Free Skin Like Dawn by Jade Alyse Page B

else to stay.” 
    “Excuse me?” 
    “You heard me. So, all delusions of you christening that bed in our new house should just go away now. Goodnight, Brandon Greene.” 
     
     
    SHE WALKED INTO THEIR BEDROOM SLOWLY. Their new sleigh bed was there. They’d picked it out together.  At a reasonable price, no less.  It reminded her of how compromising they could be, if the right environment called for it.  
    But not right now. They were on two different pages. 
    And where the hell did it come from?
    She could’ve cried. She’d blame her pregnancy.  
    She could’ve stomped a little; beat the shit out of him. 
    But she just locked the bedroom door and crawled into bed. 
    Too much was changing all at once. She’d take it in with silence. 
     
     
    THE NEXT MORNING, BRANDON SAID NOTHING OF THEIR FIGHT. He didn’t even move in to hug or kiss her. 
    That’s how she knew he was serious. 
     
     

MATEO
     
    UNDER A PILE OF BRANDON’S BUSINESS SUITS, she found a small stack of her med school books a few weeks later.  They sat there, dust collecting and tattered, as though desperate to be discovered, luring her eyes in with no remorse.  She could’ve left them there on the floor in the guest bedroom.  It would have been a simple solution to a recent past she continued to ignore.  But then a bit of organic sunlight spilled into the room, illuminating a couple of words on the covers, reigniting her shelved belief of “divine intervention”.  For a moment she though that Brandon had left them there for her to find intentionally.  He was thoughtful that way.  He knew that she’d grow tired of seeing his pile of unused clothes sitting there, and that she’d eventually want to pick them up.  After all, her own boredom got to her sometimes, enough so that, by lunchtime, she’d cleaned up more than she needed to.  
    She walked a little closer to them.  Something in her belly thumped at her.  She flattened her palm against herself, gazing downward, swallowing thickly, imagining a time when it was just her and her own goals, her passion, her future.  She closed her eyes slowly, fighting the urge to weep at her own helplessness.  
    She could take Zuly up on her offer, but what would that bring her? More strife and struggle in her relationship than she was prepared to deal with?  Brandon had made it very clear about what he expected from her - and she was far too weak to even think about fighting back.  Storming out and collecting her thoughts was her only defense, really; and she waited for Brandon to come running after her and apologize.  Like he always did.  
    How sick was that? 
    She picked up one book and began leafing through it; a picture wedge in between pages tumbled out.  It was an image of her with her sisters, taken by her mother at some point, when they couldn’t have been any older than middle school aged.  It was a reminder, really; of why she was doing it in the first place.  Sometime long ago, she had fallen in love with the idea of saving her family singlehandedly.  Being the hero that her “somewhere estranged and lost” father, Raphael could never measure up to.  
    She often thought about him and where it all went wrong, suddenly filled with anger, spilling over the edge of her.  She could stop it, of course, but she often wallowed in it, unsure of how she would really feel if she finally let it go.  Let her father go.  He’d disappeared when she was on ten years old; and with it her resolve to ever trust that men would always come through, no matter the circumstances or strife.  
    Even Brandon.  
    She now punished her own husband with silent resentment; pulling away emotionally when they made love, refusing to exhibit unscathed vulnerability.  
    What the hell would come of it if she did?  
    With Brandon due home in an hour or so, she reached for her cell phone and pressed the “talk” button.  
    “Hey, you.”  Zuly’s voice always sounded so pleasant and