Alone (3 page)

“
I hope that’s my dinner
you’re crashing about making,” Jackson shouted from the living
room.

“
It’s coming,” she managed
weakly, but the coil of anger from earlier raised its head again
and lashed its tail. Her body might be weak, but that didn’t mean
the woman inside had to be as well.

Things needed to change.

Serenity had been curled
up
in bed for an hour
when she heard Jackson’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. Her whole
body tensed, but she forced her muscles to relax and made her
breath steady and even, hoping Jackson would think she was
asleep.

She listened as he went through his
nightly routine in the bathroom; brushed his teeth, washed his face
and took a leak. Jackson shed his clothes on his side of the bed.
She would be the one to pick them up again in the morning as he
slept on regardless.

He slid his warm body in beside her. She
faced away from him and he pressed himself up against her back,
fitting his knees into the back of hers. He wrapped an arm around
her waist and nuzzled her neck.

“
I’m so sorry, baby,” he
whispered into her hair. “I love you so much. Why do you make me do
these things to you?”

A mixture of beer and toothpaste scented
breath washed over her and the strange combination stoked the fire
growing in her belly. She didn’t want him anywhere near
her.

“
Hey, I’m sleeping,” she
said, trying to move away.

He grabbed her upper arm and he pulled her
over to face him. Serenity tensed, her body hard and unwelcoming,
but Jackson ignored the physical messages and kissed her face with
frantic, hard pecks.

“
God, you’re so beautiful,”
he told her.

“
Jackson,” she said, pulling
her face away from his. “Not tonight. I’m tired.”

“
Shhh,” he said and put his hand
over her mouth, stopping her words. Her heart picked up a beat and
she tried to twist away from him. He climbed on top of her, forcing
his knee between her legs, pushing them apart.

“
Jackson...” she protested,
her voice muffled beneath his clammy palm. “Stop it.” The words
came out ‘sho-iik’ and he ignored her. She tried to clamp her legs
back together, struggling against him.

“
I love you,” he murmured, as
though the three words could heal her wounds. “You know how much I
love you.”

He took his hand off her mouth and
grabbed hold of her right arm, pinning it behind her head. With
more force, he shoved his knee back down, bruising the inside of
her thighs.

“
Jackson!” she shouted, fear
tainting her voice. “I said no. Get off me!”

She tried to push him away, but the
position he held her in, with one arm above her head and his whole
body pinning her down, meant she couldn’t move.

He kissed her again, forcing his mouth
on hers, mashing her lips against her teeth. His free arm reached
down toward her panties, trying to pull them aside.

Fear raced through her. Would he do
it? Would he actually rape her? Jackson was free with his fists,
but he’d never stooped so low.

“
For fuck’s sake, Jackson,”
she yelled. “Get the fuck off me!”

For a moment, she thought she’d got
through to him, he’d listened to her for once, but then she felt
the unnatural way he lifted off her.

Jackson
flew
away from her, leaving her half-naked and
exposed on the bed. He soared backward through the air and crashed
into the dresser on the far wall, opposite the end of their
bed.

He hit the unit with a sickening
crunch and slumped down to the floor, groaning.

Frightened, Serenity sat up, pulling
the sheets around her.

“
Jackson?” Tentatively, she
called her husband’s name and tugged the sheets tighter around her
body. Adrenaline sent blood rushing through her ears, her eyes
pricking with tears of fear. What the hell just
happened?

She climbed off the bed, taking the sheets
with her, and approached her spouse as she would a wounded wild
animal. “Jackson? Are you all right?”

He groaned again and clutched at his
lower back.

Serves you right, you fucking
bastard,
came
a spiteful, bitter voice in her head.

Jackson’s eyes flickered, the whites
showing unnaturally bright. For a moment, Serenity thought he would
pass out cold, but then he bolted upright, his eyes darting back
and forth, scouring the bedroom.

“
Someone was in here,” his voice
broke. “Someone grabbed me and pulled me off you.”

She shook her head in confusion.
“There’s no one else in here, Jackson. It’s only us.”

B
ravado deflated, his shoulders hunched,
his eyes wide. He was as scared as her, but Serenity knew from
experience—a scared animal was also a dangerous one.

“
No. Someone else was here,
someone grabbed me. I felt his hands on me. I felt his cold,
fucking hands on me!”

Cold hands,
she remembered.
Cold hands and
soft, pale skin.

No.
It couldn’t be
possible
! Nevertheless, Serenity found
herself looking around the room, half-expecting to see her stranger
materialize out of thin air. She caught herself. That was crazy.
There was no way someone had gotten in and out of the room without
either of them seeing.

Serenity’s face betrayed her; her guilt
flickered across her features.

“
Who is he?” Jackson
demanded. “Some guy you’re screwing? Have you let another man in
here?”

Her eyes widened with fright, but again
the stranger’s face appeared in her mind like a subliminal image on
a television screen.

The memory made her pause too long and
Jackson seized upon her silence.

“
You have!” he said,
incredulous, as though he never truly believed her capable of an
affair, despite his constant accusations. “You little whore! You’ve
been seeing someone else!”

It wasn’t a question anymore but a
statement.

She shook her head, desperate. “No,
no, I haven’t I swear to you.”

Jackson’s injuries prevented him from
leaping across the room and strangling her. A lump the size of an
egg protruded from the back of his head. Reaching up, he
tentatively touched the bump. He pulled his hand away, fingertips
dark with blood.

