Jamie stands over me, still holding onto the phone. It's been a whole three minutes since he showed me the message, and he's yet to say a thing.
As for excuses, I'm all out. If he knows I'm not going alone, then he knows it's with Will.
I place the palms of my hands on the floor, preparing myself for whatever he's going to do.
"You won't be alone," he says, looking at the screen and repeating it a couple more times. After a moment, he tucks the phone away into his pocket and straightens himself up.
"So you had a plan," he says, "but you said you didn't. You had a flight, but you also said you didn't. Remind me Izzy, what was the third thing you told me you didn't do?"
I strain my eyes upward, defiant. If I can't hide it anymore, I'll at least own it as best I can.
"Oh that's right," he jeers, "I remember now. It was your little friend, the bus boy. The helpful guy with the book. What do you think Iz? Is it safe to say that I'm three for three when it comes to discovering your lies?"
I feel my body begin to tremble in fear of what's coming, but I don't look away. The only regret I have right now is the fact that Sarah will blame herself when they eventually find me. If they find me.
Jamie kicks my foot to try and force my interaction.
"You got nothing to say Iz? No denial? No excuses this time?"
I shake my head, there's nothing to deny anymore. "I'm sorry," is all I can offer.
"Sorry? The only thing you're sorry about is the fact that I caught you Izzy."
"No, that's not it. I'm sorry that it happened while we were together Jamie, really, but I'm not sorry that it happened."
He bends over, pulling me up by my sweatshirt and pinning me to the wall, I try not to flinch as he screams at me.
"How long have you been fucking him Izzy?"
"I-If you had just let me go," I stammer, "if you had realised how fucked up this relationship was, we both could have walked away and been happy!"
Slamming his fist into the wall beside my head, he makes it clear that he's uninterested in hearing anything but what he wants to know.
"How long?"
"A few weeks, that's all."
"A couple of weeks?," he asks, "That's all it took for you to decide to make a run for it with him?"
There's no way I can explain this in a way he'd understand. He's incapable of comprehending love.
"I wish none of it had happened this way Jamie, but I can't change it."
He scoffs at my attempts to defend my actions, finding it laughable that I'd even try.
"You know that you and I don't work Jamie," I say. "We aren't meant to be together. The two of us avoided that truth for so long that it got to the point where you just wanted to keep me for the sake of knowing that you could."
"Oh fuck you. That's bullshit Izzy! 'Not meant to be'. That's what women like you say when they need an excuse to open their legs!"
Jamie drops my arms from the wall before he swings his hand back and hits me across the face so hard it sends me crashing into the shower door.
"What was it huh?" he yells. "Was it the musician thing? I know that works for you. What did he say to get you to drop those panties of yours and forget your place here so fast?"
"It wasn't like that!," I cry as I hold my hand up to him, wanting him to stay back.
"Well it wasn't an accident was it Izzy?"
He inch's closer and closer to me as I crawl away from him, slowly moving toward our bedroom. I only have the strength of one arm to lean on, and it's not compensating for much.
As I feel the rug from our bedroom under my fingertips, I look over to see that he's left the bedroom door open. If I'm lucky, he may have forgot to lock the front door after getting the pizza too. I try to get myself up, but at the sight of me getting to my feet, Jamie kicks out at my thigh, knocking me back to my knees in front of him.
"You're worthless Izzy!," he says. "It took nothing for you to get on your back for him at all did it? Who else have you been screwing behind my back?"
"Nobody! There's never been anybody else."
"He was just that special is that it? Special enough for you to risk everything? Is that why you tried to say that I raped you? Because you felt bad for enjoying it? I bet you wanted one last thrill with me before you went off with that dirt bag am I right?"
"Don't say that! That's not what happened. You know that's not right!"
Jamie leans down, taking a fist full of hair and pulling me to my feet, his breath beating down on me.
"You loved every second of it," he says. "You can cry about it all you want, but we both know you're partial to that little bit of rough Izzy. Does he do that for you? Is he as good as I am?"
I don't have any words for the way he's taking to me right now, he's always had a talent to somehow make me feel like nothing.
Jamie leans into me, his face just mere centimeters from mine.
"If I'd have known sooner that you wanted to act like a whore, I would have had no problem treating you like one."
"Stop," I say, "Don't say that."
Spinning me around, Jamie presses my knees against the bed frame as he grips my shoulders, bringing his mouth to my ear.
"In fact, why don't we test it out, see if I can't make you feel like the slut you are."
I push back, trying to force myself away from the bed, but Jamie shoves me forward onto the mattress.
"Stop!" I scream, "don't touch me"
As he reaches for me again, I know I'm going to have to fight him with everything I have, because I swore he wouldn't get to do this to me again.
Flipping onto my back, I kick out at him. He tries to move my legs aside, but one of my kicks lands, connecting with his nose and sending flickers of blood across the bedsheets.
Jamie pulls back, holding his face just long enough for me to climb my way off of the bed to the floor.
He lunges at me, pulling at my legs and trying to bring me back to him. I continue the fight, gripping the fibres of the carpet beneath me, trying to pull myself away from him while kicking out at him again with all of my might.
