimpered as the lights in the ceiling sent a sharp pain to my brain.

“Mmaum,” I slurred and had to bite back the vomit that wanted to break free with the pain it caused me. It felt weird, like I couldn’t move my head or mouth.

“Shhh, baby. Don’t try to talk. The doctors had to wire your jaw shut to help it heal.”

Whimpering, I looked around the room and took in my dad and sisters concerned and pissed faces. Whatever they saw when I did it, though, had their spines stiffening and their muscles in their jaws ticking.

Man, that would hurt like a bitch if mine did that right now.

Glancing back up at Mom, I blinked against the tears that were now trailing into my hair.

“A neighbor called Aidan heard some noises, sweetheart, and because the door wasn’t locked, he got into the apartment as John was strangling you. He had some friends over who helped restrain the son of a bitch while Aidan worked on stabilizing you the way the 911 operator told him to.”

I didn’t even know John had a neighbor called Aidan? I hadn’t spoken to anyone in the apartment block since he’d moved in there two months ago. I’d been spending more time there recently after realizing I didn’t want to spend time in the house I shared with my ‘friends’ when they’d turned their backs on me.

Wasn’t that some irony? Having to spend time with your abuser because there was nowhere else to go? He knew where my family lived, so I couldn’t go back there. He also knew where Dad worked, so I couldn’t go there, either.