Breakup Games (The Heartbreak Society #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

MIRA

“ M ira! Mira!”

Sharp pain radiates from my shoulder all the way down my arm. I blink open my eyes, startled by the fuzzy figure of a man standing at the side of my bed. Arms crossed, huffing, and shifting his weight side to side.

“Mira!” he repeats and I realize the angry man standing next to the bed is my husband.

“What?” I groan, still half asleep.

“Get up.” He pokes me in the shoulder again, jabbing me with two fingers as hard as he can. He’s always been like this…pushing the line between just being an asshole and being physically abusive. But this time, it hurts.

“Why?” I ask, already knowing what’s coming. The house isn’t on fire. No one called and needed us to rush to the hospital or something.

“Because I said so. I want to talk.”

I slit my eyes open again just long enough to look at the clock. It’s half past one in the morning. “We can talk later.”

“No. Talk to me now.” He jabs me again. Harder. Then again, even harder.

“Cory, stop it.” I close my eyes, just wanting to disappear into the dark abyss of my bed, sinking past the covers, down into the ground, back into the coffin that has been my home for the last three years.

“God dammit, Mira!” His voice booms around me, reverberating off the walls. Violet, my eleven week old golden retriever puppy, sits up and comes closer to me, scared already. “You’re so fucking selfish. You are the reason we have problems in this marriage. It’s not me, it’s you! It’s a Mira Problem.” He spits out the insult as hard as he can, wanting to hurt me. “Even your dad says so. You know he called me the other day and thanked me for marrying you. He said he was so worried you’d be alone forever and knows how difficult you are to put up with.”

My dad? He wouldn’t…but Cory says so. I blink, the logical part of my brain arguing against what I’ve been conditioned to believe.

“It’s late,” I reply, voice small. I’m scared. Scared of being alone. Scared of staying. I want to break free from this horrible man. I want to live a life where I don’t have to worry about waking up to find torn open bags of garbage in my car because I didn’t take out the trash at night…when I was planning to in the morning on my way out of the house.

But I can’t.

Cory throws back the blankets and grabs my ankle, fingers digging into my flesh. “You will talk to me,” he says through gritted teeth. And then he yanks me forward, and I realize it’s been him the whole time, the monster from my nightmares. The shadowy figure I’ve seen as I’ve awoken stuck in sleep paralysis. Something was warning me, something was telling me to run. But now it’s too late.

He pulls again and I—

“Miss?”

My eyes flutter open and I see the flight attendant standing next to me, holding the coffee I ordered. Inhaling, I sit up and try to shake the remnants of the dream away. It’s been two years since I escaped the living House of Horrors, and I still get flashbacks like this. Thanks, long term memory.

“Thank you,” I tell her, taking the coffee. I bring it to my lips and blow before taking a small sip. I’m on a flight back to Chicago from Ireland, and while I slept for the last four hours, I didn’t intend to doze off again. I have work to do before I land, and I’m going from O’Hare right to the barn, where I’m meeting the gang for brunch and a ride.

Curling my toes in and feeling the ground between my feet, I inhale, doing one of the breathing techniques I have my clients do when they’re anxious. As a therapist, I know flashbacks like that are normal. I know I’ll have moments of being triggered throughout my entire life, perhaps.

And I know I’m out. I’m safe. I’m not married to Cory anymore. I haven’t been for two years, but that hasn’t lessened his obsession with me. I shake my head and roll my eyes, thinking about how his mother whipped out her phone and recorded me ordering coffee at the Starbucks Reserve only last Tuesday. What she plans to do with that footage is beyond me. The odd behaviors of others—and the extremes of psychopaths—is what inspired me to go into psychology in the first place. I never thought I’d be applying so much of what I learned in college to my real life.

I update two client files and read through three intake forms by the time we land. Grabbing my bag from the overhead, I sit back down and wait for the line of people to push their way off the plane. Thankfully, I make it through customs and am wandering around the parking lot looking for my car not too long after that.

“Crap,” I grumble to myself, pulling my phone out of my purse. I was in a rush to get here and didn’t take a picture of the numbered sign, telling myself I’d remember. Well, I don’t, and I have no service so my “parked car” ding isn’t dinging. I walk down another aisle of cars, warm late spring sun shining down on me as I hit the panic button for my Jeep over and over.

“Don’t panic,” I tell myself, and all calming techniques go out the window. I’m great at getting other people to stay calm and logical, but not the best when it comes to myself. I go down another aisle, convinced now that someone stole my car or maybe I’m in the totally wrong lot—O’Hare airport does have quite a few—when I finally hear beeping.

