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LUCKY

M y chest feels heavy as I scroll through his four pages of publicly available criminal records. Who knew all this information was available? It’s like a whole new world has been opened to me. Some places charge for it, but in Sunset Cay, the info is free and incredibly easy to access.

Every charge, every conviction, feels like another brick in a wall closing in around me, cutting off the air.

My heart races as my eyes dart back to the screen, unable to look away, yet desperate to close the window and pretend I never saw it. How could I not have known? The man who promised me forever—the man who kissed me tenderly in the mornings, who made me laugh with absurd jokes about tentacle porn and superheroes—has lived an entire life of chaos, and I was blissfully oblivious of most of it until now.

My hands shake, my fingers twitching as if the words on the screen are venom seeping into my skin. Assault. Theft. Domestic abuse. Each charge feels like a punch to the gut. These aren’t youthful indiscretions or silly mistakes. This is a pattern. A roadmap of destruction.

I never would have thought to look at a guy’s criminal record. It never even crossed my mind that I could look into someone’s past this way, to proactively protect myself from someone like Timmy.

My mind races from the revelation.

Sure, I can see someone getting a speeding ticket here or there. And nearly every guy I’ve ever met has had at least some kind of run-in with the cops. Hell, even my cop ex-husband told me a story about how police dogs chased him and his teenage friends onto a rooftop because they were smoking marijuana. Even my very buttoned-up ex told me about how he has a metal plate in his foot from the time he skateboarded off a roof as a teenager.

Even the most sensible of guys seems to have done a bunch of dumb shit when they were younger.

It’s just what they do.

But four pages worth of charges?

That requires dedication. Or a string of extremely bad luck.

I want to scream. I want to throw the laptop across the room and shatter the screen into a thousand pieces, just like Timmy smashed the top of my toilet. But all I can do is sit, frozen, feeling the walls of my apartment, once a sanctuary, now closing in on me.

How did I let this happen? My mind races through every interaction, every conversation we’ve ever had, replaying them with a new lens. His charm, his excuses, the way he downplayed every mistake—now it feels like it was all a script. A script designed to manipulate, to pull me in deeper, to make me believe that he was the victim, that the world was just unfair to someone as misunderstood as him. And I fell for it. I wanted to fall for it, because the alternative—the truth—is almost too unbearable to confront.

My stomach churns as I think about the detective’s words: “He’s a real nut. You’re lucky you’re still alive.” Those words echo in my head like a drumbeat, constant and unrelenting. Lucky . I’m lucky to be alive.

The bruises on my body tell me how close I came to not being lucky at all. The deer antlers, the hammer, the rage—these records make it seem like it really wasn’t just a bad night. It was a glimpse into who Timmy really is beneath the charm, beneath the playful exterior he used to lure me in.

And yet, part of me still wants to believe him. I can almost hear his voice, smooth and persuasive: “Margaux, baby, that’s all bullshit. They’re exaggerating—you know how they are. I told you about that already. It’s just the system trying to screw me over. You know me—you know I’d never hurt anyone. That’s why most of these are charges and not actual convictions.”

I feel the heat rising to my cheeks, ashamed at what I allowed myself to believe. Of how immersed and entangled I’ve become with somebody whose rap sheet makes him look like a prolific offender who can’t keep himself out of trouble.

Yet, part of me listened to his justifications. The way he downplays his past, like somehow he’s the victim in every case. Like all the cops have had it out for him over the past two decades, and he’s been on the receiving end of police targeting as a straight white man. That every woman and the one guy who has filed domestic abuse charges against him, or petitioned for a restraining order, has somehow conspired against him because he’s such a nice person that they want to see him suffer.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the imagined conversation, but it’s no use. He’s still there in my mind, weaving his words like a spider spinning a web, delicate and intricate. What if he really is telling the truth? What if the cops do have it out for him? What if his exes really were trying to ruin his life out of spite?

But then I think about Jennifer. I think about the stories she told me at the beach club. The way she laughed, partially with malice, but also with the exasperated humor of someone who has seen too much and is no longer surprised by anything. “He’s got a routine,” she’d said. “Messes up, brings you shells and leis, gives you foot rubs and back rubs.” I feel my heart sink as I realize how perfectly I fit into his pattern. Maybe I was just another woman caught in his cycle—a fresh page in the same tired story he’s been telling for years.

And yet, some of what Jennifer said didn’t sit right with me either. The way she mentioned enjoying affairs with younger men when Timmy stormed off in a rage—it felt off, like a glimpse into a different kind of manipulation. Maybe she isn’t innocent in all this either. But does that really matter? Does it change what Timmy has done? No. It doesn’t.

I glance at the bruises on my thighs, still vivid and angry. The one under my eye throbs with a dull ache. These are not the marks of misunderstandings or petty arguments. These are the marks of violence. Marks that shouldn’t be there. Marks that he put there because he couldn’t control himself, because there was something evil lurking deep inside of him.

I close the laptop slowly, my hand hovering over the screen as if shutting it will make the truth go away. But it won’t. It’s there, waiting for me, pressing against the edges of my mind, demanding to be acknowledged. I can’t unsee it. I can’t unknow it. So for now, I close the document, my heart pounding in my chest. I can’t bear to see his name up on my screen anymore. To wonder what drove each and every incident. To think, in the back of my mind, about how so many other incidents have likely occurred but simply gone unreported.

I think about his actual excuses he’s provided me in the past, about the incidents I was aware of, and how plausible they are. ‘Oh, the cops target me because of this or that. They’re just looking for an easy target, you know?’ He makes it sound like everything he’s done that has attracted police attention is just some trivial event, like he’s the victim of some larger conspiracy.

