Page 1 of Hurry Up And Wait

1

ISLA

“That was a shit movie,”Shawn grumbled, grabbing my arm as we left the theater. “We’d have been better off seeing one of your rom-coms.”

I rolled my eyes and ignored the anger in his voice. What happened to my loving husband? Oh yeah. He fled the moment he made detective. I tried and tried to make things work between us, but he was so damn grouchy all the time, and I was fucking sick of it. I just wanted things to end.

But this wasn’t the time or place to make that happen.

“It’s not the end of the world.”

He snorted. “Yeah, because you don’t work the hours I do. You work from home and set your own schedule. It doesn’t fucking matter if you waste time.”

There was no point in arguing with him. Shawn had become so jaded over the last several years. Nothing I did was good enough for him, and it didn’t help that I made more money than him “sitting at home on my ass” as he liked to call it. I started my own graphic design company and built it from the ground up. At first, Shawn was proud of me for that. He used to brag to his friends about how amazing it was that I did so well.

And then his friends found out that I was earning twice as much money as Shawn, and that’s when it all went to shit. His friends teased him relentlessly, and the longer it went on, the greater the resentment grew. I was no longer someone he was proud of, but the butt of every joke to make himself feel better.

“Can we not do this tonight?” I sighed.

“Not do this?” he snapped, stopping in his tracks. He grabbed my arm and shoved me up against a brick wall, his eyes gleaming with hatred. He never used to be like this, but then, I shouldn’t be surprised that our relationship went south. I was generally a happy person, and I thought he was also, when we first married. As I stared at him now, I wondered if I ever truly knew my husband.

“You know, the argument part. Can we just go home and forget about this?”

He huffed out a sadistic laugh. “That’s all life is to you, right? Just forget about it and move on.”

“Well, yeah,” I snapped. “Not everything is a Greek tragedy. A bad movie is just a bad movie. There’s no point in getting this upset over it.”

He ground his teeth, his eyes filling with more hate than I’d ever seen before. He just couldn’t stand the fact that I was a happy person. It grated on him and twisted him into a person I never knew. And with every year that passed, the Shawn I married slipped away and was replaced by this incredibly arrogant, insanely jealous, and hateful man.

“You used to like to argue with me.”

“That was when I could actually win an argument,” I countered.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means…it means I’m done, Shawn.” I sighed in resignation. This was not when I wanted to drop this particular bombshell on him, but I couldn’t take another night of this. “You’ve changed so much, and the man I married is no longer here. I’ve tried to work it out with you, but you just can’t let go of this insane rage. I’m done.”

His grip on my arms grew tighter as he stared at me. The anger in his eyes amplified to a new level, but I wasn’t scared. I knew how to take care of myself, and I wasn’t afraid of what he could do to me. Yes, he was a trained cop, but I never let anyone walk all over me.

“You’re done,” he spat. “No. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to walk away from the marriage we’ve built!”

“What marriage?” I countered. “You hate me. I can see it in your eyes every night when you come home. You never have a single nice thing to say about me. In fact, the last time we actually got along was about three years ago. And I’m done trying.”

He shook me hard, making my head bounce off the wall. I squeezed my eyes closed and refused to let anger take over. That wouldn’t help anything.

“You’re done? Just like that?” he spat. “I don’t think so.”

I felt a brush of wind over my cheek, but the hit I expected never landed. I peeled my eyes open just as he was wrenched away from me and tossed on the ground. I stared with wide eyes as a man in a charcoal suit loomed over him, staring down at him with fury.

“You want to try that on someone your own size?” the man hissed.

“You have no idea who you’re fucking with!” Shawn shouted, jumping to his feet.

The man in the suit sighed. “You should have just stayed on the fucking ground and saved me the trouble of putting you back there.”

Shawn swung out, attempting to strike the man, but he quickly sidestepped him and waited for the next hit. I was torn between wanting Shawn to get his ass beaten and intervening. After all, Shawn was still my husband, even if I had just stated that I wanted a divorce.

Shawn lunged for the man again, but didn’t even make contact with his jacket before the man tossed him aside in a puddle. I winced, knowing Shawn would want me to clean that out before it stained his clothes. He was so useless.