Page 17 of Obsession

Was that why I was standing by her bedside in the middle of the night with my baseball bat in my hand, gripping the handle tightly enough to hurt the joints in my fingers? Bruises lined my arm from when she beat me with the frying pan this morning, the ache a constant reminder of how her torture would never end. She’d even caught me in the back when I threw myself down on the sectional in the kitchen to protect my head. Three more blows followed, but I was numb to the pain.

I didn’t know when I’d learned to block it out.

If you lived in the shadows long enough, you soon called them your home. As wrong as it was, Mom’s abuse had become my comfort zone. I knew what to expect beneath her foul words and blows. I knew how to not feel.

As I hovered by her bed, imagining beating her pale, gaunt face to a pulp, my head grew dizzy with the possibilities of how I could end this nightmare once and for all.

But I made no move to hurt her. The bat remained clasped tightly in my hand, my fingers curled around the wood. I couldn’t bring myself to kill her.

Not that night.

Instead, I tossed the bat beside her on the bed and walked out, knowing far well she’d punish me in the morning.

A part of me welcomed it, hoping it would be the last time. Maybe she would take it too far and finally kill me. Death would be a sweet deliverance. But of course, Mom didn’t know mercy.

She showed none as she screamed at me the next morning to place my hand flat on the table, her eyes wild. I’d never been as aware of the sticky surface before as I was then with my fingers splayed wide.

“You think you can threaten me in my sleep,” she hissed.

Her stained white nightgown had slipped off her shoulder to reveal her bony, freckled skin, but she made no move to cover herself. Nothing could soothe the storm in those cold eyes as she hissed at me through yellowed teeth.

“I’ve given you everything.” She waved the bat around the room. “The only reason you’re not on the street is because of me.”

I was tired.

Tired of fighting her.

Tired of the hatred burning brightly in her eyes.

With a final snarl, she swung the bat and brought it down on my fingers. Pain exploded, threatening to push through the lid I held on my emotions. My teary eyes stayed locked on hers, competing with her putrid rage.

I didn’t cry that time.

I didn’t make a single noise.

Not even when she knocked me unconscious with the bat.

9

SAVANNAH

“She beat you unconscious?” I can’t keep the sadness out of my voice. It cracks and shakes while Robbie peers at me from beneath his dark lashes with a cold detachment that a small part of me wants to break through.

I’m in dangerous territory. Three more weeks have passed, and I’m still as enamored by the man across the table.

What’s even more worrisome is the flutter of anticipation in my stomach when I drive to our weekly interviews. The urge to learn more about him is an itch I can’t scratch. There’s only so much the internet can tell me about the enigma that is Robbie Hammond—the monster, carved like a statue by his mother.

Worrying my lip, I hold his unnerving gaze.

Instead of answering, he tilts his head sideways and says in a voice that slides over every inch of my exposed skin like a caress, “That coworker of yours still causing you trouble?”

My eyes widen, surprised he remembers, but I arrange my features to resemble a blank mask. “It’s nothing new.”

One of his dark eyebrows arches, but otherwise, he’s still as a statue. I fidget. The tension in the room is palpable. “Have you told your boss?”

I scoff before I can stop myself. The thought has entered my mind countless times, but there’s no use. James wouldn’t listen.

Leaning forward, I ignore how my heart thuds when his scent settles in my nostrils—generic soap and a hint of sweat that’s not unpleasant in any way.