Page 72 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
But I tremble because of it each time his pitch gets higher. Each time, he lifts the broken ornament in his hand.
I’m terrified.
“Well, believe me then, and I’ll stop. Believe that I haven’t done anything.”
“But you have. So, I have to lie to myself?” I wait for an answer that doesn’t come.
We’re done, and it weighs heavily on my chest.
Still, he says nothing. Just keeps hacking until I talk again.
“Sure, let’s say I believe the lie,” I offer. “But you still have to leave now.”
“Why? We both know I’ll be back in a few days.”
Just like every other time after every other argument. He said he stayed with his parents. Had he really?
“I can’t forgive this.”
“Well, you have to because I’m not going anywhere.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then I wonder what the police will say.” With my shaking knees protesting, I stand, heading for the door where my phone sits in my coat pocket, carrying the broken pieces of the Pegasus and my broken heart with me.
Shane rushes up behind me, slamming me into the arched doorway. The wind is knocked from me. My hand rushes to my hip, which accepts another injury, and I drop the tiny pieces, stepping on them as I try to get away from Shane and the manic look in his eyes that I don’t recognize.
I rush for the door, forgetting my phone in my desperation to get away. I open the fidgety thing, only for him to force his weight against it with another huff. My skin threatens me with another bruise, this one on my arm and down to the bone.
A scream rattles the house, making me wish the neighbors lived close enough to hear it.
“What do you think you’re fucking doing?”
“I want to leave. You’re crazy right now!” And I’m fucking terrified.
My whole body shakes, and I choke on my sob as the shard in Shane’s hand—the one big enough to damage my walls—presses into my jugular.
“But I’m not the fucking crazy one, am I?” His voice alters and assaults my ears.
He sounds nothing like the man I know as he removes the weapon and replaces it with his thick fingers that wrap around my throat and lift my body from the ground.
The door and my hopeful escape get farther and farther away until my spine hits the bookcase between the staircases.
“You’re the one who thinks she sees fucking ghosts.”
My head spins from his comment—from the hate behind it, and my back aches from the wooden shelves.
“You’re so angry becauseI cheated—”He talks as if he still believes he’s done nothing wrong. “But I’ve been second best to some murdering scum cunt for years,haven’t I? I don’t know any other girl who’d pine for the brother that murdered her parents, but you did for fucking months on end when you first came to stay with me. If it weren’t for that death threat, you still would. I guess you’re a special kind of fucked up, and I’m not the only one who sees it.” His head bobs to the reading room, where all the seedy accusations lie within the destroyed wall, as his grip tightens.
The shard in his other hand cruelly teases my chest, and the promise of death looms.
I no longer feel like a human.
I feel like a badly treated possession that awful things are happening to. My vision and sense of sound abandon me, leaving me with only fear.
I barely have a minute to process what’s happening—that my boyfriend has a weapon pressed to my chest and his hand around my throat. The pressure on my bones and the swelling of the surrounding tissue have become too much. Tears roll over his hand. Something white catches in my blurred vision, and I blink at the sight, choking as I hit the floor.
