My breathing stalled at the remembrance of his words.
“… the one who birthed you.”
My mother.
Then there were hands grabbing me, reaching underneath covers, and all I had left to do was fight. I recalled swinging wildly at any and everything. My fists made contact with skin and flesh, muscle and something hard.
“Jacob, stop!”
That was Grace’s voice. She appeared out of nowhere, slowing me down. Then there were hands grabbing her, keeping her from me, and I kept going—hitting, clawing, and kicking whatever or whomever tried to stand in between me and her.
But what the hell sent me over the edge in the first place?
From what I could gather, I was fuming for hours before I got to the Underground. Something had ticked me off.
I pounded my fists against my forehead, hoping that would force my goddamn memory to work.
“He tried to kill me!”a feminine voice shrieked.
“Dr. Reynolds, we have to put you on suspension …”
The words drove the memory alive for me. It all came rushing back to me. Me walking down the hall with Grace before she got called away. She kissed me and then left. I turned and smiled at her back because she put me in that type of mood. Then I was moving into my office waiting for another doctor to come up with her patient for a consult.
I looked over some forms with my back to the door. It opened and I turned, grinning because I assumed it was Grace again. It wasn’t.
That’s when the heat of my anger began to rise.Suzanne. The bitch wouldn’t take a hint.
However, the memory that sent me shooting up off the stool was her hand reaching and grabbing me. I hated that feeling and I lunged at her, wrapping my hand around her neck. I had every intention of squeezing the life out of her. But something had kept me from doing so. Something kept me from crossing over to the dark side my mind was leading me to. And just before I could fully release her, my door sprang open.
The doctor and patient I’d been waiting on, moved inside and began hurling accusations my way. Suzanne, of course, cried and called for security.
I shook my head as the memory of the day before mingled with past memories. Ones I did my damndest to forget as soon as I moved out of that house. But the door had been opened, the gates wouldn’t hold back the flood any longer, and it all came back to me.
The nausea that always came was even worse this time, and I ran to my kitchen sink and upchucked whatever food had been left over in the contents of my stomach from the day before. When my stomach had no more to give, my body continued to be wracked with spells of dry heaves as my mind kept playing the reel of my childhood and adolescence over and over again.
Anger mixed with fear and pain. The fear of a boy who was caught between being a child and a man. I pounded against the counter, slamming my hand against the kitchen countertops before moving to the stools in the kitchen.
Pure fury ran through my veins as I picked up the first stool and brought it down hard against the kitchen island. The sound of the wood breaking exhilarated me. It wasn’t quite the same sound as bones breaking but it was close enough. I didn’t even notice or pay attention to the splintered wood that fell to the floor as I picked up the next stool and brought it down against the floor this time around. It also splintered but didn’t fully break apart. That was, until I brought my bare foot down against the wood, rendering the object useless against my wrath. Picking up one of the legs of the stool with my good hand, I swung it wildly at the contents that resided on my kitchen island.
The fruit bowl, salt and pepper shakers, and a few granite coasters were sent hurling to the ground. Somewhere around me I heard glass shattering but didn’t stop my rampage to identify what it was. All I knew was that I was in the mood to break shit. It didn’t matter to me that I was destroying my home. That I was breaking all the things that I’d built and bought through the hard work of my bare hands. In fact, that reminder forced me to look at my right hand in the cast and that caused my ire to grow even more. The knowledge that my career had been taken from me sent me spiraling even more.
“Jacob! Jacooob!” Grace’s wails pierced through the veil of my rage. The violence I was inflicting on my own home halted as I caught sight of her wide eyes. Her breathing was heavy as she stood, warily, at the entrance of the hallway and living room. She was dressed in the dark T-shirt I’d worn the night before.
I stood there, chest heaving and sweaty, with one of the legs of my bar stools lifted over my head.
“What’re you doing?” she questioned through trembling lips. And not the same trembling they did when my cock was deep inside of her.
I blinked my gaze away because I couldn’t keep staring at her. Shame began to corrode my senses as I looked around at my destroyed condo. There was glass and broken wood all over the floor. Somehow, I’d made it from the kitchen to the living room, shattering the glass coffee table that sat between the black leather couches. I turned and almost flinched at the sight of my cracked flat screen dangling haphazardly by its cords from the wall.
I took a step but froze in place when Grace yelled, “Don’t move! There’s glass all around you. You’ll cut your feet.”
I swallowed and peered up at her, as she turned and raced back down the hallway. She was back before I even got time to ask where she was going or what she was doing. She moved toward me with my pair of slippers from underneath my bed. The pair I rarely ever wore. I briefly wondered how she knew they were even under there.
“Put these on,” she directed, placing the black slippers on the floor in front of me.
I slid my feet into the slippers. There was silence as I continued to look around the room, assessing the damage I’d done.
“Jacob, tell me what’s wrong. Why did you do this?”
