Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
FALLON
Three days.
Three days of avoiding Kade Stone's eyes in my classroom.
Three days of feeling his stare burning into me from the first row while I lecture about Gothic literature and tragic heroines who don't recognize their cages until it's far too late—until the locks have rusted and the keys have been thrown away and there's nothing left but acceptance or madness.
The irony isn't lost on me. I am teaching Jane Eyre while living Bertha Rochester's nightmare.
Kade hasn't pushed. Hasn't lingered after class with those transparent excuses.
But his presence fills the room anyway—heavy and aware and patient in a way that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
Every time I glance toward his desk, Friday night in the parking lot crashes back with devastating clarity.
The way he looked at me—eyes holding mine with an intensity that said he saw everything I was hiding and wanted it anyway.
I get wet all over again. Right there at my desk while teaching seventeen and eighteen-year-olds about metaphor and symbolism while my body betrays me with memories that shouldn't exist. My thighs clench together under my conservative pencil skirt.
The silk of my panties feels slick against hypersensitive skin.
And then the guilt follows. Sharp and acidic, burning through the arousal like poison.
This past weekend replays on an endless loop I can't escape—Daniel's hands on my body while I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended they belonged to someone else.
Someone younger. Someone who touched me like I mattered instead of like I was property he'd purchased with a wedding ring.
The way I climbed on top of him that night, desperate and pathetic, trying to take control of the fantasy playing behind my closed eyelids.
The way it still didn't work because imagination isn't enough when reality feels like drowning in a bathtub you can't climb out of.
I try not to remember Friday night. Try not to think about Kade and I do reasonably well at it during the school day when I have lesson plans to hide behind.
But then fifth period arrives and I see him again, and everything floods back with the force of a dam breaking.
The bell rings and I escape to the vending machines in the faculty lounge before I do something catastrophically stupid like ask him to stay after class.
My hands shake as I feed crumpled dollar bills into the slot, smoothing them against the edge to make the machine accept them.
Another Snickers bar. The third one this week. Fourth, maybe. I've lost count.
I've been craving chocolate constantly lately—rich and dark and sweet, the only thing that tastes remotely good anymore. Everything else sits wrong on my tongue. Coffee tastes bitter. The grilled chicken I eat for lunch makes my stomach turn. Even water tastes metallic and strange.
I make it back to my classroom and collapse into my desk chair with more force than intended.
The chocolate wrapper crinkles loudly as I tear it open with unsteady fingers.
The first bite hits my tongue and I actually moan—a soft, involuntary sound that would be embarrassing if anyone were here to witness it.
The combination of chocolate and caramel and salted peanuts tastes like salvation.
Like the only good thing in a world gone rotten.
I pull out my phone to check my calendar while I chew, needing to verify what torture Daniel has planned for this week.
Dress shopping after school today. Right.
The political gala is Saturday night—some charity fundraiser that Daniel considers essential networking—and he already selected my color.
Navy blue this time. Sophisticated but sexy, he said.
Show enough skin to be interesting but not so much that you look cheap.
It's the only time he likes me to look remotely attractive—when he's showing me off to other powerful men like I'm a trophy he won instead of a woman he systematically destroyed.
My eyes catch on the date displayed at the top of the screen.
January 23rd.
My stomach drops like an elevator with cut cables.
Wait. No. That can't be right.
I scroll back through my calendar app with suddenly clumsy fingers, counting weeks and dates with growing horror.
This month disappeared in a blur of new job chaos—learning names, establishing classroom management, preparing lesson plans.
December was consumed by holiday obligations and Daniel's increased drinking and the careful choreography of surviving Christmas with his family.
Before that was Thanksgiving. Before that—
When did I last have my period?
My mind races backward through fog and fear. November? October? The memories blur together, indistinguishable under layers of survival and numbness.
Two months.
I haven't had my period in two months.
The candy bar turns to cement in my mouth.
I force myself to swallow past a throat gone suddenly tight.
The chocolate and caramel stick to my teeth, coating my tongue.
No. No no no. This isn't happening. This can't be happening.
I'm on the pill. I take it every single morning with my coffee—seven AM exactly, routine and ritual, the one thing I control in a life where Daniel controls everything else.
I never miss. Never forget. Not even once.
My bottom desk drawer screeches as I yank it open, the sound too loud in the empty classroom.
I paw through my purse with shaking fingers that feel disconnected from my body.
The compact blue case sits right where it always does, nestled between my wallet and a pack of tissues.
I pop it open with trembling hands, counting the empty slots with mounting desperation.
No missed pills. Every single day accounted for—neat empty spaces marking each morning I swallowed the tiny white tablet. Twenty-three days into this cycle. Right on schedule. Never forgotten.
Relief trickles through me. Thin and insufficient and completely inadequate.
Because there has to be something medically wrong if I've missed my period this long.
Stress, maybe—the body does profoundly strange things under constant fear and hyper-vigilance.
I read that somewhere. Women in war zones stop menstruating.
Women in abusive relationships develop all kinds of physical symptoms. Or early menopause—it happens sometimes to women in their late twenties, I definitely read that in some medical journal article Daniel left lying around.
Or.
Or.
I can't even finish the thought. Can't let my mind go there because if I do I'll start screaming and I won't be able to stop.
I'll get a pregnancy test on the way home.
Just to rule it out. Just to prove scientifically that my body is simply broken in some other, less catastrophic way.
I'll stop at the CVS on Melrose—the one far enough from our neighborhood that I won't run into anyone Daniel knows.
I'll call my OB-GYN tomorrow morning, make an appointment for next week.
There's a perfectly logical medical explanation that has absolutely nothing to do with—
With—
The Snickers bar sits half-eaten on my desk, chocolate melting slightly in the afternoon sun streaming through the windows.
The sight of it suddenly makes my stomach heave with nausea.
I wrap it up quickly with shaking hands, shove it into my purse next to the birth control pills that clearly aren't working the way they're supposed to.
My hands won't stop shaking no matter how hard I clench them together.
Two months. How did I not notice for two entire months?
Because you've been surviving, the answer comes back immediately.
Because every single day is about making it through to the next one without Daniel's fists finding new places to leave marks that I have to hide.
Because you've been so focused on staying numb—on maintaining the careful emotional distance that keeps you functional—that you stopped paying attention to your own body weeks ago.
Stopped noticing anything except threat assessment and damage control and the exhausting choreography of keeping him calm.
And then Kade happened and you started feeling again—started remembering what it was like to inhabit your own skin—and now—
Stop. Don't think about it. I can't think about it until you know for sure.
The bell rings for last period—loud and shrill and making me flinch hard enough that my knee hits the underside of my desk.
Students will flood my classroom in less than three minutes.
I need to pull myself together. Need to stand up on legs that feel unsteady and write today's discussion questions on the board and pretend everything is absolutely fine.
I'm so extraordinarily good at pretending everything is fine. My marriage to Daniel Reid has turned me into a master performer. I could win an Oscar for the role of dutiful wife who isn't falling apart behind her carefully applied makeup.
I grab the dry erase marker with fingers that still tremble slightly despite my best efforts to steady them. Stand up. Walk to the board. Start writing.
I keep my back to the room as students start trickling in, their voices a dull roar I can barely process. Keep writing questions I'm not sure I can discuss coherently. Keep pretending my entire world isn't tilting sideways on an axis I can't control and didn't see coming.
Two months.
Please God, let it be stress. Let it be early menopause or hormonal imbalance or literally anything else.
Please let it be anything except the one thing that will trap me in this marriage forever.