Devil You Know(38)

I run with cry. It seems the most fitting for the state of desolation I’m heading toward. Nothing makes you feel more of a reject than not knowing how to solve your problems. What do I think will happen if I stay here? I’ll roll over and find a directive plastered to the ceiling? Malice will hand me a mud-map showing the way to a happy life?

Wake up, Jane. Nobody’s going to save you.

Knights in shining armor don’t exist.





WAY TO go, fucker.

I walk out of the kitchen, knowing if I even contemplate cleaning that fucking pasta up I’m going to go hulk on the shit. Pure, unbridled anger swirls beneath the surface, and if I don’t find an outlet to unleash this, then I know who’ll suffer.

Jane.

Why couldn’t I answer her fucking questions? What’s so hard about saying ‘I’ve watched you hurt, and heard you cry for months’? What’s so hard about saying ‘I’m an only child’?

What’s so hard about sharing, for a fucking change?

The boys are always on my back about opening up more, and now that I find a person—a woman—who actually gives two shits, I shut down.

Fuck you, asshole.

This guy I’ve become is a jerk, a grade-A fucktard. And to think I did all this on purpose. How’s that self-preservation working out now, huh? Having fun on your own?

No sound comes from her room, and I’m not sure if that’s something that should alarm me, or comfort me. Thank Christ she’s not crying anymore—that shit burned. But being so quiet? What if she’s tried to top herself?

Fuck. Would she try that? How could I have not thought about her level of stability before now? The woman’s walked out of an abusive marriage, so who’s to say her head’s screwed all the way on?

I head to her door, itching to settle this worry that’s taking residence in my chest. I hate that fucking feeling. I’ve done all I can to shut it out: pushed people away, stayed out of others’ affairs, kept to myself. Yet here it is, making camp under my ribs.

“Jane?” I knock lightly on the door, causing it to move. The fact it’s open is a start.

She pushes up to sit on the bed, lips pulled down into a pout. Why does that look so sexy on her? She’s hurt; it shouldn’t register. Fuck, I am as sick as that asshole she left.

“Do you get why I’m upset?” she asks in a cold, level voice.

“My anger scares you?”

She shakes her head. “Yes, but that’s not all of it.” She pats the bed next to her, and Rocco jumps up. “Not you, doofus.” She smiles. “I meant him.”

A simple nod of her head in my direction and I’m willing to fall at her feet and beg to be patted.

Rocco shimmies aside, and I take the spot next to her. Lifting my gaze to hers, I find such honesty in her eyes that it throws me for a six. This woman—this warrior—has lived, and survived her own personal hell for years, and she’s willing to take a chance, to open up to me, give me that sacred part of her that nobody can take away—the essence of who she is.

And I can’t do the same for her.

She’s supposed to be the fucked up one in all of this, not me. So why do I feel as though I’m the one with his head resting on the psychologist’s couch?

“I’ve been asleep for a long time,” she starts. “Mentally, not physically. This past day or so with you—it’s opened my eyes to how much of a coma I let myself slide into. By stepping away from that place, from his influence, it’s like you passed me a torch in a dark tunnel; I can see the way out now, and when I look back I can see how black that place truly was.

“Dylan did love me once; at least, I think he did. I have to believe it, otherwise the thought of how many years I wasted on a person who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about me makes me want to curl up under the bed sheets, and cry until I wither away from lack of bodily-fluids.”

She smiles, and I chuckle at her humor.

“He never beat me from day one. That started a few years into our marriage, but what I can see now is that he’d already broken me by that stage. I was so far gone in here”—She taps her head— “that I didn’t think twice about giving him the benefit of the doubt. ‘My Dylan wouldn’t do that on purpose,’ I told myself, ‘it was one bad day.’ I tried to justify everything. I made excuses, and the more he did it, the more I let myself believe it was my fault—exactly like he’d tell me.

“I can’t go back to that, but when you lose your temper like you did back there, I panic. I panic because if you’re the same as him, then what chance do I have on my own? If all of this”—She waves her hands around the room—“is no more than the same illusion I lived at the start of my marriage, then surely the real world will chew me up, and spit me out. I need to learn to do this myself, and to trust my judgment. I can’t let myself be brainwashed by people, and I can’t be the victim anymore. I can’t rely on you.”