6. Eli
Eli
I wake before Adrian.
For a while, I just lie there and listen.
The house shifts and settles as morning stretches over it, timber creaking softly as the sun climbs.
Beyond the open window, waves roll in steady and indifferent, breaking against the shore like nothing in the world could ever change them.
Light spills through the curtains in thin gold sheets, painting the floor in quiet patterns.
It’s a beautiful morning.
And beside me, Adrian sleeps as if the world has never touched him. The sight sits wrong in my chest. A tight ache forms beneath my ribs, sharp enough to make my breath catch. My body reacts before my mind does, curling inward as if trying to protect something already broken.
This man is the storm in my life.
The source of every bruise, every flinch, every night I’ve spent staring at a ceiling and learning how to breathe through fear.
My throat tightens. A faint tremor moves through my hands, the kind that comes from remembering too much too quickly.
The truth sits heavy in my chest, impossible to swallow.
And yet here he is, peaceful. Untouched.
While I lie awake beside him, drowning in something that tastes like guilt and anger and the slow erosion of myself.
My pulse drags, slow and uneven. The room feels too quiet, too still, like it’s waiting for me to break again.
I force myself to move before the weight pins me in place.
I get up carefully.
Shower.
I scrub the dried blood from my skin until the water runs pale and I can almost pretend it isn’t there, but the mirror doesn’t let me forget.
Fresh bruises bloom across my skin like evidence I can’t erase, and my ribs throb with every breath.
A cold shiver runs down my spine. My stomach twists sharply, and for a moment I have to grip the edge of the sink to steady myself. The bruises feel louder than the room.
My gaze catches on my shoulder, where last night’s bite has broken the skin, and fresh blood sits in beads, leaving a dark, ugly mark that refuses to fade.
Heat floods my face, thick and suffocating.
My breath stutters, and I look away quickly, unable to face the mark without feeling the moment all over again.
Humiliation burns hot behind my ribs as I clean myself up. I swallow hard, but the shame doesn’t move. It sits heavy and unmoving, like it has carved out a place inside me.
After I dress, I leave a note on the kitchen counter. I take my wallet, my keys, and wheel my bike out of the garage without a sound, careful not to wake Adrian.
My hands shake around the handlebars. Every sound feels amplified, every shadow sharper. I don’t breathe properly until the garage door closes behind me.
* * *
At work, everything fractures.
Focus slips through my fingers. Conversations blur.
Details vanish the second I try to hold onto them.
Even things I should know instinctively feel just out of reach, like my mind is working against me.
A faint ringing fills my ears. The world blurs at the edges, slipping in and out of focus.
I blink hard, trying to pull myself back into my body.
Ree’s question won’t leave me alone.
Are you safe?
By lunchtime, I find myself outside Marge’s room.
She’s a floor above now. I hadn’t planned on stopping. Not really. But my body decides for me, carrying me there like it already knows what I need.
“Eli.”
She looks up from her book and smiles, warm and steady as ever.
I manage a small, tight smile as I walk in. “How do you always know it’s me?”
She doesn’t answer the question, just studies me for a moment longer. “You’ve got your worried face on,” she says gently, closing her book and setting it aside. “Talk to me.”
I sit down beside her. I open my mouth, then close it again. I try once more, but nothing comes out.
Then Marge speaks again. And what she says drops straight through me.
“You know… I stayed too long once.”
I go still. My breath catches. A cold ripple moves through me, tightening every muscle. The words hit harder than I expect, sharp enough to make my vision swim.
She’s looking out the window now, like the words are easier that way. “My first fiancé.”
I stare at her. I’ve never heard her speak about another man besides her husband.
“He wasn’t cruel all the time,” she continues softly. “He could be charming. Kind. And then, without warning… he could make me feel so small.”
Her gaze turns back to me. And Marge, gentle, soft-spoken Marge, has tears gathering in her eyes. My chest caves inward. A tremor runs through my fingers, small but impossible to hide. Seeing her cry feels like something inside me is splitting open.
“You are all those things too, hun,” she says quietly, “You don’t deserve what you’re getting.”
My stomach drops.
Her hand lifts, brushing lightly against the mark on my shoulder. The bite. The proof.
