Trouble (4 page)

“You. Will. Be. A. Part. Of. It.” He addresses me as though speaking to a child. “You’ll let me fuck them here in
our
apartment whenever I want. You’ll sit out here and listen to me fuck them. And sometimes…” He steps closer. “You’ll participate.”

No. No. No. No!

Hell no!

“I don’t think so.”
Is that me speaking?

His features tighten. He takes a step forward. I can see his hands twitching by his sides.

I sidestep around the sofa.

“You will do as I tell you, Mia. You’re mine to do with as I want.”

The belt cracked across my behind.

“Who is in control here, Mia?”

“You are, Daddy.”

I lift my eyes to his face. Forbes might be handsome, but he’s never looked uglier than he does right now.

“Do you hit those girls like you do me?”

I see surprise flicker across his face.

Even though we are both very clear on the fact that Forbes hits me … I’ve never actually said the words out loud before. They feel odd to have said, but also
empowering
.

“No,” he answers, his voice cold.

And the empowerment I held so briefly dissipates and I want to cry. The ugly type of cry.

He beats me because he can.

Because I allow it.

Because I’m weak.

“Why me?” I ask. I know why, but the sadistic part of me wants to hear him confirm it.

He moves closer until he is right in front of me.

I don’t move this time. I stand my ground, even though my legs are shaking to the point that I’m surprised I’m actually still standing.

If my act of strength surprises him, he doesn’t let it show. He leans down, getting in my face. His hot breath burns my skin. I can still smell that girl on him.

I want to vomit.

“Because you’re mine, Mia.” His voice sounds like a hiss. “You belong to me. You’re my other half. My little … easily controllable … fucked-up other half.”

I might have known this already, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting. I hide the burning flinch of pain I feel because I don’t want him to have the pleasure of knowing.

He lifts his hand.

I flinch.

This pleases him.

Touching my cheek with the barest of touches, he runs his fingers across my skin and tucks my long hair behind my ear.

“You really are beautiful,” he murmurs, brushing his fingers through my hair and down my back. Then he roughly grabs a hand full of my hair, yanking my head back. My eyes water from the pain.

“You and I are the same, you know.” His voice is low and vengeful. “Pretty on the outside, but all kinds of fucked up on the inside. I wanted you, Mia, for the same reason you wanted me. Because like knows like. The abused becomes the abuser. Or, in your case, the abused just stays abused.”

A veil lifts from my eyes. How did I not see it before?

Stereotypical pattern.

Forbes has lived my childhood. To what degree, I don’t think I’ll ever know. But he’s lived through the pain.

Did his father beat him too?

I suddenly feel awash with sadness for him. An ache for the child he was. For the childhood that was stolen from him as mine was.

Then I look up at the man before me, and that sorrow instantly turns to rage. White hot rage.

He knows how it feels, yet he does it to me.

He could have stopped the cycle. Just loved me. I would have loved him back without question. I would have given him all of me. My heart. Together, we could have healed each other.

But instead, all he gave me was a co-dependent, hate fueled, abusive relationship.

And now I’m just left with an empty chasm, lined with that hatred, and bitter resentment.

I open my mouth to tell him this … then it hits me.

I could have walked away … maybe not walked, but run. I
should
have run.

The simple truth is that I took the only way I knew … I carried on being the old me. The one who Oliver created, instead of trying to find a new Mia. The real Mia.

Because I was afraid to try.

Anger for my own failings burst in my chest … swelling … compressing me from the inside out. I feel as if I’m going to explode under the pressure.

I somehow manage to find my voice. “I want you to leave.”

Cruel laughter bursts from him. “You breaking up with me, Mia?”

It takes everything in me, but I force myself to meet his eyes. “I’d say I’ve got good reason to, wouldn’t you?”

He grabs my face, pinching my cheeks hard, then shoves my head back. He wraps his hand around my upper arm, yanking me straight back to him. I collide hard with his chest.

