But I Love Him by Amanda Grace Read Free Book Online Page A

an ache that makes my whole body weak.
    I want to be forgiven for my mistakes. I want them to wash away every day and I want a clean slate. I don’t want them to stack up higher and higher, like a house of cards ready to topple with the breeze.
    I want him to leave behind everything from his childhood and look only at the future we have together. I want him to focus on his job and his apartment and pretend he doesn’t have parents at all, that I’m his family and we can find happiness and success together and nothing can touch him.
    I want it to be like I thought it was going to be when we met. Like I thought it was going to be the first time I said those three words and realized I meant them.
    But he will never let go of his pain. And that is all I want for him.
    August 30
    One year
    I’m rocking back and forth, still sitting on the ground wrapped in a blanket, when I hear it: a car door. The telltale squeak tells me it is Connor’s truck. I’d know that sound anywhere.
    My heart seems to spasm in my chest, first half-stopping, and then galloping off in a thunderous roar. My chest seems to heave and pulsate with my heartbeats. Nausea wells up.
    Connor is back.
    I’m not even sure how long he was gone. I lost all sense of time since I landed here, amidst the mess and carnage. Has it been minutes or hours? Is he back because he’s still angry—or has he realized what he’s done?
    This is so much worse than anything before. He must know that. Does he think he can walk in and apologize and hold me?
    Would I let him?
    I look up at the door. The chain is still locked. So is the deadbolt, which Connor doesn’t have a key to because he lost it. He can’t get in, not until I let him in. Not until I am ready.
    Unless he does something crazy like break the window. Would he do that? Is he that angry? Or maybe he’s worried. Maybe he knows he went too far this time.
    I listen to his footsteps approach, and with each step my breathing gets more erratic.
    I am afraid of him.
    I am truly afraid.
    May 18
    Eight months, eighteen days
    I can’t figure out what set him off.
    He broke two dishes while trying to wash them. That was the start. And now he rakes his hands across the wall and knocks all the pictures off, and when I go to pick them up, he turns on me.
    “Get out,” he says. He spits the words at me. “I’m so sick of looking at you.”
    I don’t know where he expects me to go. If I walk through the front door of my mom’s house tonight, she’ll take one look at my red eyes and know he caused it again, and that will make things even harder. She’ll want to know everything. And I can’t explain any of this. Not even if I had all day. No one will understand this.
    I crouch on the ground and pick up shards of glass, ignoring the malice in his voice. “Just let me pick this up. You’re not even wearing shoes.”
    But he ignores me and steps into the glass and pushes me over with his leg, and I can’t catch my balance before I fall and knock my head into the wall and a flash of pain blinds me.
    “I don’t want you to see me like this today. Just get out,” he says again.
    I breathe in and out slowly, stalling for time. “Connor, just go sit down, okay? Just go play your guitar or—”
    “Fuck that stupid guitar!”
    I swallow and fight the urge to look up at him. His face is so ugly when he’s this angry. I don’t like to see it. It haunts me, like a ghost that hangs around even when his anger is gone. I can see it behind his eyes, even when he smiles. It reminds me that there will always be more of this, that it will happen again and again and again until I can figure out how to be everything he needs me to be.
    I swallow hard and get my feet back under me and stand up, doing it slowly, like I don’t know what I’ll find once I’m on my feet again.
    And he watches me, calculating, and I know he will have something to say when I get to him.
    But he surprises me. He doesn’t say anything. He just pushes