Page 46 of Love Unbound
Whirling away from her car, she stomped away several feet and then spun around, her breathing harsh. She paced back and forth several times, aware that Free was watching her closely. Tears stung her nose, and she stomped her foot angrily.
“I’m assuming you have an idea of who did this?” Free asked quietly, letting her have her moment of anger.
Jodi laughed, and it was an ugly sound. “Oh, yes.”
“Your ex-husband?” Free guessed, his brows furrowing into a deep V.
Nodding, she crossed her arms over her chest. Blowing out her breath heavily, she shook her head in disbelief. “I thought I had escaped all of this.”
“He’s done this before?” Free asked, his voice low, and Jodi was surprised at the fury simmering just beneath the surface.
Swiping angrily at the tears that leaked out of her eyes and slid down her cheeks, she nodded. “Twice when we were married. This makes the third.”
“Why did you marry this jackass, Jodi?” Free whispered, stepping forward until he stood directly in front of her. He placed his hands on her shoulders gently.
Jodi shook her head, whispering, “I don’t want to—”
Free shook his head, too, clasping her shoulders in his hands so she couldn’t hide from him. “No. I want to know. I’m cashing in on that promise to answer any question I have about this jackass.”
She sighed deeply, letting her shoulders drop in defeat. “You want to know about my relationship with Josh?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes, Jodi.”
Jodi shook her head, blowing her breath out in frustration. He wanted to hear all the awfulness, he was going to get it, unfiltered. “I honestly don’t know why I married him. I’ll be the first to admit I was tired of being alone. I… I still had feelings for you,” she admitted around a lump in her throat, and she thought she might die of embarrassment at the admission. She kept her eyes down, scared to look at him. “He was the first guy that made me feel like maybe I could… move on. I hadn’t really dated much. I was woefully naïve. One of Dad’s acquaintances introduced us one night, and I fell for the smoke screen that he presented. I don’t think I ever reallylovedhim, but I liked him. He was funny, seemed like a good person with friends that were very loyal, and seemed like he cared about me. He didn’t so much ask me to marry him as much as it was a mutual agreement. We were married less than four months after meeting. Like I said, I was… woefully naïve.”
Jodi laughed, though it wasn’t a pretty sound, and she continued, “He was a good showman, very charismatic. I didn’t see until then what he was really like; manipulative, cruel, jealous. He was looking for connections, anyone that could help him get a leg up. He wanted an entry into my dad’s company, thought being a son-in-law would get him an automatic job and a big promotion. When Dad didn’t even hire him, he was furious. He ended up choosing to go into real estate. He loved that he could still use my dad’s name for clout.”
Jodi took a deep breath, exhaling slowly before continuing. “I was working full time to get the bookstore up and running. Because he had put up a down payment for the store, he said it was my duty to pay for his real estate training. I was terribly unhappy, lonelier than ever. I realized I had made a huge mistake, but I didn’t know how to get myself out of it. I was so embarrassed.”
Digging the toe of her shoe into the gravel, she shrugged. Free was silent, letting her speak. “About nine months after we got married, I had decided to take a weekend off to myself to go to a writing convention downstate. Josh always hated my passion for writing. Said it took too much of my time, that he wouldn’t allow me to publish because he didn’t want to be associated with someone that writes ‘smut’. When I told him I was going to the convention, he told me I couldn’t go. He was convinced I was lying about where I was going and what I was doing, accused me of having an affair with some imaginary man. So, to try and stop me from going, he unhooked the car battery, and was beyond mad when he realized I’m not an idiot and could hook it back up. While he was out, I left for the convention. I was… punished… when I got home that Sunday evening. That’s when he started taking the battery out completely. He’d hide it, wouldn’t give it back until he’d given me the silent treatment for days, waited until I apologized.”
“Shane said he put his hands on you,” Free stated, his hands tightening on her shoulders slightly.
“Of course he told you,” Jodi breathed, stepping away, forcing his hands to drop to his sides. “He neverhitme, Free. He loves to be able to tell people he never hit me, because it was true. It was more… intimidation, than anything. Josh was almost always drunk. He’d back me into corners, lean over me if I was sitting, scream at me about how I never did enough for him, he complained that our sex life was a disappointment and that I didn’t ‘give it up’ enough, how I clearly didn’t know how lucky I was to be with someone that was such a great catch,” Jodi laughed darkly. Free’s jaw clenched tightly. “He hated that I had opened the bookshop, said it was a waste of time and money. When I told him I was going through with publishing in my own name, he was furious. My name, not my married name, but he was associated with it regardless. He screamed at me that I wasgoing to humiliate him. He was more worried about what would happen to him, how his name and his job would be affected by something he saw as a shameful hobby his wife had. It was a compounded fight, because I had also become aware of an affair he was having, that he had habitually lied about until I had solid proof, and even then he tried to convince me I was crazy…”
Jodi trailed off when Free’s hands tightened into fists at his sides. Shaking her head, she waved her hands dismissively. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear this—”
“What happened then, Jodi?” he asked roughly.
Watching his face, she shrugged and whispered, “I told him to leave me alone, that I was going to bed and he needed to sober up and that we would talk about everything when he was clear headed. He just kept on, and I said that if he didn’t leave me alone I was going to go to Mom and Dad’s for the night until he calmed down. Josh took my car keys out of my purse and put them in his desk so I couldn’t leave, and continued to scream at me. He backed me up against the bed. I kept telling him to leave me alone, to give me my keys back, but he just kept getting closer and more irate.”
“When he pushed me, I’d had enough, and I reached for my phone to call my parents to come get me because I didn’t want to stay in the house with him at that point,” she continued, staring out over the field, her gaze unfocused. She shivered despite the heat of the day. “He flew into a rage; I’d never seen him so volatile. He snatched my phone out of my hand and threw it across the room, then grabbed me by the arms and pinned me to the bed, held me down with his knee in my abdomen. But he neverhitme.”
Jodi wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged, and she could see the tension building in Free. He nodded for her to continue, though his features were stony.
“I couldn’t break his hold, I remember screaming for himto get off me, and then I managed to wriggle out from under him enough to try and use one leg to throw him off, though realistically I didn’t get loose until he was ready to let me go. I ran, picked up my phone from the floor and went outside, ran halfway down the street to get away. I called the police, dispatch stayed on the line with me until the officers got there. When they arrived, he tried telling them I broke his ribs by kneeing him in the side, completely unprovoked. They didn’t believe him; I had bruises on my arms and he didn’t have a mark on him, and he was stinking drunk, though he tried to tell them he’d only had one beer. It’s just what he does. Spins stories and tells lies to fit his narrative. They took him to jail for the night, but I was too scared to actually press charges.”
Jodi watched as Free’s jaw worked, though he stayed silent, letting her tell her story without interruption. “After that, I knew I needed out. My parents helped me move out that weekend, not that Dad was going to let me stay there after that. There wasn’t anything I could fix, not that I wanted to. When I gave him the divorce papers a few weeks later, he shouted at me, called me a stupid bitch and a cunt, and told me I would never find someone that would put up with me the way he did…”
When Jodi finally raised her eyes to Free’s, she was both nervous and awed at the fury that darkened his eyes and bunched his jaw.
“I’ll kill him,” he growled ominously.
Jodi shook her head slowly, her eyes softening. “He’s not even worth it, Free.”
Stepping forward, she slid her arms around his lean waist, resting her cheek against his chest. His arms encircled her, and she felt him sigh against the top of her head.
“How long were you separated before the divorce was final?” he asked.
