Hold Me Close - Talia Hibbert Page 0,104

perhaps didn’t care, that his father held the purse strings. “Shut up!” he roared. And then, standing to his full menacing height, he turned back to Laura. And he said again, “You will have an abortion.”

Laura was supposed to thank God, and count her blessings, and bow and scrape and say, Of course I will. He was going to let her do it properly. He was going to take her to a hospital or something, and let a doctor fix her, instead of beating her until she bled. This was a gift.

But she must’ve been possessed that day, because when she opened her mouth to agree, what came out was, “I will not.”

She didn’t know who was more shocked—him or her. He gaped, his rage replaced for a second by utter astonishment. He forgot himself entirely and deigned to argue with her. He spluttered, “Laura—you’ll ruin yourself. You want to be even fatter? You want to be ugly? Don’t you want to keep me happy?”

Beside her, Trevor blanched. And then his face hardened, and he stood too. He might be older than his son, but he was still a formidable man.

“Is this how you treat her?” he demanded. “Is this how you speak to your wife?”

As though she hadn’t tried to tell him.

But then, Laura supposed, she shouldn’t be bitter. She’d tried to tell her sister, too, and even her mother, and they’d laughed in her face. Trevor, bless him, had at least humoured her. Perversely, she was glad that Daniel was losing control. Trevor’s outrage—the fact that finally, finally, she had a witness—gave Laura something that felt like strength. It must have been strength, in fact, because it let her stand, too, and rest a hand over her still-soft belly. It let her say, “I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t give a fuck about your happiness. I’m going to your father’s house, and you’re going to let me. I want a divorce.”

Watching Daniel’s anger return was like watching one of those stop-motion captures of a garden bursting into bloom. In a matter of seconds, the seeds of his rage grew overripe fruit, flesh bursting through the skin, quicker than she could track. His gaze glittered, slithering over her like a snake over water. “If you think I’m letting you out of that door,” he said softly, “you don’t know me at all.”

“I do know you,” she murmured. “I wish I’d known you before I married you, but I know you now. I wish I’d believed in Ruth—”

“Don’t say her name!” he exploded.

Because the sorry truth was that Laura hadn’t even been her husband’s first choice of captive. The victim he really wanted had escaped. And Laura, under Daniel’s spell, had believed Ruth to be the problem. Oh, if only she’d known.

“You can’t hurt me,” she whispered.

A sick smile stretched her husband’s lips. “I’m Daniel Burne. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

Oh, she remembered this. This was the part where Trevor told Daniel how things would be: “You’ll see Laura under my supervision. No-one can know about the separation. We’ll keep up appearances, and she’ll stay with me until you can see sense…”

This was the part where Daniel ranted and raved and rammed his fist through the wall’s fucking plasterboard.

This was the part where she escaped the gilded mausoleum they called home, Trevor silent and disbelieving and guilty by her side.

But for some reason, this time, it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Daniel came toward her, and Trevor didn’t stop him, and she couldn’t move, she couldn’t move—her limbs were trapped by invisible, cooling concrete. She couldn’t even protect her stomach as he drew back his fist. She couldn’t—she couldn’t—

She woke up.

If it hadn’t been for her screaming bladder, Laura might have stayed frozen in bed, cold sweat sliding over her face to mingle with hot tears.

But if she didn’t get up, she’d piss herself. So she got up.

As she sat on the toilet staring at nothing, Laura reminded herself how it had really happened. How Daniel’s fist had met nothing but a wall. How Trevor had protected her, and taken her, and let her stay in his home—even if he hadn’t wanted to hear about his son’s abuse, or see her bruises.

Yet. He hadn’t wanted to hear yet. But he had, eventually. Ruth had helped with that.

It took a long, hot shower and several cups of tea for Laura’s hands to stop shaking. Even then, she felt like a toddler’s Lego tower; like something