I fight like never before, but he's so much stronger.
Getting a good grip on one of my ankles, he drags me back across the floor like I'm a rag doll. He leaves a trail of kicks and punches all over my body before he reaches down again, taking out clumps of my hair as he tugs me back to the bed and throws me onto it, face down.
Jamie uses the palm of his hand to press my head into the mattress, then he takes the arm that he reset this morning and pins it behind my back. Pain shoots through my shoulder as I struggle to breathe. Using all of his weight, he keeps me pinned beneath him as I try to wriggle free.
"If you're going to accuse me of something so you can avoid the guilt, then I'll make damn sure you experience it properly Izzy," he says.
His words turn my body to ice as he yanks on my sweatpants. I can't see what he's doing, but I know it's coming.
I cry out for him to stop, and when I do he brings his closed fist down onto my head, forcing me to be quiet and making me dizzy. He takes advantage to my woozy state and pulls my hips upward, keeping my head down.
I feel a twist in the pit of my stomach as I try to shake away the fuzzy feeling, but that's quickly replaced by something else entierly. Suddenly, I feel a sickening stabbing sensation between my legs. He's there, worse than I ever imagined, violently taking what he wants from me. Burning me from the inside out.
My body shifts under him as he pushes him self into me again and again, cursing me with every move me makes. Leaning forward so I can see him, he sneers at me. The alcohol on his breath stings my nostrils as he talks.
"I'm going to make sure that nobody can ever touch you again Izzy. You won't even be able to look at that street performer without thinking of me when I'm done here."
I can't stand the pain, its so much worse than before, at least then it didn't feel like he was trying to break me. It's hard to take the feeling this gives me, there's a complete lack of control of my own body that makes me feel weak. He's even sick enough to ask me to tell him how much I like it, making me physically dry heave at the realisation that he's somehow enjoying this.
I beg him over and over again to stop, to hear me, but at the shriek of my protests, he pulls my arm higher up my back, threatening to remove it from its socket all over again if I don't quieten down.
HERE
It's too much, it all way too much. I shut down, hearing only my own thoughts. I tell myself not to feel it. To block out the pain and imagine a life where Jamie doesn't exist. I close my eyes wanting it to be real.
I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard Of Oz, reassuring myself that there's no place like home. And she was right you know, there is no place like this hell.
Jamie forces me back to reality as he makes his final push inside of me, softening his grip on my arm as his body stiffens and he lets out an audible release of pleasure while slumping forward.
I lay there frozen in shock. My body is raw.
He allows no time for me to get my bearings, or to even cover myself back up. He just pulls up his pants and lifts me off the bed, shoving me back into the bathroom so hard that I trip over myself and land on the floor.
Jamie glares at me as he removes the pizza boxes and glasses from the bathroom before pulling the door closed again.
It takes me a minute to steady myself, the weight of what he just did keeping me down. If I thought last week was bad. I had no idea.
I listen carefully as Jamie leaves the room, turning on the shower in the main bathroom as I lay here on the floor covered in him. He gets to wash this away, I never will.
I'm only lucky that he didn't decide to put the gag back into my mouth or I'd be choking to death right now, because I have to move to the toilet as quick as I possibly can to be sick. I hover over the bowl for the longest time, praying that none of this is real.
Eventually the stickiness between my legs forces me to sit up onto the toilet. As I try to wipe myself clean, I feel a continuous sharp sting, it's like he took a blade to me. When I look down I see that theres blood already drying into my thighs. It coats the tissues that I throw into the toilet bowl over and over again. In the end I just give up, balling up some toilet roll and leaving it in my underwear to soak up whatever comes.
Jamie's footsteps enter the bedroom again after awhile, I hadn't even noticed the shower turning off. He moves around the room, it's hard to tell what he's doing, but it isn't that long until I hear him call my name through the door.
"Izzy?"
My legs quiver beneath me. For how badly I wanted him to come home today, I now hope he never sets foot in here again.
"Izzy you better answer me," he warns.
"What?" I say, wishing he'd leave me alone.
"I want you to take a shower."
I'm bleeding, a shower is exactly what I need right now, but what's the catch?
"You've got five minutes," he says, "don't take any longer."
"You won't come in?," I ask, skeptical of what he might be up to.
"Why would I want to come in?," he retorts.
The man just raped me for the second time and has the gall to somehow be offended that I think he's trying to trick me into stripping myself off. He's unbelieveable.
"Can I have some towels please?," I ask him.
"Give me a minute," he says, moving off to the linen closet before coming back and opening the door a fraction to throw two towels on the floor.
As I climb into the shower, I catch a view of my battered and bruised body in the mirror. How could he have possibly looked down at me and found a way to do that?
I will never ever understand how his mind works. And I never want to either.
Showering in the tiny time frame Jamie gave me, I clean any cuts I have as gently as possible, taking care not to make them bleed further.
