The Life You Stole (Life Duet 2)

Lucky him. He still had hair to pull.

He warned me that my life would change. I would not get to do the things I used to do. And he said it too … I would lose my hair from the cancer treatment. Why did he look so shocked?

Interesting note: Sounds stayed with me, like the sound of Evelyn’s mom’s voice when she told me my parents had died.

“What have you done!”

Sounds … oh the sounds …

I never forgot the click of Graham’s dress shoes against the tile floor or the high-pitched slap of the back of his hand across my face. But sounds faded faster than the slow destruction of a heart grieving death or the sting from flesh and bone colliding.

It knocked me back several feet. It always did.

“I don’t even recognize you,” he sneered.

That made two of us.

I would—eventually—recognize my husband. He turned and clicked his shoes across the tile to leave me alone with the resonating sounds, with the mess on the floor, with my thoughts …

Later, he would return, wearing his favorite mask of regret. He would hold me, kiss my wounds, and on a long sigh, he would say, “How did we get here?”

We.

He was the hero.

I was the villain.

And we were innocent victims of … something.

What?

I really didn’t know. How did we get there?

When did our passion turn into rage?

When did our connection become so destructive?

When did our love turn into resentment?

My phone on the vanity rang. I contemplated not answering it. Ronin … he must have felt that. Felt me.

My fingers feathered along the sensitive skin. I would tell him something, but I couldn’t make it believable yet. Instead, I knelt on the floor and gathered as much of my hair as I could—my long blond hair. My mom used to braid my hair, and my dad used to give my pigtail braids a few tugs when he called me his lovely Lila.

I hugged my hair to my chest, rocking back and forth, remembering a much simpler time in my life when love came in the form of gentle touches, adoring smiles, and unbroken promises. A time when candy trumped everything and my biggest worry was forgetting to wear my retainer. Sometimes a good cry made everything tolerable again.

After five or so minutes, I finished cleaning up the mess and slid my journal out from under my mattress. Graham would be gone … maybe an hour. When he lost control, he took off in his car. Maybe time alone and creating distance between us brought back a tiny bit of clarity. At the very least, it usually bestowed a sadness upon him that I took as his temporary version of regret.

Opening to the back of my journal, I read through my exhaustive list of reasons …

Reasons for bruises on certain parts of my body. I never imagined I’d need a list of excuses for the riddling of bruises on my arms and back, a black eye, half a swollen face, and his fingers imprinted in red, blue, and purple on my neck.

The hardest part?

Some weird, desperate, self-loathing part of me thought I still loved him, but I knew how things would end, eventually, because the scale had tipped. Flipping back to that date in my journal, I let my gaze reacquaint my broken heart with the words that marked the end of us.

JOURNAL

I feel so stupid. So blind. So trapped.

He manipulated me. It’s not rough sex. It’s not a physical need. At least … not anymore. I blindly fell for his excuses because he hurt me during sex. He justified it. He made me feel like my orgasm righted any sort of wrongs. It’s always left me confused because I love Graham. I love our intimacy, and sometimes I love the intensity, even when a little pain is the price to pay for pleasure. My desire to please him blinded me.

Today, everything changed. It’s not a fetish or a preference. It’s a sickness. Only a sick man breaks his wife’s nose because she playfully grabbed his phone when he wouldn’t give her his attention. I wanted him to notice me, my new white dress. Now, that white dress is in the trash, covered in blood.

He apologized immediately. And I honestly think he felt remorse. He cried. It’s the first time I have ever seen Graham cry. Today was the “tennis ball incident.” At least, that’s what we told the doctor at the hospital owned by the Porters. No one questioned it. Not even my best friend, but she’s pregnant with her first child, so I can’t tell her that her other best friend broke my nose. It would destroy her. And I would feel responsible if anything happened to her unborn child.

Graham did more than break my nose today. He broke a piece of us. I don’t know if we will ever be the same. I don’t know why he’s so angry.