Chapter 16 #2
“A couple of nurses seemed concerned, but he was never less than two feet away from me. I couldn’t tell them anything. Then, he stopped taking me to the hospital. A couple of times, he took me to an emergency clinic. When he broke my fingers, he splinted them himself, said I’d be fine.”
I glanced down at my fingers, wiggled them as the memory took hold.
“It’s your own goddamn fault, Amy. If you’d just listen, I wouldn’t have to hurt you.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“You should be. Next time you won’t fight back.”
That was always his excuse. If I didn’t fight back, he wouldn’t have to hurt me. It was a lie because the couple of times I hadn’t fought back, he’d still beaten me.
God, I fucking hated him.
Shaking it off, I sighed and sat up straight.
“At first, he was nice afterward. He would hit me, then apologize profusely. A few times he even cried. I would forgive him, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
As time went on, I wanted to leave, but I had nowhere to go.
I had no one else. I would work myself into a panic, worried that no one would ever love me, that I would always be alone. So I stayed. I endured.”
I didn’t bother to tell them about how he’d raped me damn near every day.
After the first time I tried to resist his sexual advances, he demanded sex from me.
Although I didn’t fight him off, I didn’t consent, either.
That was rape; even I knew that. It got to the point I simply lay there while he did what he needed to do.
In the beginning, he had tried to whisper romantic words, but I had closed my eyes and willed him to finish so he would leave me alone.
Then, he stopped trying to make it good for me at all.
He simply took what he wanted, whenever he wanted it.
He was the only man I'd ever been with and sex had never been a pleasant thing. Still, I had never been disillusioned. I knew it could be good. With the right man.
The only positive in all of it was that he’d insisted I be on birth control because he didn’t want children.
The mere thought of a child living in fear the way I had…
I felt the tears spill down my cheeks, but more importantly, I felt the anger that had become so much a part of me for so long.
“I fucking hated him,” I said, my voice getting louder.
“He was the devil. He beat me and beat me and no”—I looked directly at Rhys, the strength of my fury pointed at him—“I didn’t try to stop him!
I did put up with it. I wasn’t strong enough. ”
“Bullshit!” Rhys yelled, moving right over to me.
I wasn’t at all threatened by him. He wasn’t going to hurt me. I felt the strength of his anger as much as my own, and I understood it.
He squatted down before me. I sucked in air, my teeth clenched as I fought the tears back. I'd spent so many years living in fear, the hatred festering … sometimes I couldn’t hold it in.
“That’s bullshit, Amy. You were strong. You fucking lived through it. You got out.”
I shook my head, the tears pouring down my face as the sobs won, tearing from my chest as the truth ripped my heart apart. I wished I'd been strong, that I'd gotten out. But I hadn’t.
Rhys pulled me against him and I threw my arms around his neck, letting it all out. “I wasn’t strong enough,” I repeated against his neck.
“You’re stronger than you think,” he whispered, his hand sliding over my hair, cupping the back of my head, his lips pressing against my forehead. “It was never your fault, Amy. Never. The blame is on him. Never you.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that. No, he shouldn’t have hit me, but I should’ve found a way out. Every time I tried to come up with a plan, I got scared. I'd convinced myself that I loved him. That he loved me. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t at fault, but sometimes it was hard to acknowledge.
I pulled back from Rhys, sniffling and once again wiping the stubborn tears from my face. “I have to finish.”
I felt Reagan at my side once again. I was glad she was there.
I looked up to see Wolfe and Lynx standing beside one another. In that moment, I understood why so many people feared them. Individually, they were intimidating. But together…
Shaking my head, I took a deep breath and looked at Rhys. “I didn’t get out. Not purposely anyway.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat.
Rhys stood, then held out a cup of coffee. I waved it off. I couldn’t stomach anything right now.
Forging ahead, I clasped my hands in my lap, my voice steadier this time. “One day, I decided I was gonna leave him. For an entire week, I planned it out in my head. How I would do it, where I would go.
