She paused and winced.
“Say it,” I said gruffly.
“H-he grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head back. I was so surprised I swerved and almost hit a parked car.”
It took everything I had not to jump up from the desk and run into the parking lot to kick this fucking guy’s ass.
“He said he didn’t mean it,” she continued as if her words hadn’t just set off a ticking time bomb inside me. “He apologized profusely. He sent me flowers every day for a week. ‘It was the stress,’ he’d said. He was trying for a promotion to set us up for our future.”
I was choking on suppressed rage and wasn’t sure how long I could pretend to be calm.
“We were so close to the wedding day, and he really did seem like he was sorry. I was stupid enough, eager enough to move on to the next step that I’d believed him. Things were fine. Better than fine. Until the night of the rehearsal.”
My fingers dug into my biceps.
She was pacing now in front of me. “He showed up to the rehearsal smelling like a distillery and he had several more drinks during dinner. I overheard his mother making snide comments about how she wished she could have invited more people but that she couldn’t because my parents couldn’t afford it.”
Fuckface’s mom sounded like she needed her own kind of ass-kicking.
“I was so mad I confronted him when we left the restaurant.” She shuddered, and I was afraid I was going to grind my fillings into dust. “Thank God we were alone in the parking lot. My parents had already gone home. Stef and the rest of the wedding party were still inside.
“He was so angry. Just like a switch had flipp
ed. I never saw it coming.”
She closed her eyes, and I knew she was reliving the moment all over again.
“He slapped me right across the face. Hard. Not hard enough to knock me down, but just enough to humiliate me. I just stood there in shock, holding my cheek. I couldn’t believe he’d do something like that.”
I doubted that Naomi was aware she’d lifted a hand to her cheek as if she could still feel the hit.
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I turned for the door and was ready to rip the knob off when I felt her hands on my back.
“Knox, where are you going?”
I flipped the lock and wrenched the door open. “To dig a shallow grave so I have a place to put him after I get tired of throwing punches.”
Her fingernails dug into my skin under my shirt, giving me something else to feel besides fury.
“Don’t leave me alone,” she said, then pressed herself against my back.
Fuck.
“He started pacing and yelling. It was my fault, he told me. He wasn’t ready to get married. He had goals he wanted to accomplish before focusing on his personal life. It was my fault for pushing him. All he was trying to do was give me everything I wanted, and there I was complaining to him the night before the wedding he didn’t want to have.”
“That’s fucking bullshit, Naomi, and you know it.”
“Yeah,” she squeaked, resting her forehead between my shoulder blades. I felt something damp leak through the shirt.
Damn it.
I turned and took her in my arms, holding her face against my chest. Her breath hitched. “Baby, you’re killin’ me.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” she whispered. “It was a slap. He didn’t put me in the hospital. Didn’t threaten my life.”
“Doesn’t make it anywhere near right. A man doesn’t put hands on a woman like that. Ever.”
“But I wasn’t exactly innocent. I tried to force a man to marry me. I almost said ‘I do’ even after he hit me. How pathetic is that? I was in that church basement in my dress, worrying about what other people would think if I didn’t go through with it. Worried about letting them down.”