Southern Storms (Compass 1)

The car ride home was silent, my back turned to Penn as I kept my eyes closed the whole way back. When we entered the house, Penn finally unleashed his pent-up anger.

“You promised you wouldn’t do that,” he said with a sigh, brushing his hands through his gelled-back locks of hair. “You swore you wouldn’t have another fucking episode in public again! I mean, geez, Kennedy! Don’t you get tired of looking like a damn psychopath?” His words beat into me.

I expected them from him because those words always came after one of my meltdowns. When they had first happened, he’d understood because he was grieving, too. But as the months passed, his understanding approach had turned bitter. He was exhausted by me, and I couldn’t blame him.

I was exhausted by me, too. I just wished he could see I was trying my best. I was trying my best to be normal, to be me again.

I was trying.

I stared at him, uncertain about what to say because apologies felt so empty after so many failed attempts at trying to be my old self once more.

He took off his sports jacket and tossed it over the living room chair before unbuttoning his cuffs. “I wish you would’ve never gotten that stupid-ass tattoo. It’s a fucked-up reminder of a fucked-up time, Kennedy. I don’t get why you’d want that reminder staring you in the eyes every single day.”

His words were harsh, yet again, I didn’t blame him. I just stayed silent, staring down at the ink on my wrist. He didn’t understand it, but I needed that daily reminder. I needed to feel my baby girl on my skin. I needed to feel as if she was still with me.

“Do you have anything to say?” he asked, unbuckling his pants. He tilted his head toward me as if he were a disappointed parent as opposed to a concerned, loving spouse. “Anything?”

“I’m…” I swallowed hard and looked down to the ground. “I’m so-sor—”

“You’re sorry,” he spat out, shaking his head. “Of course you are. You’re always sorry. Your whole life is an apology.”

He was angry, and I understood why, but I didn’t get his aggression. It could’ve been the whiskey drinks sitting heavily in his gut from dinner. My husband was much more forward and shorter with me when he’d been drinking. His fuse was burning to an end.

“You know what…? I can’t.” He sighed, shoving his hands through his hair before plopping down on the couch in front of me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. “I can’t do this.”

“I-I know.” I swallowed hard and shut my eyes. “I know I can be a lot sometimes…”

“Sometimes? Kennedy. This is all the time. You haven’t been normal for a long time, and it’s exhausting. It’s hard. You haven’t worked on any new novels in months. You hardly leave the house. Just getting you into a car is a chore. It’s suffocating me. You’re suffocating me. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t…” He shook his head. “I should’ve never done this in the first place.”

“Done what?”

“Married you. We should’ve never gotten married. My parents told me it was a terrible idea, but I was young and stupid, and look where that got me. They warned me that you were just trying to trap me, but I disagreed.”

I shook my head as I looked his way. “Penn—”

“But here I am—trapped. I should’ve listened. I should’ve run back then and not been an idiot.”

“You…you’re upset. I know I messed up today, but—”

“Stop talking. Don’t you get it, Kennedy? I only married you because you got knocked up, and now I don’t even have a daughter to show for it because of you,” he spat out, raking a hand through his hair.

My chest felt as if it were collapsing.

His words stung even though we’d been so distant that his comments shouldn’t have hurt me anymore. We hadn’t been close in a while, minus meaningless sex and attending his work parties. I couldn’t recall the last time we laughed. My heartbeats were hardly ever crafted for him. Still, the venom on his tongue wreaked havoc on my mind, leaking into my brain cells and poisoning my self-worth—not that there was much left of it.

He kept going. He kept digging. He kept destroying me with his words. “My father was right—you should’ve had an abortion. It would’ve saved us all a lot of time.”

My heart…

Its beats…

They all came to a halt.

Crashing…

I was crashing down.

My knees buckled beneath me and the cold hard wooden floor caught my body. I began to sob into my hands, and there was no one around to comfort me. Penn was tired of it all, tired of me, tired of this—my panic attacks, my breakdowns, my hardships.

I knew it right then and there.