“Are you sure?”

“I am. It’s up ahead. No one’s out here anyway. Thank you for coming to my aid earlier.”

“Thanks for coming to mine,” he replies. “I’ll be in Key West through the weekend if you need anything.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He gives me a sad look as though we both know that isn’t strictly true.

“Are you sure you don’t need patching up?” I gesture at the general vicinity of his torso.

“I’ll be fine,” John replies, echoing my earlier statement. He takes a cigarette and a lighter from his pocket. “I’ll wait here a time, make sure everything is all right.”

“Good evening.”

“Good evening,” John replies with a faint inclination of his head.

I walk the last few yards to the cottage alone. When I round the bend to the building I call home, I spy a soft glow in one of the windows.

I grip the doorknob, twisting the handle as a chill slides down my spine.

With drink, there’s a line, a tipping point between being drunk and dangerous and being too drunk to be of much harm to anyone. I pray Tom is simply passed out, his limbs sprawled out on the cottage floor.

The main room is dark, save for the glow of a kerosene lamp in the corner.

The front door shuts behind me.

The scent of bourbon hits me first, turning my stomach, the air heavy with it as though if you lit a match everything would simply go up in flames.

I swallow, cursing the loudness of my heavy footsteps as I head toward the bedroom.

I stifle a scream.

Tom’s positioned right in front of the doorway, his body half in the shadows, a bottle dangling from his fingertips, half empty.

“Who walked you home?” he demands.

I quake at the boom in his voice, the sound of it bouncing off the walls of the little cottage, seeping inside me as the tremor grows.

“Wh-What are you talking about?”

How could he know?

“I heard voices.” He rises from the rickety chair, the bottle abandoned with a thunk on the floor, the amber-colored liquid spilling over the floorboards.

It’ll be hell to clean later, but Tom doesn’t like a mess.

He moves closer, crowding me, his frame blocking out the light thrown off by the kerosene lamp. “Don’t you lie to me.”

Between the late hour, the full day of work, and the babe, my response doesn’t come as quickly as it should, my mind and body sluggish.

“There were men outside Ruby’s when I left work. They were drunk. Hassling me.” I take a deep breath. Tom, like the rest of the town, distrusts the veterans. “Men working on the highway. One of Ruby’s regulars saw it happen and came to my aid. He offered to walk me home so they wouldn’t follow me.”

Tom takes a step toward me, and I move without realizing it, my hip colliding with the sharp corner of the table in the kitchen.

My heart pounds.

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know,” I lie.

“You said he was a local.”

“He’s a regular,” I reply, dancing around the “local” term.

“Who are his people?” Tom challenges. “Perhaps I need to have a word with him.”

“I don’t know. He mostly keeps to himself.”

“Now that’s not exactly true, is it? Seems like he wanted something with my wife.”

“I’m nine months pregnant,” I whisper, the plea in my voice unmistakable.

When we first married, I thought it was sweet that he worried about me so much, that he cared where I was. But the more out of control the world around us became, the tighter Tom held on to things at home, until he became more jailer than husband and I realized it wasn’t sweet at all.

“It was nothing,” I babble. “He was doing me a kindness.”

Tom raises his hand.

“Please.”

I scan the room, searching for something to use to defend myself, something—

Tom drops his hand to his side.

“He take an interest in you?”

My head wobbles, my teeth chattering.

He moves so quickly, his reflexes so fast, that I wonder if he’s been putting on this whole time, if he isn’t nearly as drunk as he’s pretending to be.

His big hand spans the width of my neck, lifting my chin up so our gazes meet.

“Don’t you lie to me.”

“I’m not. I’m not lying. I promise. Just let me go.”

“Who do you belong to?”

Tears spring in my eyes, fear and shame surging inside me.

“You.”

“That’s right. You better not forget it. I hear stories about you carrying on with men at Ruby’s, and you’ll never see that baby again. Do you understand me?”

The pressure of his hand against my face jerks my head up and down, until he releases me with an impatient noise.

I take a step back, the reprieve from his hands a welcome relief, and Tom grabs me, clamping down on my wrist, his fingers digging into the old bruises.

He likes to do this: let me go so that I have a taste of freedom, only to snap the leash again so I am back under his control.

“It was wrong,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have let him walk me home. I’m sorry.”

Tom’s nails dig into my skin, the scent of him sending a wave of nausea through me, my stomach rebelling at the odor of fish, salt, sweat, and bourbon.

Please don’t hurt the baby.

Tom’s grip tightens, and my knees buckle, my vision narrowing, a tunnel of blackness greeting me as the pain becomes more than I can bear.

“You won’t see him again. He tries to talk to you again, you tell me and I’ll handle it.”

I don’t bother arguing with Tom about the difficulty of my keeping such a promise, the likelihood that John will come into the restaurant again; at this point, I would say or do anything to stop the pain shooting through me.

His grip on my wrist tightens.

I fall to the floor, cradling my stomach with my free hand, and Tom releases me.

The baby kicks.

A tear trickles down my cheek.

How did we go from a couple embracing on the docks, love beating in my breast, to this?