Love Unbroken

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Three years prior

No one ever told you that you could make stupid decisions when your mind and heart were screaming at you every step of the way. That’s what Emma thought as she stood with her back to the locked bathroom door, flinching with each strike of a fist against the door.

“Stupid b***h! Open the damn door, or I’ll break it down!”

Miracle of all miracles, the bathroom door was fairly sturdy and had a decent lock. Despite Greg pounding on the door for a solid five minutes and trying to wrench it open, the door held its ground. He gave up and left the apartment, slamming the front door on his way out. Emma crept to the window, remaining in the shadows, and cautiously looked out to the parking lot.

She watched Greg shift from the person he was inside the privacy of their home to his public persona as he offered to help a neighbor carry groceries inside. Nausea welled. She was disgusted with his façade and more disgusted with herself for staying with him as long as she had. She waited, her breath quiet and slow, barely moving, until he got into his car and drove away. He was most likely headed to one of his preferred bars where he would drink and send a series of texts to her. The texts would start angry and attacking, shift to apologetic and then syrupy sweet. He’d come home drunk and fall into bed. She would lie on the far side of the bed and wish herself away, wondering night after night just how she ended up here.

Tonight was different though. After Emma was certain Greg was gone, she slipped out of the bathroom, moving quickly and quietly. Within minutes, she walked outside with a small duffel bag that contained all that she could carry with her from this life. The drive to the Boston airport was several hours away. She and Greg lived in western Connecticut, but she’d decided on Boston because Greg wasn’t that creative. If he tried to find her trail, he’d start at Bradley International Airport in Hartford and then perhaps New York. Pushing further north would hopefully throw him off. Roughly two hours into her drive, she exited off of the highway in Massachusetts and turned into the used car dealership she’d visited last week. They’d already drawn up the paperwork to purchase her car.

Emma had to give the dealership points for efficiency. Inside of another fifteen minutes, she was walking outside, her old car no longer hers. With a car rental place another block away, she drove away in a rental car, trying and failing to push thoughts of Greg out of her mind. When they’d met, she’d fallen for the charming, solicitous man he’d seemed. The first few months of their relationship had been marred by a few of his explosive episodes of anger, though he never touched her. It was only after she moved in with him that he became violent. She’d become the master at hiding bruises. Although, and this is the part that she hated to contemplate, Greg was adept at not hitting her in obvious places. He never struck her face.

Emma had been married to Greg for over two years now. She’d never imagined that she could feel so isolated from her family, but the unease her parents gave off when they visited was strong and pushed her further into herself. Greg had family in Connecticut, so she’d moved with him, too far away from her parents in North Carolina. Prior to her relationship with Greg, Emma had been close to her parents. No matter how hard she tried to stop it, Greg managed to chip away at her connection to them. There was always one reason after another why it wasn’t a good time to visit. He interrupted her calls with them, usually for innocuous reasons.

Emma had always felt lucky when it came to parents. She had known for as long as she could remember that she was adopted and knew this made her special. She had no recollection of how her parents originally told her she was adopted, but she’d turned it into a fairy tale—that she’d been chosen by them. And they’d been amazing parents, always supportive. Until Greg. Now she felt anxious calling them, worried they judged her, worried they knew what was really happening with Greg. She also knew that Greg would likely try to find her if she went to them just now, so going there wasn’t an option.

Out of the blue, she’d finally dug up the information on her biological family that her parents had given her years ago and posted on an online forum. A few weeks ago, she’d gotten a response from a woman named Hannah who might be her biological sister—in Alaska of all places. This possible link from so far away was a doorway out of her situation. Hope blossomed in the barren soil of her heart. Though she wondered every other minute if she was crazy and if she could pull it off, she booked the ticket to Alaska. As the plane lifted into the sky, Emma felt free in a way she hadn’t in years.