Page 66 of Tough Love

Jess glances between us, clearly concerned.

“Just …” He sighs. “What made you think he wasn’t just bluffing?”

The first tears build behind my eyes at the memory of the one incident that hurt me more than any physical pain Tristan inflicted. “The precursor to violence against people is animal cruelty, right?”

“Mimi…,” Jess whispers, daring me to be leading her on, daring me to be wrong.

Evan closes his eyes briefly and nods. “Yeah.” He doesn’t know this. I’ve never told anyone what he did until now.

“The second month of our ‘home visits,’ as I liked to call them in my head, there was an Internet company salesman doing door-to-door canvassing. We’d seen him a few houses down when we turned into the street, but Tristan thought he wouldn’t show up at his place because he had a Doberman that he kept tied up near the gate.” My chin dimples, and I pinch the bridge of my tingling nose. “The sales guy made it to the door. He didn’t stay long after Tristan got abusive, though.” My throat closes; acid swirling in my stomach. “The dog didn’t see another sunset.”

“He killed it? Because it didn’t keep the guy away?” Jess asks, clearly shocked.

“Yeah.” My shoulders stiffen as the memory of the dog’s screams send a chill through my bones. It’s a sound I’ll never forget. Ever. “What was worse, he didn’t bury it or anything. The body lay there in the sun, stinking, rotting. I had to walk past it every day after that.”

I lose the battle of wills. Fat tears spill over as I think about that poor fucking animal and what he did to it. A thousand times I’ve wished I could go back to that day, just to try again, to do more to stop him when I realised what was about to go down. I would have gladly taken a knife to my gut to save the suffering he put that dog through.

“Fucking hell, Amelia,” Evan mutters. “Come here.”

He reaches out, loops his arm over my shoulders, and pulls me in. I nestle into his side, his heartbeat a soothing rhythm under my palm.

“Everyone knew that guy was unhinged,” he says with definite bite to his words. “Everyone.”

“And nobody did anything about it.”

“What could they do?” he asks. “Unless they had something on the guy that was guaranteed to send him away, poking a stick in the hornets’ nest wasn’t exactly a smart thing to do. It would have just put you at more risk.” He swallows hard, and I know what’s coming next. “You saw what he did to me.”

Jess glances down at her hands, lost.

“I guess.” Evan’s right. Antagonising the situation would have only made Tristan worse.

“What did he do?” Jess asks quietly, her mouth turned down at the corners as she looks across to the two of us.

I sit up, pulling out of Evan’s hold so I can look him in the eye while I answer her question. “I lied to Evan for ages. He didn’t know what was happening until I had marks I couldn’t explain.”

His crisp blues hold me captive as he sighs. A curt nod is all the encouragement I need to carry on.

“I was bruised,” I explain, looking to Jess, “in places you couldn’t explain away with clumsiness.”

She nods, indicating she gets what I’m dancing around.

“I couldn’t lie any longer. I told Evan everything.” I look back at the man who’s so a part of me that his absence has left me feeling incomplete this past decade. “I wish I hadn’t.”

“I don’t,” he says, taking my hand. “Never.”

Taking a moment to collect myself, I stare at the ceiling, wishing the memories of that day away. “Evan confronted Tristan about what he was doing.” Jess visibly stiffens, holding her breath. “He lied, of course. Dismissed it.”

“I thought he’d leave it at that,” Evan explains. “I planned on finding a way to prove it, get Amelia a watertight case against the asshole.”

“But Tristan wasn’t the kind of guy to let things go,” I say.Me included.“He and two of his low-life mates cornered Evan three days later on his way home from footy practice.” My vision blurs as I look across at his handsome face, remembering how brutal it looked when he turned up on my doorstep. “They beat the shit out of him.” I lift a hand, pointing out the injuries as I recite them. “Cracked his cheekbone, split his eye open, and broke two ribs.”

Jess groans, dropping her head into the palm of her hand. “Shit, guys.”

“I missed the rest of that season,” Evan says. “Never actually played again after that.”

“Surely that was the end of it,” she asks. “How could he talk his way out of that one?”

“I left a few months later. As far as anyone knew, I’d been jumped by some street kids. I kept the whole thing a secret because when we finally outed him for the stuff he did to Amelia, I didn’t want him passing it off as lies to get back at him for my attack.” He scoffs. “Never managed to prove what he did to her, though.”

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