“Oh, my sister’s best friend is a dick, and he beat me up and I defended myself. People blow things out of proportion. I didn’t even touch the guy, and he came at me first, you know? Cops are assholes, and they love to take guys down like me. Makes them feel important.” He said it with such conviction, such confidence, that I’d believed him at the time.

His explanations have always been airtight, or carefully navigated in a manner that casts significant doubt on the veracity of any allegations against him. He knows when to be vague, and when to build in specifics. And then, on top of that, his charm disarmed any doubts that crept in .

When he talked about his exes, his tone had grown even more venomous.

“That crazy bitch,” he’d say, shaking his head with disbelief, as if he’s the long-suffering victim of a vindictive woman… make that many, many women. “Oh, she said she was going to do that because I wanted to leave her. She filed all sorts of false reports against me, trying to ruin my life just because I wouldn’t put up with her constant drama. She had a raging drinking problem, and everything she said about me was bullshit. None of it’s true, Margaux. It’s all lies.”

Always a reason, never an acceptance of accountability, even for the smallest citations.

“You’re the only one who really understands me,” he’d say, his eyes pleading. “You know I’d never hurt anyone.”

His excuses were as voluminous as his charges, but he was so convincing, and I felt icky about it all, and it was easier just to push it down and believe what he told me. Because to admit I’ve been with someone who is a prolific, violent offender who regularly puts other people in danger is more than I can take right now.

So at the time, I believed him, going so far as to feel sorry for him—his exes all sound like unstable women trying to take him down. He always made sure to paint himself as the hero—the sensitive, kind, misunderstood soul trying to navigate a world where all sorts of people were out to get him. Exes, friends, family members, bosses, coworkers.

Always the victim.

And he plays that role so well, turning each story on its head one by one until I can’t imagine it being any other way.

I despise the saying, ‘there are three versions of every story: mine, yours, and the truth’. It’s something my stepfather loved to say to justify my mother’s terrible behavior, and gloss over everything, as if I hold some blame in how she acted while I was a child.

But in Timmy’s world, he only needs one truth, no matter what evidence seems to sit in front of him. Timmy’s truth. Timmy’s truth. Oh, and Timmy’s other truth.

It seems to vary, depending on the weather, his mood, what he said last time and whether I poked holes in any of his versions. He’s adaptable, I’ll give him that, but not in a good way. More like a slippery eel that weaves through rock pools, twisting and turning his words until you forget what he even said in the first place. Making you doubt your own version of events, even though you’re pretty sure you know what happened.

But now, having stared at the long list of offenses, I feel ill. How could I ever have believed him? Why didn’t I check this sooner? How have I ignored all the red flags that led to this moment?

My stomach churns as I think about telling anyone what I’ve found—friends, family. What would they say? None of them have met him in person, except for Natasja, and although he destroyed the evening we spent with her and her friends, she was fairly chill about his behavior at the time—at least to me.

Now, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been played—I feel small and stupid, like I’m somehow complicit in his lies.

The worst part? He’s made me feel like we’re in it together, a true team. “Nobody gets me like you do,” is one of his favorite phrases. His words echo in my head now, hollow and poisonous, dangerous. I feel like a fool. I was his ally, his defender, and now I’m too embarrassed to admit how deeply I’ve been deceived.

I can picture it now, Timmy sitting across from me feigning surprise and hurt if I bring any of these things up. He’d probably scoff and roll his eyes and say something like, “Oh, Margaux, you found a long set of charges? I told you, that’s all nonsense. A string of misunderstandings. You’re not actually believing any of that bullshit, are you?” I can see him leaning in, his voice dripping with condescension, his eyes flicking between ‘deep, honest guy’ to irritation that I might not be falling for any of this. “I really thought you were smarter than that,” I can imagine him saying. “It’s really hurting my feelings that you don’t believe me.”

And then, now, the guilt presses down on me, heavy and suffocating. The absolute shame. Because I know that, even with all the evidence in front of me, a small part of me still fears that he might somehow convince me again. That he might spin a new story, concocting an updated version that explains everything away—that calms my residual fears, by smoothing over the gouges in his backstories, like putty over the gouges he made in the walls of my apartment.

I need to tell someone. I need help. I can’t deal with this alone. But the shame wraps around me like a heavy blanket, suffocating me. How could I be so stupid? How could I let this happen? I’m supposed to be smart. I’m supposed to be independent. And now, here I am, tangled in the mess of a man with a rap sheet longer than any I’ve ever seen, feeling guilty for wanting to help him, for still caring about him despite everything.

What if I tell someone and they judge me? What if they say, “You should’ve seen the signs. You should’ve known better.”

I grip the edge of the table, the cool surface grounding me for a moment. I know what I need to do. I need to cut him off. I need to walk away. I need to be stronger than the web he’s spun around me. But the thought of leaving him—of abandoning him in that jail cell, of not being there when he calls—makes my chest tighten with guilt. What if he really does need me?

I shake my head, trying to clear the fog. This isn’t love, it can’t be. I know that. I know that. But knowing and believing are two very different things. And right now, I’m still standing on the edge, teetering between the two, trying to figure out which way to fall.

I’m not ready to confront the truth yet. Not with anyone else. I need to figure out what to do next, but I need to do it alone. Without the judgment of others, I need to find a way to extricate myself from Timmy’s web of lies. But all I can feel right now is guilt, shame, embarrassment, and mortification that I missed so many flags and didn’t see the signs of what he was doing.