Page 6 of Domino
Chapter Three
Ashley
“Girl, he isn’t gonna kill you,” Maggie says. “He’s a coward and a lot of other things, but he’s not a killer.”
“You didn’t see him last night, Mags. He was… crazed. I really think he would have killed me if I hadn’t backed down. As it is, he slapped me. Again. Twice this time. Hard. He wasn’t playing around.”
“That son of a bitch,” she mutters.
We’re sitting at Maggie’s dining room table. She lives just a couple of streets over, so I packed Cole up this morning after Ryan left for work and have been pouring my heart out to her all day. As she looks at me, her face clouds over and there’s genuine sympathy in her eyes, as well as a flash of white-hot anger.
Maggie, a tall, willowy blonde with a body to die for and more men in her life than she can keep track of, has been one of my very best friends since grade school. Together with our friend Missy, we were the power trio back in our halcyon days of high school, back when the boys all wanted to sleep with us and the girls all wanted to be us. It was the high point of my life, sadly enough.
Back then, we believed the three of us could, and would, take over the world. We all had big dreams. We’d all said we were tired of being poor and decided we were going to be rich, and that we’d all get the heck out of Erwin. You can’t really dominate the world from a small, podunk town like Erwin, can you?
Of the three of us, only Missy had actually escaped the bondage of our hometown. She’d gone to California to chase her silver screen dreams. She’d gotten a few parts here and there but nothing major. Eventually, she had left Hollywood to settle down with a stuntman she’d met on one of her films. Missy has a family now and is living a nice life, though she’s as far from the dreams of world domination as Maggie and I are. But then, maybe she feels like she’s won, anyway.
Like me, Maggie had married shortly out of high school. Leonard was a good guy and I liked him a lot. Cancer took him way too young. Now, she’s a successful lawyer, content playing the field, and having a good time doing it. And as much as I hate to say it, I envy her that. But then, the truth us, I envy Missy and her staid and domestic life. She’s got a gorgeous and incredibly loving husband and has a good life out there.
And what do I have other than a cold an abusive boyfriend? I’ve got no career to speak of. Although I am educated, I’ve got no particular skills and even limited experience in my field. Getting a job in my field right now would be pretty much next to impossible. About the only good thing to come out of this relationship is Cole. He’s the light of my life and my entire world. My little boy is the only thing I feel like I’ve done right in this life.
I glance over at Cole, who’s parked in front of the TV watching cartoons. He’s laughing and singing along with the characters and the music. My eyes sting and my vision blurs as they well with tears.
“You need to get out of here, Ash. If he’s slapping you now, it’s not going to be long before he can justify beating on you with a closed fist,” she says.
“He’s already justifying it,” I reply. “Says it’s my fault. That I push him too far.”
“See? All the more reason for you to take Cole and get the hell out of Erwin.”
The tears fall and I can’t seem to stop them. I wipe them away, but they’re replaced by more in the next heartbeat. Maggie pulls me into an embrace, and I bury my face in her shoulder, doing my best to stifle my sobs so as to not scare Cole. I glance over her shoulder and see him looking back at me, quiet concern on his precious, innocent face.
“Mama okay?” he asks.
Sitting back, I quickly blink back my tears and wipe my face. I give Cole my best reassuring smile.
“Mama’s fine,” I assure him. “Everything’s okay. Just watch your cartoon, baby.”
Cole looks at me for another long moment before turning back to the television. I turn back to Maggie and she gives me a weak smile.
“He’s too smart for his own good already,” she says.
“He’s definitely too smart for my own good.”
She sighs and takes my hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I told you a year ago that you needed to get out of there.”
A frown pulls my lips downward and I nod. She had told me, had warned me that things were going to get worse if I didn’t do something like pack up and leave, and I didn’t listen.
“I wanted to believe he’d change, Mags. I wanted to believe we could work through this.”
“You’ve been hoping and waiting for him to change for years now, honey. I hate to break it to you, but that asshole is never going to change. He is who he is,” she tells me, and not for the first time.
“He didn’t used to be like this. You knew him back then. You knew how different he was. How kind he used to be.”
She purses her lips. “He did used to be different. But that was then. This is now,” she says. “He never fully recovered from his injury. Not up here, or down here.”
Maggie tapped her head and her heart to emphasize her point. And she’s right. The injury healed and he’s suffered no ill effects from the fusion surgery. But it’s his mind and his heart that never recovered. He’s changed because of it and definitely not for the better. It’s something Maggie has been telling me for some time now, and something that deep down inside, I know in my own heart.
But I keep wanting to believe he’ll change. I keep wanting to believe he’ll find his way out of whatever dark place he’s wandered into.