I flinch away instinctively, but I can’t hide from it. My pulse spikes. Heat rushes up my neck, and my stomach twists violently. The reaction is automatic, carved into me by too many nights like last night.
Tears spill down my face before I can stop them.
“Look at me, sweet boy.”
I do, and I see her crying too.
“Wonderful memories don’t cancel the bad ones, honey,” she says, her hand settling against my cheek. “Love isn’t supposed to cost you who you are. You don’t pay for love.”
I can’t breathe. The room feels too small, too loud, too sharp.
I stand too quickly and leave without another word. I can’t stay in it. Can’t sit in it. Can’t hear any more. I grab my gear and go.
My vision blurs at the edges. The hallway feels too narrow, the air too thin. I move fast because stopping means feeling everything she just said.
Outside, I reach my bike, and Ree is already there, leaning against it like she’s been waiting longer than she admits.
“Are you okay?” she asks softly. “I stopped in to see Marge before I left. She said she saw you.”
I look at her, and for the first time, I don’t lie.
“No.”
The word feels heavy leaving my mouth. My throat tightens, and a strange relief washes through me, sharp and fragile.
Something in her expression shifts instantly.
“Good,” she says.
I blink. “Huh?”
“It means you’re finally telling the truth,” she replies, her voice steady. “We need to talk, Eli. About how we get you out.”
I nod mechanically. “I can’t right now. I have to go.” I leave her there in the middle of the car park, watching me go.
* * *
I get home, and Adrian is in a good mood. I hear laughing, and as I turn the corner, I see him talking animatedly on the phone, looking like nothing in the world weighs on him.
I stand in the doorway and watch him.
He leans casually against the kitchen counter, relaxed, effortless. And for a moment, my mind betrays me, painting a version of him that never breaks, never changes. A future stretched out in slow suffocation.
My stomach drops. The sound of his laughter curls around me like a warning, familiar enough to make my skin prickle.
Five years. Ten. Twenty.
Walking on eggshells forever. Explaining bruises. Inventing excuses. Apologizing for taking up space in my own life. The thought lands like ice in my veins.
My breath stutters. A cold sweat breaks across my skin, and my hands tighten around the strap of my bag. The future feels suffocating, a tunnel with no exit.
Nothing is changing.
Nothing ever will.
And Adrian will never see himself as the problem.
That’s the truth I can’t unsee now. And if I stay, there is only one direction this leads. One ending waiting at the end of it all.
Me.
Dead.
* * *
My thoughts keep circling back to Marge and Ree.
They don’t try to solve it for me. They don’t overwhelm me with instructions or force anything into place. When we meet the next day, Ree simply hands me a notebook.
Inside it, her handwriting is neat, deliberate. There are practical questions laid out like stepping stones through chaos:
Where can I stay?
Who can I call?
What do I need to take?
What documentation do I need?
What would make me go back?
Every lunchtime, we meet in Marge’s room, tucked away from curious eyes and easy questions. I sit beside her while she spreads a map across her lap. Her finger moves slowly over the paper, stopping at a place she knows by heart.
Campbell River.
She talks about it like she’s still there sometimes. Not just a place, but a beginning. Where she grew up. Where she met her husband. Where her life became something else entirely. A place she calls safe.
The more I look at it, the more it stops feeling like a drawing on paper and starts feeling… possible. Real. Like the only point on the map that doesn’t shift when I look away. And it feels distant enough to breathe in. Far enough that he wouldn’t find me.
“That’s where I found my life,” Marge says quietly, watching me instead of the map. “Maybe you’ll find yours too.”
At the end of my shift, I go home with something unfamiliar forming in my chest.
A plan.
Small at first. Fragile, but steady enough that I can’t ignore it anymore. A faint warmth flickers in my chest, small but real. Hope feels dangerous, but it’s the first thing that hasn’t hurt in a long time.
I have a little cash saved. Not much, but enough to begin. I can get more with the groceries. Small withdrawals, nothing obvious. If I do it carefully, he won’t notice. I can hide it, tucking it away where it can’t be seen or taken.
I’ll need my passport. My documents. Things I’ve never been allowed to think about as “mine” before. I can move a bag out quietly, leaving it with Ree, or maybe Marge. Somewhere it won’t be questioned.
Ree gave me her number. I’ve saved it under Nurse Gale – new staff, a quiet joke to myself, an escape route disguised as normal life.
