I don’t back down, though.
I’m not afraid of him. And I sure as hell won’t let him believe otherwise.
Still, I don’t need a drunken confrontation about nothing, and so I try to employ the same tactics I’ve found effective in the past.
“Jonah—”
His glare widens, his nostrils flaring. “I’m sick of my girl disappearing all the time! And people always having to ask me where you are! I look like a fucking idiot!” he growls, so fiercely that spittle lands on my cheek.
I stifle my gasp.
I don’t know why I’m still so stunned by this behavior from him, by his random, inexplicable perceptions, and his utterly unacceptable reactions. Maybe it’s because of all of the impassioned apologies—and the displays of contrition—he so zealously swore the last time he ‘lost his temper’.
All of the ‘last times’.
“If you look like an idiot, Jonah, it isn’t because of me,” I shoot back, honestly.
It’s the wrong response.
He grabs my upper arm again, this time hard enough to cause actual pain, and I wince, more surprised than anything when he refuses to let me shrug him off. Instead his fingers squeeze harder, with the kind of force he usually reserves for drunken brawls with his friends or the occasional bar fight with people he refers to as “spoiled summer brats”.
Jonah drags me a few more feet down toward the dunes, and for the first time I register actual fear.
“You’re a real independent woman, Liz,” he spits, sardonic and seething, “but there’s only so much shit I’m going to take from my own fucking girl!”
I yank so hard I actually feel myself bruise, but I finally escape hi
s grip. Or he releases me. I’m not sure which.
I rub my arm, knowing I will feel his unwelcome mark far more sharply tomorrow, and I resent it beyond measure.
Jonah has grabbed me before, I have no choice but to shamefully admit to myself, and he’s lost his temper and gotten too aggressive with me, too, but he’s never caused me actual, physical pain. He’s sure as hell has never left a mark on me, either.
But it's the debilitating injury to my pride—to my self-worth—that is far more devastating to my soul.
I am not this girl.
I will not be this girl.
I make the decision here and now, once and for all. The one I should have made in the first place.
“Then I’m not your fucking girl,” I say slowly, cautiously.
Not cautious of his reaction, because fuck him.
Fuck Jonah Berry.
I’m cautious of his comprehension. Careful that he understands that this—this controlling, violent fucking bullshit—it is a nonstarter for me.
My proverbial line in the sand.
And he’s already crossed to the wrong side.
I glare at him, demanding he hear me, that he come back to his senses. Or whatever senses he’s ever had.
Because as much as I wish that the other Jonah, the version of him that can be so sweet and caring, if not particularly thoughtful, would somehow return to the body of this monster before me—to show off his typical displays of regret and remorse—it won’t change anything now.
This is too much. Too far.