Free Tainted Love: contemporary womens fiction love story and family saga (Behind Closed Doors Book 1) by Erin Cawood Page A

wasn’t pregnant anymore.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Seventeen
     
    Oh, my baby girl. She's never played ice hockey since. She won’t even go on the ice anymore. How do you convince a twelve-year-old she wasn't to blame for my accident? I fell over something she left lying around. How do you do that without telling her I was running away from her dad? I was running away from her hero.
    And of course, I was back to being the stupid bitch, the crazy whore and the inane slut, because he had to bury another son. He didn't give a damn about me. He saw Dylan, held him, said goodbye. I was unconscious through the entire thing. He arranged the funeral. I didn’t get an opinion. Not that I could have given one even if he’d have asked. I was numb for the entire experience.
    I tried to piece together the information. There was no way Cal would hurt me, so why did I run away? Whatever happened in our bedroom spooked me but what was it? I had no idea.
    Things just got worse for us, and if I'm honest... our marriage should have ended there. But I didn't see it back then. There was too much pain. There was too much anger and too much pushing important issues aside, because we either didn’t want to deal with them or because of the children.
    My heart breaks every time I think of Georgia back then. She was devastated. She burst into tears every time she saw me. She shouldered the blame for the death of her baby brother, for my injuries, and Cal didn't want to deal with it. He didn’t want to face it. He couldn’t see her in so much pain. He buried himself in his work and I had to beg him to talk to her about it, just once, just to see if she had post-traumatic stress. He was the expert and he was the only one who could reach her. He was her hero, after all.
    Of course, when he realized how damaged she was by it all, it cost me. My irresponsible fall downstairs had not only killed our son, but traumatized our daughter. He made me pay for it. No, three cracked ribs, a broken leg, and a miscarriage hadn't been a high enough price for Cal. He was furious, angrier than I’d ever seen him before but still, I wasn’t expecting the broken nose he added to my debt notice, too.
    I know... and I'm sorry... I lied to you. I said it was the concussion; that I went dizzy and I fainted in the shower. Even then I knew what was happening, with refreshed memories of his hands clutching at my hair. I remembered the day in the study when he had his hands around the top of my throat. I saw that day on the beach with his body crushing against mine. I saw marks of years gone by, saw the bruises still to come, and no matter how hard I tried, they just wouldn't go away.
    How did I explain it when you found me sobbing in the bathtub? When your first reaction was to fetch your hero, Cal? So I told you everything was okay. I sucked it up and I put on a brave face. I told you not to worry about me, to focus on your scholarship at the pre-med college of your choice. Didn’t I say every marriage had their make or break defining moments? This was just one of ours. When I placed it all in perspective, things really didn't seem so bad.
    Of course, right now D, I’m ignoring the fact it wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay. I can’t go back and talk about those days. We have no photographs and there aren’t any fond memories for us to share. And once again, I’m jealous of my husband because he has something I don’t, and I wish I knew why. Because until then, I’ll never be able to think about the baby I never held, and never saw, and not... not… well, maybe another time.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eighteen
     
    June 1993
     
    There's always been one thing about my marriage I've always been proud of; our ability to create fireworks in the bedroom. I know that sounds really pretentious, but it’s never gone away. You’ll have probably heard from married friends about falling into routines and only having sex on special occasions, or maybe ‘being on