Chapter 69

When did this happen? When did my feelings spill beyond friendship this badly?

I’ve seen him with other women …

He’s always been this way, when did I start reacting like this? Breaking my heart over him being his Casanova self.

“Tell the others, after I’m gone, I had to go away for a couple of days.” He’s picking up his suitcase, his body stiff with tension and the hatred oozing between us is unbearable.

“What reason shall I give?” I sound alien. This fake politeness between us, thick in the stifling air. We’re both exceptionally good at cold and polite.

“I don’t give a shit, Emma … The truth for all I care.” He flexes his eyebrows sardonically.

That was a blow … it hurt; it knocked the wind out of my sails. I move back as he stalks out with suitcase in hand, he slides his shades on, despite it being duller in here and he doesn’t even look at me; he seems beyond pissed.

Should I follow him? Should I stay here?

Stop hovering, Emma, it’s pathetic.

I don’t know what to do, this isn’t me, not anymore. He’s up the hall and out the door in the blink of an eye, obviously determined to leave. I hesitate and follow, I’m not sure why, but I suddenly need to cling to his presence, the last moments of him. I just want him to stop this, he’s making me feel so alone. So, broken.

I lose him at the top of the stairs, the sun hurting my eyes. I blink and shield them from view and suddenly I want him to slide his glasses over my eyes, the way he always does. I want him to brush my hair back and take care of me. I want the Jake I know and care about, not this cruel cold man who doesn’t give a shit about me.

I want to cry as sheer hysteria and panic consumes me. I catch sight of him near the rear of the boat, he’s following one of the crew down to the awaiting speed boat.

Oh my god. He really is going, it’s not a ruse. He really wants to kill me.

I want to scream out and run after him, but I’m rooted to the spot as I watch him descend into the waiting boat. I can’t bear to see him leave, so I turn on my heel and run back to my room at full speed. I run like my ass is on fire and don’t stop until I slam down onto my bed and sob every bottled up, deep wracking emotion, right up from the tips of my toes in a spewing out of desperate agony.

I don’t know how long I’m there, but I can’t stop; it’s like a damn has opened and the floodgates break. Everything I’ve ever held back slips out with the pain I’ve always avoided. I can’t breathe, it’s suffocating and unbearable. It’s excruciating and every cell of my body is in bleeding agony.

Jake’s breaking my heart.

***

Lying in the dark, watching the shadows of the water on my ceiling, I’m still and numb. As sensation as though I’m floating on the ocean directly, but I’m still laid on my bed. It’s night and dark… I haven’t left, and I don’t want to.

I’ve cried so much that my body is ravaged and weak. I didn’t know that it could do this to me … release so much … doubt … insecurity … pain. I haven’t sobbed properly since I was five years old; back then I didn’t cry over heartache, I only knew the tears from physical pain and illness. This is so much worse.

Crying over Jake has to be the worst pain I have ever experienced, it leads to breaking down over the way my life has turned out. The way I am. I think of my mother and wonder if she disintegrated like this over the men she dated.

Did she break this way over Ray Vanquis when he left?

Except Jake never dated me, he never left me in that way. I never experienced her kind of heartache. Ray inflicted more than heartbreak on her. I have no clue what to call this.

The thought of that monster makes me nauseous.

Did she cry when he beat her to a pulp and left her half-dead on her own floor? Why am I even thinking about this?

I never dwell on this, I don’t want to, it’s a thought that makes me ill. I can’t stop though, in my emotional state, the walls in my head have been smashed and I’m not in control of the thoughts and memories flooding in. The memories flashing into my mind like a stop motion movie and I’ve lost control.

Ray and his ugly, screwed up face towering over my mother, her body broken and bruised after he had raped her, yet again, for making him angry. I witnessed so much cruelty and perversion when she was in a relationship with him, powerless to stop him and afraid to try.

My mind is like an open door, without any ability to stop it; he’s in my head and she’s there, crying on the floor but then it’s not her … it’s me and I’m eighteen … memories I’ve tried so hard to push down, for an eternity, breaking through my broken walls and fatigue.

The first hit was a punch, a reaction to my self-defensive slap when he tried to force a kiss on me, right in the face. It knocked me down, made me groan, my head spin with a warmth spreading over my lips. It wasn’t the first time I’d been punched. I tasted the blood in my mouth, fueling my rage, and tried to get back up, but he hauled me up by the hair and threw me against the wall.

He was a big man … strong and cruel. I had seen the bruises on my mother from being with him, she would laugh them away uneasily and say he was just a rough lover. Rough was true, he tried to push his tongue in my mouth, and I fought with all my might, but he grabbed my clothes and started to tear at them. My jeans at the waist, bursting the button off, trying to thrust his hand down there. I kicked and bit, clawed until the floor was hard against my face with another jarring punch.

He yanked my jeans down when I was reeling, hunched over onto the wooden floor. He knocked the sense out of me and I knew what he was going to do, I had seen him hold my mother down this way more than once; she didn’t know I came home and saw it many times. I had hidden in the shadows and slunk away quickly, afraid to intervene. Ray was a devil and he instilled so much fear with his aggression and bulk. He got off on this shit.

My pants were around my ankles and he pulled my underwear to follow. I flipped, in terror and rage, turned and twisted and thrust about, trying to save myself from him; his grip was strong, but I had a renewed strength as adrenaline coursed my veins. I managed to gauge his face with my nails cruelly, and it angered him, getting up to rain more cruel kicks on my body. Beating me down.

I remember chanting internally, “I’m not going to crumble, I’m not going to pass out, I’m going to fight,” in a bid to stay conscious. I reached for the table nearby and it fell, the vase smashing over the top of me; scrambling desperately to grab a piece of it, but he hauled my ankles and dragged me backward, my arm pulled through the broken mess until my blood was smearing the floor, my arms warm with the thick liquid. I kicked with my restrained ankles, knocking him over into the couch and it gave me time to yank my clothes back up and stumble to my feet. I was dizzy and swayed.