Chapter 48
Chapter
Forty-Eight
FALLON
Last week at school was miserable in ways I hadn't anticipated.
Kade didn't show up for the rest of the week, and I spent every class period torn between relief and devastation.
Having to see him when I can't talk to him, can't touch him, can't explain—that would be agony.
But his absence carved out a different kind of pain.
His empty desk felt like an accusation, a physical manifestation of everything I'd destroyed with my lies.
Every time the classroom door opened, my heart jumped into my throat.
Every time it wasn't him—some student running late, another teacher borrowing supplies, the janitor checking the thermostat—something inside me died a little more.
By Friday afternoon, I'd stopped looking up entirely.
Couldn't bear another disappointment, another reminder that he was gone because I'd pushed him away.
This weekend isn't proving to be any better.
If anything, it's worse. Daniel is feeling better, and I can see him returning to his old self now—the version of my husband who believes violence is an acceptable form of communication. The version who sees my existence as something to control rather than cherish. At least his dick doesn’t work.
I don't know if that will ever work properly again.
The thought should probably bother me more than it does.
Instead, I file it away as cosmic justice, inadequate but present.
"Did you hear me?"
Daniel's voice cuts through my thoughts like a blade. I've been zoning out a lot lately, disappearing into my own head where the walls aren't closing in and I can still feel the ghost of Kade's hands on my skin.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" I take a bite of my pasta, forcing it down even though everything tastes like nothing lately. Food has become just another thing I endure, another performance of normalcy in a life that's anything but.
"I said," he begins, irritation sharpening his tone into something dangerous, "I'm going back to the office tomorrow, so I want to get something special for dinner after. Celebrate properly."
"Why?"
The word escapes before I can trap it behind my teeth.
Daniel's face darkens immediately, color creeping up his neck in that familiar warning pattern—pink to red to the purple that means duck or brace for impact.
I should know better by now. Three years of marriage should have taught me when to keep my fucking mouth shut.
"What do you mean, why?"
He's getting angry and I didn't even realize how that sounded before I said it. Didn't consider how my genuine confusion might translate as dismissiveness or contempt. I've lost the ability to predict his reactions, or maybe I've just stopped caring enough to try.
"I mean, what's special about going to work?" I try to soften it, rearrange my features into something that looks genuinely curious instead of the bitter dismissal it actually was. "You go to work every day normally, so I just... I'm trying to understand what makes tomorrow different. That's all."
My voice comes out measured, careful. Years of practice make me sound almost sincere. Almost.
"Oh, I don't know—how about I almost died and I'm finally getting better?
" He pushes his plate away and stands, looming over the table in that way designed to make me feel small.
It works. It always works. "I can finally go back to work, to a job that's actually important.
To a career that matters, unlike playing babysitter all day. "
The casual cruelty lands like it always does. He pauses, studying my reaction with clinical interest.
"I know you don't understand that, baby," he continues, voice dripping with condescension, "but it's a big day and I want to celebrate with dinner. I want my wife to pretend she gives a shit about my accomplishments for once. Is that really too much to ask?"
A laugh slips out of me before I can swallow it back.
I don't mean to. God, I know better than to laugh when he's working himself into this state.
But he's so full of himself, standing there acting like a child demanding praise for basic functioning while I've spent three years surviving his fists and his contempt.
The absurdity of it hits me sideways—that I'm supposed to celebrate him returning to the job where he defends people like himself, where he protects men who hurt women and call it justice.
The hysteria bubbles up from somewhere dark and broken inside me, spilling out as a single, harsh bark of laughter.
His expression shifts. Goes very still, very cold.
He rears back and backhands me hard across the face.
My head snaps to the side, the sharp crack echoing through the kitchen.
For a second, the world goes white, then spots bloom across my vision.
My ears ring with a high-pitched whine. The familiar copper taste of blood fills my mouth—I've bitten the inside of my cheek, or maybe he split my lip.
Hard to tell through the spreading numbness that gives way too quickly to burning pain.
"Something funny?"
"No." I hold my cheek, feeling the heat bloom under my palm like a brand.
The skin will bruise within the hour—I know the timeline of my own injuries better than I know my lesson plans.
I guess the break is over. The brief reprieve while he recovered, the handful of days where his weakness meant my safety. "Sorry."
The word comes automatically, muscle memory from years of conditioning.
Apologize first, always apologize first, even when you've done nothing wrong.
Especially then. But inside, I'm combusting.
This piece of shit. Sorry excuse for a man.
Stanford-educated attorney who uses his fists on his wife because words require too much effort.
"Clean this up."
Daniel flips his plate off the table with a casual flick of his wrist, like he's tossing aside something trivial instead of creating another mess I'll have to handle.
It crashes to the floor, ceramic and marinara sauce exploding across the tile in a pattern that looks disturbingly like arterial spray.
Food everywhere—pasta and cheese and broken glass scattered like shrapnel across the kitchen.
He doesn't wait for acknowledgement. Just walks away, leaving me sitting there with my throbbing face and his destruction painting the floor red.
