As the minutes passed, my mind took over and somehow distracted me from the pain of being ripped in two. It became a safe haven when the hurt seemed unbearable. Memories of my mother before she got sick flooded my consciousness, my thoughts of her just as clear as if they happened yesterday, thoughts of happier times before she got sick. I wondered what she would think of me now.
Then I remembered the piercing, hazel gaze of a stranger—kind eyes that made me feel at ease and comfortable in my own skin. I remembered his words about wanting to find a woman to cherish. My heart ached. I ached for the stranger I barely knew. I ached to be cherished by someone—anyone. Had I missed my window of opportunity? Was I now damaged goods? I didn’t want to believe that.
When Ethan finally rolled off me, panting with a satisfied grin as if he’d just experienced the best sex of his life, I knew what path I had to take. My only hope was that it wasn’t too late—that I would survive long enough to escape this.
9
Gianna
Just as he always did after he attacked me, Ethan turned apologetic. He lifted my lifeless body from the floor and carried me to the bed. As I laid under the blankets next to the man I hated all the way down to the depths of my soul, my body ached in places I hadn’t even known existed. However, mentally I was numb. I pretended to be asleep, afraid to move for fear I’d do something else to enrage him. He spoke softly and calmly to me as if he didn’t know I could hear him.
“I love you, Gia. I wish you could understand that. I just wish you wouldn’t say and do things to upset me. You knew how important starting a family was to me. Why did you make me hurt you?”
It was incredibly bizarre. If I hadn’t heard it all before, I’d almost believe the confusion and remorse in his tone. I might have even cried silently into my pillow. But I had heard it all before and knew my narcissistic husband was certifiably insane.
I tuned him out, completely withdrawn from my reality. While he rambled, I contemplated life and how things came to be. I even questioned my very existence.
Was I born to suffer this way?
I thought about what I knew of sex—from my knowledge of it as an adolescent to how I understood it as an adult. I loved my mother, God rest her soul, but she came from a different generation where sex wasn’t talked about. In fact, it was practically forbidden. Anything sexual or private in nature tipped her right off the scale of awkwardness. MTV and VH1 were never allowed in my home when I was growing up—heaven forbid I be corrupted by Madonna’s Like a Virgin. I managed to not-so-accurately learn about the birds and the bees by sneaking reruns of Beverly Hills 90210 while my mother was at work.
As an only child, I had no older siblings to learn from. My mother worked three jobs to send me to a small, private elementary school. The kids there were definitely not talking about sex, which only added to the reasons I was so utterly clueless as I grew older. Even my period talk was non-existent. At school, when we had the class, a ninety-something-year-old nurse came in and told us that tampons were dangerous. She said the string could break off, and the tampon would get lost “up there.” And if that wasn’t enough, all her talk about toxic shock syndrome was more than enough to make every girl in the classroom terrified of using a tampon.
The awkward silence about such topics meant I didn’t know what sex actually entailed until I was ready to have it for the first time. I had no idea penetration was involved—yes, at seventeen-years-old, I really was that naïve. It’s no wonder why today, at twenty-eight, I’d never really contemplated what it meant to be raped.
When Ethan took me tonight, he snatched a part of my soul I was afraid I’d never get back. I should have reported him to the police a year ago. Instead, I believed him when he said the police wouldn’t help me and chose to stay silent. The sound of that silence had become deafening. The man I’d once trusted, for better or for worse, had tried to break me.
He failed.
My time with Ethan had made me harder and more resilient. I was no longer a naïve teenager who knew little about sex. I was no longer a woman blind to a man who wanted to control me in every sense of the word. I didn’t want to be on the bad end of a statistic. I wanted to be one of the survivors. I had been waiting for the right time—to have enough money to start over again. I’d spent months plotting but none of that mattered now. My choice was made. The illusions I had over my level of preparedness fell away—I couldn’t stay here for a minute longer.
It was time to take my life back.
Ethan’s ramblings about loving me had fallen silent some time ago, so I chanced a glance in his direction. He was fast asleep. As quietly as I could, I gingerly slipped naked from the bed, desperately trying to ignore the pain from his assault, and awkwardly tiptoed around to his side of the bed. Without making a sound, I slid open the drawer to his nightstand and removed the COP .357 he always kept there. Knowing his department-issued sidearm was already securely locked in the safe, I hid the .357 in an old boot and shoved it in the back corner of the closet where it was out of sight.
Now that the potentially deadly weapon was safely tucked away, I pulled out a large garment bag hanging in the closet. The bag had once held my wedding dress. Months ago, I had removed the dress and burned it—literally. The corners of my mouth twitched up at the memory. I had picked a day when I knew Ethan would be working late and invited Natalia over. The two of us had a bonfire in the backyard and watched my dress go up in flames while we split a bottle of sauvignon blanc. We had laughed about our ever-growing bucket lists, and although leaving Ethan was far from being a joke, it had moved up to become my number one thing to do. I didn’t burn the gown out of spite. I did it because I needed the garment bag. It was a step I needed to take in order to complete bucket list item one—leaving my husband for good.
The day after the dress burning, I packed the large garment bag full of clothes I’d need when I finally made my escape. I was careful to make sure the puffiness of the bag matched the way it had looked when it held the wedding dress. I couldn’t pack a regular duffle bag—that would be way too telling on the off chance he found it. So, I’d kept the white garment bag hidden in plain sight inside my closet where it had hung since our wedding day. It seemed like I’d packed it a lifetime ago, but it also felt like yesterday.
As I tucked the bag under my arm, a sense of nervous trepidation crawled over my skin. I shook it off and tiptoed silently to the master bathroom to get dressed. Once the door clicked quietly closed behind me, I flicked on the light. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, but when they did, my hand flew to my mouth and I had to stifle a cry.
Dark purple lines snaked around my neck. There was a small knot on my forehead, and bruises covered my arms. My gaze traveled south to find the evidence of Ethan’s sadism. Dried semen mixed with my blood caked the inside of my thighs. Angry tears flowed as I dampened a washcloth to clean myself. When I was finished, I unsuccessfully attempted to pull my blonde hair back into a ponytail but my head was too raw from where Ethan had pulled out chunks of hair. Leaving it as is, I wiped my tear-stained face and quickly threw on jeans and a teal, loose-fitting t-shirt.
Once dressed, I grabbed a few basic toiletries and tossed them into the garment bag with my clothes. The tube of toothpaste was lying on the counter. Instinctively, I placed it in the drawer before Ethan could get mad about it being left out, then thought better of it. Pulling it back out from the drawer, I put it back on the counter. The tube had been rolled up from the bottom, something Ethan always did, so I unrolled it with a feeling of great satisfaction.