I keep running through it. Over and over. Adjusting, recalculating, replaying every detail until it starts to feel like something I could actually survive. Until it feels like something that might work.
* * *
One month later.
I get up and move through my routine like nothing is wrong. Like I am normal. Like we are normal.
For the past month, that’s what we’ve been: a convincing illusion of a couple. Behind closed doors, he has broken me in every way that matters, and still I have continued to smile on command, breathed through it, and waited for the moment I can finally leave.
I’ve saved more money now. My documents and escape bag are already at Marge’s house. I haven’t bought the bus ticket yet, but I will when I get there.
I find Adrian in the kitchen, coffee in hand.
“I’m heading to work,” I say, leaning in to kiss his cheek. I fill my to-go cup while he watches me.
“Dinner tonight,” he says without looking away from me. “Down at the waterfront, at that new restaurant. Six o’clock. Don’t be late.”
I smile like it’s nothing. “That sounds really nice. I’ve heard good things about that place.”
I kiss his cheek again and turn toward the door.
His hand catches my wrist, grasping it firmly. Enough for my breathing to hitch. My pulse jumps violently, my fingers go numb, and a cold rush sweeps through me. I freeze, waiting for the shift in his voice, the change in his eyes.
He cups my face instead, turning me back toward him. For a moment, his expression shifts. The version of him I first believed in flickers to the surface. Then he kisses me.
I hesitate for half a heartbeat too long before I respond. My mind splinters, torn between instinct and survival. The hesitation feels like a crack in the mask I’ve worn for years. My plan wavers, the exit almost disappears.
Then he pulls back.
His hand stays on my jaw, holding me in place just long enough for the warmth to drain from the moment.
“Be there at six, Elijah,” he says quietly. “Not a minute later.”
I hold his gaze, and I smile. “Six sharp.”
He releases me, and I walk out the door.
And I don’t look back.
Because I remember everything else. The bruises. The fear. The years of shrinking myself down to survive in my own life. And I remember Marge. I remember Ree.
So I keep walking. Each step feels heavier than the last, but I don’t stop. My chest tightens, my throat burns, but the movement feels like the first real choice I’ve made in years.
* * *
Hours later, I stand on the deck of the ferry as it pulls me away.
The wind cuts sharp against my skin, but I don’t care. I’ve never felt anything like this before. My lungs expand fully for the first time in months. The wind stings my eyes, but it feels clean, sharp, alive. Like breathing without permission.
It’s movement. Escape.
The shoreline shrinks behind me, slowly dissolving into grey water and mist. For the first time in years, no one knows where I am. And that freedom is almost unbearable.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
I had turned the location services off, halfway to the hospital. I stopped, shut everything down, and changed direction, heading back for Marge’s place instead. That’s where they were waiting, and when Marge insisted I take her car, I argued. She won.
I couldn’t carry everything on my bike, so we packed the car carefully. My bag. My documents. Everything that had started to feel like a life I wasn’t allowed to have.
Marge pressed an envelope into my hand. “For emergencies,” she said simply.
Ree hugged me like she wasn’t sure she could let go. “Find your happiness, El. You deserve every good thing that comes next.”
Then she handed me a burner phone. “Our numbers are in it. We’ve got yours too. Get rid of the old one before you stop anywhere.”
“Okay,” I said. And then I drove away. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw them standing on the road, both women strong and steady, waving until I couldn’t see them anymore.
* * *
Now, my phone won’t stop vibrating.
6:01 p.m.
Adrian.
Late.
The screen lights up again and again, his name flashing like a pulse I used to mistake for love. It stops. Starts again. Stops. Starts.
My chest tightens painfully. The vibration feels like a hand closing around my throat, pulling me back toward everything I’m trying to escape. I lean against the ferry railing, watching the dark water churn beneath me as the call keeps pulling at something inside my chest.
My fingers loosen.
And I let the phone fall.
It disappears into the sea without a sound.
Gone.
An hour later, a new coastline rises out of the mist. Buildings, harbor lights, forested hills behind them like something ancient and patient watching over everything.
For the first time in years, I let myself consider something I haven’t dared to name: That survival and happiness might not be opposites. That they might be the same road.
I tilt my face into the wind and close my eyes.
Are you safe?
Yes.