I still remember the sound of their laughter as the truck pulled away. The tires kicked up dust, the sun was hot on my back, and my heart dropped straight into my stomach. Kyle, I yelled, running after them, my hands waving like a fool. Kyle! But they just laughed harder. His brothers, Brad and Chase, had their heads sticking out the windows, filming the whole thing like it was some kind of joke. I could hear Chase shouting, Good luck, Lena! See you in 300 miles! as they drove off. That gas station sat in the middle of nowhere. One pump, a dirty bathroom, and a vending machine with old chips. Nothing else.
My phone had just died. No charger. No wallet.
I’d left it in the truck when I ran in to grab Kyle an energy drink. He had asked for it sweetly, told me he was too tired to walk inside. So I’d gone in.
And when I came out, they were gone. I waited. First five minutes.
Then 20. Then an hour. I kept looking down the road, expecting to see the truck come back around the bend.
I thought it was just a dumb joke. Kyle had done stupid things before, but never like this. Never something so cruel.
I sat on the curb in the sun. My hands were shaking, my mouth dry. Every few minutes I stood and walked around, pretending I wasn’t scared.
Pretending it wasn’t happening. Then my phone buzzed, just before the battery finally died. A single message.
Don’t be mad, babe. Just a prank. We’ll come back in a bit.
I stared at it. I didn’t laugh. I felt hollow.
This wasn’t funny. This wasn’t a joke. This was the man I married.
The man I cooked for, cared for, defended. And he thought leaving me stranded hundreds of miles from home was funny. With his brothers.
That was the moment it clicked. Not suddenly, but in a slow, creeping way. Like when you realize you’ve been sick for a long time and just got used to it.
I looked around the parking lot. One trucker filling up. A dusty road stretching both ways.
No police station. No hotel. Just a convenience store clerk who shrugged and said, they’ll be back, I guess.
But I knew they wouldn’t. Not anytime soon. And I didn’t want them to.
I’d spent five years trying to keep that family happy. Every dinner with Kyle’s parents. Every birthday party for Brad’s kids.
Every sarcastic comment I let slide because that’s just how they are. This time, I wasn’t going to wait. A woman pulled in with a minivan, two kids in the back.
I asked her if she was headed north. She looked at me, sweaty, scared, with nothing but a half warm bottle of water, and nodded. I can take you as far as I’m going, she said.
You okay? I told her I would be. We drove for hours. I didn’t talk much.
I just stared out the window, thinking. I didn’t cry. Not once.
I think I had cried too much already over the years. She dropped me at a bus station in a small town I’d never heard of. I thanked her.
I used the last bit of battery on my phone to check the bus schedules and message someone I hadn’t spoken to in years, Aunt May. All I wrote was, can I come stay with you for a while? I don’t know where else to go. A few minutes later, a reply.
Always. Come home. That night, I bought a one-way ticket.
As the bus rumbled down the highway, I looked back at the town fading behind us and realized something. I wasn’t going back. Not to Kyle.
Not to their laughter. Not to a life where my pain was entertainment. And for the first time in a long time, I breathed.
Looking back now, I think I always knew something wasn’t right. Even when things were good, there was this small ache in my chest I could never shake. I used to tell myself that all marriages had problems.
That Kyle loved me. Just not in the way I wanted him to. But the truth is, Kyle didn’t love me.
Not really. He loved how I made him feel. He loved having someone to show off when things were going well and someone to blame when they weren’t.
And his brothers? They made everything worse. Brad and Chase were older, louder, and always had some ridiculous idea brewing. Kyle looked up to them like they were gods.
Every weekend it was something. Water balloons in the shower. Fake eviction notices.
Even once hiding my car keys before a job interview just to see what I’d do. That one nearly cost me the job. But Kyle laughed.
Said I needed to lighten up. They called it pranking. I called it cruelty.
I didn’t say much back then. I thought maybe I was the problem. Maybe I was too sensitive.
I tried to laugh along. I tried to be the cool wife. The one who rolled her eyes and said, boys will be boys.
But it hurt. Every single time. After three years of marriage, I started setting money aside.
Not because I planned to leave. Not yet. But because something deep inside me whispered, one day, you might have to.
I’d squirrel away $10 here, $20 there. I opened a small account under my name, using my mother’s maiden name, and never told anyone. Kyle never noticed.