“GET-THE-FUCK-OUT!” I rage.
My raised voice has the effect I want. Her footsteps move rapidly on the hardwood floor, and she opens the bedroom door.
Her plea comes raspy and laced with hurt. “You could tie me up and set me on fire, and you’d never be like them. You’re not evil, Heath.”
Two strides, and I’m in front of her. My hand grips her chin, and she winces from the force of my fingers. Good, because I want it to hurt. I want her to know the sad, pathetic boy is gone, and this man in front of her is capable of all kinds of surprises.
“Sweet Katelyn, I’m the monster the rest of the evil men in your life run from.”
With those words, I shove her and watch her ass hit the floor and her eyes well with tears.
“I know you, Heath. You may have changed, that might be true, but you’re not a rapist. Not like my husband or Henry.”
Chapter 16
Katelyn
His eyes go cold and dead at my words. He’s frozen in anger, or is it disgust that’s keeping him quiet?
“I only pushed you away because he told me he’d kill you if I didn’t. I married Eddie to escape only to end up in another hellscape.”
Heath brings his hands to his face to hide his emotion. I take his momentary lapse in action to turn and run out of the house that brings so many horrible memories.
I’m out of that room in a heartbeat, flying down the grand staircase faster than I’ve gone before, even the days I was running away from Henry. Heath comes after me, screams my name, but halfway down the staircase, I hear him fall. I don’t waste my time turning around or going back to see if he’s okay.
A drunken and delirious Henry blocks the front door, but these days he’s so far gone with his alcoholism, he barely scares me. Jaundiced and bruised, eyes bloodshot, yellow teeth, and I know he has brittle bones. I could probably hurt him if I wanted to. I yank the giant front doors open, and Henry gets out of my way.
Heath screams my name once more when I’m halfway down the path. I won’t go back for him—there is no ‘us’ anymore.
Instead, I run through the dunes in Wainscott Hollow as fast as my legs will carry me, kicking up sand and falling a few times but never letting it hamper me.
Back to my abuser, to my monster of a husband who I know doesn’t deserve me. Eddie was my one-way ticket away from Henry, and no matter how horrible he is to me, he’s still better than my brother. My prison is beautiful, and my abuser even more so. From the outside, we look like the perfect couple. Yet I’m so broken inside I can barely get through each day. I thought Heath’s return would be imminent, but I didn’t expect him to storm back into my life like a walloping tidal wave.
“Where the fuck were you?” Eddie demands when I slam the door behind me.
The ocean breeze has whipped my hair into a wild nest, and my clothes are more than disheveled. Blood drips down my leg from where it got caught on a bramble.
Eddie’s drinking red wine out of a large, stemmed crystal glass. His lips are blood red, and his eyes narrow in fury as he takes me in. His glassy stare tells me he’s drunk.
“I’m going to bed,” is all I can manage to say.
I stalk past him toward the staircase and wish I had some comfort in my own home, my own bed, but none of it gives an ounce of reassurance. Only the dunes serve as a place of solace to me, a respite from my doomed existence. In my home, I’m weak prey, the losing team in a game I don’t want to play.
“I’m taking a sleeping pill because I have a headache,” I shout down the stairs to my husband.
Only one of those statements is true. I cannot, in any way, shape, or form, deal with Eddie and his bullshit tonight. Nor can I replay over and over what happened with Heath, which is exactly what I’ll do if given the opportunity. I want to block out the world and succumb to unconsciousness because it’s all I can handle right now.
I fall asleep to the faint tinkling of glasses as Eddie drinks himself into a stupor, and the hushed roar of the waves through the open door of my balcony. The wind blows the white curtains into billowing ghosts as my eyelids grow heavy and my heartbeat slows. I drift into oblivion with Heath’s scent lingering on my goose-pimpled skin.
Chapter 17
Heath
She’s not going back to him. The times I stood by and let life happen to me are long gone. I fucked up. I know it. I could have been the knight on that white horse saving the princess from the villain, but the reality is I’m just as big a villain. The only thing that keeps her safe with me is she’s the very air I breathe. As much as Kat is destructive to me and I to her, we’re also each other's salvation.