What would you do if the man you're terrified of discoverd everything you've been hiding from him?
Would you lie?
I can't see how I could make it creditable. Or how he'd ever believe me now.
Would you run?
How close to the door will I get this time?
Would you face it?
I've nothing left to lose here.
Jamie throws the book back down on the table, a menacing glimmer in his eyes.
"Tell me Izzy," he says, "when did you start going behind my back with Will?"
"That's not what it looks like, he was there the first time I had an attack, he gave me the book to try and help."
"Has he been helping you plan all of this college stuff too?
"No!" I insist, "He has nothing to do with any of it, I told you, I made the choice myself."
Jamies face turns mean as he gets close enough for me to feel the heat off his breath.
"Izzy, at this point your lying is becoming insulting."
A stony silence falls between us as we await each others next move, but I don't wait long. I slowly make an attempt to back away from him, shifting towards the door. He's on me in seconds, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back to him.
"Do you think I'm going to let you convince me that I'm wrong this time?," he asks. "Do you think for one second that I'm going to believe a word that comes out of your mouth?"
"That's not what happened!"
"Bullshit Izzy!"
"I swear Jamie, I threw that book back there forever ago, I forgot I even had it."
"I should have known you were up to something," he says. "Acting like you were prepared to have my children when all the while you're with him. You're a fucking whore!"
Jamie suddenly rears back, bringing his fist down in a blaze of fury and punching me in the mouth. I taste the blood hit my tongue as it begins to pour from my lips, it spils over and runs down my face.
"Stop! Please!"
My pleading is useless as he pulls back again and again, hitting me anywhere he can reach. I fall to the floor, covering my head as best I can, but that's all I can do as he rains down blow after blow, I can't even understand the things he's saying as it does it.
At one point, his fist must get sore because stands up and kicks me so hard in the side that he knocks the air from my lungs. A shooting pain rips through me, making me cry out in agony.
"Get up!," Jamie spits as he stands over me. Sweat drips down his face as I try to move, but the pain in my side is unbearable.
"I said get up!" he says, reaching for my hair. He takes it in his fist and pulls me to my knees, blood splattering the floor around us as he does.
"What was the end game Izzy?," he shouts, "Did you think I wouldn't find out? Were you hoping that you'd run off into the sunset with him?" His voice gets louder and louder, until he's literally screaming into my face. "Tell me!"
As he throws me to the floor again, I brace myself for another onslaught of his punches, but he stays right where is, watching.
"Stop." It's the only word I can get out. The shooting pains in my side make it feel like I can barely breathe.
Jamie leans down and takes a hold of me, pinning me to the floor and placing a knee down either side of me.
"Tell me the truth right now, or I'll smash every single one of those pretty teeth," he says.
He pulls his fist high above my face, ready to bring it down on me again. I reach up with my hands to try and protect myself, begging him to stop.
"Wait!" I cry, "I'll tell you, I swear I'll tell you everything."
"Right now!"
Something on the floor beside Jamie catches my eye as I turn my head, I think it's a pen, it must have fallen off the table. Stretching my palm out, I slowy reach for it, aiming to keep Jamie distracted by talking.
"I was leaving," I tell him. "You're right."
"For him?" he asks.
I watch as his eyes seem to grow darker somehow. I want to protect Will, and Jamie will do what he wants to me whether I tell him about him or not.
"No," I say, trying to sound truthful, "it was nothing to do with Will. I did it all myself."
Getting a grip on the end of the pen, I slide it upward towards me and manage to flick the lid off as I do. It's not much, but it could be enough.
Jamie shakes his head as he pants heavily above me, he can't seem to believe that I've done this to him.
"You could have had everything Izzy," he says. "But now you'll have nothing, and it's all your own fault."
He quickly raises his fist above me again, ready to make good on his threat. I have to do something now if I want to get out of this.
Using all of the strength I have, I swing my hand up into the air before plunging it back down and driving the pen into his leg.
I feel the resistance as it pierces his skin, wedging itself into his thigh.
Jamie hollers from the shock, leaning back and instinctively reaching for where the pain is coming from. It gives me a tiny gap of space to roll over and crawl out from under him as he curses me.
I don't wait to see what he does next, I run straight for the door, pulling it open and getting myself out of there as quick as I can.
