Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
FALLON
Pain assaults me before I open my eyes—a vicious announcement that my body survived the night even if I'm not sure I wanted it to.
The throbbing in my head announces itself first, a pulsing agony that radiates from my temple down through my jaw like someone's driving nails through bone.
Everything else follows in quick, brutal succession: the raw ache between my legs that makes me want to scream, the deep bruising in my stomach that pulses with every shallow breath, the sharp protest of my shoulder when I try to move even an inch.
I force my eyes open against the weight of exhaustion and pain.
Hardwood floor stretches inches from my face, the grain blurring in and out of focus.
I'm still beside the bed where I fell last night—no, where I was beaten and raped.
The distinction matters even if my body doesn't understand the difference between the two types of violation.
Even if Daniel would argue there's no such thing as marital rape.
Even if the law in some godforsaken places might agree with him.
Pale grey light filters through the bedroom window, weak and watery. Dawn. The sun is rising on another day I have to survive, another twenty-four hours of pretending I'm alive instead of just existing in the space between one beating and the next.
I try to sit up and the movement tears a groan from my throat before I can stop it.
Everything hurts so bad—worse than last time, worse than the time before that.
The pain is everywhere, layered and overlapping until I can't separate one injury from another, can't tell where the old bruises end and the new ones begin.
My body is a map of his violence, territory he's claimed with fists and kicks and worse.
I collapse back onto the floor, breathing shallow and quick through the agony. Each inhale feels like broken glass in my lungs.
Last night comes rushing back in fragments I can't quite piece together into a coherent narrative.
His hands grabbing, bruising, breaking. His fists connecting with flesh that used to be mine but feels like it belongs to someone else now—some other woman who lives in this body and takes the punishment I can't escape.
His body forcing mine into submission even as I fought, even as I begged, even as I knew fighting only makes it worse but couldn't stop myself because something in me still refuses to just lie there and take it quietly like he wants.
The taste of blood—metallic and wrong, coating my tongue where I bit through my lip.
The sound of tearing—fabric or skin or the last shreds of hope I had left.
The moment everything went dark and I was grateful, so fucking grateful for unconsciousness because at least then I couldn't feel what he was doing to me. At least in the dark there was mercy.
Tears begin falling before I realize I'm crying. Hot and silent, tracking down my cheek to pool against the hardwood floor I've been staring at for the past—how long? Hours? Minutes? Time moves wrong when you're this broken.
Light snores drift from the bed above me, steady and peaceful.
Daniel is still asleep.
The realization cuts through pain and grief like ice water, shocking me back into the present.
I need to get up before he does. Need to be presentable, functional, the dutiful wife who pretends last night didn't happen.
Who serves him coffee with steady hands and smiles with split lips and never, ever mentions that her husband is a piece of shit who beats her unconscious and rapes her broken body because apparently that's what marriage means to him.
I try again, pushing through the pain with the kind of determination that comes from pure survival instinct.
It's overwhelming—a tidal wave that threatens to pull me back under, to let me drown in the agony because at least drowning would mean it's over.
My stomach screams where he kicked me, the deep internal ache that suggests damage beyond surface bruises.
My shoulder refuses to cooperate, the joint grinding in a way that's probably not normal.
My head pounds with every heartbeat, a metronome measuring out the seconds I've survived.
But I finally get to my feet, gripping the nightstand for support until the room stops spinning and the black spots fade from my vision. Small victories. This is what my life has become—celebrating the fact that I can stand up after my husband tried to kill me.
I move slowly toward the bathroom, each step a careful negotiation with my broken body.
The hardwood creaks under my weight and I freeze, holding my breath, waiting to see if the sound wakes him.
The snoring continues, steady and undisturbed.
He sleeps like a man with a clear conscience, which would be funny if it wasn't so fucking horrifying.
The bathroom tiles are cold under my bare feet, shocking against skin that feels too hot, too sensitive, like all my nerves are exposed and screaming. I close the door with shaking hands and lean against it.
The mirror catches my reflection and I look away quickly. I'm not ready to see what he's done to my face. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I pee first and it hurts—a sharp, burning sensation that makes me bite down on my already injured lip to keep from crying out. The pain is different this time, deeper, more frightening in its implications.
I place my hand on my belly and rub gently, protective even now. Especially now.
"Please still be with me, little one," I whisper into the silence, and the words break something open in my chest. I cry harder, trying desperately to be quiet so Daniel won't wake and find me like this.
Broken. Bleeding. Begging a life inside me not to give up just because I'm too weak to protect it. Too weak to protect either of us.
After a few minutes—or maybe longer, time still moving strange and disconnected—I wipe.
The toilet paper comes away pale pink. Not much.
Just a faint stain that could mean nothing or could mean everything.
Just enough to make my heart stop, then restart at double speed, hammering against my ribs like it's trying to escape the cage of my body.
It could be because he was rough with me after I passed out. It could be. It doesn't have to mean the worst. Bleeding happens sometimes. Spotting is normal in early pregnancy. I've read all the books, done all the research. This doesn't have to mean what I'm terrified it means.
But my stomach aches where he kicked me—twice, maybe three times, I lost count—and I know. Somewhere deep down where hope goes to die, I know.
I flush and get up, walking to the sink on autopilot.
My body moves through the familiar morning routine while my mind disconnects, floating somewhere above the pain.