And then I remember I parked in row M6, which I told myself I’d remember because my name starts with the letter M and my birthday is March 6 th . Hah.

Shaking my head at myself, I open the back of my Jeep, toss my suitcase inside, and then go around, starting it up. I’ve flown out of O'Hare plenty of times and know my way around Chicago and its surrounding suburbs pretty well. Still, I need to put the barn’s address in my GPS because I’m totally the girl that will miss an exit I’ve taken fifteen times in the last month.

Half an hour into my drive, I take a client call. While I prefer meeting my clients face to face, I have a handful that have their sessions either over Zoom or via a phone call.

“Hey, Emily,” I start. “How are you?”

“Well, I was okay,” she replies, voice on the edge of breaking. “Until Aaron blew up at me again last night. I just…I don’t know how to cope with this, so I’m hoping you can give me some new coping skills because I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around him.”

Aaron came in and tried to do a session with Emily about two months ago, when she first became my client. It was like a PTSD flashback to my relationship with Cory. Aaron accused her of faking her anxiety for attention and that she “was good at it because she took a few psych classes in college”.

The guy is a grade-A asshole and he has her stuck in a cycle of emotional abuse.

“Have you thought about what life would be like without him?” I question bluntly.

“You mean like…break up with him?”

“Yes. Have you thought about what it would be like not to have to deal with someone who has outbursts? Last week, he threw away two very expensive pairs of your shoes and dropped off a bag of your clothes at Goodwill without your permission just because you didn’t immediately fold your laundry after taking it out of the dryer.”

“Well, it must have been annoying to deal with my clean clothes on the bed.”

“Okay, let’s say it was. He essentially destroyed your property. A sweater your grandmother made you was in there,” I say, not to bring it up and make her sad all over again, but to hope that she’ll finally see Aaron for what he is. “You’re a bright girl with a lot of friends and a promising future as a creative writing professor. You don’t need anyone, especially someone who treats you like that.”

“I mean…I would like…it would be nice…I want a romance like I read about.”

“Exactly. And that’s what you deserve. I think you should break up with him.”

A few seconds of silence fill the air. “Aren’t you supposed to like, just help me get through my current emotions?”

“Some therapists would do that, but not me. I don’t want to sit back and watch you waste your life, Em. He’s not going to change and you are going to let your best years go to waste waiting for him.”

“Y-you’re right.”

“I know I am. Now I just need to get you to take action.”

“Okay, if that’s how you look after a six hour flight and then nearly two hours of traffic, I give up.” Zara narrows her eyes before laughing, dropping her keys, riding gloves, water bottle, and phone on the table.

“Those heatless curlers work,” I reply, dramatically tossing my hair back. “Though it’s going to get all smashed under my helmet.”

“They do,” Kathryn agrees. “I’ve been wearing them on flights even before I got that brand deal.”

“Brand deals…trips to Ireland…you both live such exciting lives.” Elsie’s blue eyes light up and she smiles. “I’m kinda jealous but I’m just so happy you get to do what you love.”

“Well, I haven’t told my client that her husband wasn’t on a work trip,” I say with a grimace, leaning over to zip up my tall boots. I came straight from the airport to the barn, where my big white thoroughbred, Thor, lives.

“Not surprised,” Kathryn—or Kat as the four of us call her—sighs. “But at least you got a free trip out of it.”

“Right?” I zip up my other boot, so happy to be here with my three best friends. Kat and I met three years ago in a support group and became instant best friends once we realized we’d gone through a lot of similar trauma…and both had retired racehorses. Throw in the fact that her horse is named Loki and mine is Thor and we decided it was fate.

“Who am I riding today?” Zara asks Elsie, who has two horses here at the barn.

“I rode George pretty hard yesterday, so he’ll appreciate an easy ride,” she says with no hesitation and we all laugh. She swats Kat, who’s sitting next to her, and then laughs, too. “Okay, I totally handed you that one.”

“So,” Zara asks after we’re all ready to go get our horses from the pasture. “How do you break the news to your client?”

“I’ll tell her in our session this afternoon,” I explain. “Most of the time, when you get to the point of needing someone to spy on your partner, you already know.”

“Yeah, how sad.” Elsie, the forever hopeless romantic, shakes her head. “But at least she’ll know and can move on to finding someone who deserves her.”

“Yeah,” I say, dreading having to tell her already. As a therapist, I know what to say and how to react. But as a woman, it kills me a little bit more inside each and every time I have to deliver news like this. Which is probably why being a therapist by day and an amateur PI by night isn’t typically recommended. It’s mixing professional ethics in a sense, but it’s a hill I will die on.

Because I did almost die and it’s only by the grace of God I got out alive.