To the Stars (Thatch #2)(2)

He held my hand on the tabletop the entire time he ate, and even cleaned and put his dishes in the dishwasher when he was done before walking back over to me. Bending at the waist so he was eye-level with me, he stared at me for an entire minute with an apologetic look.

“I love you, Harlow,” he said, as if he was trying to determine whether I knew that or not.

“I know,” I responded softly. “I love you too.”

His lips fell gently upon mine for a few seconds before he straightened. Grabbing his wallet out of his back pocket, he pulled out a credit card and let it fall to the table. “Go pick up your sister, take her out to lunch, and get your nails done or something. If you have time, go shopping.”

“Thank you, Collin.”

“Anything for my girl. I’ll see you when I get home.”

I just nodded and watched as he left the kitchen. I waited for the front door to close and his car to start before I finally let my body relax.

There was no point in telling him I didn’t want his money. He knew he’d upset me, and having me buy things for myself was his way of apologizing. Money was his way of apologizing, but no amount of money could keep me in this house and married to that man.

The threat of my family’s lives could.

When times were better, like just then, he handed me his credit card and told me to do things for myself. That way, he could show me off to his family and mine with how well he took care of me. He would joke with them that I loved him for his money, but he and I knew differently. And I knew that if he handed me his credit card and I didn’t have anything to show for it at the end of the day, I would pay for it in other ways.

When times were bad, the jokes about credit cards and buying me off were something I longed for, because it was then that I got my monster. It was then that my husband would tell me in detail the ways he would kill my family in front of me if I ever left him or told anyone what happened in our home. I hadn’t believed him at first. I’d been terrified of him—no, beyond terrified. Terror couldn’t begin to explain the feeling that coursed through my body when I first came face-to-face with my monster, but I had thought he would come after me if I left . . . never them.

I’d planned for two months over a way to leave him, leave everything. It wasn’t until my little sister was still here when he got home one night—something I knew wasn’t allowed—and he came back into the living room with a gun in his hand and his lifeless eyes fixed on her, that I understood his threats were very real.

My sister never saw the gun. I’d been able to come up with a reason for needing her to leave before she could understand the underlying panic in my words or see the detached look in Collin’s eyes. But according to Collin, I still needed to pay. I’d waited in the bedroom for him all night, trembling, but he’d never come after me. It wasn’t until the next morning that I received my punishment. I’d walked into the kitchen to find him sitting at the table in his clothes from the night before, eating breakfast and drinking coffee like any normal morning . . . except our dog was dead on top of the table.

He’d told everyone that she’d been hit by a car, and as an apology a few days later, had allowed me to buy a new kitchen table. Thankfully he had never put me through the torture of making me buy another pet.

So I’d waited until that summer when my family was on vacation in California before finally attempting to leave. I had thought if they were out of state I could leave and give them enough warning, especially since I’d never let it slip to Collin where they were going, or that they were even going, period. I hadn’t known my parents had disclosed everything to him, since they hoped Collin would be able to get time off from work to fly us down.

I’d barely even made it into Portland, Oregon, before I was pulled over and arrested for “driving while intoxicated.” It didn’t matter that it was late morning, that I wasn’t given any form of field sobriety test, or that the officer didn’t bother to put me in a holding cell once we arrived at the station. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been given the privilege of using the phone—not that I would have called Collin anyway. He still showed up at the Portland police station less than three hours later to pick me up; all of the charges were miraculously dropped.

That night Collin made me sit on the couch with my phone in front of me, and told me I wasn’t to move until I’d received “the call.” I didn’t understand what call he was talking about since he sat across the room from me the entire night.

Then my phone rang.

It was my younger sister crying and telling me that the beach house they’d been staying in had caught fire. They had all made it out fine, but half of the house had been destroyed, and the cause was later determined to be arson. They never found who did it, but I hadn’t thought they would. Collin had been able to get an officer from Portland to fake my intoxication; why would he hire someone in California who was so careless as to get caught?

I hadn’t tried to leave Collin again.

After getting up from the kitchen table, I moved slowly through the house, making sure everything was still clean from the day before. Once the clothes in the bedroom were picked up, and the bed was made, I texted my younger sister, Hadley, and headed into the bathroom to take a shower.

I hated our shower. It was big; too big. You could comfortably fit ten people in there. Collin had one of those rain shower systems put in so the entire thing was heated and could be put to use. All it did for me was make it harder to push memories of Knox aside, especially after dreaming about him—which was nearly every night.