Sprinting straight for the stairwell, the adrenaline keeps my legs moving, even though they're sore from Jamies attack. Flight after flight, my only thought is to get as far away from him as I can.
The car park is empty of every soul except my own, I have to move quick incase he's following me. Dashing towards my car, I reach into my pocket in search of my keys, soon realising that I've made one grave error. I left them behind.
Looking around me in a panic, I drop down, hiding myself behind a truck. How am I going get to safety now? Why did I come down here?
I have to do something, I'll be a sitting duck if I wait much longer. Weaving my way through rows of parked cars, I quickly make my way towards the elevator, pressing the button repeatedly in the hope that it moves faster. If
I can take it to the ground floor, I know I'll be able to get some help.
Keeping one eye on the door to the stairwell, I hold my breath, praying that Jamie doesn't come bursting through it.
I hover between some parked cars, keeping myself low just incase. Every second feels like a minute as I wait for the elevator to get to me, but when it finally dings and opens up to let me in, I crouch down a bit further and watch, waiting to see if anyone emerges from it.
There's complete silence. Nobody comes out, but nobody seems to be coming from the stairwell either.
As the doors begin to slide closed again, I decide to take my chances and rush forward towards it, only to be completely stunned when I find Jamie inside, his eyes wild as they fall on me. He holds a tight grip on his leg as blood covers his hand.
"You fucking bitch," he says as he lunges for me. I scramble to get back, pushing through the gap in the doors and attempting to run for the stairs, but somehow Jamie gets ahold of my sweatshirt and tries to pull me back into the lift with him. He frantically presses the buttons as I grip the door frame, stopping it from closing.
"No!" I plead, "Let me go, please!"
Jamie reaches for my arm as I push him away, twisting it around my back and pulling it upward.
"Let go of the door Izzy, or I swear I'm going to break it!"
"Please! I won't tell anyone Jamie, just let me go!"
He jerks my arm further up my back, causing me to cry out when I feel a tear rip through my shoulder.
"I'm warning you!" he says, "Let go!"
I don't, I grip that door even harder, doing everything I can to pull myself free from him.
With one swift movement, Jamie yanks my arm one more time. A loud pop bounces off the walls around us as I let out a gut wrenching scream from the pain of it. My hold on the door frame falls as he covers my mouth before pulling me back inside the lift. The doors slide closed right before my eyes, sealing me inside this box with him.
I feel like I could throw up with the pain that's shooting through my arm, he has to have broken it. Tears pour down my face as he keeps his fingers over my mouth, muffling my screams.
"Be quiet or I'll break the other one!," he says.
Jamie holds onto me as the lift travels upward, I will somebody on the other side to press a button so it stops before it gets near our floor, but as always, luck seems to fall in Jamie's favour rather than mine.
We continue to travel past each floor until the elevator comes to a stop on our own. We both stand frozen inside, waiting with bated breath as the corridoor appears in front of us. Me hoping that someone is out there, and him for them not to be.
Jamie keeps his hand over my mouth as he carefully pokes his head out, checking to see if its clear. Of course it is. He drags me from the lift, pulling me straight back toward our apartment. The door is still swinging open from my attempted escape.
I push and shove as hard as I can, doing anything I can to stop him getting me back in there, but he quickly tires of my fighting.
Grabbing ahold of the arm that he's already done a number on, he squeezes it tight, sending a surge of pain through it.
Taking advantage of my moment of weakness, he shoves me back inside the apartment before quickly closing the door behind him, taking the time to make damn sure it's locked this time.
Taking the keys from the lock and placing them in his pocket, Jamie turns his attention back to me, grabbing for my neck and slamming me to the wall behind. He might be injured, but he's certainly not out of the game.
"You feeling brave now?" he asks before strinking me with the back of his hand, sending me barrelling towards the floor.
I land face down in the hallway, just like the night he tried to kill me. I can't let this happen, not again.
Shouting as loud as I possibly can, I call out for any kind of help in desperation.
Jamie rushes to roll me over so I face him before he forces his hand over my mouth again.
"Scream like that one more time and I'll break your jaw, do you understand me?"
Staring up at him, I can see that he means every word, so I nod my head back at him in compliance.
Lifting his hand from my face, Jamie forces me to my feet and begins to push me toward the bedroom, telling me to move. Flash backs of what he did to me in there last week overtake me.
