Page 2 of All I Have Left

EVIE

“ I ’m late.” I hold the phone to my ear hoping he’ll listen this time. If I know Shane, he won’t. He never does. “I need to get going.”

“I said I was sorry.” He pauses, and even though I can’t see his face, I know what’s coming next. What he always says. “Please give me another chance.”

We’ve been over this for years, but at some point, when is another chance enough? When do you draw the line that sorry isn’t good enough? Sorry doesn’t take away bruises or scars.

“Shane….” I don’t know why I don’t hang up, but then again, I do. He’ll call back, again, and then again. And when I don’t answer, he’ll come by. He’ll plead in person, cry, make me think I’m all he has.

“Please, baby,” he begs, his voice so vulnerable. “I’m so fucking sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I will never touch you like that again.”

But he did mean to. He wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t. Not the first time, the time after that, and so on.

“I know.” And I do, but my shoulders shake, a reminder of how many times I’ve heard this.

He was so sorry the first time he hit me.

And the second time, even sorrier. The third, I ended the relationship.

Here’s the thing about this kind of toxic relationship.

One second can change your life forever.

One hand to the face. One sorry that shouldn’t have to be said.

One reaction that will never be forgiven.

For a year now, I’ve fallen for this game of his, until February, four months ago when it ended in me having a miscarriage. Because of him. No, I didn’t want to have a baby with him, but it happened, and he made sure he ended it.

Now it’s June, and he’s begging for another chance. I gave him one, two weeks ago, for reasons even I don’t understand and it ended with me getting stitches in my forehead because he head-butted me when I told him I didn’t want to have sex with him.

I blacked out. He took me to the ER and told them I fell.

They believed him, and now here we are. Him begging again.

“I just… I panicked and I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

I’ve heard this before. A few times.

Swinging my legs around on the bed, tears spill over my cheeks. Reaching for a tissue, I look over at the picture frame on my nightstand.

Bending over, I pick it up and hold it in my hand, a quick pulse radiating through me at the life I wanted and didn’t get.

That photograph, it’s a distant memory of two kids who didn’t have a care in the world.

Back when life and everything in it made sense.

Those two kids, the ones sitting on the tailgate of a black Chevy, wrapped in a moment.

Sadly, I don’t know them anymore. And I wish I fucking did.

I’d give just about anything to be back on that tailgate, with that boy.

The one whose love didn’t come with circumstances.

The one who didn’t touch me in anger and beg for forgiveness in the wake.

Everyone makes mistakes, but it’s the ones who learn from them who make the difference in whether you should grant forgiveness .

“Evie,” he whispers, drawing my attention back. “You know I feel terrible. I wish I could take it back.”

He can’t. You can’t take back what’s said, or done.

With a deep breath in, my stomach rolls with it when I touch my fingers to the glass on the frame. “I have to go,” I say, cutting him off, knowing Frankie will be here any minute. “I’m running late for work.”

“I’ll take you,” he adds, an unexplained irritation with me pulsing with every word he says. “I can be there in five minutes.”

Five minutes? A heaviness roots in my chest. That means he’s not at his house where he said he was earlier.

I wonder if he is at Courtney’s house or some other girl he says he’s not with?

“No, that’s okay.” I sigh. “Frankie is driving me and picking me up after work because I’m singing tonight with Ethan’s band.

” I don’t know why I’m telling him all this.

I shouldn’t be, but then again, if I tell him, maybe there’s a less likely chance he’ll show up if he knows my brother will be there.

“What? Since when?” His voice fills with fire. I’m not sure what bothers him more. The fact he didn’t know what I was doing tonight, or that I’m singing.

I twist a lock of my brown hair around my finger and then untwist it, my eyes darting around my small bedroom. “Ethan asked me this morning.”

I wait for the reaction. The one I know is coming. He’s quiet for a moment. I hear the inhale, and then the heavy exhale as he smokes his cigarette. “Fine, whatever.” And then the line disconnects.

There’s no sense in arguing with him. It never does any good. I pull my phone back and stare at the fading screen with his name on it.

Shane Larson. The picture on my phone is one we took on a date.

Back when dating him seemed like the best part of my life.

