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“Don’t.” His voice dropped, dangerous. “Don’t say his name to me.”

“Tyson,” I said it deliberately, watching the veins pop in his neck. “Tyson Calloway. Ty. He’s made me scream harder than you ever could with that pathetic excuse for a penis you have. You should definitely take some biology lessons as well, maybe that’d fucking help you find a woman’s clitoris.”

I laughed unhinged as he shoved me against the wall. My shoulder blades hit the brick and the impact knocked the breath from my lungs. His hands found both my arms and pinned them, his face inches from mine.

“You owe me.” The words came out through gritted teeth. “You think some redneck with a toolbox is going to give you the life I gave you? The house? The cars? The vacations?”

“I didn’t want any of that. I wanted a husband who didn’t lie to my face every single day.”

“I loved you!”

“Please. You just loved my face. Lucky for you, there are two of us. So no, you didn’t love me. You don’t even know me.”

Something shifted in his face. The desperation turned into a colder expression. “You’re right. I don’t know you. Because the woman I married wouldn’t have destroyed her own family. Wouldn’t have run to another state to ride some stranger’s cock.”

I drove my knee up. Hard. Caught him right where it counted.

He doubled over with a choked sound, and I used the second of freedom to fumble for my phone. My fingers were shaking but muscle memory kicked in. Tyson’s name, recent calls, connect.

Garrett straightened faster than I expected, grabbing for the phone. I twisted, keeping it away, pressing it to my ear.

“Tyson, I’m in the alley by the flower shop on Main, Garrett’s here, he grabbed me…”

His backhand caught me across the face. The phone went flying, clattering against the asphalt. Pain exploded across my cheekbone. Stars burst behind my eyes. But I’d seen the phone land face up, the call timer still running. Still connected.

“You bitch.” He was breathing hard, fist clenched. He looked at his own hand, the one that had just hit me, with something that might have been surprise. As if the violence had happened to him rather than been done by him. “Look what you made me do.”

“I didn’t make you do anything. That’s been your problem from the start. Nothing is ever your fault.” Blood was pooling in my mouth from where my teeth had cut the inside of my cheek. I spit it at his shoes. “You’re pathetic, Garrett.”

“Shut up.”

He grabbed both my arms again, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. “You’re so ungrateful! Selfish! Frigid!” Each word punctuated by another shake. “Sleeping with you was probably the most boring experience of my life. You just laid there-”

“That’s not the winning argument you think it is,” I said through my gritted teeth.

“You think you’re so smart. You think you’re so much better than everyone.” He slammed me against the wall again and I felt the skin on my elbow tear against the brick. “You’re nothing. You’ll always be nothing. That’s why you ran to the middle of nowhere, because you know nobody else would ever want you.”

I punched him. Closed fist, the way Tyson had shown me during a self-defense lesson two weeks ago. My knuckles connected with his mouth and his lip split, blood blooming against his teeth.

“You know that’s not true,” I said, shaking out my hand. “A whole town of people want me here. The only person who doesn’t want me is you, and that’s because I stopped being the doormat you could wipe your feet on-”

Wrong thing to say. Or the right thing, depending on your perspective.

His face contorted with a rage I’d never seen before, not in five years of marriage, not during any argument. This was the real Garrett, the man underneath the tailored suits and rehearsed charm.

The punch came fast, his fist connecting with my temple. Pain detonated through my skull, white then black, the world tilting sideways. I felt my legs buckle, felt the rough brick scrape my back as I slid down the wall. Heard him still ranting above me, but the words were warping, stretching, losing their edges.

The last clear thought I had before the darkness swallowed me was the phone in my bra. The backup phone. With all the strength I had left, I found the side button through my clothes and pressed it four times. A SOS alert that would send a message with my live location to his phone.

Tyson is coming, I told myself. He’s coming.

23

— • —

Sam

I came to with dirt in my mouth and pine needles stabbing through my sweater. The alley was gone, replaced by trees and shadows. My head pounded with each heartbeat, wrists burning where something had scraped them raw. Garrett paced ten feet away, muttering to himself, running his hands through his hair over and over.