When I'm finished, I dry myself off and get dressed back into my sweats. Fresh pyjamas were obviously too much of a luxury. I shiver from the cold as I sit back down, glad that I was careful not to get my hair soaked. It's way be too cold to try and sleep with it wet in here, and I doubt he'd give me the dryer.
All I can do now is sit with my tears and let the horror of the evening close in on me, wondering how I'll ever manage to get over what he did. Whatever about the physical scars, they'll fade, it's the mental ones that scare me.
I didn't realise it until now, but the idea that Jamie didn't believe what he did last week was rape made it somehow easier to deal with. It was like he didn't mean for it to happen, but there's no question at all that he meant it this time.
He made every intension to inflict the worst thing he could imagine on me. He's the kind of man you hear stories about. The type that has an exterior that sucks you in, touching your soul and rotting it from the centre outward. Destroying the very thing that makes you.
I don't know how I'll get out of this, or if I even will. I find myself getting less hopeful about that possibility the longer this goes on. But if I do, if I can get away from this horrible place, I'll erase every single trace of Jamie from my life. I won't leave a single thing behind to ever give him the satisfaction of knowing that I think about him. I won't let him get what he wants.
I wait in my prison as an hour or so passes, the door creeks and I hear Jamie walking through the bedroom. I hold my breath while I wait to see if he plans to come in here again, but when I see the light go out under the door, I know I'm not in for anything else.
Somebody will realise tomorrow, I tell myself. Surely Annie will find it odd when I haven't called her? Or Sarah? Then it will only be a matter of time. That's what all my hopes are pinned on.
I might still have a tiny sliver of a chance of being with Will. We could still be us, we could still have our own life, our own home, our own children if we wanted.
Children.
Oh god, I've been so lost in this haze that I didn't even think of it.
I'm so fast jumping up onto my feet that I get a head rush, forgetting how weak I am. I pointlessly search the empty shelves of the cabinet, wanting to find what I need. Jamie took everything though, he missed absolutely nothing. Including my pill.
I tap on the bathroom door, knowing he couldn't be asleep just yet.
"Jamie?" I croak, "Are you there?"
"If you keep banging on that door I'm going to come and tie you back up. I'm trying to sleep."
"... I'm sorry... it's just, you took everything out of here."
"So?"
"So I need my pill," I tell him, "I should have had it this morning."
The fact I'm already late trying to take it isn't good, so I really need him to hand it over.
"Your pill?," he asks.
"My contraceptive pill, it was on the shelf in here."
Easy knowing he's not the one who has to worry about it.
I hear Jamie begin to laugh aloud into the darkness. "Wouldn't that be some poetic justice Iz?," he says. "You think that bar tender would wanna' raise my kid?"
I bite my lip, holding back how ill that thought makes me.
"Please can I have it?" My voice cracks, the possibility that he may not give it to me scares the life out of me.
"Actions have consequences Izzy. You've learned that already tonight."
"Is that what you'd want?" I ask, "For a child to be here that way?"
I don't know what I think I'm doing, appealing to someone without a conscience.
Needless to say, my words make no difference to Jamie as he rolls over and warns me to shut up one last time.
Sitting back down, I don't allow my mind fall into the trap of 'what ifs'. There's only so much I can take tonight, and right now I'm at my limit.
Jamie falls asleep insultingly easy. If I get snippy with a cold caller I toss and turn for hours feeling bad about it, but he assaults me and holds me hostage in our bathroom and seems to drift off to his dreams like a baby.
Any hope I had of sleeping myself disappears due to the sound of his snoring. It's so cold in here that I knew there wasn't much hope of it anyway. Laying onto my side, I tuck one of the towels under my head like a makeshift pillow.
I let my eyes fall closed, opening them up every once in a while in a panic thinking that Jamie is standing over me, but it's just some form of torturous daydream.
As the morning light creeps through the cracks of the door once again, a scraping sound running along the floor tile jolts me upright. It's from the blister pack of my pill. Jamie must have shoved it under the door.
I know him, he's not giving it to me because he might regret what he did, he's giving it to me to remind me that he decides everything.
I quickly take one, swallowing it dry. I've missed a whole day now, but I hope that I might just get lucky.
I wonder if he's decided he's staying home today. Part of me wants him to, it would mean no gag and no rope. But another part of me worries that if anyone comes to find me, it will be Jamie they meet. And I don't know what will happen then.
Just like the day before, Jamie comes knocking on the door with breakfast.
"Move back Izzy," he says.
I do as instructed, retreating to the other side of the bathroom as he opens up. It's the same routine as yesterday. Cereal, toast, milk. My heart sinks.
He doesn't look at me, he's not interested in talking to me either, not now that he knows about Will.
"Twenty minutes," he reminds me and then begins to close the door.
"Wait," I call after him, "does this mean you're going to leave again?"
"Why?"
"Please don't. Don't put that thing in my mouth again."
He looks at me finally, hatred pouring from him. "Like I said, twenty minutes."
The door closes with a soft click behind him.
Every bit of food he brought in remains untouched, I can't stomach it.
I count down those twenty minutes in my mind like they're bringing the end of the world with them.
How much longer can this possibly go on?