Page 73 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
No.
The bruises aren’t neat. They’re ugly, mottled. Yellow and purple and black blooming unevenly across her cheek. Her lip split and swollen. Her eye bloodshot, rimmed in red. No pictures with anyone else in them. No smiles, no laughter.
Not makeup. Not staged.
I flip to the next. Her face turned away, but the curve of her jaw unmistakable. A mark circling her throat, the shape of fingers imprinted in skin.
I can’t breathe.
Another photo—her ribs bare, bruises blotched down her side in the unmistakable shape of a fist. I know that bruise. I’ve had it.
The stack trembles in my hands. My pulse slams against my temples. These aren’t props. These are records. Proof. Proof that says David Oswalt didn’t just shout. Didn’t just threaten.
He tried to break her.
The air in the attic presses against me, suffocating. I shove the stack back into the box, but the images won’t leave me. They’re burned into my head, seared into my blood. I know violence. I’ve seen it. Overseas, in alleys, in war zones. But seeingher—Bailey—captured like this, her pain printed in color, is something else entirely.
The ladder creaks under my weight as I descend. My grip on the box is too tight, my knuckles white, edges of the cardboard biting into my palms. Dust trails behind me, shaken loose by my urgency, falling through the shaft like ash.
When I step back into the hallway, the normal air feels wrong—lighter but also heavy with what I’m carrying. Every photo in this box is screaming at me, and I can’t quiet it.
The living room is dim except for the lamps we’ve left on. Bailey hasn’t moved. She’s still at the table, mug untouched, staring at the wood grain like it might split open and give her an answer. Her profile is carved in exhaustion, but her spine is rigid, defiant against the collapse waiting for her.
I stop in the doorway, box in hand, chest heaving. “Bailey.”
Her head lifts slowly, like she’s dragging it through water. Her eyes flick from me to the box, and I see it—the recognition, the flicker of alarm.
I set the box on the table with more force than I intend. It thuds against the wood, rattling her mug. My voice is rough, scraped raw from the rage burning through me. “What the hell is this?”
She doesn’t answer. Her lips press together, her hands curling tighter around the ceramic.
I pull out the stack of photos, fan them across the table between us. The images stare up at me again, accusing, undeniable. “What is this?”
She stares at the photos, her face pale, her breath catching. Her hand twitches once, like she wants to grab them and run, but she doesn’t move.
“They’re real, aren’t they?” I demand. “He did this to you. David did this.”
Her throat works. For a second, I think she’s going to deny it, shove it all back into some neat little box of explanations. But then she exhales, and the sound is sharp, broken. She nods.
That single nod detonates inside me.
My grip on the back of the chair tightens until the wood groans. My vision tunnels, red at the edges.
I thought I hated David before. I thought I knew the shape of that fury. But seeing her like this, bruised and bloodied in still frames, knowing he put his hands on her—knowing he thought he could get away with it—makes me want to take him apart piece by piece and scatter what’s left so no one ever finds him.
“Why,” I grind out, “haven’t you used this? Why the hell haven’t you taken these to court? To the cops? To anyone who could end him?”
Her eyes snap to mine then, blazing with something hotter than the rage in my chest. “Because if I do, it becomes public record.” Her voice shakes, not with weakness but with fury. “Do you understand what that means? My kids will grow up. They’ll Google his name. They’ll Google mine. And these will be waiting for them. Photos of their mother beaten half to death by their father. Headlines. Court transcripts. That’s not a story I’m handing them. Not while they’re still children.” Her hands move fast, snatching the photos off the table, shoving them back into the box with angry, trembling motions.
I reach out, my hand closing around her wrist before I can stop myself. “Bailey?—”
Her head snaps up. Her eyes are fire and glass, blazing and brittle all at once. “Don’t. You don’t get to tell me what to do with my pain.”
The words slice clean through me.
She jerks her wrist free, clutches the box tight against her chest, and storms out. Her footsteps hammer down the hall, sharp, furious echoes that fade into silence.
I’m left standing there, chest heaving, hands shaking, the empty space she leaves behind vibrating with everything unsaid. I sink into the chair, the wood cool against my palms. The images keep flashing in my head no matter how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut. Her face bruised. Her body marked. Evidence undeniable.
