“C-Collin, p-please. I-I-I”
He removed his hands and paced away from me. “Get dressed,” he ordered without looking at me. As I dressed, he spoke. “We’re going to go home. You’ll drive in front of me, and you will stay in front of me. I don’t think I need to tell you what could happen if you tried to get away from me, do I?”
“No!”
“Good; dress faster.” He continued pacing and clenched his hands into fists over and over again. “I will use that time to calm down, and you will use that time to come up with a damn good explanation for what happened Friday night and today, you understand me?”
“Collin, how can—”
He closed the distance between us so fast, I started falling back. “Do you understand me?” he seethed.
“Yes! Yes, of course I do!” I whispered frantically.
Collin nodded and gave me a once-over, then brushed back my hair, which must have gotten messed up when he slammed me down. “Good. Let’s go.” We walked quickly out of the office and the building, but just before we got to my car, he stopped me and held out his hand. “Give me your purse.”
I knew better than to question him when he asked for something, and normally I wouldn’t have thought twice, but now all I could think of was the secret phone. On shaky legs, I handed over the purse and tried not to gasp out loud when he reached inside.
“You won’t need this. I don’t need you making any calls, and you shouldn’t be driving stupid enough to get pulled over.” He handed over my keys and stalked away from me.
I blew out a ragged breath once I was in my car, but the fear only grew with each passing moment on the drive home. I was supposed to be meeting Knox in half an hour, and not only would that not be happening, but I wouldn’t able to let him know that I wouldn’t be there, or why.
By the time we got home I was doing everything not to throw up, but thank God Collin didn’t seem to be any angrier than when we’d left, which hopefully meant he hadn’t found the other phone.
Collin put his arm around me as we walked up to the house, but I knew it was all a ruse for anyone who might be watching us, as everything was. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that the drive home had actually given him time to calm down. Collin only calmed down when he was done teaching me a lesson.
As soon as the front door was shut behind us, Collin grabbed my hair and flung me back against the door.
Putting a hand on either side of my head so he was caging me in, he leaned close. “Where is the baby?”
“You heard her, there was no—”
“Then how the fuck did you get that test to say positive? How have you been magically feeling like this may be our time, Harlow?” he screamed.
“I don’t know why it said that. You heard her!”
Collin grabbed my shoulders and shook me once before slamming me back, making my head smash against the door. “Not good enough, Harlow!” When my head rolled forward, he grabbed the top of my hair and yanked my head back. “You are worthless,” he spit out. “You mess up time and time again, I’m constantly having to correct you, and you can’t give me what a wife should. After two and a half years, we should at the very least be past me having to correct you, don’t you think? Shit, we should have been past that after the first month!”
“I try,” I whimpered, and attempted to blink away the darkening in my vision. “I don’t want to mess up, I—” My slurred words stopped, and my head rolled forward again.
“Jesus Christ,” he scoffed, and yanked my head back up, but this time his other hand wrapped around my throat and began squeezing. “I’ve looked every time and I’ve never found any birth control pills, which means you hide things better than I thought, or there’s something else going on. But I know there is something going on, Harlow.”
I tried desperately to bring in air, but there was nothing, and he didn’t seem too affected by the fact that I wasn’t breathing or that I was gripping and scratching at his hand and arm, trying to get him to release me.
“So let’s do this differently. Are you going to try to get pregnant now?”
Nothing but choking sounds left my mouth as I continued clawing at his arm.
Collin made an annoyed face and sighed. “Poor, poor Hadley. She’ll never get married, or have children. All because her big sister didn’t care enough to try to protect her.”
My arms and body hung uselessly, and my vision was almost completely black by the time Collin let me slowly slide to the ground, but his grip on my throat never loosened.
The last thing I remembered was his voice saying, “I’ll let you think this over.”
I WOKE UP to the sound of hoarse screaming, and soon realized it was mine. The realization came seconds before the pain did. My head felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to the back of it, and my body felt like it was being pricked by thousands of needles. I automatically tried to move from where I was, but froze at the sound of Collin’s menacing voice.
“Do not move.”
Even though I’d thought my eyes were open, it took force to get them to, and then it was only halfway. I was on the ground in the shower, and Collin was sitting outside it with a gun aimed right at me.
He waved the gun at the rest of my body. “You took too long to wake up. So I thought I’d do it for you.”
It was a few moments before I felt like I could look away from the weapon in his hand; I was worried what would happen the second I did. When I finally managed to tear my eyes from it, I sluggishly looked down, and my eyebrows pulled together. I was covered in ice cubes . . . so much so that I couldn’t see my body, and water was coming down on me from every angle in the shower. After a few seconds I realized I couldn’t feel the water coming down or the ice, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t shaking.
“You know,” Collin said laughing, “the guy at the gas station asked if I was having a party when I bought all the ice. For some reason that was hilarious to me, because I was planning on announcing your pregnancy at my parents’ anniversary party this week had your appointment gone differently this afternoon. That won’t be happening now. But I guess this is kind of a party, too, if you want to count it as one.”
“H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-how . . .” I didn’t try to get anything out after that, and it was then that I realized that I was shaking. I was shaking so hard my teeth were actually rattling.