The kitchen lights were dimmed and candles flickered softly around the room. I made steak and potatoes, with seasoned asparagus, and even though this wasn’t the first dinner I’d prepared for him, my stomach was aflutter with butterflies.

“God, this is so delicious, babe, really.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and smiled his sexy smile, the one I was falling in love with. “I haven’t had a home-cooked meal like this in years.”

I was glad he liked the dinner. I wanted to make him something special. His mood had been off for the last few days, and I wanted to make him feel better, more relaxed. We’d been dating for three months, sneaking in time together from our busy work schedules. It had been exactly three months, and I know it sounded cheesy, but I was falling for him fast. I wanted to celebrate us, and the twelve weeks we’d shared together. I’m a hopeless romantic.

And I thought it was about time he met my family.

I thought making a Porterhouse steak for him would seal the deal, hoping he’d be just as excited about the idea of meeting my crazy family as I was about them meeting him.

“So, I was thinking,” I said, twirling my fork through the butter on my mashed potatoes. My voice was soft and low.

“Uh oh, that sounds like trouble,” he chuckled, taking a long sip of his red wine. He set down the empty glass softly when he was done and a stain of deep crimson wine circled around his lips.

“What do you think about me inviting you to dinner with my family?” The words came out a lot weaker than I wanted them to. The last thing I wanted was to sound like one of those whiny, nagging girlfriends. I wanted us to be different than what I heard my friends in relationships complaining about. I wanted us to be real. I wanted to be in love.

His eyes darted up to mine and narrowed. “We haven’t been together that long.” He shook his head, his wine stained mouth pulled down at the corners, making him look macabre. “I think it’s too soon to meet your parents.”

I blinked up at him, stunned, not knowing what to say next. Three months was a pretty long time for me. One of the girls I worked with was dating a guy for not even four months, and she was already wearing a two-carat diamond engagement ring.

He poured himself another glass of wine, almost spilling it over the rim. “Aw, babe, come on. Don’t look at me like I just kicked your puppy.” He took another gulp at the wine, and the stain around his mouth darkened. “You’re young Brooke, and meeting parents is important to you, but I’m much older. I can tell you it’s not. It’s totally overrated.”

I felt a little sick. “Three months though, you know? Did you know it’s our three-month anniversary today?” I asked, quietly, feeling my heart thudding faster in my chest.

He forked another piece of steak into his mouth and chewed loudly. “Anniversary of what?”

“Of us. Together.” My voice cracked, and I instantly felt like I wanted to throw my potatoes at him.

“Us? Together? You mean…how long we’ve been hooking up?” he said, his glance wandering to his phone to see if he had any messages.

Hooking up?

The words felt like slaps to my skin. He thought all we’ve been doing for the last three months was hooking up? I silently dropped my fork onto my plate and fisted my hands in my lap. I didn’t know if I should hold my tongue or let loose on him. Heat flushed through my chest like I was feeling my blood actually starting to boil. My teeth ground down as I watched him continue to eat and drink like his words weren’t knives slashing into my flesh. He was halfway done with his steak and on the second bottle of wine, and I was having a mental and emotional breakdown right across from him. Yet, he noticed none of it.

I needed to be honest with myself.

I was starting to feel uncomfortable about the sneaking around at work. Why did I always have to go out of my way to do things for him? Why didn’t he ever invite me over to his place and cook me a nice romantic meal? Why did we have to keep it under wraps?

“I get the feeling that I’m more involved in this relationship than you are. What the hell is that about?” I blurted out, angrily. Totally sounding like a nagging girlfriend there. I needed to rein it back in and calm down.

His hands stilled, fork midway up to his lips. Immediately, he dropped it clattering back down into the plate.

I didn’t care. I was pissed off and getting more pissed by the second. There was no controlling my mouth. “I feel like I’m in, like, half a relationship. I don’t want to be a secret. I’m an adult. We’re adults, and I just feel like—”

He held up his hand to stop me from spewing more crap. “Brooke, I love that it’s just me and you. Okay? No one else needs to come into our bubble. Don’t you like it just me and you?”

“I like it, but I kind of want more. At least a dinner with my family. Or, something else, maybe?” What else maybe, why did I say that? All I asked for was a dinner with my family. How hard was that?

“What else?” he sighed, leaning back on the chair and offering me a glassy-eyed stare. “What more do you want from me? I thought we were happy with the way things were going. I thought everything was perfect. Are you saying it’s not perfect, because then I’m not sure—”

“I’m not saying that! I love the attention you give me. I love that when you’re here, there’s no work or people bugging us. I love that you turn your phone off and just spend time with me, okay? I love that you cannot keep your hands off me. I love our sex life. But we’re always running out of time. I just want more of you. That’s all.”

He ran a hand over his face and rubbed at his brow as if to ward off the headache that was me. “If this is going to become an issue, then maybe we shouldn’t spend time together. Maybe, we’ve run our course.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I snapped, calling his bluff.

He shoved his chair back from the table. “You’re fucking someone else, aren’t you?” he growled.

