Josie chuckled. Leave it to Sam to pull a joke out of the situation, even one as intense as this.
As if reading her mind, a new message popped up on her phone. “You think I’m joking, but I’m not.”
Josie sucked on her teeth and typed. “I will call you later, Sam. Now pls go. And thanks.”
Sam must have taken her at her word, because when Josie entered the kitchen, Beau was sitting at the table alone.
“Beau,” she said.
But that was as far as she got before he was out of his seat. He lurched toward her, gripping the nearby island counter, then one of the bar stools, then walked forward without support.
Josie, having never seen him navigate a room blind, watched mesmerized.
But the scene didn’t last long. He snatched the air a few times, found her shoulder, and dragged her into his arms.
She could feel him breathing heavily against the top of her head. “You should have told me,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “But I couldn’t.”
He gripped her even tighter. “I’m not him, Josie. I would never hurt you like that. No matter how angry I get, I would never lay a hand on you.”
“I know,” she said. Because despite the times she had been afraid of him, and as angry as she had gotten with him, she knew deep down in her heart Beau wasn’t like Wayne. He’d never hit her, and unlike Wayne, he would never pretend to be her Prince Charming. He was Beau Prescott, amazing lover, ridiculous asshole, and he’d never pretended to be anything else. “I know you’re not him,” she said.
He rocked her in his arms for a few beats. “Any chance of you telling me where your ex-husband lives or are you going to make me have Mac Google him?”
“According to the text I got from Mac this morning, you fired him,” she reminded him. “And he’s not my ex-husband.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, pulling back from her. “Are you still married to that bastard?!”
“No, but not because we’re divorced.” She looked away from him and finally confessed, “I’m a widow.”
Then for the first time in her entire post-college life, she told a man about what had happened between her and Wayne. The angry words that had turned into shoves, which had turned into occasional hits, then amped up to not-so-occasional beatings.
That was bad enough. She couldn’t even look at Beau as she told him her story. But then came the worst part, when Loretta died.
As sad as her mother’s passing had been for Josie, she realized it also meant freedom. She no longer had to live in fear that her mother would go hungry if Josie didn’t do exactly as Wayne said. And she began quietly making plans to leave him.
She’d made sure to clear her browser history after looking into Atlanta shelters, and when Wayne got home every night, she tried to be as perfect as she could for him.
And maybe it had worked for a little while, because Wayne talked down to her but didn’t hit her for months after the funeral.
But apparently he didn’t believe all was as peachy keen as she was putting on, because he kept pressuring her to make an appointment with a fertility specialist. He wanted to make sure she was all right “down there” because they’d been married for several years and still no kids.
Josie made the appointment but ramped up plans to leave before the blood tests revealed what Wayne didn’t know, that she’d been taking birth control. But then two days before the appointment, she came back from the grocery store to find her walk-in closet in total disarray. Clothes strewn about everywhere, every box removed from the shelves above. But the sight that really stopped her heart was her favorite pair of jeans from college lying on the floor—the back pocket of which was where she’d been hiding the birth control pills she snuck into her mouth and dry-swallowed every day.
She’d run then, knowing exactly what would unfold if she stayed in this house even a minute longer. But Wayne, who had been nowhere to be seen when she first entered the house, suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs. A steak knife glinting in his hand.
She screamed and turned tail, dashing back up the stairs, but she couldn’t get away fast enough. At the top of the stairs she felt his hand around her ankle and then she got the wind knocked out of her when she fell against the steps.
Before she could fully gather herself up, Wayne turned her over and with nothing but stone cold malice in his gleaming eyes, and plunged the knife into her chest.
Josie thought she was dead, she was sure of it. But here’s the funny thing about trying to stab someone in the heart. Despite it often being depicted as directly under the left breastbone, in most people it resides slightly left of center in the chest. As it was, Wayne took her breath away when his knife ripped through her left lung, but he didn’t, in fact, kill her.
And despite her punctured lung and years of abuse, or perhaps because of it, she saw an opportunity and quickly took it. With a rough grunt of exertion, she lifted her foot, drew it back, and planted it squarely in Wayne’s chest.
She’d always remember the expression on his face after she did this, almost comical. His expression suddenly morphed from one of undisguised, maniacal glee to one of shocked disbelief, his eyes bugging out in the moment after she pushed him backwards when he realized what had just happened. He grabbed out frantically, trying to find something, anything to hang on to. But there was nothing to grab, just air, and eventually he fell backwards, toppling heels-over-head down the stairs, until he landed at the bottom, his neck snapping upon impact.
Wayne died that day and Josie lived, but not without consequences. She’d found out later that despite lording his high-earning status over Josie for years, Wayne had been in debt up to his neck and everything, including the house, had to be sold to pay it off. And that was how she ended up back in Alabama in her grandmother’s old trailer, reeling from the end of what had started out as a fairytale romance.
“I wish you had called me,” Beau said, rubbing her back. “I would have paid for Loretta’s apartment, gotten her anything she needed. She raised me.”
She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “I was so ashamed. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone,” she whispered to him. “I shouldn’t have let him trap me like that. I should’ve been smarter.”
“Ssh, darlin’” he said. “You want know something? I couldn’t be prouder of you right now.”