“You’re so selfish,” he gritted out. “For making me do this.”
He pulled me back, this time he used twice the force than he did before. My face hit the fridge and I was sure that he had broken something. I sobbed at the pain and slumped down the fridge smearing blood as he let me go. I kept my head down, not wanting to make it any worse.
The first drop of blood landed on the floor, followed by a second drop mixed in with tears as they slid down my face.
“So sick and tired of this,” he muttered as he walked away. “You’ll never learn.”
His boots thudded on the tiled floor, then the carpet in the hallway. The slam of the front door followed him out.
I agreed with him.
I was sick and tired of this too.
Chapter Eight
I woke up the next morning, my eye throbbed and it felt like I had the worst hangover in the existence of hangovers. I lifted my head off the pillow and pushed myself up off the bed. Shuffling into the kitchen I started the coffee machine. I pushed the door to the living room open relieved that Max wasn’t in there.
He was the last person that I wanted to see. I made my coffee and went straight to the bathroom, needing to do something with my eye before Eli woke up.
I hadn’t checked it the night before, afraid that it would be my undoing. Instead, I went straight to bed and cried myself to sleep.
I lifted onto my toes and pushed my face up into the mirror to get a closer look.
My whole eye was swollen with a gash underneath my eyebrow all covered in a horrible green and purple bruise and dried blood. I dipped my head, not wanting to see it. If I couldn’t see it then I could pretend that it wasn’t there.
I jumped in the shower before I tackled it.
I thought about what had happened last night while the water washed it all away. Normally, I could say I knew what I had done wrong but last night was different. All I had done was ask what he wanted for dinner.
If anyone should have been pissed then it should have been me, he was the one who was meant to take us out last night.
But I should have known to tread carefully when he came home slurring. It was always when he had been drinking. It did something to him, made him have a short fuse, he’d told me several times that he blacked out. I believed that he did because the man that would hurt me wasn’t the man that I had known these last five years.
I wrapped a towel around me and wiped at my eye with some cotton wool pads. The cut opened, and I watched as blood trickled down my face before I caught it with the cotton pad.
I rummaged through the cupboard for the first aid kit and got to work. I cleaned the cut with some antiseptic and applied some butterfly stitches cleaning the dried blood as best as I could. It looked better than it had but there would be no way to disguise it.
The bruises from my arms were nearly gone now, I looked down at them. He’d never hurt my face before; it was always somewhere that I could cover up easily.
The sound of Eli’s bed squeaking alerted me to him waking up. I pushed the first aid kit back just as he walked down the hallway.
“Morning, sweetie!” I called as he went past.
“Mornin’, mama,” he mumbled back.
I went into the bedroom, threw a t-shirt and leggings on and went to make his breakfast. I hadn’t got anything planned today apart from visiting with Miss Maggie. I hadn’t seen her since I told her that I got the job.
I cleaned the apartment while Eli ate his breakfast. I hadn’t had much of a chance to clean it to Max’s liking. If he had noticed I hadn’t done it that could have had an effect on him. Maybe that was part of the reason why he had been upset with me last night.
My duties at home were slipping, I’d have to rectify that.
“Come on, sweetie, let’s get you dressed,” I said when I had finished.
“But, maaaa, I’m watching this,” he groaned, his head moved from left to right when I stood in front of the TV.
“Now, Eli.” He huffed and crossed his arms. “Come on, we’ll go to Miss Maggie’s.” I smiled.
He shot up off the couch then. There was nothing that got him moving more than the prospect of seeing those damn cats.