“What?” I said, flinching back. “That’s what you think I’m saying? Really? Because what I hear is that I want to spend more time with you, and you said maybe it’s not working between us. So if it’s not working for you to spend more time with me, then maybe I should find someone else to fuck.”

Holy crap, what did I just say? I didn’t mean that.

I was just upset and hurt and angry and God, all I wanted was to have dinner with my family. My mother knew I was dating someone, and I was sick of the all the questions.

He was up in an instant, lunging across the table, hands at my throat.

My hands were at his chest, pushing as hard I could, but he was too strong. My back was slammed against the wall, his huge forearm wedged under my chin, shoved hard against my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t steal the slightest bit of air, my chest burned with fire. I felt my veins popping and pulsing through my temples.

I balled my hands into fists and pounded on his chest, but the punches came too weak. My eyes watered. My vision doubled, tripled, blackened along the edges. I tried to scream, mouth open wide, eyes bulging from my sockets. I went for his eyes, tried to scratch them, tried to scramble away, but he pressed his arm into me harder and my hands and arms went numb. They prickled with thousands of pins and needles that rushed up to my shoulders and down to my toes.

Fireworks of pain and light exploded into the side of my face, making the world tilt and reel around me. I couldn’t think straight to figure out what happened. My thoughts fogged over for a moment. This wasn’t really happening. We were just eating dinner, weren’t we?

Then, he let me go.

My legs instantly gave out. My arms flailed, all on their own, trying to gain purchase on whatever was close by to stop me from falling. They knocked along the edge of the kitchen table, sending our half-eaten dinner across the room. Dishes and wine glasses shattered around me as my body crumpled, folding over, crumbling down hard.

The cold, tiled floor was as unforgiving as the tiny sharp pieces of glass I landed on, which ripped through the palms of my hands and the bare skin of my legs. Tears and snot ran down my face, and I gasped and coughed.

My head felt wobbly, my heart throbbed wildly, loud enough that I thought he heard it. I wanted him to hear it—I wanted him to hear it as it broke.

He took a few steps back, I saw him bump his back against the counter, like he hadn’t known where to stop. Behind him, outside the window, beautiful white flakes of snow drifted softly down, the moon just a dim glow below the clouds.

I tried to speak, but my throat felt like fire, burning its way down, destroying the rest of my important organs. My vision blurred with tears as I inhaled harder and swallowed, swallowed, swallowed, trying to drown out the flames.

I blinked, and he stepped forward, hands out to reach for me.

Automatically my hands lifted, blocking my face, my throat, and my chest. My leg kicked out, warning him against a repeat performance. I didn’t fully understand what happened, yet. My entire body was trembling from sheer shock.

“Brooke? Oh God, look what you made me do…” his words trailed off into whispers as he pressed the back of his hand over his lips. He was just as stunned as I was.

Then, he was mumbling words I couldn’t understand, in between sobs and shame-filled looks. He bent down beside me, and slid his hands under my arms and behind my knees. He tried to pull me up, but I kicked out with my legs and grabbed the stem of a broken wine glass, and pointed the sharp edge of it to his face. I tried to move, tried to climb up on my knees, but the kitchen spun and a wave of nausea rolled through my stomach and up my esophagus. White-hot pain blasted through my throat as I keeled forward and vomited all over his brand new shoes.

I spat and spat as long strands of thick saliva dripped from my lips. He scrambled back to the counter, grabbing a fistful of napkins, and held them out for me to take. He spoke words I didn’t hear, too deafened by the pain and anger that blazed across my skin.

How could he?

All I did was fall in love with him.

I kicked at his knees and shakily climbed to my feet, still holding the sharp stemware between both of our bodies. “Get out,” I croaked, slicing the glass through the air.

“Brooke, please,” he begged, stepping closer. “I’m sorry, you know I would never—”

“Yet, you did,” I snapped, pushing past him, leading the way with a slicing motion. I ran to my bedroom, slamming my door. I didn’t bother to lock it. Let the fucker come in, I thought. I kept my holster on the nightstand, and I’d just gotten a sudden urge to have target practice with certain parts of his body.

My gun was aimed at the door instantly, finger just to the right of the trigger.

But he never tried to get in that night. I did hear him sweeping up the glass, though, and the loud roar of the vacuum. It was followed by the sound of the front door slamming closed, and his footfalls on the stairs, leaving. I didn’t open my bedroom door or re-holster my firearm until I saw his car drive away through the snow covered streets as I peeked out the window.

I rushed to the front door and locked the bolt. Leaning my forehead against the cold metal of the lock, I let out a shaky breath. I pulled my hand up to my neck, laying my palm to my skin; it felt swollen and hot. I’m okay, I thought. “He’s gone and I’m okay,” I sobbed out loud, as I ran into the bathroom, stumbling dizzily.

“But you’re not okay,” the girl in the reflection cried back. There was a red welt across my throat and a fresh purplish red bruise blooming rapidly around my red-rimmed eye. “You’re not okay at all.”