Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📗

and you played games with your friends to try and predict the future. Folded notes that offered glimpses into what could be. But nowhere and never had she predicted that she would find love, find the man of her dreams, only to have him turn into some kind of monster. Only to have it become something deadly and dangerous and quite the opposite of a dream.

She didn’t know what you did after that.

And she missed being sixteen right then.

When you were so convinced that becoming an adult was a destination, and you wouldn’t just be continuing on the journey. Having no idea what you were doing or what you wanted, or where to go.

It was like being sixteen in some ways, actually, except knowing all the things she didn’t know. She felt like she had just gotten her first job. And she felt confused and like the popular girls hated her. So yeah, maybe it wasn’t being sixteen she missed. Maybe it was just feeling like there was a future ahead where she would know everything. When she was convinced now that didn’t exist.

Her phone buzzed and when she looked at the screen and saw the name on it, everything in her went cold.

David.

She looked up, and that was when she saw him standing there in the parking lot.

She felt an icy sliver of fear, because she kept remembering what Hannah had said about how things escalated. About how she might actually be in danger.

And she wanted to scream. Because this was the father of her children and she was afraid of him. And right then, she hated him as much as she had ever loved him.

She got out of her car, because they were in public, and she was going to make sure that if he did anything, or thought about doing anything, there were going to be a hell of a lot of witnesses.

She crossed her arms and stood as tall as she could. “What are you doing here?”

“I tracked your phone,” he said. “We need to talk.”

She hadn’t even thought of that. Her phone. They were on the same account because everything was meshed together. So deep and in too many ways to count.

“We don’t need to talk,” she said. “All of the talking between the two of us is going to be done between law enforcement and lawyers.”

“Lawyers, Avery? Really? You had me arrested. I was at work.”

“You hit me,” she said. “In my kitchen.”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t pause. It was like she hadn’t said anything.

“You didn’t even talk to me about it.”

“Is there anything to say? Is there anything to say at all? How can I talk to you. How can I talk to you when it’s going to just end up with me being injured. I can’t do anything to stop you, and you know that.”

“I’m not that guy, Avery, don’t make me sound like I’m some psychopath.”

She was thankful the car door was between them. “I’m sorry, what guy aren’t you?”

“I am not some wife beater, and the cops treated me like one. And it was in the damn paper, everyone knows.”

“I’m sorry, are your own actions embarrassing for you?”

She searched his face for something. Some shame. It wasn’t there. There was just the cool, low burn of his anger.

“You know that this isn’t a one-way street. Marriage never is. We’ve been married for a long time, and it never came to that until recently. Didn’t you ever ask yourself why that is? I’m stressed, and you like spending my money, but you’ve never done a damn thing to try and help me out when my job got more stressful, and started paying better, too, which you benefitted from. What are you off doing? Having coffee with your friends, working on this quilt thing with your mom and your sisters. We’re your family. We are more important. I’m more important. And if I come home from a long day of work and I don’t have my damn dinner...”

“You hit your wife.” She felt like she was having an out of body experience. “When you come home from work and you don’t have your dinner you hit your wife. And you hit your son. And you know what, David? I might have been weak enough to be talked into going back to you a couple of times if he hadn’t told me that. But so much of what I was doing was to protect them. Because I’m scared. Because if you go to jail what am I going to do? You’re right. I do spend your money.”

She let out a ragged breath. “I’ve let you take care of me. But because I did that, I started to belong to you, and the more that you thought I belonged to you the more you thought you could do whatever you want with me, and the more I thought maybe you were right. Some women... Some women can trust their husbands to take care of them and they really damn well do it. They don’t lay a finger on them. They’re safe, and their homes are sanctuaries and their kids are treasured, and I wanted that so much I decided that we had it. We had it except that I didn’t feel safe. Except that you hurt me. And I decided it was a separate thing. So separate that I walked into a quilting session with my mom and my sisters with a bruise on my face and had somehow convinced myself that I could talk my way around it. That I could justify it away. But you hit me. In the face.”

This was her moment. No matter how scared she was, no matter than it hurt. This was her chance to say what needed to be said. “The drywall in our house is crumbling from the places where you shoved me against the wall. None of it’s normal. And none of it’s right. And you are that man. You are. It doesn’t matter that