Maybe There's No Mistakes..

•fifty five•

"We didn't always fight, things weren't always bad with Colton." I started quietly. "We had weeks, months even.. of good times. Well.. good for us anyway. The second full year we were married was the best. We could finally move out of the dorms and even though technically Colton was supposed to live at his frat house for that year, they really didn't care as long as they got their dues paid. We moved into the little yellow house on the corner. Picket fence and all. It was our little honeymoon phase, we finally felt like a real married couple. During that time Colton had to go out of town for a distant relative's funeral, in Arizona, he was gone for a week and it was the longest we had been apart since we started living together. We missed each other terribly, and I honestly think it was genuine then. He was never a good liar, and I thought we were both really happy at that time." I let out a sigh and Austin kissed the top of my head.

"We sent each other videos... I'm sure you know exactly what I was doing in that video.." my voice cracked. How could I have been so stupid.

"I'm not judging you baby. You were a married couple, who cares? I've done worse with less..."

"Eww.." I said with a raspy laugh. "I don't want to know"

"Everything like that has been gone from all my shit for a long time by the way. Before you and I met. Just clearing that up.. I never kept shit like that." He held his hand up like he was pleading his innocence. I laughed and pulled his hand back around me. "Sorry, continue.." he said pressing his lips to my hair.

"Well I thought the same way about it. And after everything was over I deleted it all too, fuck if I wanted to see that shit again." I shuddered. "But on the other hand.. We were married, why would I be concerned my husband has compromising videos of me? Especially ones I willingly sent him. And it was never anything I even thought about after the fact. So graduation comes, this is less than a month after I left him, and his frat had a huge party. My friend Sedrick was in the same frat with him. He was one of the guys who jumped in and beat the shit out of Colton that night he hit me in front of all our friends. So he's at this party as well. At one point he was looking for another friend and walked in on Colton showing about 10 other guys the video of me. On a fucking projection screen on the wall. Apparently they all were being stand up gentlemen and sharing videos of all their girlfriends, escapades, whatever they had to share." I felt disgusted. A new wave of anger and nausea washing over me. "Sed lost his shit on him again and basically threatened to kill him this time if he didn't delete the video off his phone. He watched him delete it and gave him another black eye. Poor Sed was beside himself, he walked to my friends house, 4 blocks away, at like 2am..  where i was couch surfing and told me everything. He even apologized profusely for seeing what he did of the video, like he had something to apologize for. I'm so grateful that he made him delete that video, but... there was more than one video, and there are photos too. I know he still has them, no way would he get rid of anything he could use against someone." I drew a shaky breath, trying not to get upset again. "I was so humiliated, scared too. I didn't know who had seen the video, and I was alone most of the time. It made me scared to go anywhere, because I felt like no matter where I went someone there was going to know who I was, my face was clearly in that video. I almost didn't go to my own college graduation 3 days later because I was so embarrassed to be in front of all those people after this. It didn't make the substance abuse I was in the middle of any better, that's for damn sure."

"I'm so fucking sorry Sara." Austin started, he was angry. I could tell, no wonder he insisted I kept my back to him. He knew I wouldn't want to see him like this. I could feel it, how I could always feel his emotions radiating off him.

"You don't get to apologize for him Austin. I've told you."

"It's definitely not for him baby, I'm sorry you had to go through all this. I'll never apologize for that sick fucker. I just don't understand how he could stomach the things he did to you. He should be in jail Sara."