Chapter Forty Four
Crazy, I was crazy once
I looked horrible. Like really, really horrible. I didn’t know what day it was or the time. I just felt this feeling, like everything was wrong. And it made sense because that’s when bad things usually happened—when things finally got good. I hated that Cal saw me like this—worse—I cried in his arms.
“You’re pathetic,”
I whispered as I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
I didn’t know what exactly made me pathetic, but I could feel it.
Was it my appearance?
The eyebags under my eyes—the low, lifeless eyes? My matted hair? I reached out to touch my hair—it’d been tied into a bun and hadn’t been touched in days. Was it the clothes? I was stained with food, milk, and Clay’s small clump of vomit from when I burped him.
And if we looked past my appearance, I think I’d be pretty fucking pathetic because of the real reason I’ve been hiding out in my room. I’ve been hiding from Christian. This was the only place he couldn’t show up unannounced.
And maybe I was pathetic because of the way I let him treat me—the way he’s been treating me for years—and I just…let it happen.
I mean, why did I just take it?
Was it what I deserved?
Was it the only way I could’ve been loved?
I feel even more pathetic because the whole situation felt silly at some point—I mean he never did hit me. I didn’t have any scars or bruises—any actual proof that he’d been torturing me. Having some sort of proof was the only way this would make sense to anyone, otherwise everyone and most definitely his parents would just think I was just making it up.
For attention, for money, to exploit his family—GOD!
There was no proof that he was ever awful to me, if anything, all the proof I had was the fact that Christian Hale was a pretty damn fucking amazing person. So it felt really fucking silly to tell anyone that he called me names from time to time, that he made me feel cheap and underserving of anything nice, he made me feel like I would be absolutely nothing without him, that he liked humiliating me and always found a way to make me feel less than. He made me hate everything about me that made me feel me.
Maybe he was just a naturally domineering man—it seemed like, maybe, he was a very masculine man. He liked control. But I knew I was definitely pathetic to realize after all these years he liked taking other people’s power and still couldn’t tell anyone about it.
Because this was the story.
Rich white man fell in love with a poor orphaned black woman. He helped her with a start-up shop, loaning her thousands of dollars because love knew no measure and what did she do? She ran off the day of their wedding and months later after she was found she started accusing him of emotional abuse.
I’d be a crazy, angry black woman.
I didn’t want that kind of fight—I just wanted to get rid of him. The shop had been doing well enough that I could say I was nearly done paying off my debt.
“He’ll leave once I do,”
I whispered as I pulled down my pants and sat on the toilet to pee, ignoring the fact that deep down I knew Christian just wants to destroy me.
In the meantime, I just thought the best I could do right now was to just avoid him as much as I could and record him whenever he was around me. If things somehow went to shit, I had to have something to fight him off with.
I was a mother now.
I stood after I wiped myself and pulled my pants up. I stood in front of the mirror again as I turned the water on and started washing my hands.
Callum was right about one thing.
I am Clay’s entire world.
When I got back to the room Cal was gone. I grabbed the food tray and sat on the bed to eat his soup like I promised him.
I grabbed a spoonful of the soup and shoved it in my mouth.
The door snapped open. “Don’t eat that!”
Ava screamed.
My eyes widened as I choked. “What—the,”
I gurgled the salty soup, “fuck?!”