Fear sparked in my belly.
Nathan was not an overly large man. He was lean, with more of a swimmer’s body, but he was tall. Much taller than me. And definitely able to overpower me, manhandle me as he was right now.
I was a woman living alone. I was a curvy yet petite woman who did not have any fighting skills to speak of. At that moment, I realized I should’ve prioritized training to fight back. Defend myself. So I would not feel so helpless when a man had his hands on me.
But I was lucky enough to have never been in a situation where a man had put his hands on me, so I hadn’t thought I’d need to learn such things. I thought—stupidly—that the universe had fucked with me enough and wouldn’t add being physically hurt by a man to the list of my traumas.
“You need to get your hands off me right now, Nathan,” I told him, willing myself to meet his eyes, to not let my voice shake. “And then you need to get out of my house.”
I was proud of the steel in my voice.
The steel that had absolutely no effect on Nathan, apparently.
“No,” he gritted out. “I’m not leaving until we sort this out. Until you’re mine again.”
Fury and fear mingled together inside me. “I was never yours,” I hissed at him. “Evidenced by the fact that you don’t respect my decisions, you don’t take your hands off me when asked, and you think I’m someone to be owned.”
The tips of Nathan’s ears reddened in indignation and his lips turned down with a scowl. “You don’t mean that,” he muttered, gripping me tighter. “I just need to show you.” Then he yanked me forward, our lips crashing together, his tongue forcing its way into my mouth. A tongue that I immediately bit.
Which, thankfully, made him rear back in pain, letting go of me.
Not thinking, I turned, intent on getting as far away from Nathan as possible. Unfortunately, amidst my fight or flight response, I forgot that I had left the cabinet open, and I ran right into it.
Now I wasn’t what could be called a runner by any stretch of the imagination, but when the guy you broke up with—the guy who you’d become repulsed by—forced his way into your house then into your mouth, you became a runner. And I had installed these cabinets myself. Not to toot my own horn, but they were damn sturdy. Which was something I had been very proud of up until that moment.
If I had been subpar at cabinet building, the door would’ve likely just come off its hinges. But I wasn’t subpar. So, the door stayed firm. I, on the other hand, after slamming into it at full speed, fell right to the ground. Pain exploded in my left eye as my head slammed into my Italian stone floors.
“Nora!” the voice came from somewhere far away. It was muffled.
Then there were hands on me. Hands that I had literally ran into a cabinet door trying to escape.
“Get your hands off me,” I hissed, my own voice tight and thin from pain. I forced myself up, hating the vulnerable position on the floor with Nathan anywhere near me.
My head swam as I sat up, my face throbbing, and the vision in my left eye almost entirely obscured as I glared in Nathan’s general direction.
“Nora—”
“Get the fuck out of my fucking house,” I snarled at him, my voice unrecognizable.
Nathan paused for a split second. I doubted it was from any kind of actual concern, likely because I’d never spoken to him like that before. I’d always been delicate, agreeable, submissive. And I’d never cursed in front of him. He’d found it ‘unbecoming.’ Ugh. How in the fuck had I let this man put a ring on my finger?
“I’ll call the police if you’re not gone in the next thirty seconds,” I threatened. I really would’ve called the police if I thought I’d be able to get up and reach my purse, which I knew I couldn’t. The point was to make sure Nathan didn’t know I couldn’t.
Nathan’s self-preservation won over, and he reacted quickly, his shape moving away from me and footsteps receding as he ran from the house. I didn’t breathe easier until I heard my front door open and close. And even then, I didn’t breathe easy. On account of all the pain.
Though I was a neurotic hypochondriac, I had a rather high pain tolerance. I’d broken my arm once, and no one believed me because of the hypochondria, so I was forced to go to school for a week with a broken arm. And run our school’s cross-country race. I actually came in second, the one and only time I had run because it was forced upon me. My mother had felt sufficiently guilty, so that ended up being the one time in my life when she was kind to me for an extended period.