The Truth About Love

Read The Truth About Love for Free Online

Book: Read The Truth About Love for Free Online
Authors: Emma Nichols
the thermostat.  Finally, he disappeared into the bedroom and I had to rely on my ears to tell me what was happening next.
    It didn’t take long before I heard the sound of shattering glass.  Was it a picture frame?  Was it a mirror?  Like we needed any more bad luck.  There was banging and grunting, thudding and crunching.  After a brief time, there was silence.  Was it too much to hope he had tired himself out and was finally sleeping off the rage?  I listened closely, stuck on the couch while waiting for Kylie’s feed to finish.
    Then I heard it, the distinctive rattling of the pill bottle being shaken or moved.  He was in the bathroom.  The rage would pass, but I worried he had finally decided to end it all as he had often threatened before. While my better judgment would have me staying far out of the line of fire, my love for this crazy man had me pausing Kylie’s feed, unhooking her, and rushing to see what he was doing.
    The moment I reached the bedroom door, I stopped.  This was different.  This was so much worse than any rage ever before.  Obviously, the sound of shattering glass had come from the bedroom windows.  He had, apparently, broken them with Kylie’s IV pole.  Her crib was flipped.  There was broken glass all over my side of the room.  His side was no neater.  There were holes all over the wall and ran the width of the room.  Clearly they had been made with the vacuum, which lay on the floor in pieces, and with the IV pole, since one of the wheels was embedded in the wall while the rest of it was bent and broken in the bathroom.
    “Nice,” I grumbled.   Once I had taken in the extent of the destruction, I rushed to the bathroom where I found Shane collecting some things.  He had a pair of boots in one hand and was stuffing them with his toiletries.  He must have stuck the pills in his pockets, since they were nowhere to be found.   “ What are you doing?”
    “Leaving.”  Shane refused to look at me.
    My shoulders heaved as I tried to hide my sigh.  “Why are you leaving?”
    He turned and snarled at me.  “Because you are such a bitch!”
    I stepped back in surprise.  Shaking my head in disbelief, I finally responded as I moved to exit the room.   “ Why am I a bitch?”
    His hands waved angrily.  “Why did you have to bring up dinner?  You’re mean!”
    Though I had managed to keep my cool thus far, my patience was beyond tried at the moment.   “ For the love of God and for the last time, I never mentioned dinner.”   I stopped just inside the bedroom, turned and looked at him.  Kylie was on my hip, had been throughout the entire exchange.  She was simply watching everything unfold, completely unconcerned.  As long as I remained calm, she would too.  She could handle anything as long as she had me.
    Staring at Shane, I waited for his reaction.  Without saying another word, he bent and picked up a stack of picture frames I had leaned against the wall and he’d promised to hang above our bed weeks ago.  Then he threw them at me, Frisbee style.  Luckily he was sluggish and off his game.  These weren’t the average pictures.  Nope.  Two of these were the roughly two foot by two foot wooden square frames, painted with a quote on them, a small 4x6 picture in the centers.  The other was our wedding frame, 20 inch square everyone had signed, and now was covered by glass, meant to protect those heartfelt wishes from our guests for posterity.
    They came at me like giant throwing stars, separating as they drew nearer.  They flew low, hovering barely a foot off the ground.  Though I managed to dodge two, one of the three hit my calf, scratching my leg and creating what was sure to be a huge lingering bruise.  Behind me, in the hall, our wedding frame hit the wall and shattered, glass spilling out and scattering several feet.  Without waiting for him to say anything, I left the room, careful to avoid the shards of glass and chunks of sheetrock littering

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