“So, let me get this straight – I get to smack you around whenever I feel like it, but the moment you catch me with my dick in some cheap slut, you’re apparently done?”

I wince from the pressure of his fingers digging into my arm, but I speak through the pain. “It’s got nothing to do with you having sex with that girl. This is me finally waking up. Something I should have done a long time ago. I won’t continue to be your punching bag, Forbes. And I definitely won’t become your whore.”

He laughs in my face. His voice chilly, he says, “You’ve been my whore from the moment I met you.”

“What happens when you dress like a whore, Mia?”

I bit my lip through the lashing, unable to speak through the pain.

“Answer me!”

My body jumps from the force of his voice. Sweat trickled down the side of my face, like the tears I wanted to shed. “I-I get treated like o-one, D-Daddy.”

“Exactly right. You’re finally starting to learn.”

Something in me snaps.

I stare hard into Forbes’ eyes. “I’m no one’s whore! Now get the hell out of my apartment! I’m done with you!”

Rage engorges his features, making him barely recognizable. In all this time, I’ve never seen him this angry, this far gone.

I should be terrified. I’m not.

“Done with me?” he spits in my face. “You think it’s that fuckin’ easy? I’m going nowhere! And neither are you!”

He slams his lips against mine at the same time as he restrains my hands by my sides. The next thing I know, my back is pressed against the wall, his body hard on mine, caging me in.

I’m trapped.

I feel his quick erection dig in my hip, and my senses instantly tell me where this is going.

My heart plummets.

Oh god, no. Not this. Anything but this.

I’ve been degraded, humiliated and beaten. But never raped.

He’s not taking this from me. I have to fight back.

The laughable thing is, I don’t know how to fight back.

Fear is bubbling my blood, adrenaline spiking my senses, so I do the only thing I can think of. I bite down on his lip until I taste blood.

“You fuckin’ bitch!”

He slaps me hard. I expect it, but not the punch that follows.

My head ricochets off the wall. Pain explodes everywhere. Light swims my vision.

Forbes grabs me and lifts me off my feet, then slams me up against the wall. I cry out from the pain it sends hurtling through my already bruised ribs.

Shoving my skirt up, his hand goes down my panties while his other pins my throat, squeezing hard.

Fingers press painfully into my flesh. One violating me. The other stealing my breath. Yet all I can think is:
Why did I wear a skirt this morning? Why didn’t I pick pants? If I’d picked pants, it would have made this harder for him. Maybe gave me an out.

Something so small can define how a situation goes.

I will probably never again wear a skirt.

Something small. Insignificant.

But it matters to me.

I can feel myself shutting down. I close my eyes tight.

Warmth. Music. Flying free in the blue sky…

Safe. I’m safe.

“I’m going to fuck some sense into you,” he hisses in my ear. “You need teaching a lesson.”

“Come to my office, Mia. It’s time for a lesson.”

Forbes’ fingers roughly and painfully pull out of me, dragging me back to the now.

For a spilt stupid second, I think he’s changed his mind—that maybe he isn’t going to do this.

Then he reaches for the zipper on his jeans.

In this moment, it’s difficult to say what I feel. Realization, mainly. This is really going to happen to me. He’s going to take from me the last shred of dignity I have.

Only if I let it happen.

Stop this, Mia! Stop being weak and fight back! You stop this, and there will be no more pain. No more hurt. Ever.

Forbes is struggling with his zipper. He moves off me, just a fraction, but I take full advantage of that fraction. Using courage I didn’t know I had until now, I bring my knee up as hard as I can and slam it into his balls.

A sound like garbled agony emits from him.

His hand drops from my throat, releasing me as both his hands go to his crotch, holding the pain I just created.

Now you know how it feels you bastard.

I slide down the wall, gasping for the air I so desperately need.

Forbes staggers a little to the side, face lined with pain, then he drops to his knees.

Now, Mia, go!

I’m moving. Running through my apartment. I grab my keys off the table, and I’m out the door, flying down the stairs.

