And there it is. The words I didn’t want to say but I knew were true.
“Okay,” I tell her as I slip a hoodie over my head and step into a pair of Uggs. “It’s going to be okay. Just tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”
“I’m outside,” Electra cries. She’s literally gulping for air, choking on the bile in her throat.
“Outside where?” I ask as I sprint down the stairs.
But when I disarm the security system and open the door, I get my answers. Electra is standing in front of me. She’s in her pajamas, no shoes or socks. Her hair is a mess, her face is worse, and she practically launches herself into my arms.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, but I’m not just concerned about her. I’m concerned about how she got in here. This neighborhood is home to some of the most professionally dangerous men in the northeast. Which also means security is tops. “Is the gate open?”
She shakes her head frantically, still clinging to me like a wounded animal. “No. The gate is still closed.”
“Then how did you get in?”
“I climbed over it.”
My jaw falls. “You climbed over thegate?” Sure enough, her legs and arms are scratched and bruised.
She nods. “I just had to get away from him and I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Okay, come here. You’re alright.” I usher her over to the couch and wrap a blanket around her. “Sit here. It’s okay. I’m going to make you some tea,” I tell her and pad over to the kitchen.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she sniffs.
“Don’t be.” I start two cups of chamomile tea and make a mental note to thank whoever bought me the tea basket for the shower. Someone from yoga class, I think.
“But I am,” she goes on. “I never do this. I never let the men I’m dating run my life. And I definitely don’t get in situations like this. I’m usually the one warning other people about toxic men and red flags. And here I was sitting in a field of them.”
“It’s harder to see the warning signs when they’re right in your face,” I tell her.
“I know, but it’s not me, you know?” She dabs her eyes carefully with the blanket. “I’m usually the bitchy one in the relationship. If and when there is a relationship. I don’t let people run me around. This time it feels like I’ve been run over.”
I feel sick to my stomach. I drop the tea bags into the mugs, waiting for the coffee machine to heat up the water. I never wanted to see it come to this either. But I’ve known for weeks that something was very off.
“So what happened?” I ask her.
Electra takes in a deep breath before slowly and shakily letting it out again. “He’s been crazy lately. Even more than usual. Coming and going, refusing to tell me anything. Some days he’s in a good mood, which basically just translates to not being adick to me as long as his dick is in me. He’s not that great in the sack, by the way.”
“And you still kept him around?”
She cracks the smallest of smiles. “I know. I guess I was blinded by all the lovebombing,” she mutters as she rips the Tiffany chain and diamond from her neck and tosses it. It slides across the coffee table, and she huddles back up again.
I round the counter with two mugs of tea. “It’s easy for what we think could be love to get the best of—Electra?”
I stop when I see it. Her legs and arms are of course scraped and banged up from gate-climbing, but that doesn’t exactly explain the welt on her cheek. Or the black eye that I can now see in the lamplight.
“Did he hit you?”
The words come out in a whisper. The very idea of it has me sick.
Electra doesn’t make eye contact with me. Instead she looks angry. “He was in a particularly bad mood.”
“Oh, El…”
She must hear the pity in my voice. I think that’s what breaks her. Her lips twist from proud to defeated as she falls apart again.