I start brushing my teeth, the mint toothpaste sharp and stinging against my split lip.
The mirror is unavoidable now and I force myself to look.
A bruise is forming on my temple—purple and ugly, the exact size and shape of his fist. I can see the individual knuckle marks if I look closely enough, which I don't want to but can't seem to stop doing.
I try to raise my right arm to touch the spot and white-hot pain shoots through my shoulder, making me gasp.
The toothbrush falls from numb fingers and I catch it awkwardly with my left hand, switching sides like I'm learning to be a different person who functions with different limbs.
I finish in the bathroom and tiptoe into the bedroom closet, moving around Daniel's sleeping form with the practiced stealth of prey avoiding a predator. Five steps to the closet door. Don't let the hinges creak. Don't breathe too loud. Don't exist too noticeably.
I get dressed carefully, each movement calculated to minimize pain.
A long-sleeved blouse—the cream one with the high collar—that covers the fingerprint bruises on my arms. A cardigan over that, navy blue and shapeless, concealing everything else.
I button it all the way up and check myself in the closet mirror.
Presentable. Professional. No one will see the evidence written on my skin in purple and red.
The makeup takes longer. Foundation over the bruise on my temple, building up layers until the purple barely shows through.
Concealer under my eyes to hide the sleeplessness, the crying, the fact that I look like a corpse pretending to be human.
Powder to set it all. Lipstick to cover the split in my lower lip, though it stings like hell going on.
I look almost normal by the time I'm done. Almost like a woman going to work on a Monday morning. Almost like someone whose husband didn't beat and rape her last night.
Once I'm dressed and satisfied that I'm presentable enough—that no one will see, that no one will know, that I can maintain the illusion of a functional marriage for another day—I head to the kitchen on silent feet.
I start coffee. The familiar ritual grounds me, gives my hands something to do besides shake. The smell fills the kitchen—dark roast, the expensive kind Daniel insists on.
I sit at the table with my own cup, staring at nothing, existing in a weird trance where time moves wrong and nothing feels quite real. The world has that distant quality, like I'm watching myself from far away.
His alarm goes off upstairs.
The sound jolts through me like electric shock, snapping me back into my body with all its pain and damage. My coffee sloshes over the rim of my mug, hot liquid burning my fingers. I barely feel it over everything else that hurts.
I get up mechanically, moving on autopilot, and make his cup of coffee exactly how he likes it. The precise routine of appeasing the devil I married.
Only a few minutes pass before he comes into the kitchen in his sleep pants, hair disheveled, looking for his coffee with sleepy eyes and a yawn.
Normal. Casual. Like last night was nothing.
Like he didn't nearly kill me eight hours ago.
Like I'm not standing here broken and bleeding and dying inside while he scratches his stomach and blinks away sleep like any other husband on any other morning.
I have to look away. Can't stomach the sight of him right now, can't reconcile the man from last night with this morning version who looks so fucking normal it makes me want to scream.
He's a disgusting piece of shit wearing human skin, and I can feel the hatred burning in my chest hot enough to choke me.
After he grabs his cup, he comes over to me. I tense, every muscle locking up, bracing for another blow. But he just kisses the top of my head—gentle, affectionate, the gesture of a loving husband—and I go rigid under his touch.
"I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean to hurt you.
" His voice is soft, apologetic, the tone he uses when he wants forgiveness without earning it.
The tone that used to work on me, back when I was stupid enough to believe his remorse was real.
"But you can't deny me. It makes me think you don't love me and it upsets me. Okay?"
God, I hate him. Hate him with every fiber of my being, every cell in my damaged body, every thought in my fractured mind.
He thinks he can just say sorry and excuse it all by blaming it on me.
Making his violence my fault. Making his rage my failure.
Making his decision to beat and rape me somehow about my inadequacy as a wife instead of his choice to be a shitty excuse for a man.
"Okay," I say, and the word tastes like ash and surrender. I hold my breath until he leaves, counting the seconds until I can exhale safely.
He stops halfway out of the kitchen and turns back to me. My heart stutters.
"Oh, and if you want to take the day off, you can.
" He smiles—actually smiles, like he's being generous instead of acknowledging he beat me so badly I might not be able to function.
Like he's doing me a favor by allowing me to recover from the injuries he inflicted.
Then he leaves, whistling softly as he heads upstairs to shower and dress for another day of being the respectable District Attorney who prosecutes criminals while being one himself.
I sit frozen in the kitchen, listening to his footsteps fade, listening to the shower start running upstairs. Only then do I move.
I take my mug to the sink, rinse it with shaking hands that won't steady no matter how hard I try.
I grab my purse, my car keys, my bag with graded papers.
Check my reflection one more time in the hallway mirror.
The bruise barely shows through the makeup.
My split lip could be chapped skin. I look tired but not destroyed. Presentable enough.
It's a little early—the sun barely up, the morning still grey and quiet—but I'd rather sit in my empty classroom than be here any longer.
Rather face my students with makeup covering bruises than spend one more second in this house breathing the same air as him.
Rather pretend to be alive somewhere else.
I walk out the door and don't look back at the house that's become my prison. Don't think about coming home tonight. Don't think about anything except making it through the next sixty minutes, then the next, then the next.
One breath at a time. One step at a time. One lie at a time.
This is what survival looks like.