Rowan14
Rowan
I shut the door behind me and flipped the lock immediately. The click rang loud in the quiet flat, but I didn't care. I needed it locked. I needed a line drawn fast and solid between me and the world outside.
I dropped my bag onto the sofa and headed for the bedroom, yanking the turtleneck over my head as I walked. The fabric caught around my neck for a second, and I had to fight down a flare of panic that came with it. When I finally got it off, I let it drop to the floor and tried to catch my breath.
My neck ached with a dull, lingering kind of pain that never really faded, only pulsed harder when something touched it the wrong way.
The collar had been digging in all day – enough to make it feel like I was being strangled all over again.
Every time I turned my head, it brushed against the bruises the belt had left behind.
It took everything in me to keep the damn thing on.
I pulled a looser shirt from the drawer and threw it on. The moment it settled over my skin, a shaky sigh left my lungs. Finally, I could breathe again.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and let my shoulders slump. The new shirt barely brushed the bruises, but even that made me wince. I reached up and touched my neck gently, my fingers tracing the worst of it. How the hell was I going to hide this from Eli?
I already knew the answer. I wasn't.
He saw something today. He wouldn't have reached for my collar if he hadn't. He noticed the marks. Maybe not clearly, but he saw enough. He’d ask about them when he got here.
And I wouldn't be able to lie to him anymore.
That was why I didn't stay at the school after he left. Nothing on my desk couldn't wait, but I told him I had work to finish just to get him to leave. I needed time to figure out what to say when he showed up at my door.
Because once he heard the truth, everything would change.
He'd never say it outright. He wouldn't make a scene.
But he'd see me differently. There'd be discomfort in his voice.
Distance. That polite kind of silence that hangs between people who don't know how to talk anymore.
He'd finally realise how much of a mess I was, and he'd back off.
He'd go back to his life in London and pretend this whole situation with Marcus never happened.
I knew I couldn't avoid it. But as much as I was trying to brace for it, I didn't want him to leave it alone. I didn't want him to walk away.
God, I didn't want to lose him. Not over this. Not when I'd already lost so much. Eli was all I had left, and if he drifted away, it'd be one more win for Marcus. One more thing he took from me without even lifting a finger.
My thoughts drifted to earlier that morning.
Just after sunrise, I'd returned to Marcus's flat with a police officer.
It felt surreal to stand there just hours after he attacked me to find everything so quiet and still.
Marcus answered the door shirtless and bleary-eyed.
But he didn't say a word. Didn't try to stop us. He just stepped aside and let us in.
The rage was there, though. I felt it radiating from every inch of him. But he kept it in check. Maybe because of the officer, maybe because he thought it wasn't worth the trouble. Either way, he didn't speak. Not to me.
I moved quickly to grab my bag and double-checked that nothing was missing – phone, wallet, keys, everything for work. I took back the spare key to my flat that I'd stupidly given him a couple of months earlier and snatched a few other things I'd left behind. I never once looked him in the eye.
But I could feel his stare. Heavy. Unblinking. Like he was trying to set me on fire with just his gaze. I didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
Not even when I saw the scratches. A few long, red slashes along his arms, faint but still angry-looking. I hadn't been able to get him off me in the moment, but seeing the marks... It was a tiny win.
When we stepped back outside, the officer didn't speak to me right away.
He just walked beside me until we got to his car.
He finally asked for probably the third time that morning if I wanted to press charges, but I didn't. I just wanted a clean break from Marcus.
He likely thought I was an idiot, but he didn't try to convince me and just gave me a ride home.
Getting to my feet took some effort. My legs were stiff from sitting on the bed for too long, and everything still ached in ways I didn't want to think about. But I moved, anyway, leaving the bedroom to grab my bag from where it sat on the sofa.
I slid the zipper open and pulled out my phone first. I tossed it to the side and kept digging until I found the folder the nurse had handed me before I left A&E.
I'd gotten the drug tests done. Answered their questions as vaguely as I could without raising alarms. When the results came back, I almost didn't want to see them. But I needed to know.
