Page 42 of This Life of Mine

“Don’t fucking run from me!” he snarls.

I shove hard against him. “Get off me!”

He doesn’t.

His face twists, rage and desperation bleeding together until I can’t separate one from the other. He can see the lingerie.

The insults start spilling out, vicious and familiar. The same poisoned words he used to sink into me until I believed them.

“You fucking whore.” His grip tightens. “Fucking slut.”

His forehead presses against mine with bruising force.

“You think you can leave me? Huh? You think some other asshole’s going to take you from me?”

I twist away from him, but he pins me against the car with a violent shove.

“You’re mine,” he growls. “You’ll always fucking be mine.”

Instinct takes over and hesitation disappears.

Fear burns away beneath something hotter. Meaner.

I bring my forearm up between us and jam it into his throat, pushing with everything I have. His breath catches in a strangled sound as I force space between us, the way my self-defense instructor once showed me. Just enough to move.

Cole curses violently and yanks my arms down. “You bitch!” he screams in my face, spit hitting my skin.

I react before I can think. I throw my knee upward, aiming for his groin, but my heel slips against the pavement. Instead, my knee slams awkwardly into the inside of his thigh.

It’s enough. Cole stumbles back with a grunt.

I run. Or try to in these fucking heels. One step. Two. Three—

Pain explodes across my scalp. I scream as he grabs a fistful of my hair and jerks me backward so violently my neck snaps with it. The world tilts. Pavement tears into my palms and explodes in my head as I hit the ground seeing sparks burst behind my eyes.

Then he’s on top of me. Heavy. Drunk. Furious.

His weight crushes me into the asphalt while he shouts words I refuse to let myself hear, refuse to absorb, because if I do, I think they’ll break something in me all over again.

“Stop!” I scream, thrashing beneath him. “Get the fuck off me!”

I kick blindly. Shove at his chest. Try to buck him off, but he pins my wrists with one hand while the other crushes my jaw in an unforgiving grip.

“You fucking belong to me!” he roars.

Rage detonates inside me. I stop thinking. I pull my arms free and claw at his face, skin to tear beneath my nails. He jerks back with a curse, and I slam the heel of my palm into his nose. Agonytears through my hand. For one panicked heartbeat, I’m sure I’ve broken something. Then blood pours from his nose.

Cole howls. As he brings his head back down, I drive my forehead upward into his face.

The crack of impact makes my vision blur. Pain erupts through my skull so violently I nearly black out with it, but it works. Cole falls backward, giving me the opportunity to twist beneath him.

It isn’t graceful or skilled. Pure adrenaline and desperation let me roll him and shove him off balance.

I scramble away on shaking hands, sucking in ragged breaths as I force myself upright. My heels wobble uselessly beneath me. I kick them off without stopping, one flying somewhere into the darkness.

Run.

I lunge for my car, fumbling for the handle with trembling hands.