Love Me Like That (14 page)

I went the next day to the clinic and got the birth control shot. No matter what he says and no matter my reasons for not being strong enough to leave him, there’s no way I’d ever bring a baby into our situation.

I wish I could say that things with Brian got better after he hit me the first time. Hell, I wish I could say that they stayed the same. The truth? The first year and a half we were together was the best part of the relationship. Shortly after he hit me the first time, he hit me a second time and a third.

I got really good at hiding the bruises. Brian became an expert on abuse and began only hitting me where I could hide the damage with my clothes. Unless he was really angry, then it was a free-for-all. After those times, he’d just keep me secluded away in his house for days. Those were the worst days; the days where I’d spend all day and night as a slave to his every sexual whim.

I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. I don’t argue, and I don’t talk to anyone about my problems. I no longer have any friends. He controls every second of my life. I’m his only focus it seems. Well, that’s not the whole truth. I’ve come across feminine items and things we don’t use around his house that don’t belong to me. What do I care about the foreign pair of panties tangled in his sheets or the empty condom wrappers that have ended up under his bed?

I do care actually, but not in a way that makes sense. Not in a way that makes me human. I wish whatever girl that had on the panties I had to throw in the trash last week would gain all of his attention. I wish he would get some other girl pregnant so he can obsess over her. I know that’s a horrible way to think, but I was the girl tied to the bed and repeatedly filled with his sperm during Thanksgiving break.

I’ve been on the Depo shot since he made me throw out my birth control. He can’t understand why I’m not getting pregnant. He’s even gone so far as to use an app on his phone to track my cycles making sure he fucks me as often as possible on the days it says I’m most fertile.

What I thought was a reprieve at Christmas time when he went home to see his family, turned out to be the worst thing that could’ve ever happened. Brian has always had a taste for drugs. He’s snorted coke socially as long as I’ve known him; even forcing me to party with him a handful of times.

When he got back from his parents’ house, his habit was a full blown addiction. He admitted that he spent half his time down there on a coke binge, blaming his asshole dad as reasoning. New Year’s also coincides with my fertile days this month, so we make no plans to leave his house. My three most fertile days have been spent in his bed for the last six months.

Brian snorts a line of coke off my stomach. “Just jump starting the party, baby girl. Can’t wait to feel you from the inside.”

I turn my head, too sick with my life to even look at him. I’ve grown numb to the abuse and forced sex. Wouldn’t do me any good to tell him no. Last time I tried I ended up with two broken ribs.

“Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing his flaccid penis against my entrance.

This isn’t the first time he binged on coke all day and couldn’t get a hard-on; it’s actually been happening a lot lately. This is the first time during my fertile days that he hasn’t been able to perform.

“I can’t even get my dick hard looking at your fat ass anymore!” He pinches the inside of my thigh painfully and gets off the bed. He pulls his pants back up and heads to the living room to watch TV. I lay on the bed in the silence, waiting for him to come back, which he will eventually.

If I were brave, I’d tell him that I’m eight pounds lighter than I was when we met. I started running at the school gym shortly after he made a comment about the size of my ass, which come to think of it was not long after we started dating. The snide, hurtful comments have progressively gotten worse, as has the abuse.

The next day he seems different, happier as we walk across campus to my dorm. He’s no longer in school. He told me he was tired of the bullshit and found a small house off campus since he couldn’t stay in the frat house because he wasn’t enrolled anymore. He thought it was a great idea; I knew from the very beginning it just meant he could hurt me more with less chance of getting caught.

I said hi to people I knew as we walked. Keep up appearances right? Always be courteous but never be available to do anything. That’s how you keep people from asking questions, remain elusive.

His good mood seems to worsen with every step we take back to my dorm. He has me pack a bag to stay at his house since we are going into the President’s Day long weekend. I can practically see the steam coming out of his ears by the time we make it to his house. I stay quiet and try to not get in his way by keeping to myself in the bedroom.

It doesn’t work; he’s too angry. Today is the last day that Brian hits me; unfortunately he causes enough damage that I’ll be reminded of him each and every time I look in the mirror.

By the time she was done telling me about the scars on her back and how that piece of shit Brian used a thin wooden switch to whip her repeatedly until her back was laid open and bleeding, she was quaking and completely drained.

I rocked her gently in my arms until she fell asleep. She didn’t have the strength to finish the rest of the story, and my stomach turns to think of how she may have suffered more than what she told me about. I can’t even begin to comprehend how someone stays in an abusive relationship for as long as she did. It’s unfathomable to me, but I know it happens often.