I opened the folder and stared at the first paper tucked inside, even though I'd already looked at it a dozen times that morning. The words didn't change. The result didn't change. It stared back at me in clean, clinical print: Positive.
Marcus must've slipped it into that first glass of wine. At least now I knew I wasn't losing it. I wasn't being dramatic or paranoid or imagining things.
There was something else tucked behind the result paper.
Sheets with information and resources. Phone numbers.
Helplines. I wasn't surprised that someone suspected something, but I didn't have the energy to deal with it right now.
I hadn't slept since I woke up groggy and sore in Marcus's flat, and the exhaustion was starting to get to me. I'd reached my limit hours ago.
I closed the folder and slipped it into the desk drawer. I'd look at all of that later. Right now, I had to save my strength to deal with Eli.
A sharp knock at the door made me jump.
I flinched and glanced at the clock on the wall. I'd barely been home for twenty minutes. My heart climbed into my throat as I processed what that sound meant.
Eli must've seen me leave the school. It wouldn't have taken him long to guess where I was headed. If he knew I was home, of course he would come straight here. He could be impatient sometimes. Especially when he thought I was hiding something.
Even so, I stayed frozen in place and stared at the door. Part of me wanted to ignore it and pretend I wasn't home. Let him assume I was too tired or busy or just not ready. But then another knock came. Louder. Quicker. More urgent.
I sighed. He knew me too well. He wouldn't buy the silence. And I couldn't put this off forever.
I walked slowly to the door, steeling myself for whatever came next. Eli would see the bruises. He'd know. I wouldn't be able to hide it from him anymore. May as well get it over with.
I hesitated with my hand on the knob and took one last breath to steady my nerves. Then I unlocked the door and pulled it open.
A hand clamped around my throat and shoved – hard. I almost lost my balance before my back slammed against the wall with a thud that rattled my teeth, and pain shot down my neck. I gasped, already breathless from the pressure as the door slammed shut.
Marcus. His face was twisted in a way I'd never seen before. Rage curled at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were empty. Cold. Focused.
My body surged with panic. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, to run, to move ... but I couldn't. My limbs didn't respond. I froze.
His other hand seized my wrist, the one still raw from the belt. I barely had time to react before he punched it into the wall by my head. The impact made a sharp crack echo through the flat, and white-hot pain radiated through my arm.
"You think you can humiliate me?" he hissed. His breath was hot and sour, too close to my face. "You think you can bring the fucking police to my door and just walk away?" His grip tightened on my throat. Not enough to choke me, but it still hurt. Enough to remind me who was in control right now.
"My neighbours asked questions," he went on, his voice low and seething. "My boss got wind of it. You think that kind of thing doesn't get around? You think you can turn me into some kind of monster and everyone's gonna take your side?"
His grip on my wrist tightened, grinding it into the plaster. Any more force, and my wrist would snap.
"You don't make the rules, Rowan. You don't decide how this ends."
Before I could even think, he yanked me away from the wall and threw me to the floor. I hit hard, my shoulder catching most of it and sending a jolt down my spine. I tried to push myself up and managed to get my arm under me –
His fist slammed into the side of my face. Pain exploded across my cheek, and my head snapped sideways. I hit the floor with a force that knocked the wind out of me. Everything went blurry.
My glasses were gone. I heard them skid across the floor, maybe crack against the leg of the table. The whole room spun sideways. My vision filled with static. I blinked, but nothing came into focus. Everything pulsed with light. My ears rang.
I tried to sit up again, but my arms wouldn't cooperate. The hit had scrambled everything – sight, sound, thought. I felt movement nearby but couldn't make sense of it. I couldn't make sense of anything.
Marcus grabbed my shirt and forced me flat onto my back. His weight dropped over me fast, his knees pinning me at the hips and locking me in place. My chest heaved on instinct, but I was too slow. His hand found my neck again and pressed hard against the bruises he left the night before.
I choked on the pain. My body bucked, tried to twist away, but the disorientation and the full weight of him kept me still. My fingers clawed at his arms, but they were useless. I could barely get a grip, let alone push him off.