"No no no, not in there," I beg him. "Don't take me in there!"
"Get in and shut up," he says, jabbing his fingers into my back and forcing me through the door way. He limps behind me, guiding me to the bathroom in our room.
"What are you doing Jamie?," I ask him. "Please just let me go, I'll do anything you want!"
"What I want is for you to be quiet," he says.
Backing up into the bathroom, I cower against the door of the shower, watching as Jamie strips the room of everything in here in a frenzy. Towels, toiletries, even the cleaning solution that I store under the sink, he takes it all. The only thing he leaves behind is some toilet paper.
Throwing it all onto the floor of our bedroom, he comes back towards me, cornering me against the shower.
"I want you to stay here," he says. "If you scream, or shout, or even so much as make a peep, I'll come in here and make sure you never taste solid food again. Is that clear?"
My legs shake beneath me, what is he doing?
"Jamie I'm sorry," I say. "I'm sorry that I ran like that, please don't make me stay in here, please."
He looks at me with no feeling at all, his expression is cold, his voice even more so.
"Not a sound Izzy. You're going to stay in here until I clean this mess up."
He glances down at his leg. Blood soaks his pants, but theres nothing coming from the puncture wound I made anymore.
"You can't leave me in here!," I tell him. "Jamie I need to go to the hospital. I think my arm is broken."
"It's not broken," he says. "I only dislocated your shoulder, and you're lucky that's all I did. Now sit down, be quiet, and hope for your own sake that I don't need to get this looked at."
Jamie groans as he limps from the bathroom, he slams the door behind him before turning the key in the lock. Closing me inside the room like a bird in a cage.
I'm too afraid of his warning to make a sound. I tip toe to the door, pressing my ear to it, trying to hear where he is. The ringing in my ears doesn't help my cause, nor do the throbbing pains I have all over.
I wait and wait, listening for any movement. My body gives in before I hear anything and I have to sit down before I fall. I grab some tissue from the roll Jamie left and try to wipe the blood from my face.
There won't be any hiding this. My lip feels like it's completely burst open, and there's a cut over my eye seeping blood that I can't seem to stop the flow of. The swell is so painful that I can't press the tissue to it for long. He really didn't hold back this time, that's for sure.
Angry looking bruises are already appearing on my arms and legs, I can't take much of a look at them though, I have to keep still, my arm doesn't seem to hurt so much when I do.
Sitting here on the floor, I wonder what Jamie's next move might be. I didn't think things through carefully enough, I have no emergency plan. Nobody is expecting to hear from me. I told Will I might not be able to call him at all. Why was I so reckless? Jamie could torture me all night and nobody would know. Lord knows what he could do to me before tomorrow.
♾️
I'm not sure how long Jamie has left me in the bathroom for, it feels like hours have passed, and yet when I hear him slip the key into the lock, it feels like it wasn't nearly long enough for him to stay away.
I press my back to the tiles of the wall, wishing a hole would open up.
Jamie stands in the doorway, he's carrying the wooden footstool I use to reach the tall cabinets in the kitchen. Placing it on the floor, he steps over it and sits down, all the while keeping his focus on me. He feels like a stranger.
"You're in luck," he says. "I won't need stitches, but pull that shit again and you will."
I keep quiet, just as he said before.
Reaching behind him, Jamie takes the book that Will gave me from his waistband, turning it over in his hands a few times. He flicks through the pages for awhile, eventually coming back to the note he found.
"Did you ever touch him?" he asks.
I shake my head, unwilling to make things worse for myself.
"I find that hard to believe Izzy," he says. "I know you, I know what you like... I know what does it for you."
"I didn't. Nothing ever happened, I swear Jamie."
"You've told me so many lies now that I don't know when you're telling the truth anymore Iz."
Jamie looks over the words that Will wrote once again, reading them over and over before lifting his eyes to me.
"He knows things about you that you never told me. And yet, I'm the one who gave you everything you ever wanted."
Tears sting my eyes, he thinks I wanted this life?
"No Jamie, you didn't give me everything. You only gave me the things you wanted me to have."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that everything comes at a price with you. Your love came at the cost of my friendships, at the cost of my job. At the cost of myself. Cant you see how crazy that is?"
"Oh well excuse me for loving you Izzy!" he snaps.
