She looks from me to Gabe, who is now rubbing his chin.
“Fuck Lauren, fucking hell. She hit me Jo. Its fine, I'm fine.” He pushes himself up on his elbows and our eyes meet. He has the sexiest smile on his face and I almost melt.
“Fuck Lauren. That was so fucking hot, I love it when you get pissed off with me like that, fuck you can punch.” His hand is rubbing over his jaw and he continues to laugh. I’m in bits and he lays there and laughs.
“You're a sick, sado, pervi liar! That wasn’t meant to be hot, you nob, you broke my fucking hand and you broke my heart you lying arsewipe. I know what you did, I read the text messages.”
Jo is standing staring at us with her hair dripping wet and a towel wrapped around her. “Are you right in the head? You two really are made for each other. Lauren, play nice, Gabe, if I find out you fucked that blonde whorebag, I will deck you myself darl. Now the pair of you, sort your shit out please and don’t bleed or have sex on my carpet.”
And he winks… He winks and smiles at me when Jo says the word sex. The bang on the head has obviously wobbled something loose. He thinks he can make everything better with sex, if only life were that simple.
Jo turns and leaves us. I wipe my angry tears away with the back of my left hand and go into the kitchen and run my right hand under the cold tap. It's just a little swollen and doesn't hurt hardly at all now.
I feel him behind me, before I can speak, he says, “Lauren, let’s get some ice on that.”
I finally look up into his baby blues and yes it truly is as painful as I feared, but there is one thing I have learnt about myself these past weeks, I'm stronger than I ever imagined, and I call on everything I have to get the words needed out of my mouth.
“Don't you dare touch me; it will take a lot more than ice to put this right Gabe.”
“Stop being a martyr Lauren, that needs looking at, it must be painful.”
“Gabe. You know what, you're right; my hand hurt. But it's not hurting anywhere near as much as my heart is right now, you let me down. You, the person who has spent the past weeks convincing me to trust you, telling me you would protect me and these past days telling me how much you love me. When the first big test came, you were gone, you left me alone in a house, where just the night before, I was assaulted, you left me there on my own, you didn't tell me where you were going and you didn't find out during the rest of the day if I was okay. You went off without a second thought and did your own thing. Then you came home with another woman, covered in her lipstick and so fucking blind drunk that you couldn't even stand up. You let me down. So please don't touch me, please don't talk to me or show concern for me, it's too late, I would just like you to go, I will arrange to pick up my stuff over the next couple of days.”
I don’t mean it, I don’t want him to go anywhere but he has broken my heart and right now this is about survival, I need him to go so that I can get my head around it all, I need to find out the truth and I need. No – I want to make him suffer like I am and if that means I have to suffer a little bit more, then so be it, I’m a woman right? We have cutting our nose off to spite our face down to a fine art.
I turn and grab a tea towel and get a glass full of ice from the dispenser and tip it onto the tea towel and despite the pain I use both hands to tie the corners together and gently lay my homemade ice pack on top of my hand. All the while I can feel his eyes on me. I finally pluck up the courage to turn and face him, he looks terrible. But still totally hot and gorgeous and sexy. My heart melts just like the ice on my hand. Just a very little. He is staring at the floor, he has no shoes on and he is tracing an invisible pattern onto the tiles with his toes. He looks up at me and instantly takes my breath away, he has two days stubble on his jaw and I so want to run my tongue over it, right into that dimple on his chin. I blink a couple of times to try and clear that thought from my mind. He has dark circles under his eyes and he looks drained. Serves him bloody right. Hope he still has a hangover from hell. Hope he's suffering and continues to all day. Yeah, I'm a bitch... And???
“I'm so ashamed Lauren. I fucked up big time. I am so sorry, I love you and I want to make this right, what can I do, how do I make this better?”
“Tell me the truth Gabe, did you fuck her?”
He looks down at the floor and his hand comes up to his hair and he grips it. What’s left of my heart stops in my chest. The cold from the ice on my hand travels through my body, through my veins. I have to swallow down the cry of pain that wants to escape from my mouth and I think my legs are going to give way. He's going to say yes.