Page 50 of Dollhouse

“Go ahead, butterfly. Tell us why you came back to the city,” King says, giving me a reassuring smile.

I hate being vulnerable.

Rowen was shot because someone out there, other than them, is trying to kidnap me, so I have no choice. I must share the reason I returned.

With a sigh and a deep breath, I turn to face them. “I came back to the city because…” I pause, trying to sort out a way inside of my head how to approach this conversation. “I’m married,” I blurt, and they all look at me in surprise. They weren’t expecting for me to drop that type of bombshell.

“You have a husband?” King gives me a sinister look that makes me shudder. I have to look away from his cold hazel stare.

“Yes… I’ve been married for five years.”

“What the actual fuck!” he roars, causing me to jerk in a flinch that doesn’t go unnoticed. I hold his gaze, and in an instant, his eyes soften and realization sets in. He’s beginning to piece two and two together and understand why I flinch the way I do sometimes.

“Shut up, King, let her talk. We need to hear everything.” Rowen urges me to continue even though I saw that he, too, was surprised by my revelation of being married.

“My husband was an abusive bastard. He was so charming during the time we dated and got engaged, but the second we said our vows, everything changed. It started with snippy insults from him, then a few months into our marriage, it became physical. I had to quit doing everything I loved that he didn’t approve of. I had to quit dancing, I couldn’t see my friends, I couldn’t even go to the store without him needing to know every small detail. He controlled everything about me. How I dressed, what I ate, where I went, what perfume I used. When I say everything, I mean everything, even right down to my nail polish.” I inhale deeply to look down at my freshly painted red nails. “I once got my nails painted a color he didn’t like, so he broke two of my fingers.” I can’t make eye contact with them as I speak because I know I’d see sympathy on their faces and that’s the last thing I want from them. Instead, I look down at my left hand and trace over my crooked pinky that I still can’t straighten all the way.

“Did you ever try to leave?” Eli asks, but I don’t look at him.

“Once. I was pregnant and didn’t want my baby being raised around his abuse. I tried to leave but didn’t make it very far. He found me and forced me back home.” My voice is clogged with emotion. Slowly I spread my hand out across my flat stomach.

“What happened to your baby?” Rowen’s the one to speak this time. I torture myself by looking up at him and meeting his eyes.

His usually green eyes are nearly black, his jaw tightly clenched. He’s angry, and when I look at Eli and King, they share similar looks. They are fuming in anger. I can’t blame them. I was angry too.

“He was angry at me for trying to leave and didn’t want kids yet, so he beat the baby out of me.” The first tear rolls down my cheek, and quickly I wipe it away, not wanting to cry in front of them or at all.

I’ve let Sebastian have enough of my tears, and I refuse to cry anymore over things he did. “He beat me so badly I had a miscarriage. The trauma was so intense that I’ll never be able to have children.” I walk toward the fireplace and sit down on the floor beside it. Leaning back against the wall, I bring my knees to my chest. “I dealt with his shit for five years. One day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew he was going to kill me, so I let him. So to speak…” I lose myself in the memory of that night in our bedroom, and with a deep breath, I tell the guys my entire story of what happened nine months ago on Lee’s last night alive.

* * *

“You stupid fucking whore!You always make me angry!” Sebastian yelled, saliva spraying my face as he screamed at me. We were nose to nose as he pinned my back against the wall by his grip on my throat.

My eyelids had become too heavy to keep open, my arms were too tired to continue fighting him. My fingertips were bloody. I could feel his skin underneath my nails from all the places I scratched him.

I succumbed to letting my eyes close as darkness took over. With my eyelids closed, I willed my pulse to slow using the exercises I’d been practicing over the last few weeks in preparation for that moment. And just like I anticipated, he loosened his grip on my throat, allowing me to fall to the floor with a soft thud.

I didn’t react; I kept my eyes closed and held my breath. This plan required perfect execution. I knew there was a possibility I’d actually die, but it was something I was willing to toy with. And that’s exactly what I was doing. I heard his footsteps as he walked toward the bed, and only seconds later he was collapsing onto it.

Exactly as planned.

On hands and knees, I crawled over toward him, placed my hands on his back, shaking him to see how deep in a drug-induced sleep he was.

It probably wasn’t a smart idea to triple the dose of sleeping pills and put it in alcohol instead of water, but I didn’t care.

Maybe he would die right along with me.

With my back against the bed, I gasped for air, only allowing myself a minute or two to breathe cherished air into my lungs before I had jumped up and sprung into action, carrying out the escape plan I’d been planning for far too long.

The first step was to cut my nails.

I used a nail clipper to carefully cut the nails that I’d been growing out for this exact reason.

His DNA was under my nails.

A few nail clippings were carefully placed around the toilet and thrown around in our bedroom and the rest were flushed. With quick steps, I had exited our room and hurried into the guest room, went inside the closet, and removed the blood bags that I’d hidden in there inside a minifridge. Setting the blood bags on the bed, I dragged the minifridge back into the bedroom and restocked it with the water bottles I’d taken out when I began withdrawing and collecting my own blood.

I’ve seen Gone Girl and if she could do it, so could I, regardless of that story being fictional.

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