Page 16 of Cross To Bear

“What the fuck are you guys doing here anyway?” he barked at the other men.

I admired his courage, because all three of them stepped forward then, staring Jesse down. Bjorn came rushing up the steps, taking them two at a time, before appearing behind Jesse’s shoulder.

“Bit of a heads up woulda been nice,” Crash told Bjorn.

“About what?” Jesse’s voice cracked through the apartment. “What did you need a heads up about, Cayden?” That was Crash’s real name. “What the fuck are you doing here with my girl?”

“Jesse, look—” I said in a placating tone, my hands held wide.

“What you shoulda been doing,” Crash replied. His arms crossed his chest. “This place is a fucking mess.” Jesus, that stung. “And you what? Left it all for someone else to clean up?”

“It’s none of your fucking business, is what it is.” I watched in alarm as Jesse started moving towards the man, fists clenched. “This is my place. Maddie doesn’t need your help—”

“Yes, I do.”

My voice was small, sad, and broke on the words, though everyone turned around as if I’d shouted that out. Jesse stared at me then, like I was a stranger, not his girlfriend. Because how else could you explain the anger burning in his eyes? He was furious I’d contradicted him in front of everyone but… What else could I say? I did need help, because that burning feeling in my eyes, the ache in my head that I felt now, it’d been there since the moment I woke up. Like any old pain, I’d gotten used to coping with it. Not any more. I shook my head slowly. I didn’t want to anymore.

“I cleaned every inch of that kitchen last night because we have an inspection coming up—” I said.

“I said I was sorry!”

This was the petulant snap of a child, not a grown man.

“No, you didn’t.” I shook my head, realising then that he hadn’t. “You didn’t, Jesse. I asked you what the fuck happened and you said you burned your hands.” I looked down at the red welts. “Then you told me it was my fault.”

“I didn’t—”

“Not in so many words, but near enough. I ‘bitched you out’ last time you dumped the fact I was supposed to make a potato salad that takes hours to prep at the last minute, and so you decided to show me.” I shook my head slowly. “You showed me. You said it later, when you were chuckling with your friends, about the mess you left me. That if you did this badly, then I’d never ask you to do it again.”

For a second, there was just the grave silence of my friends witnessing my shame. I’d allowed Jesse to do this to me, because instead of bawling him out for trashing the place and forcing him to clean up the mess he’d made, I’d…

Fixed everything for him, just like Nelly instructed.

“So I’ll fucking clean the kitchen then!”

He stomped over to the bucket and jerked a dripping cloth free, then without wringing it out, slopped it all over the benches the guys had just cleaned.

And this was peak Jesse.

You weren’t supposed to criticise him, and if you did, you’d wish you hadn’t. If he wanted to do something, he was sweet as hell, but if you called him out on something he didn’t want to hear, you’d know.

I’d had a conversation with him early on in the relationship, about something so minor I couldn’t remember the details. I think it was him coming home drunk late at night and waking me up. I’d been half asleep, irritated, stumbling into the kitchen to find him wavering there. I snapped at him, letting him know this wasn’t OK, and somehow that’d turned into a massive argument, then him standing there with a kitchen knife to his throat.

“So I guess I should just kill myself then?”

I blinked, unable to grasp how the hell I’d come to be standing here, watching the knife point press against the skin of my boyfriend’s throat, a hysterical scream building in mine.

I just wanted him to crash at a friend’s place on the nights he got drunk. I just wanted to sleep through the night then wake up to a text letting me know where he was. I just wanted him not to drink and drive, because that’s how he got home, and thank god he didn’t kill anyone when he did. I just…

We took a break after that for a week or two. I needed to think, to work out what the hell had just happened. And during that time he called and texted every day, even sent flowers to my work, making clear how sorry he was. So that when we got back together, I thought it was just a one off, bad moment, the alcohol talking, not him. He never pulled a knife from the drawer to point at me or himself, seeming to know it was a hard boundary, but… This, this kind of deliberate negligence, doing what I’d asked of him, though making sure ‘giving in’ to me was my punishment.

I dimly watched dirty water run in rivulets across the bench, then down the cupboard doors, as if this was happening to someone else.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Bjorn’s hand snapped out and stopped Jesse’s from moving, his knuckles going white as Jesse fought his grip. Their muscles strained with the effort, though this display wasn’t sexy, but terrifying. Jesse was never going to be able to win in a fight against Bjorn, something he recognised with a strangled shout, right as his brother jerked the cloth out of his hand and dumped it into the bucket. Hawk was already there to whisk it out of Jesse’s reach.

“Is this the shit you pull all the time?” Bjorn was one part disbelief, one part horror and somehow, I needed to hear that. I needed someone else to feel the way I did. “You do this to Maddie?”

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