A step in the right direction. Until it wasn’t.

Though I knew of him in high school, I officially met him while having lunch with Mom at Larson Industries.

She works for his dad on a landscaping design project.

Two years older than me, Shane had everything I thought I wanted and captivated me from the beginning.

With a bright mischievous smile, thick black wavy hair, dark captivating eyes, and mysterious, I fell fast and hard.

All my friends warned me about his temper, but I didn’t see it.

He was nothing but gentle and understanding with me.

He was romantic and charming and from the beginning, that very first date, he drew me in and made me fall in love with him.

And then, with time, as it usually does, we got comfortable in the relationship and everything changed with the flick of a switch.

It was after we had sex for the first time.

I made him wait four months. In the days that followed that night he made special for me, the Shane I fell in love with slowly began to slip away.

He became controlling, convinced me dropping out of college was best and I did.

I don’t know why, but I did. Then, one night in a moment of irritation with something I said, I remember when I realized something was changing.

It was in the slow roll of his throat and the way he bit back the anger.

And then one day, alone in his room, it changed completely.

The innocence of the relationship wore off and the man I thought I knew disappeared with the jerk of his hand after an argument about going to my brother’s concert.

I don’t even remember the argument, but what I recall was the sting of my face when I took a direct hit.

I never saw it coming. Never thought he’d react that way. I left his house that night, wore a hat and cheered on my brother without Shane. The next day, he showed up at my house, crying, begging me to see that it was a one-time thing. He’d overreacted.

I wanted to believe him. I did. I was in love with the idea of him, but something told me I shouldn’t.

I should have listened to my gut.

Ethan, my brother, doesn’t know about the times he’s hit me, but he can’t even be in the same room with him and refuses to come home when he’s over.

And my mom, she hasn’t said anything, but I know she doesn’t trust him.

I haven’t let on there’s any problems, and I fear if I do, she’ll hold herself responsible.

Probably because she’s been in my place before.

Shane is exactly the way my father was to her.

I remember his name. Crawford Brooks. Extremely charming when he wanted to be, the kind of guy who was always riding the edge of what he could and couldn’t get away with.

And unfortunately extraordinarily… toxic.

She’d just turned seventeen when she had us; he was eighteen.

Raised in a house full of secrets, I don’t remember much about that man, but I do remember when Ethan and I were four, he showed up trying to take us away from her.

She had to file a restraining order against him while Ethan and I stayed at our neighbor’s house for a week.

Two days later, my dad ignored the restraining order and put Mom in the hospital. Sixteen stitches in her neck where he tried to slit her throat and thankfully failed.

Needless to say, we haven’t seen or heard from him since. Mom says he’s dead, a motorcycle accident, but we don’t know and I don’t care.

So how’d I go from that, to dating someone who treated me the same way?

You don’t go into anything thinking, damn, I want to be in a relationship with a man who hits me.

It doesn’t work that way. It’s months, maybe even years of building a relationship with someone and trusting they’d never do anything to hurt you.

Until they do. Until that trust is shattered.

You want to go as far as to say, that will never happen again.

That’s the one and only time they will ever hurt you.

I said that too. And then he cried and begged and promised it would never ever happen again. I believed him. I felt sorry for the broken man he portrayed and let him in.

I never wanted to be that girl who fell into the ways of their mother, mirroring my life with hers, but somehow I’d become everything I promised myself I wouldn’t.

I don’t want to hurt her in knowing I’m living a life I swore I wouldn’t.

I promised her at five years old I’d never let a boy lay a hand on me.

She made me swear “You owe no one your forgiveness.”

I thought I’d keep that promise. I wanted to.

When will I finally say, it ends now? Staring at myself in the mirror, I touch the tender spot on my stomach from the last time he promised.

I won’t do it. Not again.

I reach down and pick up the picture again. I try to remember what his face looks like. The curve of his sharp jaw, his eyes, his smile. If I saw him again, would I remember all the intimate details I loved so dearly about him? Would he remember me? What would he think of what I’ve become?

That boy, he’d be so disappointed to find me like this. I run my fingers over our faces and cry. No matter how many times you think your life is going to turn out one way, it never plays out the way you want.