Your husband is already standing there.
Ethan Morrow, thirty-seven, handsome in the way polished men can remain handsome long after kindness leaves their faces, fills the doorway with pure accusation. His jaw is tight. His eyes are hot with the kind of anger that has long since stopped being spontaneous and become ritual. He doesn’t ask why you’re late. He doesn’t look at your exhausted face and wonder what happened. He doesn’t see a wife. He sees a target that has made him wait.
“Do you know what time it is, you useless bitch?”
The slap lands before the sentence fully settles.
Your head jerks sideways so hard the hallway blurs. A white burst of sound explodes in your left ear. Your bag slips from your hand and crashes to the floor, scattering your wallet, your lip balm, your phone, the little packet of crackers you never had time to eat on break. The metallic taste in your mouth arrives a second later, sharp and familiar. He grabs your upper arm hard enough to bruise and drags you across the threshold.
“My mother, my brother, and Ashley will be here in twenty minutes,” he snarls. “Get in the kitchen and cook. And fix your face. I am not being embarrassed because you can’t act like a woman.”
You don’t cry.
That would have been months ago, maybe even years ago, before you learned that tears around Ethan are like gasoline near a stove. They don’t soften him. They feed him. So you nod once, because nodding is faster than speaking, and go to the kitchen while your heart hammers so hard it feels like it’s trying to get out of your ribs.