The sight of the blood threw him off
his rant. She could always rely on Jackson to put his well-being
ahead of everything else. “I need to get to hospital,” he said.
“I’m hurt. You need to call an ambulance.”

Serenity stared at the blood and a sliver
of malice slipped down her throat. She wanted to tell him to suck
it up. He’d given her far worse injuries and she’d never been able
to seek medical help. But years of silence weren’t broken in a day
and she held her tongue.

Grateful to be out of Jackson’s company,
if only for a minute or two, she left the bedroom and ran
downstairs. Crossing the living room to where the phone sat on a
side table, she lifted the receiver and dialed 911.

“
What’s your emergency?” asked
the tinny voice of the operator.

“
I need an
ambulance.”

“
Can you describe the incident,
Ma’am?”

“
My husband’s had an accident in
the bedroom,” she said and a bark of hysterical laughter almost
escaped her. She managed to clamp her mouth shut and the laugh came
out as a strange, strangled cough. Images of Jackson in some weird
perverted mess with a pair of handcuffs and a candlestick danced
through her mind. Hysteria lurked perilously close to the surface
but if she gave in, Jackson would kill her.

“
I was attacked,” Jackson
shouted, still finding the strength to try and control her actions.
“Tell them I need the police as well!”

For once Serenity ignored him; she gave
the operator their address and hung up. Taking a deep breath, she
made her way back up to the bedroom.

“
Jackson,” she said, sitting on
the edge of the bed. She sounded authoritative, not like herself at
all, and her tone made him look up. “What are you planning to tell
the police? That some invisible intruder attacked you? The first
thing they’re going to ask is if you’ve been drinking, which you
clearly have, and then they’ll send you for psychiatric
tests.”

He opened his mouth to protest and
shut it again.

Serenity knew he’d been weakened by
his injuries, but even this small victory lodged like a powerful
rock inside her.

But she had to wonder,
what
did
happen? Jackson didn’t leap backward by himself and she
couldn’t ignore the shock on his face. Her husband hadn’t jumped
off voluntarily, but she was crazy to think the man she’d met today
had somehow saved her and then promptly disappeared.

She found her gaze drifting to the window
where the full length drapes lifted and flapped in the
breeze.

Something stirred within her; shouting
that something wasn’t right. She stared at the window, trying to
figure out what nagged her.

Realization dawned.

They never slept with the window open.
Jackson always complained about the amount of noise from the road,
especially first thing in the morning when everyone else left to go
to work or take their children to school. If there was a breeze, it
meant the window was open.

Serenity got to her feet and pulled
the sheets around her, most of them trailing out behind like the
train of a wedding dress.

“
Serenity?” Jackson called out,
but she ignored him and continued to the window.

Goosebumps rose on her skin, prickling
their way down her naked arms. With a shaking hand, she reached out
and touched the thick, cream-colored fabric. Did someone hide
behind them, the same someone who had helped her? She paused for a
moment, taking a shallow, jittery breath, and then whipped back the
drape.

The empty window stood ajar, looking down
onto the street below. Serenity frowned and stepped forward,
craning her neck to peer out into the night. No solitary figure
stood in the street, yet someone must have used the window to enter
and leave the room. Did they balance on the ledge, pull the window
partially shut behind them, and jump?

No, she shook her head.
Impossible.

Just like it’s impossible
how someone threw Jackson across the room without being
seen.

“
Serenity?” Jackson said again,
irritation
coloring his voice. His initial shock faded, he was waking
up. “Serenity, what the fuck are you doing? Get over here and help
me up.”

I should leave him
there,
she
thought.
I
should step over him and walk out the door.

But what she should do and what she
did do were two different things. Where would she go? She had no
friends or family, and their bank balance would only buy her a
couple of nights in a motel. Besides, he would find her. He would
find her and he would make her sorry.

I’ll know the right time
to go.

For years, she’d told herself
something inside would
tell her when the time was right to leave. She had
no idea when that would be. Maybe she was making excuses to
herself—a coward giving herself a get out—but that was how she
felt.

Deep down, she hoped someone, somewhere,
would find it in their heart to help her. She wasn’t strong enough
to walk out on her own.

Reluctantly, she helped her injured
husband onto the bed.

Chapter Three

The ambulance took almost
twenty
minutes to arrive and by the time the sirens cut through
the night air, Serenity stood outside her front gate waiting to
usher them in.

She didn’t care about her husband’s
state of health, but the longer they took, the more time there was
for him to come out of his doped-up stupor and beat the living crap
out of her. At least now an ambulance would be ready.

Two men jumped out of the vehicle, a
younger one with short dark hair, and a slightly chunky man in his
late forties. Serenity didn’t speak, just showed them up the stairs
to the bedroom where Jackson lay on the bed.

“
What happened?” the older
of the paramedics asked.

Serenity glanced at Jackson, but he
wouldn’t meet her eye.

“
We were fooling around,” he
said, his voice dull. “I slipped.”

The two paramedics took in the sight
of her wearing her bathrobe and Jackson in his shorts, and they
shared a glance of their own. They would be drinking out on this
one tonight. Serenity could hear their voices now, ‘You should’ve
seen the state of what this guy’s missus did to him! Must be an
animal in bed!’

Screw them,
she thought.
They don’t know what they’re
dealing with
.