Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 522(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 522(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
Throughout her life, Beth had witnessed not only healthy, enviable relationships but also people who maintained their individuality while being part of a tremendously close pairing. Everyone she’d grown up with was complete ‘couple goals.’
Why on earth had she turned her back and walked away from it all as though better existed somewhere in the world and she could find it? Was it young, dumb hubris, or did she have something fundamentally wrong inside her?
She wasn’t happy with her life and hadn’t been for a long time. The realization sat heavy in her chest, like a stone she couldn’t cough up.
“Yo, B, where the fuck’s the beer I bought last night?”
Right in the fridge, where you watched me put it yesterday, you piece of shit.
Her shoulders slumped, and her skin paled in the mirror. Even expecting it, the sound of his voice still made her muscles clench, and her hands tremble. She gripped the edge of the sink to still them. As much as she might want to, she’d never sass Jason out loud. Not unless she wanted a night of screaming, berating, and possibly another handprint on her cheek. Though when he hit her, the fighting typically ended. A few times, she’d been tempted to goad him into getting physical to stop the screaming.
Wow, that’s the saddest thought you’ve ever had.
This was what her life had become.
She’d need a mountain of therapy to undo the twisted mess this relationship had caused to her psyche. Of course, she’d have to attend therapy first, and that meant admitting out loud that she had a serious problem. That she was the kind of woman who stayed.
For the past week, a statistic she’d stumbled across in some magazine at the dentist’s office had been eating her alive. On average, women went back to their abusers seven times before finally leaving for good.
Seven times.
She’d done the math on herself more times than she could count. Had she already ‘left’ when she’d slept at Megan’s for three days after Jason shoved her into the wall? Did it count as leaving if she’d only thought about it, really, seriously thought about it, while he was at work? How many of her seven had she already used up?
And what kind of person needed seven tries to save her own life?
Yet there she stood, rubbing the tears away and rushing out of the bathroom to appease a man who didn’t act like he gave a shit about her. A man who’d humiliated her, fucked with her mind, and hit her more than once.
“They’re in the refrigerator. I’ll grab one for you, Jase,” she called, forcing brightness into her voice as she hustled into the kitchen and found him standing in front of the open refrigerator, scowling.
“Right here.” She slipped under his thick arm and grabbed a bottle of his favorite beer from the top shelf of the refrigerator. How he couldn’t find anything would always remain a mystery, but one she’d never asked him to solve. Asking why, even about something small, could be the wrong move on the wrong day.
Back at home, she could and would have teased the hell out of her dad’s MC brothers if they’d been unable to find something practically staring them in the face, which, to be fair, would probably happen. The difference was that they’d shrug off her teasing and join her in laughing. Those guys had always been able to laugh at themselves. It was a quality she’d never fully appreciated until Jason.
Around the club members, she didn’t have to measure her words or tiptoe around a volatile temper. She didn’t have to catalog tone, expression, and the number of beers someone consumed and run it through some twisted internal safety calculator before she opened her mouth. And if they ever saw her acting like a timid mouse around a boyfriend, well, the boyfriend wouldn’t be breathing for long, and that wasn’t a hyperbole.
“Don’t fucking hide my shit next time,” he grumbled as he snatched the bottle from her hand.
Or, you know… you could open your damn eyes.
She clamped down on her tongue as she nodded. Her throat ached from all the words she swallowed each day.
Jase twisted off the top, then took a long drink that had more than half the bottle disappearing. Looked like tonight would be a multi-drink night, and her nerves fluttered. Drunk Jason could go either way, sleepy and lazy or mean and destructive.
“Grant and Benny are on their way over. We’re gonna play some GTA. I’m hungry. Make us some of those spicy cheese fuckers we like.”
“Jalapeño poppers?” she asked, even though she knew exactly what he meant.
He snapped and pointed at her with a grin she used to find sexy. “That’s it.”
Oh, of course. Let me drop everything and deep-fry appetizers for you and your mouth-breathing buddies while you shoot hookers in a video game. Would you like me to fan you with a palm leaf while I’m at it? Rub your feet? Maybe I should crawl on all fours and bark on command.