Page 64 of This Life of Mine

“You fucking bitch. You stupid fucking bitch!”Spat in anger over something small—something so insignificant I don’t remember.

I do remember freezing. The shock of it. The way it didn’t match the person I knew, nor did it match the reason for that level of rage.

I remember staring at him, trying to understand where that anger could have come from.

After days of giving him space because I was so hurt, he came to me crying.

He apologized. Said he didn’t mean it. Said he was damaged—messed up—by his ex. Told me she’d hurt him in ways I couldn’t understand yet. That she’d broken something in him.

He made it sound like a wound. And somehow, I became responsible for healing it.

He told me the pain his words caused was nothing compared to what he’d experienced. That I was strong. That I was different. That loving him meant patience. Understanding. Forgiveness.

He made me sound noble and that I was the only person to understand and accept the challenge of healing him.

I was too young to understand that love doesn’t come with a debt attached.

Too young to recognize the red flag waving right before my eyes—that when someone calls all their exes crazy, it’s usually not the exes.

But at sixteen, I didn’t question it. I internalized it. I told myself his pain mattered more than mine. That if I could only love him better—be gentler, quieter, more understanding—he’d stop hurting, and stop hurting me.

I didn’t get that apologies without change aren’t remorse; they’re fucking rehearsal.

And once the door opened for words like that, it never fully closed again. Over time, it got much, much worse.

Even years of therapy didn’t help. Every time I reached my breaking point, Cole would cry, promise he’d change, swear this time would be different. And for a while, I believed him because he made it easy to believe. Three months. Sometimes four. He’d become the husband I’d fallen in love with—or at least the man pretending to be him. The yelling stopped. The manipulationfaded. He’d buy me gifts, hold my hand, tell me I was his whole world.

Then little cracks appeared. A sarcastic comment. A slammed door. A night where I somehow became the problem again. Before long, I found myself tiptoeing, weighing every word, apologizing for things I didn’t do, and questioning how we returned to the same place.

I know now it wasn’t change. It was maintenance. Just good enough behavior to convince me to stay before his true self came back. Then, each time the real Cole came back, he was worse than before.

Val glances up at me now, eyes soft but steady. “Fuck him!” she says. “He’s not fooling any of us ever again.”

She sees it, and God, I’m so grateful. I have her, my family, and friends who know the truth. And this town—this place we poured ourselves into—showed up in ways I didn’t know I needed.

They don’t ask for details. They don’t demand explanations. They decide, collectively, that we’re worth defending.

The shop settles by late morning. The hum of ovens, the murmur of customers, the comforting normalcy I’d been craving.

I move through the morning like I always do—focused, polite, capable. Customers smile. Someone asks if I’m okay, and I give the answer they expect.

I’m fine. All good.

That’s all everyone hears and sees.

They see the calm. The competence. The woman who shows up, handles things, keeps going. They don’t see the tight coil of fury under my skin or the way my body aches when Ireach for something too quickly. They don’t see the bruises hidden beneath fabric or the scrapes I’ve memorized so I don’t accidentally touch them.

There was only one real moment in my life when others saw me actually break.

The day I lost my baby. My little Danny.

I went from holding him—barely—to not holding him at all. From a few fragile minutes in the NICU, his skin warm against my palms, to a heart monitor screaming and hands moving too fast around us. One moment, he was here, and the next, he wasn’t breathing. And then there was nothing anyone could do.

No one knows why. The doctors believed it to be related to the trauma of the accident. Or his lungs—still too small, too unfinished from being born early. Possibly both. Possibly neither. The reasons don’t matter. The outcome does.

I was alone when it happened.

Cole was in another part of the hospital, recovering from injuries he caused himself. Drugged and drunk. Broken in a way people could see and treat.