Burned(45)

His words slur and, smelling the alcohol on his breath, I scrunch my nose up in disgust and take a step back.
“What were you doing inside for so long? Fucking the entire house or just giving it up to that * McDaniels?” he continues.
My face heats with guilt and I immediately squelch it. He has no right to be jealous and I’m not about to stand out here in the middle of the street and feed into his bullshit.
“It’s none of your business what I do or who I do it with. Get away from my car and stay the hell away from me,” I fire back.
He’s on me in a second, his body pressed up against mine, shoving me back against the side of my car roughly. His hand quickly comes up, cupping my chin and squeezing my cheeks so hard that it makes my eyes water.
“You are still my wife. People are already starting to talk. They’ve seen you with McDaniels and they all know you’re f*cking him. You’re embarrassing yourself and you’re embarrassing me,” he says angrily, his nose pressed up against mine.
Bringing my hands up to his chest, I shove as hard as I can. Considering he’s drunk and can barely stand, it doesn’t take much to get him off me He stumbles away and I quickly glance around, hoping someone from the station is nearby and sees what’s happening. Unfortunately, the bay is empty and there isn’t any sign of life in the windows of the house. Everyone must have gone on the call with Collin.
“This is the last time I’m going to tell you this. Stay the f*ck away from me, Jordan, or I’m calling the cops,” I threaten, refusing to let him know just how much he’s scaring me right now.
I’ve never been afraid of my husband physically hurting me, but right now, with the anger radiating off of him and his blood filled with alcohol, there’s no telling what he’s capable of.
He smirks at me as I yank open my car door and quickly get inside, hitting the automatic lock as soon as I’m behind the wheel. As I start up the engine and peel away from the curb, I can hear him shout after my car through the closed windows.
“YOU CAN’T KEEP ME AWAY, FINNLEY!”

TWO DAYS LATER, I’m still a jumble of nerves every time I walk out of the house to go to work. Collin has called a couple of times a day to check on me and just the sound of his voice through the line calms me down. When he isn’t out on a call, I curl up in bed with the phone propped against my ear, listening to his soft, baritone voice tell me stories about the crazy things D.J. did when they were at the fire academy and what his family has been up to since I last saw them. In turn, he listens to me ramble about my friendship with Phina, silly things we did in college and what my own family has been doing with themselves.
In the quiet of the night when he’s lying in his own bunk at the station waiting for the next call to come in, he asks me about my marriage to Jordan and I tell him everything—the good, the bad and the ugly. I tell him about how hard I tried to make it work, forgiving him over and over for the addictions he allowed to rule both of our lives and I admit to him that I don’t even know how long ago I fell out of love with him. He listens to it all and he never judges me for the choice I made to try and stick it out for as long as possible before finally reaching my breaking point. He tells me I’m amazing and that he wishes things could have been different.
I don’t know how many times I wished for the same thing. I never realized it until now, but everything happens for a reason. Maybe Collin came into my life at this point in time because I was finally ready for him. If I would have run into him again years ago, we probably would have just said a polite hello and continued to go our separate ways.
He’s so sweet and understanding as I explain everything to him, I just can’t bring myself to tell him about what Jordan has been doing. I don’t want to worry him and I certainly don’t want him getting into trouble by taking matters into his own hands. Collin is the type of man who would never stand idly by and let Jordan treat me this way.