Pain Chic

I'm absent in the present, dwelling in the past, even as my family sits at the formal dining table and mutters about in bleak conversation. Lexie is telling Jake all about soccer and her plans to go to soccer camp this summer. This will be a short debate, though Jake would prefer she be on the campaign trail with us - happy family illusions and all that jazz - she'll win in the end. She has Jake wrapped around her little finger in a way Reny never could.

He may be, and is, a less than perfect husband; there is nothing between us but the padding we've created, but he's a fantastic father to his children. He dotes upon Lexie and Walker with the love only a father can possess.

But not Reny, and this has kept me firmly against giving him more of myself - my heart - than I already have. There's little love lost between the two of them. They're fire and ice, and the older she gets the more she knows.

Reny harbors no ill will toward the man she calls dad, but she grew up knowing he wasn't hers biologically. She didn't press the topic of her father, because she saw the way my face fell and the tears filled my eyes back then. She saw enough of it to stop asking all together. I see the flicker of envy in her eyes when he listens to Lexie tell her tales and only acknowledges Reny's accomplishments with a "good job."

When dinner is over, the plates are cleared, and the kids head up to bed, I know I must speak with Jake. I've been putting it off, trying to deal with it on my own, but the time has come to involve him.

I rap on the door of his office and wait for permission to enter. The room is stuffy, the scent of cigars and brandy linger. He's such a politician already.

"What do you need?" he asks without looking up from his computer.

This is the bluntness I've come to live with; live by. "Just because I want to talk to you, doesn't mean I need anything, Jake." It's kind of a truth, kind of a lie.

"Everybody needs something. You're usually looking for a new pair of shoes or something, or permission for a weekend away. Am I right?"

Actually, he is. I am going away for the weekend, but it's less about permission than telling. "I'm taking Reny to the beach this weekend. Just she and I and the Carolina sun," I say. It's mostly true. I leave out the part about Edward. I don't really know if I can say it aloud to Jake yet.

Finally, he looks up. Black eyes bore a hole into my skull. Slowly, he lowers his reading glasses from his nose. "Would this have anything to do with a Marine you've met with recently?" he asks.

Shit. "No - I ..." I don't know what the fuck to say.

"Do you think I don't know that you're fucking around? You think I care? You think I don't know that you're a whore and always have been?" He rises from his chair and I back up quickly, wanting, needing an escape, but my back hits the solid door. "You go fuck the jarhead and I'll spend my time with Leah and Tanya and Jane." All women on his campaign committee. Lovely.

"I haven't touched a man in all the years we've been married!" I shout.

"No? But you fucking ruined my life by getting knocked up by that asshole. You make me look like an idiot because she's obviously nothing like me." He's in my face and his fist is under my chin, ready to do damage. "See. You're a whore, Bells! A whore! And you are not taking Reny with you. Not a fucking chance."

"She's meeting her father," I insist, but it's gasoline not water to the fire in my husband. He grabs me by the hair and throws me onto the leather sofa I picked out for him on his birthday last year. "Stop! You're hurting me, Jake!" I shriek.

He doesn't care. He's blind with rage and hurt and anger, and I know this side of him well. He's pushing down my yoga pants, tearing at my lace thong, taking what he believes is his to take.

"Stop it!" I yell. But he doesn't. "Stop. Jake, please stop!" I cry out over and over until it's nothing more and sobs lipping through my chest. I'm his wife and he'll have what he sees as his.

When he finished, and I'm aching and sore and crying on the fine leather, he pushes me off his dick so I fall forward.

"Go. Get the fuck out and take her with you. Show her what a bitch you are, but tell her she better not forget she's mine. She may be his DNA, but she's mine, and she will never be a whore like you or I'll destroy you both."

xxxxxx

A/N:

I cried while I wrote this.

It's all gray.

Abuse colors the world with bruises, and the story you think you know may only be the tip of the iceberg.