Page 126 of The Sound Of Us

When I sleep next to Eli tonight, I’ll be Axel St. James again. I’ll be me again. And I’ll be Eli’s, truly.

In the bedroom—our bedroom—I scroll through my phone, accidentally opening my Facebook app. I have over a hundred notifications and sixty-six private messages. Frank has gone through every post and picture dating back ten years and reacted to them. Some comments are just appalling, such as: good times, underneath one of me and him just after we got married.

I open the PM’s with shaking fingers.

Sure enough, every single one of them is from Frank.

I miss you, Axel. Come back home. I’m begging you.

I’ll change. I’ll do everything you need me to do. I’ll be the man you need me to be. I don’t deserve you. You’re too good for me, but I’ll try.

Then,

It’s so tough without you, Axel. I even miss Pepper. How is she? Is she coping well?

My hand balls in a fist. What? Frank hated Pepper from the first day I got her.

More messages. He’s been sending them every single day.

I ate sticky wings today, and I thought about you. I even got a recipe book from the bookstore so I can make them for you just the way you like it.

You are everything to me, Axel. I got a card from the medical centre for a therapist just outside of town. I’m going to make an appointment. It’s all for you, baby. Everything is for you.

And the last one was sent a few days ago.

Axel, baby, I had to sign the papers today. I had no choice. But this is proof, sweetheart, that I’m willing to lose you for a little while so that I can win you back forever. I also destroyed the video to prove to you that I hold nothing against you.

Tears wet my cheeks. I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through the emotions. Sit with them, the therapist had said. Honor your feelings. They deserve to be acknowledged. And then find words to describe them.

Finding words to describe them feels like talking myself off a ledge. I breathe deeply in and out while I speak to myself, reaffirming my own truth.

I suffered narcissistic abuse at Frank’s hand.

He does not love me.

He loves the control he used to have over me.

He misses the control, not me.

His abusive nature will do and say anything to get me back so he can get that control back.

His primary goal is to control me. Nothing more.

It occurs to me that he hadn’t asked once how I was. Or wished me happiness with the choice I’d made. Nothing in his messages was about me and my wellbeing. Everything was about him.

And it was all the confirmation I needed that Frank was baiting me.

No contact. Mrs. Dalton, and my therapist, too, had said no contact is how you deal with this type of abuser after leaving them.

I delete the messages and then block Frank and walk to the closet to get a pair of socks.

Standing in the closet, I trail my fingers over the drawer where my underwear is neatly stacked next to Eli’s.

Tears come from nowhere as I let my fingers drift over the rows and rows and rows of silk panties. My mind drifts back to that day behind the library. I’d been so ashamed. But with Eli, there’s no such thing as shame. He simply accepts… me. I will never go back to Frank. I will never allow any contact between me and Frank ever again.

Half the rows of panties are black, but the rest are of every color you can think of. This drawer gets more and more full every other week. Eli buys them for me.

The one I have on now is black. Some of them are of the flimsiest material. So easy to tear. Eli must think it’s his honorable duty to replace ones he’d—

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