“Then on Friday, he went to work, and I packed up as much of my stuff as I could. I hesitated, I’ll admit it.
I think that’s the only reason it happened.
If I had left as soon as he went to work, I probably would’ve been home free.
But I was scared. I had no car, no credit cards.
I had some money in the bank. At the time, I wasn’t sure it was still there, but I’d received money after my parents’ death.
I had never told him about it, scared he would take it.
“He didn’t allow me to have any of those things.
I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone, wasn’t allowed to buy anything.
The only time I left the house was when he took me somewhere.
After I moved in with him, he stopped taking me out unless it was to a business function.
I was only there to look pretty, he told me.
I’d become his prisoner. He picked out my clothes, told me how to do my hair, what makeup to wear, how long I could sleep.
I ate what he wanted me to eat, watched shows he approved of, but only when he was home.
He didn’t let me use the Internet, wouldn’t give me a phone.
There were security cameras in every room, including the bathrooms and closets, and on all the doors outside.
He kept me under his thumb every minute of the day.
“He had taken over my entire life and I wasn’t sure how to survive without him.
I debated whether or not I was safer with him, despite the damage he inflicted.
After all, I wasn’t dead. He told me he loved me and that I would always belong to him.
That I would never survive without him.” I met Rhys’s eyes.
“He wasn’t lying. About the last part, anyway.
Only, he’d meant it in an entirely different way than I took it. ”
I looked over at Wolfe. “Before I could get the nerve up to leave that day, he came home. He saw that I had my stuff packed, had watched me pack it, in fact. There were cameras. Everywhere. I tried to tell him that I was done. That I wanted out. I told him I didn’t love him anymore, that I needed to move on with my life.
That I would survive without him. That I could make it on my own.
I even promised I would never tell anyone that he was a complete monster.
Not in so many words, of course. I knew not to talk to him like that. ”
As I told the story, I saw the trend, realized how I had grown to hate him more and more with every passing day.
Sure, I'd felt the anger at the time, but as I told the story, I had to wonder what had stopped me from killing him. I hated him that much, and prison would’ve been a step up from the hell I'd been living.
“What did he do, Amy?” Wolfe asked, his tone reflecting how hard it was for him to hear this.
I locked my eyes with his. “When he said I wouldn’t survive without him, he didn’t mean I wasn’t capable.
” I sucked in air, glancing between them all.
I could see they’d figured it out, so I kept going.
“He meant he wouldn’t allow it.” I felt all eyes pinned on me, so I took a deep breath and blurted out the worst of it all. “He tried to kill me.”
“Son of a motherfucking bitch,” Lynx roared, stomping across the room.
Copenhagen whimpered, clearly worried about his human.
I ignored Lynx.
“He told me that if I was serious, if I was planning to leave, he was going to kill me. He told me there was no way he would let me leave him. He wasn’t about to give up his life, his career for some stupid bitch—his words—who was too stupid to keep on breathing.
” I glanced at Reagan, then back down at my hands.
“Of course, he didn’t have any mercy on me.
He wasn’t about to simply shoot me in the head, put me out of my misery.
No, he used his hands, his feet, a crowbar.
” I sucked in air. The room seemed to be closing in on me, but I kept pushing forward, my words coming out faster.
“He beat me, then dumped my body in a drainage ditch just outside of Embers Ridge. It was June and the temperatures were already soaring. That’s how I ended up here.
He drove more than four hours from the house where we lived.
By the grace of God, an old couple had a flat tire on that long stretch of highway that day. They found me, called an ambulance.”
“You’re Jane Doe.” Rhys was staring at me, his eyes wide.
“What?” Lynx’s confusion rang loudly.
“There was a story about Jane Doe. About a year ago. I read it. It went out to the local agencies, asking for information that might lead to an arrest.” Rhys never looked away from me. “They found the battered and beaten body of a woman in a drainage ditch. There were no pictures of you because...”
“Because my face was so damaged I wasn’t recognizable,” I finished for him.
Rhys nodded, pain in his eyes. “The list of injuries was extensive.”