Ellie
My blood ran cold when Connor followed me to the back of the kitchen, where I had just been sitting and relaxing. Relaxation was the last thing on my mind thanks to his presence. It had been weeks since I’d last seen him, glorious weeks. There was always the threat of him showing up, however. The shoe had to drop sometime.
I turned to face him, putting on my bravest attitude. “What is it?” I asked. “I have a table full of people out there, and there’s a pretty big tip riding on it. I don’t want to make them upset.”
He snickered. “A tip. That’s what you care about now? Look how low you’ve fallen. When we were together, you didn’t have to worry about things like that. You had everything you could’ve ever wanted, didn’t you?”
Yes. Everything. Except for a loving, respectful husband who didn’t hit me and hurt me whenever he had a bad day. Except for a husband who did his share around the house, his share with the baby. “Monetarily, yes.”
“Yes. You didn’t have to work then, did you? I provided everything. I made life easy for you. All you had to do was sit on your ass all day and let other people do the work for you.”
That old argument again. “Connor, I don’t know how you think the cooking and cleaning got done around the house. I really don’t.”
“The housekeeper.”
“Who only came in three days a week. I kept it spotless for you because it was how you wanted it. I cooked your favorite foods every day because that was how you wanted it, too. I raised our daughter virtually alone. Do you think it’s easy wrangling a toddler and keeping the house clean when she was hell-bent on destruction all the time? Yes, you made it so I could stay home with our daughter, and I’m grateful. But there was a lot more to it than that, and you can’t keep using that old argument over and over.”
He bristled. “No court will ever believe you left for no reason. And they won’t award full custody to a woman who relies on tips from bikers to support her daughter.”
I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself as if for protection. “There’s no way I’ll let you twist this around,” I whispered.
“I don’t have to. The facts are plain. You ran off, took my daughter, and you can’t support her as well as I can. I mean, come on, Ellie. Everybody in town knows me. Hell, I have lunch scheduled with the district attorney next week. You don’t have a chance.”
He was right. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I had no way of winning against him if he took me to court. I was barely able to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths, but I was determined. I’d work twenty-four hours a day if it meant my daughter could be out of the clutches of an abusive narcissist like her father.
“You’re bluffing. You know there are stories I can tell that wouldn’t paint you in a very flattering light.”
“Oh please.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You have no proof of any of this so-called abuse. I’m tired of hearing you talk about it that way, too. Abuse. Couples fight, Ellie. Just because you grew up thinking life was like it was on Leave It To Beaver…”
I resented the way he talked about my parents. Just because they were loving and happy and respectful of each other, he tried to make it sound as though I were completely out of touch as to how normal couples behaved. It was his primary fallback.
“Couples fight, Connor, but they don’t hit each other.” I lowered my voice to a fierce whisper, keeping one eye on Jimmy at all times. He stood at the other end of the kitchen, staring at me from over Connor’s shoulder. I willed him to stay where he was. All he needed was to have one of Connor’s high-powered friends swoop down and close the diner. It was all the sweet-natured man had in the world. “Men don’t hit. They don’t choke their wives. They don’t knock them down and scream at them. They don’t kick. They don’t make them crawl around, crying, while they laugh and call them names. That’s not what men do when they love a woman. You did all those things to me. Remember? Don’t tell me it didn’t mean anything to you.”
He sneered, his gray eyes nearly disappearing as he narrowed his eyes. “If it was so bad, why did you stay as long as you did, then? Why didn’t you leave a long time ago?”
How many times had I asked myself that question? Why didn’t I have the strength to leave him when I knew I should? Every time he hit me, I told myself it was the last time. Every time he degraded me by coming home with another woman’s perfume on his clothing, or laughed at me when I found another woman sending sexy photos to his phone, I wondered what it would take to finally walk away. Every single time for years. I’d put up with it, though, all if it and then some.
“I finally grew the balls to walk out on you because I realized it was worth working my fingers to the bone if it meant raising Isabella far, far away from you and your nasty, filthy ways. I won’t have a man like you raising her. Hell, Connor, you never cared a damned thing about her until I left, and you know it.”
“How dare you.” He advanced one step, then another, cornering me. I felt distinctly nauseated. Jimmy made a move as though to stop him, but I held up one hand just high enough for him to see. He couldn’t get in the middle of the fight. Connor was a man of deep, hidden evil. He would stop at nothing to have revenge, no matter who it destroyed. There were times when I wondered if he even had a conscience, or whether he was a complete sociopath.
I couldn’t stop myself, though. He’d unlocked everything I’d held inside myself for a long time, and I couldn’t help but let it all out. “How dare I? You weren’t there for anything, Connor.”
“Right, because I was working to support you. To keep you driving a fucking Lexus, Ellie. To keep you living in that insane condo you loved so much.”
