“I know. I get it.”
She took a deep breath, and released it. “He only smoked when he was stressed. Which turned out to be a lot, and easily—he wasn’t good about handling challenges, because he’d never really had any. I didn’t really understand any of this before we got married. We had our first big fight over him smoking and lying about it, actually. Sort of dumb. I teased him about wanting to look cool at his age. But it turned into a fight about other things, and then... hehitme.” Even now it was astonishing to say it out loud. “Just hauled off and hit me in theface. It was so surreal, J. T. I can’t begin to describe how surreal. I’d taken plenty of falls as a cheerleader and I played other sports and so forth, so it’s not like I was a stranger to pain. But no one hadeverhit me like that before.”
J. T.’s entire body was as rigid as a board.
Oddly, her body eased a little. Probably because she’d never said these words out loud to anyone before and carrying them around had required a very particular kind of balance from her.
“I’m pretty quick and strong. But he was a big guy. So what happened next was... he... somehow he... he got hold of my wrist and just held it so hard that I couldn’t move. And then he just ground the cigarette into my shoulder. I never in a million years saw it coming. It was almost an out-of-body experience, like I was watching it happen to someone else. The pain was insane.”
And her mind knew it was over but her body tensed again, as if it was happening as she spoke.
She felt J. T.’s chest rise as he sucked in a deep breath and let it go, too. As if to steady some wave of emotion.
And neither of them said a word. It was a lot for anyone to take in.
But if anybody could, he could. This much she knew.
“Did you leave him after that?” His voice was abstracted.
She gave a soft humorless laugh. “No. I did all these rationalization gymnastics instead. Because everything else in my life had made sense, and I had to make sense of this, too, you know? I thought... could I love part of him and not another part? Could I fix him? Because I felt like... doesn’t everyone deserve to be loved even if they’re flawed? He cried and was so abject and so appalled, and I actually felt sorry for him. It was horrible. And he didn’t hit me for a long time after that. But then, he did. Again. And again.”
She took a deep breath and he adjusted to hold her closer.
“The fourth time he hit me I was out of there. I went to my sister’s house that night and I never looked back. I mean, it’s kind of like, you can love a beautiful house next to a nuclear waste site, but ultimately it’s a slow death sentence to live there, right? He cried and begged and apologized again but I was at least smarter than that, even if my heart was still a mess. And I’m making a long story really short, but it wasn’t easy. None of it. It took a few years to leave him. I never told my family the whole story, but I think they kind of guessed. Especially my sister. I divorced him. And he was so ashamed he never put up a fight.”
She had never said these things aloud to anyone. Not in so many words, anyway.
J. T. was as rigid as if he was absorbing the impact of those blows for her, right now.
“What happened to him?”
“He’s dead.”
“You kill ’im?”
He said this so casually. As if it was a matter of course.
“Car accident. Going too fast around a curve in his BMW. Rolled the car. About two years ago.”
“That’s a pity. I would have done it for you,” he said idly. “It would have been my pleasure. I did all my own stunts, did you know? I know ways.”
“Yeah? How would you have done it?”
“Well... let’s say he was strolling down the street. I would swing down from a ladder...”
“Yeah?”
“...that was dangling from a helicopter...”
“Yeah?”
“.... and get his neck in a scissor lock with my powerful thighs. And just twist it until I heard a crunch.”
“Wow. That isbloodthirsty. I like it. Although that’s much flashier than he deserved.”
They were quiet for quite some time, and just listened to a bird singing outside the window.
“Did you stop loving him?”
