Chad made me hope. He made me forget. He made me believe there could be better. He made me smile, and he made me feel. He restored something within, dragged it to the surface and made me feel alive again. No longer finding comfort in the darkness, but wanting to see the light. I needed him there to tell me he would protect me, that I’d be safe, that I had nothing to fear, nothing to worry about.
On a deep inhalation, Chad closed his eyes, but made no attempt to remove his hand from my throat. I waited, lungs tied in knots, heart hiding in my throat, to see what he would choose.
Until he chose…
His fingers tightened around my throat, ending my flow of air as he drove me backward and slammed me to the refrigerator, the contents inside sounding off a muffled jumble of rattles.
Removing my hands and dropping them to my side, I surrendered. If death was what he chose for me, then death it would be.
Tempestuous dark eyes flew open and glowered down at me. “Did you make it easy for her, or was it painful?”
Temples throbbing from all the blood trapped in my head, I shook my head as best I could. “Slit…her…throat.”
That elicited a wolfish growl from him, savage, ferocious, as he pinned me with his hips and really started to choke me. With that rage in his eyes, I no longer recognized him. Instantly I remembered his words from the night before:
…it’s easier not to get pissed off than it is to control myself after I get pissed off. Rage kills, it consumes you and makes you do impulsive shit…
Rage killed indeed.
Chad’s face shifted into twos, and then back as one, in twos, then back to one. My air dwindled lesser and lesser until my body went limp, my vision nothing but a thin sheet of darkness, and, though I knew I was gasping in my last counts of breath, I heard nothing. I saw nothing. It was such a contrast the way my body was struggling, but my spirit, my spirit was so peaceful. Floating.
Suddenly, it was like a ton of steel was lifted off me, and my body was sliding, falling down, no longer struggling. Then the sense of hearing was back, like a gushing waterfall inside my head, and someone’s voice from far away. “…pen…eyes…eety Byrd…”
Tactility returned next, but I wished it hadn’t, because I sure as shit felt that hard ass slap on my cheek, and then another in quick succession. I blinked open my eyes and brought my hand to my throbbing cheek.
Chad was leaning over me, my upper half cradled in his lap, his expression an artist’s sketch of panic and contrition. My body suddenly convulsed, lurching forward as I heaved up nothing at all, then inhaled a long lungful of breath, eyes stretching wide.
“Jhay?”
As everything rushed back to me, I lay there, audibly inhaling and exhaling, while mulling over the conclusion here: he didn’t kill me.
“Talk to me, Jhay,” his voice pleaded, vigorous hands shaking me. “Tell me you forgive me. I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know what—”
“I forgive you,” I rasped out.
He paused. “What?”
“I forgive you.”
Those dark eyes, they were wet. Those long lashes, they stuck together from the salty moisture. Tears. That’s what the wetness was called. Tears.
Although those pained eyes watched me like he thought I’d lost my sanity during the strangulation, his shoulders sagged in relief. “You stupid, stupid girl,” he whispered, pulling me to him, stifling me in a tight hug. “You shouldn’t forgive me. You should be running from me.”
“No,” I protested to his chest. “I told you, I’m yours.”
A therapist would purse her ruby-red lips, tap her ballpoint pen against her clipboard, and scribble down something like, ‘Patient suffers bondage complex. As a result of being kidnapped, enslaved and mastered since the age of ten, patient does not know how to lead an unfettered, liberating life, but feels the need to be owned and mastered, as that is the only way patient will ever feel loved and appreciated.’ And in fine print summary: ‘Patient is dumb as fuck.’
But screw that. I needed Chad.
“How can you trust me, Jhay?” he asked the top of my head. “I promised you I wouldn’t hurt you, and I did.”
Because I have no one else to trust.
“You didn’t hurt me, Blood,” I answered, soft and quiet. “You just had a hard choice to make. Maybe you made the wrong one in the beginning, but you eventually chose the right one, didn’t you?” Lifting my face away from his chest, I peered up at him. “You chose to love me.”
Shaking his head at me, Chad leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “You’re doing my head in, Tweety Byrd.”
“Well,”—I gave a weak shrug—”you take my breath away. Literally.”