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t like those comforts, but it wasn’t for the reason he thought. I needed them as a way to keep myself sane while living with him. I was in hell through those long, lonely years. I needed something to make it all worthwhile—a beautiful car, a comfortable home I could at least feel proud of. I sure didn’t feel proud of myself. “I didn’t need all those things, Connor. What I needed was a husband, and my daughter needed her father. You never got up with her in the middle of the night. You never changed a single diaper or fed her even once. On your days off, what did you do? You played golf with your buddies.”
“It’s called making business deals outside the office, Ellie. You wouldn’t understand that.” He put his hands on his narrow hips, the very picture of a high-powered businessman in his tailored suit and fashionable trench coat. Who the hell wore a trench in Arizona? One of his many affectations.
“Oh, so the women who sent you graphic texts and photos after those golf outings, they were just part of your business deals, too, huh? Is that how that worked? Because that’s how it played out.”
He shook his head. “Just jealous because they managed to maintain themselves. They didn’t let themselves go the way you did.”
“We were married, damn it.”
“That didn’t give you the right to let yourself turn into a slob. You gained, what, ten pounds?”
“Who could blame me, after the way you treated me? God, Connor, I needed something to keep me sane. If it was food, it was food. People do it all the time. I didn’t have you—even when I did, you made it a point to make me miserable and throw it in my face that I wasn’t good enough for you. Why the hell wouldn’t I try to soothe myself? Why am I even explaining myself to you? You don’t deserve it.”
“As your husband, I’m the only person who does deserve it.”
“Ex-husband, Connor. We’re not married anymore.”
He leaned over me, his voice full of threat. “You don’t get to make that decision, honey. We were married in the eyes of God. You can’t just make that go away with a single slip of paper. You can’t run away from your commitments that easily. I’ll have you back—and if I don’t, I’ll have our daughter.”
“You’ll never have her or me. Ever. So help me, Connor. Try all you want.” My heart pounded so hard, I thought I might die right there on the spot. I had never been so strong, so totally ballsy, in all my life. He’d awoken the Mama Bear in me, plain and simple. When my instincts roared to life like that, there was nothing I couldn’t do. No one I couldn’t push out of my way.
“I don’t even have to try, you pathetic slut. I’ll take Isabella and leave you with nothing. And you’ll finally be the nothing you always were. Don’t you get it? The only time in your pathetic life when you were ever somebody was when we were together. You were nothing before me, and you’re nothing now. Maybe things would have been better between us if I didn’t realize after we were married that you put on an act all that time when we were dating. Pretending to be somebody so I’d like you. You’re trash, plain and simple. I finally figured that out, and you couldn’t handle it.”
His words crept into my brain, ate at my soul. The very sorts of things he used to say to me when we were together—that I was nothing, nobody, that I would never be anything. That he was the only reason I had a roof over my head or clothes on my back. He was the only reason people spoke to me or spent time with me or even looked at me, pathetic as I was. It was all him. He was the reason I got by in life, and I needed to remember that. All the times he’d beaten me down with his fists and his words. It all came back.
And my blood, which had nearly frozen earlier, boiled over. I shoved him, pushing him away from me, sliding out from the corner into which he’d trapped me. “You’re the one who’s trash. I suggest you get the hell out of here before I have Jimmy call the police. They can escort you out if you can’t find the door.”
“Him?” Connor jerked a thumb in Jimmy’s direction. “He’s so scared, he’s liable to piss his pants in another minute or two. Look at him, standing there. You think he’ll help you? Nobody can help you.” My palms grew clammy as Connor’s eyes narrowed. His fists clenched. I’d seen that look on his face many times before. It was the look he got right before he was about to take a swing at me.
“Stop this, Connor.” I injected strength into my voice. “Stop doing this and just go. Okay? You got what you came for. You wanted to screw with my head? You did that. You wanted to remind me that you can take Isabella any time you want? You did that, too. There’s no reason to come in here and mess up everybody else’s life, too. You’ve done more than enough. Please, go, now. Leave us in peace. I have work I need to get back to.”
I thought my little speech would be enough. I thought it would make him leave once he knew that I knew the reason he was there—just to scare me. I honestly thought he would turn and go. How naïve I was, even after all the years in which he’d made my life pure torture.
Instead of leaving, he lunged at me. I tried to slip by him, but I was too slow. My reflexes must have dulled in the time we were apart. No way I would have let him catch me so easily at the height of our marriage. I cried out when his hands, like steel grips, closed around my upper arms. He shook me like a rag doll until my head flopped from side to side.
Then, it all stopped. He let go. I slumped against the wall, dazed, shaking my head a little to clear it. When I did, I saw who had pulled Connor away from me. I couldn’t believe it when I recognized my knight from the biker gang.