I don’t stop to look behind.

The street is quiet. No one around. I unlock my car in the race toward it. Slamming the door shut, my hand shakes as I try to get the key in the ignition.

Shit! I can’t get it in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Forbes come stumbling out of the building, hand still holding his crotch, and I don’t know if it’s sheer luck driving this moment, but the key suddenly punches in.

I turn the ignition, shift into gear, and slam my foot down, getting me out of there.

Reaching the end of the street in a matter of seconds, I turn left and race off down the street. I feel wet on my hand as I push my hair off my face. Pulling it back, I find it smeared with blood.

I take a quick glance in the rear-view mirror.

My eyebrow is split open and the blood from the wound is running down my face, dripping onto my clothes.

“Shit,” I wince, instantly feeling the pain from the knowledge.

I need to clean it up, but I can’t stop. Not now. I can’t risk Forbes catching up with me.

Because he will, undoubtedly, be coming after me.

I press my sleeve against the cut to soak up the blood and press down harder on the gas, firing me onward.

Before I know it, I’m on the I-90 with absolutely no idea where I’m going.

I have nowhere to go.

No friends to turn to. No family.

There’s only me.

***

I drive down the I-90 for an undetermined amount of time. I’m just staring ahead, foot on the gas pedal, putting as much distance between me and Forbes as I can.

It starts to rain, so visibility becomes poor, and my eye is starting to shut. It isn’t easy driving as I am, but with the rain pouring down, I’m going to have to pull off.

The thought of stopping terrifies me, but at the moment, I don’t have a choice.

A few minutes later, I see a sign for a service station coming up in a mile.

When the turn comes up, I pull off and follow the road round.

I park my car into the lot just outside the service motel. Shutting the engine off, I check my doors are still locked, then I examine my eye in the rear-view mirror. It’s looking bad.

I reach into the glove compartment and get out the hand wipes I keep in there. That’s when I spot my handbag sitting in the foot well where I’d dropped it earlier. Relief fills me.

I’ve got money.

There’s no way I can go back to my apartment. When Forbes gets bored of looking for me, that’s the first place he’ll go to wait. Looks like this motel is going to be my bed for the night.

I lift my bag onto the passenger seat. The papers about my mother are still there. I gently touch them with my fingertips.

My cell starts to ring, making me jump.

Forbes.

With trembling fingers, I cancel the call and switch my cell off.

I clean my face using the hand wipes. On closer examination, I see the cut is really deep. I’ll need to tape it. What it really needs is stitches, but I’m not up for stitching myself at the moment, and going to the ER is out of the question.

I can live with the scar. It’s not my first.

There should be some tape in the first-aid kit in the trunk of the car. Always prepared. That’s me. I could do with an icepack. I’ll see what the motel has.

I grab my overly large sunglasses from my bag and put them on to cover my eye. I don’t care that it’s raining. I hang my bag on my shoulder, open the door and step into the bouncing rain.

Popping the trunk, I get the first-aid kit and shove it in my bag before I head to the reception of the motel.

The female, a middle-aged clerk barely looks at me as she checks me in, which is good because I must look a complete state wearing sunglasses, soaked through to my panties and blood on my clothes.

She hands me over a key card with barely a word, so I thank her and head straight to the room. Stopping on the way, I grab a can of soda from the machine. It’ll work as a makeshift icepack.

I open the door, and I’m greeted with the stench of stale air freshener. Walking into the room, I shut the door behind me, locking it. I remove my sunglasses and put them in my bag, which I drop on the bed as I sit down. The mattress is hard and uncomfortable. I rest the cold can of soda against my eye using one hand. With the other, I curl my fingers around the edge of the bed and grip the comforter.

Then I just let go. I cry the tears I’ve needed to cry all night.

I’ve no clue how long I sit here for, crying, but when I’m finally dried eyed, I go to the bathroom and strip my clothes off.

The urge to eat and purge is overwhelming right now, but fear of going back outside keeps me in the room.