Page 82 of Unexpected

My chest tightened, and I nodded. I wanted to respond with something just as genuine, but I couldn’t find the words with the hope swimming in her eyes holding me hostage.

When words failed me, it was easier to show how I felt through my actions. I leaned in for another kiss, bracing to show her my heart in the best way I knew how, when I was interrupted by the ringing of my phone.

I groaned, but Hazel just chuckled and placed a quick peck on my lips before pushing me back and hopping off the counter. She tapped my chest, “Go answer it. I’m just going to finish up in here.”

“Okay, don’t fall off of the damn step stool again.” She rolled her eyes but muttered agreement that she’d be careful.

I stepped into the dining room and pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was a number with an Austin area code and knowing it could be one of the vet techs at work, I answered it without a second thought.

“This is Luke,” I said.

“Hi, Bear. It’s me.” A voice I was all too familiar with purred down the phone. Thank God Hazel was preoccupied with packing the kitchen with her back turned to me because I couldn’t hide my reaction. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt the world collapse in on me. I had to refrain from throwing my phone at the wall, but I was just barely holding it together, even with those four simple words.

THIRTY-ONE

Luke

“Valerie,”I choked out her name and cringed at the way it tasted on my tongue.

“I knew you’d remember my voice. How are you? I’ve missed you.”

I couldn’t think or breathe or move. The muscles in my hand strained and begged me to loosen my grip on my phone, but I couldn’t. The fucking panic of hearing her voice paralyzed me.

“Bear, talk to me. I want to hear your voice.”

I growled at her use of my old nickname. “Don’t fucking call me that.” It was once a term of endearment that I longed to hear from her, but it had slowly morphed into a name that made my skin crawl.

Her chuckle was dark, and she sighed. “God, I used to love when you’d get all worked up. We had some great times, don’t you think? I loved that voice you used.”

I shut my eyes against the onslaught of disturbing memories. Rough sex was Valerie’s favorite, and it didn’t take me long into our relationship to realize she would start arguments and get me worked up for the sole purpose of knowing it would lead torturously long, never-ending arguments and eventually, hot, aggravated sex.

The first memory to cross my mind was one right before our final blowup. Maybe a week or two before I moved out, Valerie came home with what looked to be a hickey on her neck and the inside of her thigh. The rage I felt in that moment was unlike anything I’d felt since finding my parents dead and until finding Hazel beaten and bloody in her bathroom.

She pretended like she was attempting to hide it from me and making sorry excuses for where she’d been. I knew she was intentionally trying to get a rise out of me, and I let her. Looking back on it now, I realized I was so broken, I couldn’t have held my anger for anything. So, we argued for hours before I fucked her harder than I ever had. By the time I was done with her, the hickey on her throat and her thigh were just two small marks among the many I had littered her body with.

She was so proud of herself and lived to wake the monster inside of me. She lay in the middle of our bed, my cum drying on her face and in her long, black hair. She quirked an evil smile in my direction when I came out of the bathroom, pulling my shorts on and ready to pack my shit.

The glint in her eyes stopped me dead in my tracks when she confessed that it was a girlfriend that marked her, and she only did it because she knew it would infuriate me.

She was so proud of herself for how well her plan had worked. I had played right into her hands, and I knew at that moment I was done with her mind games. If she wasn’t putting herself in my destructive path, she had no problem doing it to other people. As long as she provoked me, she didn’t care who got hurt along the way.

I left a week later only to find out she wasn’t nearly close to being done.

“How did you get my number?” I hissed and moved down the hallway and into Hazel’s office. Hazel knew about Valerie. As much as I didn’t want her to have to deal with my shitty past, it was necessary to share at least a few details with her after my freak-out when searching for apartments. I didn’t want to tell her everything though, it was in the past and that’s where I wanted it to stay.Saying it out loud made it feel like it was bleeding into the present.

I cracked the door and ran a frustrated hand through my hair, yanking on it like the uncomfortable feeling would distract me from the torrent of pain in my chest and the rolling of my stomach.

“Oh, Bear. It doesn’t matter how I got your number,” she tsk-tsked. “I just want to talk. Don’t you want to talk to me, too?”

I clenched my teeth, pressure radiating through my jaw. “I thought I made myself clear years ago when I left. We are divorced, and you don’t get to just call me out of the fucking blue anymore after everything you’ve done.” I tried to restrain myself, but the venomous words couldn’t be contained. “You’re psychotic. I’m glad to be rid of you, and it’s no use trying to talk to me. I don’t want to talk, and I never will. Leave me the fuck alone. You owe me that.”

I caught my breath and when she didn’t respond, I continued. “I’m blocking your fucking number. Don’t try to contact me again.”

I pulled the phone from my ear, my finger hovering above the “end” button when she cleared her throat like she would finally respond. But apparently, I was a masochist because I didn’t end the call. Instead, I held it to my ear.

“I know there’s someone else. Didn’t have to go too far to find her, right, Bear?”

My temper flared, and my vision blurred. How the hell could she know about Hazel? When I didn’t respond, she took my silence as her cue to keep going.

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