Page 104 of Coercion

Condemning us both.

I don’t let her go, I don’t release her from my grasp until I can hear from her breathing that she’s fallen asleep once more. It’s going to take weeks, maybe even months for all the damage to heal.

I’ll pay whatever I have to, I’ll find the best doctors to treat her, I’ll jump through whatever hoops she says to fix this.

I just need my wife back.

I need her back.

When she wakes again,I can see she’s not all with it. That the drugs are having full effect.

Her eyes struggle to focus, she keeps licking her lips, wetting them with her tongue.

I hold a glass for her to sip and she does it more out of instinct than anything else. Taking huge gulps, her throat bobbing as she swallows again and again.

“He wanted me to seduce you.” She says quietly. “He wanted me to make you fall in love with me but that’s not what happened.” She gasps. “I fell in love with you. Almost from the start, I loved you. I loved you.”

I cup her cheek, hating the way she flinches from my touch.

She used the past tense and not present.

My head already tells me what that means, that I’ve destroyed that too, that my actions have decimated any feelings she had for me.

I don’t deserve her love, I don’t deserve anything from her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “Why didn’t you say what Gunnar was doing, how he was hurting you?”

She screws her face up as more tears fall. “I couldn’t. You were a stranger, and by the time you weren’t, I knew you’d despise me. What sort of a man wants a wife like that?” She spits like she’s disgusting, like she’s so full of self-loathing she can’t even think straight. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t trust you.”

I hang my head, hating myself because I should have seen this, how the fuck did I not see all this? It was right under my god damn nose this entire time.

“I was loyal to you. I was. When he came round…” She trails off her face contorting into something horrific. “He put a phone in amongst the boxes they dropped off but I hid it. I didn’t communicate with him once, that’s why he showed up here.”

“Where did you hide it?”

She licks her lips, “In the library. I turned it off, put it behind the copy of ‘Huckleberry Finn’.”

Her eyes glaze over, she shuts them for a second like they’re too heavy to keep open.

All this talking isn’t helping her.

She’s not resting right now, she’s using far too much energy trying to explain herself.

“Sleep, Ruby.” I say, wanting to touch her, wanting to hold her hand, to comfort her but I don’t dare.

“You were so kind.” She whispers. “I expected you to be like them. I expected you to treat me like he did.”

“I will never hurt you.” I say but I hear the awful lie in that, because I did, I hurt her worse than any of her family did. “I will protect you, Ruby, from now on you’ll never have to be afraid again.”

She doesn’t look at me, she has her eyes shut fully.

I can’t tell if she’s asleep but the tears are still falling.

She’s still crying even now.

Preston

“How is she?”