Page 48 of Losing Control
“Well, as a treat, why don’t we invite Kim and Jeremy round here for dinner tomorrow night?” he suggests.
“Sounds good.”
“I mean, Kim has been going on about us all getting together again, but I don’t really fancy going out. If we stay here, then we don’t run the risk of bumping into anyone else.” What Michael really means is that we won’t run the risk of Cal coming along.
“Okay.”
“Here,” he says, pulling my phone out of his pocket and handing it to me. I look at him flabbergasted. He has kept my phone all week long, so I find it strange that he is giving it back to me now.
“I can have my phone?” Even I can hear how pathetic I sound.
“Of course,” he says with a chuckle. “How else will you ask Kim and Jeremy to come round?”
“I just presumed that you would text one of them.” He has both of their numbers after all.
“I think it would be nicer if you invited them. I mean, it may look a little strange that I text Kim instead of you.”
“Whatever you think is best,” I reply as I take my phone from him and switch it on.
“I’ll have it straight back after,” he clarifies.
Of course he will.
How stupid of me to think that he would let me keep it.
The phone screen comes to life and instantly pings with several text messages. I am about to open the messages when Michael abruptly snatches the phone back off of me.
“I don’t think that you need to be bothered with any of these,” he says. “I’ll just get rid of them.”
“Please let me see them,” I say without thinking. He pauses and looks at me, narrowing his eyes.
“Why? Who do you think they are from?”
“I don’t know, but they may be important,” I say in a quiet voice, wishing that I had just kept quiet in the first place.
“I don’t think that anything Cal has to say is important,” he replies before resuming his act of deleting the messages. His jaw ticks as he clearly reads them first, but there is no way that he can blame me for receiving a text message, can he?
“There,” he says a few moments later. “All gone. Now you can text Kim.” I take the phone back off of him and hold back the tears that threaten to emerge. I don’t think that I have ever cried so much in all of my life, not even when Tom and I broke up. I send a quick text to Kim and then hand the phone back.
“I’ll just leave this on to wait and see if we get a reply,” he says as if this is normal fucking behaviour.
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you go and have an early night? You look shattered and we don’t want you looking anything but your best for tomorrow night now, do we?” He raises one eyebrow and I stand up like a good girl and go to the bedroom. I shut the door behind me, throw myself on the bed and silently scream into the pillow.
My life isn’t supposed to be like this.
I’m not meant to be controlled.
How did I let this happen?
How could I not see this coming?
Why do I feel so weak against him?
I need to find a way of escaping here, and quick.
Chapter Thirty-Five
