Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,12

until my fingers were numb and my knuckles were raw and bloody did nothing. I was hopelessly trapped.

After the adrenaline and desperation of trying to escape faded, frustration at my own uselessness clawed at my chest. I wasn’t strong enough to break the door down, and I wasn’t smart enough to devise a plan. All I could do was think of all the ways Tony could hurt me—all the ways he would torture or kill me. All I could think about was how before he took me, he seemed to lack all compassion or humanity—he’d had the eyes of a desperate man with nothing to lose, nothing left to live for.

There was only one thing left to do—lay down on the floor and cry. I cried so hard that my stomach ached and I could barely breathe through the gasping. I cried until there were no more tears left for my body to expel. Laying there on the bathroom floor, staring at the white ceiling littered with pot lights, I was overtaken by a sense of emptiness.

I didn’t bother to wipe the hot tears from my face, and exhaustion took over. I had used my anger and fear to try and escape to no avail, and crying had accomplished nothing except giving me a blotchy, puffy face. It was then that the lights cut out, enveloping me in a darkness that rivaled my growing despair, a darkness that matched the hole in my heart where hope had been. I lay there in the dark, tearstained and bloody, feeling hollow and drained, and allowed sleep to distract me from my new reality. Time didn’t exist while I was trapped in the bathroom. I was told later that I was missing for three days—and it was arguably the scariest and worst three days of my life.

Tony never visited me, never brought me food. I didn’t know where I was or what Tony wanted. I didn’t know if he was planning on torturing me or killing me, or even just leaving me there to starve to death. I was weak, drained of energy, and survived by drinking water from the tap and from sheer force of will.

The lights of the bathroom flickered on, and it was obvious Tony was coming. It was so bright that I had to shield my eyes with my arm until they adjusted to the brightness again. The last thing I was prepared for was a confrontation, but when I heard heavy things being moved away from in front of the door, something in me snapped.

My survival instincts and my burning will to live gave me a rush of adrenaline. All I knew was that I wasn’t about to let myself be a victim—I wasn’t going out without a damn good fight. If I was going to die, I was going to do so knowing that I’d taken a chunk of Tony with me.

My breathing was loud in my ears and my heart beat hard against my rib cage. The blood in my veins sped up as Tony got closer to me. With the lights back on in the bathroom, I surveilled my options. There was no mirror that I could shatter and use as a weapon, no cabinets I could search or unhinge. As the last heavy object slid away, the part of my brain that was being blocked by hunger and fear took over, and my attention narrowed in on the toilet—specifically on the lid of the tank.

I remember reading or seeing somewhere that if you’re ever home when there are intruders and have no weapons, the lid of the tank is a great option because it’s thick and heavy. In the seconds between when the dead bolt slid open and the doorknob turned, I grabbed the lid, satisfied at feeling its weight, and turned toward the door just as it was pulled open. With all the strength my body could possibly muster—strength I didn’t know I possessed—I swung my makeshift weapon without aim as hard as I could in a direction I prayed belonged to Tony’s head.

With time simultaneously speeding up and slowing down, the tank lid connected with his skull, the momentum of the impact almost causing me to fall over. His body slammed against the wall and immediately slumped to the floor.

I didn’t wait to see if he was unconscious or not. Tossing my weapon to the floor, I jumped over his body and ran out of the bathroom as fast as my weakened