Chapter 2 #2
“I’m going to count to ten,” he said, his voice still maddeningly calm. “If you don’t come out by then, I’ll assume you want to play hide and seek. And you know I always win our games.”
“One.”
My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I thought he might hear it.
“Two.”
I looked around desperately, searching for anything that might help. A weapon. Another way out. A miracle.
“Three.”
There was a fence at the end of the alley—old silver metal, rusted at the hinges, with a gate that looked like it had not been opened in years. It was my only option. If I stayed where I was, he would find me in seconds.
"Four."
I ran for it.
"Five."
I hit the gate hard, my shoulder slamming into rusted metal.
The hinges screamed in protest. The weak lock tore loose beneath my weight, and the gate lurched open, spilling me into a narrow backyard cluttered with trash cans and dead plants.
I scrambled through, not daring to look back, and spotted another gate on the far side—a way out to the next street.
I was halfway across the yard when his voice came from behind me, almost fond.
“There you are.” Dex’s voice was almost fond, like we’d been playing a harmless game.
I spun around. Dex stood in the open gate I had just broken through, his silhouette backlit by the distant streetlights. He was not even out of breath.
He moved quicker than I could, quick enough that the clatter of the broken gate barely finished echoing, lining up with my escape.
“Six. Seven.”
How can this be the same man?
The question spiraled uselessly as I ran, each step erasing another piece of hope.
I reached the end of the alley and found exactly what I feared—a brick wall topped with barbed wire. No way out. No escape.
“Eight.”
I turned around slowly, my back pressed against the wall, and faced my husband.
He was walking toward me now, the gun held steady in his hand, his face calm and controlled.
This was the Dex who terrified me most—not the raging, drunken version, but the cold, calculating one who spoke in measured tones while planning to hurt me.
“Nine.”
“Please,” I whispered, the word barely audible. “Please don’t do this.”
“I don’t want to, baby. But you’re making me. You’re making me be the bad guy when all I wanted was for us to be happy together.”
“Ten.”
The gunshot exploded through the night like thunder, echoing off the brick walls and shattering the silence. The sound was so loud, so sudden, that for a moment I thought I was dead. I waited for the pain, for the darkness, for everything to end.
Instead, fire exploded through my right shoulder, spinning me around and slamming me against the wall. I looked down in shock to see blood spreading across the white fabric of my nightgown, dark and wet and wrong.
He shot me.
“Look what you made me do,” he said, and his voice actually sounded disappointed. “Look what happens when you don’t listen.”
I slid down the wall, my legs gave out, black spots danced at the edges of my vision. The pain was unlike anything I ever experienced—sharp, burning, all-consuming. I pressed my left hand against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but blood seeped between my fingers.
“Now we can go home,” Dex said, his voice steady as he walked toward me, unhurried, as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
There was no anger in his face, no drunken blur, no cracked edges I could cling to.
This was something colder. Calculated. The part of him that didn’t need to shout or strike to feel powerful.
“Now you understand that running away isn’t an option.”
As he closed the distance, I realized with a sinking certainty that this was a side of him I had never seen before. Not the man who lost control, but the one who knew exactly what he was doing.
He stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the alcohol on him. I braced myself, my back pressed to the bricks, my body already preparing for the impact, for being dragged, for the inevitable walk back home as if this were just another argument that had gone too far.
But I heard something else—the distant sound of an engine, getting closer. Headlights swept across the mouth of the alley, and Dex froze.
“Shit,” he muttered, glancing toward the street. “Shit, shit, shit.”
The car slowed, then stopped. I heard a door slam. Footsteps approached.
“Hey!” a man’s voice called out. “Is everything okay down there?”
Dex looked between me and the street, panic flickering across his face for the first time that night. He shoved the gun into his jacket pocket and stepped back into the shadows.
“You say nothing,” he snarled. “Because next time, I won’t just clip your shoulder.”
Then he melted into the darkness between the buildings, leaving me bleeding on the ground.
I did not move. I could not. The pain in my shoulder had dulled to a thick, heavy throb, and my thoughts felt slow, like they were moving through water.
I thought of all the excuses I had made for him. I thought of all the times I had mistaken charm for love and control for strength. He had shaped me into this. He had turned me into someone who lay bleeding in an alley and still wondered if it was her own fault.
The realization settled in like a bruise.
Then I heard footsteps. They were different from his.
I tried to call out. I tried to ask for help. But my voice came out as barely a whisper. The edges of my vision were going soft and gray. I was losing too much blood. I could feel it now, warm and wet beneath me, soaking into my nightgown.
My last coherent thought was that I was going to die in this alley, alone, and no one would ever know what really happened.
The footsteps stopped. A shadow fell over me.
“Don’t worry,” a familiar voice said above me. “I’ve got you.”