Hi, my love. I feel a bit poorly today so I will not go for a walk. I will call you before lunch anyway, but I'll stay in.

I sent the text message, and my heart was pounding in fear. What if he came home early? What if he understood that I was up to something by my voice when I called? Oh, God, how I wished I had friends!

Glad you're taking care of yourself. Love u babe xx

So it was one of those days. He had them sometimes, still, but they occurred more and more rarely...

He had lied that first time, when he promised it wouldn't happen again, because it id. The next week, in fact. 

He came home drunk once more. This time, his shirt buttons were done up badly, meaning he, or someone else, had undone them at some point during the day, since he definitely looked proper when he left that morning.

And he smelled of that cologne that was definitely not his nor mine.

I don't even remember the reason he had to beat me up that time. Nowadays, all the different times when he hit me when drunk where sort of blurred into one another. When he was drunk, he didn't really need an excuse to hit me. 

But then came the first time when he hit me sober.

"What's that?" he asked.

I was standing in our bedroom one Saturday morning, the spring sun shining in through the open windows. He hadn't come home drunk that Friday, and that made it a good, happy weekend. 

I was changing sheets. I had bought a pair of new ones, crispy white with bluebells. 

"I'm changing sheets", I said.

"Don't play dumb with me", he said darkly, and I was instantly frightened. What now? "I've never seen those sheets before."

"They're new. One of our old sets were torn, so I bought new ones." 

"Torn, how?"

Last time you came home drunk, you tore them in two to show me what you wanted to do to me. 

"In the washing machine", I lied. 

"And what was wrong with the model we had? Why did you change to this crap? Does someone you know have them? Have you been to someone else's home?"

"What the actual-"

He slapped me in the face.

I had always seen a slap to the face a weak and meagre way of fighting, but it was not. It made me feel as if my head would explode. Suddenly, I was down on the floor.

The drunken version of him had stopped apologising long ago. Sober him, however...

"God. Madara. Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Of course I'm fucking hurt!

"I'm fine", I said.

"Let me-"

"I said, I'm fine!"

He jerked at my outburst, and I shrank back, realising what a big mistake it was that I had made when screaming at him.

He didn't hit me again then, but just left, stating that he wanted to burn down the apartment with both me and him in it because I was so worthless that the world would be a better place without me. 

I leaned back against the bedroom wall, hugged the new, perfectly fine sheets to me, closed my eyes, and imagined I was somewhere else. 

Behind my closed eyes, I was back in the bar where we had met, but I did not talk to him; I talked to the bartender instead. The bartender who had seemed so kind, who I had planned on flirting with before he interrupted. 

And behind my closed eyes, the bartender treated me with love and respect and asked my opinion and took it like a man and allowed me to work and encouraged me to try new things and followed me along when I went to see my friends just to see who they were.

Tears streamed down my face as I married that man in my dreams.

The day after, he sent me a bouquet of a hundred red roses while he was at work and I was at home. The scent of them made me want to throw up. To this day, I couldn't handle the scent of roses. Then, he took me out to dinner when he came home. I softened up to him, forgave him, even, just as he knew I would.

"Madara", he said at the restaurant. "I want to show you I really mean it. When I say it won't happen again."

And right there, in the middle of the restaurant, he went down on one knee and offered a black velvet box with a beautiful diamond ring.

"Will you marry me?"

I hid my face in my hands. Of all the tacky ways to propose he could have chosen from... A restaurant?! How tasteless!

The people around us thought I was hiding my face because I was stunned in my happiness, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. I was terrified.

No, I thought.

"Of course", I said.

I didn't say yes. Yes seemed too intimate. Yes was something I would save for when I really meant it.

He beat me up again the day after, when I wasn't wearing the ring when he came home from the gym.

"I'm doing the dishes", I tried to explain. "I don't want to ruin the ring."

"Why not have it around your neck in a chain? Flaunting yourself around, not showing you're taken." I just gaped. I was indoors; who the hell was there to flaunt around for? But at this point, I had given up trying to defend myself. "You want to keep getting attention from men despite having me, don't you?"

"I'm out for only thirty minutes a day!" I protested.

And there was the slap again.

I learned not to defend myself when he said nasty things to me. Not to go against him when he made terrible claims. I could sometimes escape a beating by pretending I was dumb. He seemed to like it when I hinted at being stupid. Oh, you don't want me to get a library card because books can inspire me to infidelity? Why hadn't I thought of that? You don't want me to go to the beach because there will be bare-chested men there? Of course! You don't think we should get a television because the only man I should look at is you? Good and valid point! 

I lived in misery, yet I stayed afloat by just shutting off my emotions. What choice did I have? 

He never talked about marriage, for which I was glad. He seemed happy just to have a marking of ownership in me in the form of an engagement ring. Not that he needed one. He constantly talked down to me, telling me I was ugly, telling me I was childish and unlovable. He never let me forget that if I left him, I would have nobody, and since I didn't have a job, I couldn't take care of myself, either, so I shouldn't even try.

"The roof over your head. The food on your table. It's all from me. You would die without me", he would remind me as much as he could.

And I believed him, even if I was dying with him as well.

Now, I was doing something dangerous. Something that could have me killed. But if so, so be it.

I left my phone on the kitchen table so that he would believe I was at home when he checked the tracking app. I prayed he wouldn't call me; he very rarely did in the afternoon. Then, I locked the door and left.

I walked to the photo studio Hashirama had booked for us. He said it belonged to a colleague of his, and it was situated in a very stylish warehouse. 

I went to the top floor and took a deep breath. A million thoughts went through my mind after I had dared to knock. What if he knew I was here with this photographer? What if Hashirama was actually hired by him to trick me? To put up a poster where I usually walked to see if I took the bait? 

My face went hot, my hands went ice cold. I was just about to turn away and run when the door opened, and...

And I gasped. 

Because there stood the kindest-looking man I had ever seen in my entire life.