I feel like I need to do something to help her, but I have no idea what that could be. She told me about Brian, but she hasn’t explained that douche Trent except for telling me that she caught him fucking her best friend, so I don’t know where that entire situation was left except she packed her shit and left town. She may change her mind and go back. Cheating is not something I could ever get over, but she may be different. She did stay with the abusive prick for years. If Trent isn’t hitting her, she may not see that situation as being just as bad.

I wrap my arms around her tighter, wanting, for some reason, to protect her from the world. I want to shield her from everything and everyone who may cause her harm or make her cry. She’s had enough shit dealt to her in the last ten years to cover the grief of at least a dozen people. Why is it that some people just get handed so much shit to deal with, and others just skate through life without a care in the world?

I rest my cheek on the top of her head and glide my hands up and down her arms and smile when she snuggles deeper into my embrace. Things are so easy with her. I don’t find myself having to force conversation or dig for things to talk about.

I peer down at my arms around her; I catch the light reflecting off of my wedding band. I have absolutely nothing to offer her even if I wanted to. I hated the pain I saw on her face when I told her as much before we had sex earlier. I wanted to take the words back instantly, but that would have been untruthful. I’m not the type of man to lead someone on just to get laid. I never have been.

That makes my mind wander to back home and the mess I created there. My eyes shift to the drawer across the room. My urge to protect her is beginning to outweigh my need to use the things in there, but I know deep down that nothing has changed. I know that the same misery waits for me if I go back. The long drunken nights without Savannah; the misery of losing the love of my life. I’ve been over all of this a million times in my head, only now there is another whisper in my ear that tells me things could be different if I only allow it.

London shifting in my arms pulls me from where my head was about to go. She’s a welcome distraction.

“I fell asleep on you,” she says but makes no move to leave my arms.

“You did,” I admit and kiss the top of her head. I need to keep myself from doing things like that. It’s very personal and doesn’t exactly scream ‘all this is, is sex.’

“You ready to finish?” I need to hear the rest of it, and I figure we might as well get it over now, rather than rehashing tomorrow or something.

“I don’t want to talk about Brian anymore,” she sighs.

“I want to know about Trent,” I say matter of fact.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” She shifts in my arms so she can see my face. “Start at the beginning,” I add.

Her eyes focus on the fire in the fireplace like she remembers the beginning of her relationship with Trent. She looks sad at the loss with no anger. This worries me that my earlier thoughts are true and that she may want to go back to him.

“Trent is the brother of the girl who was my roommate my last semester at college.” She clears her throat to tamp down the emotion trying to boil up.

“Brian, for some reason, took me back to my dorm after he beat me the last time. Trent brought my roommate back from a visit at home for the long weekend, and they found me on my bed. I was lying face down and naked; my back all cut up from the switch he used.”

I squeeze her tighter because I can tell she’s struggling with the memory. Even though it happened over six years ago, it’s very apparent that she’s still not completely over it.

“I was barely conscious, but I heard Trent ask her ‘is that what you were talking about’ and I knew then that even though I tried to hide the abuse as much as possible that people still knew about it. They cleaned up and bandaged my back, and Tina helped me get dressed. They wanted me to go to the police, but I couldn’t. Brian had told me more than once that he’d kill me if I ever tried to get him in trouble. He said they’d blame me because if I acted right, he’d never have to punish me.”

My rage is bubbling like lava in a volcano, and I hope the calming breaths rushing in and out of my nose are going to be enough to keep me from erupting. Blame the victim to justify his actions. Sounds like something a piece of shit boy who likes to hurt women would do. I have every intention of tracking his ass down when we’re able to leave this cabin. He will know what it’s like to be abused by the time I’m done with his pussy ass.

“I had met Trent a couple times when he came to see Tina, but I wouldn’t consider us friends. He offered to take me back home with him so I could heal and as a chance to get away from Brian. I turned him down at first because I knew Brian would come after me. He had Tina take pictures of my back. I knew it was bad because it hurt worse than even the broken ribs he’d given me before, but when I
saw
.” She swallows roughly. “When they showed me what I looked like and I had to face the fact that he would end up killing me if I stayed, I knew I had to leave. They helped me pack, and I left later that day with Trent to Great Falls and never looked back. Tina told Brian when he came to the dorm the next day that she hadn’t seen me, that she’d gotten back from the long weekend and I, along with my things, were gone. Tina and I weren’t close at all; mainly because he wouldn’t allow it, so he really didn’t have a reason to think she was lying.”