I did it. I survived my first day of my first job.
I was feeling pretty proud of myself as Angela and I exited the bar. It was almost 3AM and the exhaustion of a full night’s work settled into my limbs. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be up for an 8AM class once school started, but I’d find a way. I was determined to make it on my own.
“Grabbing an Uber?” Angela asked me as she called her own on her phone.
I didn’t have a smart phone. Bryce took it before I left. I’d gotten a prepaid flip phone at Wal-Mart so I’d have a number to put on job applications.
“Gonna walk, it’s just two blocks. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I gave her a tight hug. “Thanks again for hooking me up with the job.”
Angela’s face suddenly became serious. “You seemed like you really needed the help.”
I sighed, she’d been the only number I’d had memorized from my old life here. When I married Bryce so young, my foster family pretty much wrote me off and Angela was the only link to my past that I cared to keep. “I did. Thanks, girl.”
Her Uber showed up and I waved goodnight.
Taking off down the road, I made my way over two blocks to where my hostel was. Like L.A., this city was noisy: sirens in the distance, music blaring out of bars, a homeless man screaming at someone, and the distinct sound of a motorcycle engine. I was fifty feet from my place when I looked over my shoulder to follow the purring of the motorcycle that seemed to have been with me the entire way. My eyes locked on Ethan King riding on the far side of the road, going slow and clearly following me. Two of his buddies were behind him.
What the...?
I faced forward, ignoring the fact that I had somehow acquired my own protection detail or worse, a stalker.
The moment I slipped inside the youth hostel doors, I heard the rip of the motorcycles as they gunned it down the road.
The hostel was forty bucks a night. Angela had tipped me out a hundred bucks tonight for all my hard work. That would get me two and a half more nights at this shithole or half a month at Ethan’s garage…
I’d already paid for tonight, so I was going to sleep on it. Sleep next to my snoring, probably high-as-fuck Danish bunkmate, Agnes. I passed the front lobby, where the hostel manager waved to me, and made my way to room number four. Opening the door quietly, I crept in and used my key to open the footlocker at the end of the bunk bed. The moment the lid popped open, it hit me. After roaming this earth for twenty-two years, all of my possessions fit into one trunk. Not in the cool minimalistic way either—in the homeless, nothing-to-show-for-the-past-fucking-seven-years-I invested-in-a-man way.
Tears spilled out onto my cheeks and I had to bite down in order to keep my sobbing silent. I remembered Bryce stripping me of my jewelry as I tried to walk out the door. My wedding ring, my earrings, everything. Every single thing he’d bought me. He took my smart phone, would have taken my MAC laptop, but I’d concealed it in a special compartment in my backpack. He was so enraged he’d shoved his hand in my bag and ripped all of my clean underwear and jeans out. Like he didn’t even want me to have a change of clothes. He wanted me to feel like I was nothing without him, that I would have no possessions without him, all while the doorman watched on because I’d paid him to help me leave Bryce. I was afraid he’d never let me go.
It was in that moment that I’d realized I was capable of murder. Not in the three times he’d struck me across the cheek, or the countless times when he demeaned me in front of his friends, or during the constant verbal abuse. No, I’d never wanted to kill him then. But watching him tear off my jewelry, rip out my clean underwear, and leave me with nothing, that had broken something inside of me, and if I’d had a gun or knife on me, I’d have cut off his balls and then shot him dead.
He made me feel less than human. I would never forgive him for that. After everything we’d been through, I left L.A. feeling like an animal.
I pulled out my laptop and fired it up, then I checked my email. I don’t know what I expected to find. Maybe an email from a friend in L.A., maybe more information on the nursing school orientation on Monday. I did not expect to see an email from Bryce:Subject: Come home.
My hands started to shake. How dare he? I hadn’t even read the email and already I was so angry I could snap this laptop screen in half. I’d had to take out a secret credit card with a seven-thousand-dollar limit in order to pay for the attorney to file the divorce paperwork. I’d had to meticulously plan my escape from that monster so that he could never hurt me again. And now …Come home.
With shaking fingers, I clicked delete before even opening it, and for some reason my mother in law popped into my mind. The last conversation I’d had with her:
“You’ll never have it this good, Hailey. No man can provide for you like Bryce can. So he’s a little hard to deal with? Go on a girl’s weekend and come back refreshed. You’ll never have to work a day in your life, and for that you should be grateful.”
She had no idea the sadistic shit her son was capable of. His dad owned the biggest PR firm in Beverly Hills, and right out of college at the tender age of twenty-one he made Bryce a partner and gave him a quarter-million dollar-a-year salary. I’d never forget that day. It was the day he bought me my Audi.
The following month he took the keys away for a week when I got home fifteen minutes later than I said I would after going to the gym.
I needed therapy, but I couldn’t afford it.
How had I gotten the balls to leave him? There must be something strong left inside of me. I’d need all the strength I could discover in order to rebuild my life on my own terms. But it would taste that much sweeter. I knew it would.
OceanofPDF.com
Three
After Agnes screamed out with an orgasm and woke me up at 6AM, I made a very quick decision. I was going to call Ethan and check out that apartment above his garage. But Hailey 2.0 wasn’t taking any fucking favors from men. Hailey 2.0 would owe a man nothing. Hailey 2.0 would live in squalor if it meant she paid for it herself. So if this apartment was lavish with granite countertops and he was charging me two hundred dollars a month, I wasn’t taking any fucking handouts.
I strapped on my backpack that contained everything I owned and called Ethan from my flip phone.
He answered on the third ring, sounding pretty awake and alert for 8AM. “Ethan King.”