After he leaves, I get up slowly and get to work on cleaning his mess.
Always cleaning up after him. Always putting things back together that he's broken. The metaphor isn't lost on me—I've taught enough literature to recognize symbolism when I'm living it. But recognizing doesn't make it easier to endure.
If I can't have Kade and I'm stuck with Daniel, I don't know if I can do this.
The thought crystallizes with uncomfortable clarity as I crouch on the floor, picking up ceramic shards with careful fingers.
I can't live like this forever. I just can't. The math doesn't work—the years stretching ahead of me, decades of this same pattern repeating until one of us dies.
Until he kills me or I finally find the courage to kill myself.
I had a taste of what it could be like. Gentle hands that touched to give pleasure instead of pain.
Careful kisses that asked instead of demanded.
Someone who looked at me like I mattered, like I was worth protecting instead of destroying.
Kade's green eyes seeing me—really seeing me—in ways Daniel never has.
And now what? I'm supposed to just go back to this life, to Daniel physically and mentally abusing me forever?
Accept that the glimpse I got of something better was just that—a glimpse, a tease, a cruel reminder of everything I'll never have?
I can't stand to look at my husband anymore.
Can't bear to hear his voice. The sound of his breathing makes my skin crawl, every word out of his mouth feels like nails on a chalkboard.
As I clean, I start imagining ways I could end it all. Escape it.
We don't own a gun. I would have been dead a long time ago if we did—probably the first year, in one of those early fights when I still had enough spirit left to argue back.
Daniel's too smart for that, too careful about keeping weapons away from the person he torments.
Can't have your victim turning your tools against you.
After thinking through my options with the cold logic of someone who's been considering this for longer than I want to admit, I decide overdose or cutting my wrists are my best choices if I decide to do it.
Pills would be easier, I think as I dump broken ceramic into the trash.
Quieter. I could just go to sleep and not wake up, and maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
Better than this slow death by a thousand cuts, this existence where I'm already a ghost haunting my own life.
Better than watching myself disappear piece by piece until nothing's left but the shell Daniel married.
I mop the floor after I clean his mess and wipe down the counters in the kitchen.
Everything back in its place, every surface gleaming.
Evidence erased. When I'm dumping the mop bucket in the sink, my mouth starts to water in that specific way—that saliva rush that's a thirty-second warning before disaster.
I don't have time to react before I'm throwing up my dinner into the sink.
Pasta and acid burn my throat on the way back up. I turn the water on and let it run, one hand braced against the counter, not sure if I'm done yet. My stomach clenches, warning me.
Nope. Another round hits me, my body heaving even though there's nothing left. Bile and water, my throat raw from the repeated assault. I stand there gripping the counter for a while until I'm sure it's passed, until my stomach stops trying to expel organs I might actually need.
I clean the sink with shaking hands and put the mop away, then head to the bedroom.
I pass by Daniel in bed watching TV—some political commentary show he likes, volume too loud—and go straight to the dresser.
Grab my clean clothes without looking at him, without making eye contact that might spark another explosion.
I walk into the bathroom without acknowledging him, close the door with careful quietness.
I start the shower and wonder why I just got sick. Running through possibilities—food poisoning, stress, the beginning of some virus. I feel fine now. Normal. It was so out of the blue, so sudden. One minute I was dumping mop water, the next I was bent over the sink trying not to choke.
Then I spot the shirt I grabbed.
It's one of Kade's white t-shirts, the one I kept hidden in the back of my drawer. Contraband. Evidence of my affair, my betrayal, my desperate grasp at something that felt like living instead of just surviving.
I pick it up and inhale deeply, pressing the fabric to my face like I'm drowning and it's oxygen.
But it just smells like detergent now. Tide and fabric softener and the generic scent of cleanliness.
God, I wish it still smelled like him. What I would give to inhale his scent one more time—that combination of dark and sweet, something uniquely Kade underneath it all.
I put the shirt down and get in the shower, letting the water run hot enough to burn. Hot enough to turn my skin pink, to make me feel something other than this hollow ache in my chest.
I rack my brain on what kind of pills we have while I stand under the spray.
I think I have some old painkillers I never took—Vicodin from some of the injuries Daniel's inflicted.
And Daniel has some I can sneak away, the prescription he got after his beating.
I wonder if I can overdose on that. How many it would take.
Whether it would hurt or just feel like falling asleep, like slipping into unconsciousness and never having to wake up to this nightmare again.
I need to Google that, I think as I shampoo my hair, working the lather through mechanically. Need to research dosages and drug interactions, figure out what combination would be most effective. Least painful. Most certain.
The thought should horrify me. Should send me into panic or tears or something other than this cold, analytical assessment of exit strategies.
But all I feel is tired. So fucking tired of surviving when living is no longer an option.
Tired of waking up every morning wondering if today's the day he finally goes too far, if today's the bruise that doesn't heal or the blow that doesn't stop.
Maybe it would be easier to just... stop. To take the choice away from him, make it mine for once.
The water runs cold before I'm ready to get out, but I stay under it anyway, letting the temperature shock some feeling back into my numb skin.