"That's not love Jamie. This is not love! Look at me, look at what you've done to me. And not for the first time either. This isn't normal. You need help!"
"I need help?," he asks with a snicker. "Like what? The anger management you had me go to? Or the therapy? Right! And you say my love came at a price. Are you kidding me?"
"You went to those because you beat me Jamie," I remind him. "Not because I happened to decide one day it might be good for you. It's the kind of help you need, but you stopped going the minute you slipped back into being aggressive with me."
"I don't need a doctor, or a therapist or anything else Izzy. What I need if for my girlfriend to stop opening her god damn legs for every scumbag she meets."
"You know that's not true. You're the one with the history there, not me!"
I know better than to bring up anything that Karl told me, it would only make this worse, but it's not like that any of those were his first discretions either.
Jamie glares at me from across the room. "You're getting pretty mouthy for someone that's just had their shoulder taken out of its socket Izzy."
"See!," I say exasperated, "Do see what I mean Jamie? Nothing is equal, it never has been. You hit me, you talk down to me all the time, you tell me what I can do and when I can do it. I live in constant fear of you! That's not a relationship!"
"God damn it Izzy, you dramatise it all so much. You make all of these scenarios up in your head to make it seem worse than it is!"
My aggravation with him just continues to grow. I won't accept the blame any longer.
"I dramatise it?," I yell, completely losing my composure. "Right, of course Jamie, you're right. You're always right! I just make up the bruises and manipulation and the control in my head don't I? And what, did I just happen to imagine that you raped me in our bed too?"
Jamies eyes blink rapidly as he leans back on the stool like what I've just said has blown his mind.
"Raped you? What the hell are you talking about?"
I don't believe it. He doesn't even know what he did. He's so used to getting what he wants that he can't tell when I don't want to give it. How am I meant to convince this man to let me go when he thinks the things his does are just?
My lip quivers as I have to point out the most basic of things to him.
"I asked you to stop," I say.
"Stop what?"
"I asked you to stop, last week, out there." I look behind him to the bedroom pointedly as realisation hits him.
"Izzy, you didn't tell me to stop, not once. You had a good time from what I remember."
How would he know? He wasn't listening to me. I told him to stop. Whether he chose to hear it or not, I know exactly what I said.
"No, I didn't Jamie, that's just it," I say, "I didn't want to have sex that night and you didn't listen to me. I told you to wait, I asked you to slow down."
"To slow down?" he says, standing to his feet and making me flinch under his sudden movement. "Wait just one second here Izzy, you're saying that was rape? Because I got a little heavy?"
"Yes!" I exclaim, "How can you not see that?"
"Look, I'll put my hands up and say yes, absolutely, you did tell me to slow down. I was a little hasty for sure, I mean Iz its not like you're putting it out there in any way that's frequent lately, not with me anyway."
"It didn't feel right Jamie," I tell him. "It hurt."
Jamie watches me for a moment, his fown deepening. Moving himself closer, he hunkers down right in front of me, letting his eyes settle on mine.
"You wanted it," he spits out bitterly.
I shake my head, afraid to answer him back.
"You did. You were kissing me Izzy, you were responding to me!"
"I- yes, I did kiss you back, but if you consider for a second how scared I was-"
"You were moaning Izzy."
"Because it hurt!"
"How was I to know that? How was I to know if you didn't say it? How can we have two completely different perspectives on this? It makes no sense! Honestly, this is just another example of all the shit you make up."
"Excuse me?" I ask, disgusted by his accusation. How could I possibly make any of this up?
"You want me to be the villain so badly that you tell yourself it happened. You don't want to admit that you loved fucking me at the same time you had that pathetic loser under your thumb."
"No, that's not it, he has nothing to do with this!"
"Oh I think he does. You lay your ass on that bed with no complaints Izzy. You were loving it. You say something different about it now, but I heard you. Jesus Izzy, you were gripping onto me so tight that you left nail marks in my arms, how is that not enjoying it?"
I wipe the tears from my eyes with hands that shake with rage. I have no fear right now, and theres no way I'll let him convince me that I'm wrong.
"I know what happened Jamie," I say. "I know what it was."
"So do I Izzy. It was you, having your cake and eating it too."
No matter what I say, he won't see the truth. I can't stand to hear him reduce what he did to nothing, or to blame me for it.
He doesn't believe he did anything wrong.
It's the story of his life.