Page 54 of Your Sharpest Edge
She shook her head and huffed out a breath. “It is. I thought marriage would be good for her. I thought I was giving her a backup plan, but instead, I was giving her a death sentence. If you hadn’t intervened that night, she would’ve died.”
I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry again. It had been two weeks since every emotion left my body. I hadn’t cried since then, hadn’t wanted to until...
“I’m glad I was there, too.” It was all I could say.
“You look skinny. You need to eat more,” she said as she slumped deep into the chair.
I shook her off as I grabbed the cooing baby from the car seat carrier and held him gently in my arms, football style, as she had taught me. I walked him over to his mother, placing him right between her arm and her body, resting her hand on the baby while holding him still. She’d want him to be here, and maybe he’d help wake her up faster.
“What did the doctor say about her?” Mrs. Illyiana asked.
I took a deep breath, struggling to find the right words. “She’s still sedated,” I began. “They had to perform another surgery to fix the tendons in her legs. The doctors aren’t sure if they’ll ever heal enough for her to walk again.”
Mrs. Illyiana’s face tightened with concern, and the weight of the news settled in.
“She will walk again,” her mother stated confidently.
The reality of the situation was almost too much to bear. Seeing her lying there, hooked up to machines, her body frail and vulnerable, was a stark contrast to the vibrant, strong woman I knew. As much as I wanted to agree with her, I wasn’t sure if that was a reality, either.
“Let’s tell your mama a story, Damien. What about the time I first met her, and she brought me borscht?” The baby looked at me with bright blue eyes and cooed. “Sound like a good one?”
I held Damien as I recounted the first time I laid eyes on her—the first time the world showed me what would never be mine. As I told the story, her mom’s knitting needles clicked behind me as she sat in the visitor chair in the corner. I glanced back and, for the briefest of seconds, saw her smile at me before returning to her typical scowl.
“Your mama was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid my eyes on. I knew she was going to absolutely destroy my heart,” I whispered to the baby. My hands never left either of them.
20
stassi
The pain radiating in my legs was the first thing I felt as I emerged from the dark, black hole where I had been trapped. The next was the pounding in my brain. It was like I had been shoved deep into a pit of despair after that night with my husband.
I had told him, gently, that I was going to leave him. In response, he revealed that he had planned this all along. He was going to leave me with nothing. At first, he pinned me to the bed, pinching every part of me. His hand covered my mouth as he left marks all over my skin. I tried to call out for help, but his hand muffled my screams.
Then he tied me up to the bed and went to the bathroom, returning with a hockey stick. He hit me over and over again as I fought desperately to escape.
“Please help me,” the voice inside my head cried.
Whose voice was that? I think it was my own, but the pain inside my head was killing me. I couldn’t be quite sure what was happening.
“Please. Please.”
The stick whaled down against my legs, and I heard it crunch a million times over.
“That’s what you get, bitch. You want to leave me? I was going to leave you anyway, but you’ll be left with nothing. You’ll never skate again. You’ll be a nobody—a lesson for your future self.”
“Please,” I begged.Don’t let me die.I just wanted to be able to see my baby.
It all happened in so much of a blur afterward. He rolled me from the bed to the floor before he scrambled to jump out of our window, but because we were in such a dingy hotel, the windows were sealed shut.
“Shit,” Dimitri cried. “Shit.”
There was nowhere for him to hide. Moments later, the door was pushed open and I was saved.
“My baby,” I said, but no one had heard me because the darkness was already pulling me under and I was falling.
I was falling so far down that even the soothing, familiar touch couldn’t pull me back up.
“Save me.”
