He Hits You? Suck It Up So I Locked Them in With My Abusive Husband novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Her Choice

The silver car was gone before the patrol car turned the corner.

The officer knocked at midnight and took our statements standing in Nate's doorway.

The plate was registered to Slocumb Auto Group, he said, and a company car could be driven by anyone.

He could not prove who had been behind the wheel.

"I can set up a police escort for your belongings, ma'am," he said. "Friday at ten. Your husband's attorney says he'll be in his study and stay out of the way, which is his right in his own house."

"His right," I said.

"It's his name on the deed. I'm sorry."

He left.

Nate locked the door and slid the second bolt, and then he stood there with his forehead against the wood.

"You don't have to go back there Friday," he said.

"Yes, I do. My passport is there. My grandmother's ring. Everything I own that isn't a toothbrush."

"Then I'm coming."

"I know."

I walked up behind him and laid my palm flat between his shoulder blades.

He went still.

"Jean."

"I'm not scared of you," I said. "I'd like to be very clear about that before anything else."

He turned around.

"I want you to stay with me tonight," I said. "In the bed. And I want you to do exactly what I tell you."

His throat moved.

"I always was good at taking orders from you."

"No, you weren't. You argued with every one."

He laughed, unsteady, and it broke something loose in me that had been tight for two weeks.

I took his hand and led him down the hall.

His bedroom was dim, with a lamp on the dresser and an unmade bed.

I sat him on the edge of the mattress.

"Hands on the sheet," I said. "Flat. Until I say."

He put them there.

I pulled my sweater off over my head, and then my bra, and I stood in front of him in the lamplight with the yellow bruise still fading along my ribs.

He looked at me.

He did not look away from the bruise, and he did not look only at it.

"God," he said quietly. "Look at you."

"You may touch my breasts."

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