Chapter 11 #2
“That I’d fallen down the stairs one night getting a glass of water.” I twist another tissue into thin strips. “After that, all the things Derek did to me were in places where no one would see.”
It wasn’t constant. The punches and kicks didn’t come every day, but they came often enough. I never truly relaxed, flinching when Derek or one of my co-workers stood up too fast around me.
I watched what I said, carefully picking out each word in case it was the wrong one, and it was almost always the wrong word. The man I loved spent years actively destroying me, breaking me down until I was a shell of myself. Then he made me quit my job because my nerves were shot.
The only thing I clung to was my determination never to bring a child into our home. I hid my birth control pills in a plastic bag in the toilet tank, and I never forgot to take them.
“Something else happened,” Wyatt says slowly. “Something that gave you an opportunity to leave him.”
Wiping tears from my cheeks, I lift my head to meet his gaze. “Derek was out one night after he closed a big deal at work. He was driving, and this time he didn’t wrap his car around a tree. He ran a red light and killed someone.”
My soft admission silences the room.
Clearing my throat, I continue shredding more tissue in my lap.
“A loud knock on my door woke me up one night. I pulled my robe on, checked in the mirror to make sure it covered all my bruises, and went to answer it. There was a cop at my front door, his hat in his hands. He said there’d been an incident involving my husband and asked me if I wanted to sit down.
I told him no. No one should wish for another person to die, but that’s what I was secretly wishing for.
How cruel must a wife be to see a cop at her front door in the middle of the night and hope he was there to tell her that her husband was dead? ”
“It was not wrong to wish your abuser would die,” Knox says, and I nod, but I don’t believe him.
It is wrong. What I did was wrong.
“What happened?” Hunter asks, rubbing a hand up and down my back.
“Cops had arrested Derek after the crash. He had a couple of scratches and bruises, but he walked away from it in one piece. His parents tried to pay the man’s family to make the problem go away, but they wouldn’t take the money.
Their son had died, and they wanted justice for him.
The judge sentenced Derek to one year in jail for vehicular manslaughter. ”
Knox’s eyes widen. “He went to jail?”
“Before the sentencing, his lawyers had said he would get jail time. Even though they painted Derek as the perfect husband who never drank, there was no way to avoid it. I went to see him,” I say.
“He didn’t get bail?” Elias asks.
I shake my head. “The judge viewed him as a flight risk. His parents hadn’t been subtle about trying to make the problem go away, and the judge must have heard about it. I took divorce papers with me.”
“And he signed them just like that?” Wyatt blinks, surprised.
“He didn’t want to. I told him if he didn’t sign those papers and give me a divorce, I would stand on the bench outside church the following Sunday in just my underwear with a sign over my head saying my husband, Derek Brandon, was responsible for all my bruises.”
And I had so many. Too many for him to lie and say I’d fallen once or twice.
Elias’s mouth drops open. “You threatened him.”
I scrunch my face, ashamed that I could threaten anyone, but proud of myself at the same time.
“It was my only chance to get away. Maybe not everyone would believe he’d done it, but they would wonder.
And if nothing else, people would look at him differently when he got out of jail.
His golden-boy reputation would go away forever. ”
Knox tilts his head. “So he signed.”
“He signed. I got my divorce, he went to jail for vehicular manslaughter, and I packed up a bag and left Oregon in my rearview mirror,” I say.
“You didn’t get any money in the divorce?” Wyatt asks.
I shake my head. “I wanted nothing from him. And I knew Derek. I’d threatened to humiliate him in front of the whole town.
He would never forgive or forget. I didn’t want to give him more of a reason to hate me by taking his money, and I knew I couldn’t go to my sister because it would be the first place he looked for me when he got out.
So I packed what I could, emptied our shared bank account, and left.
I didn’t tell anyone where I was going or why. ”
“But he still found you,” Hunter guesses.
“I moved every month and kept a go-bag by the front door, just in case. Then I made a mistake by lowering my guard and staying in one place too long. Derek found me in Nevada after they released him early because of prison overcrowding. The bruises you saw when I first came to town were from the night he nearly killed me. A motel worker heard me screaming and intervened.”
“You got away,” Wyatt says.
“I’d grabbed my purse and run to my car. The motel worker wound up in intensive care. It made the news because he nearly died from the beating Derek gave him. I drove for days and slept in my car when I was tired.”
“To your sister?” Hunter asks.
“When I first got in my car, that’s where I thought I would go,” I tell him.
“I was panicking and terrified and hurting. It wasn’t an hour later that I knew he would expect me to run to Pittsburgh, and he’d find me again.
I decided to avoid big cities. I could easily hide in them, but that meant so could he.
Small towns were dangerous. I’d be noticed and remembered, but he would stick out too.
Then I stopped for something to eat in a small diner in an Iowa town I’d never heard of. ”
Exhausted, with no clue what to do next, I felt so lost that day.
The diner had been busy, but not crazily so.
Lina had been friendly and warm, guiding me to my table, seeming not to even notice the bruises on my face that concealer couldn’t quite hide.
Nico had brought me my food since it was busy, and Winston was singing so badly in the kitchen that the people sitting on the stools at the counter were smiling and shaking their heads.
“It had felt like the first place I didn’t want to leave.
All warm and friendly and safe. It had all my favorite smells, and the pies in the glass cabinet looked exactly like the ones I’d made with my grandma.
I was running low on money, so when Nico had casually mentioned he was looking for a waitress, it had felt like this was the place I was supposed to be.
Nico even said he had an empty apartment if I needed a place to stay. ”
Like the universe had brought me to Rios, opened the diner's doors, and said this place is for you, Maisie Lucas. I heard it as clearly as if the universe had whispered those words into my ear.
Then four handsome alphas walked into the diner on my first shift, and my world felt right in another way I hadn’t expected. And as the month trickled by, they kept stopping in during lunch and after work, asking how I was and telling me about themselves.
They made me feel safe. I’d never had that before and I didn’t want it to end.
I still don’t.