So our little therapy game worked for a while. Collin started changing, slowly but surely, into the man that I knew he always wanted to be. He spent more time in the office and less time on the streets. He took whatever he had been storing over at my place out, probably because he knew it was too much of a temptation for me to have such easy access to it. Understandable, considering I was pregnant with his son. But it was all good. Without Collin stressing me all the time, I was also making my way to kicking my own bad habits...one by one.

Eventually, though, little stuff started setting him off again for no apparent reason. Like, he would yell at me if the TV was too loud, so I started watching it just above a whisper, not wanting to take any chances on potentially resurrecting the old Collin. Minor things like that didn't really bother me too much, though. I knew that if I changed whatever it was that I was doing to tick him off, then it wouldn't become a problem. The thing was, I was beginning to get used to living my life on eggshells. I tried to make as little noise as possible whenever he was over and I tried my very best not to speak to him unless he spoke to me first. I never could tell which topic of the day would set him off, so I simply settled comfortably into my own world of silence until I felt sure that it was safe to speak. It wasn't so bad, actually. The more pregnant I became, the more moody I became, too, and I didn't really feel like hearing a whole bunch of talking anyway.

Around the beginning of my third month, the morning sickness kicked in. Or, should I say the 24-7 sickness. Every little smell sent me running to the bathroom puking my guts out. Collin thought this was so funny. True, he was a changed man, but he still had that mean streak in him. Case in point: No matter what time of day he came over, he would make it a point to cook sausage and eggs.

Now, even that I could tolerate. It was messed up that he liked to make me sick, literally, but at least we weren't fighting anymore. In fact, it wasn't until the hang up calls started happening again that the tension resurfaced between us. I knew it was that same girl he was screwing, too, because every time she called he would snatch the phone away and start yelling and cussing into the mouthpiece. Collin only overreacted like that when he was dead wrong and knew it.

But I didn't say anything about that, either, too into the idea of keeping a peaceful home. Until...one day I walked into my peaceful home (keep in mind Collin still didn't actually live there at the time, he only had a key) and found a woman standing next to my man in my kitchen laughing and pushing all up on him, acting like she was trying to force a finger full of icing from my cake into his mouth. For a second I just stood there blinking, sure that I couldn't have possibly been seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Then I heard her voice.

I recognized it immediately.

Collin was dangerously close to licking the icing right off of her finger when he finally felt my eyes radiating a hole into the side of his head, and looked over. As soon as he saw me, he took a step back and tried to act like he knew I was standing there the whole time.

"Natasha, um, this is..."

I didn't even give him a chance to finish. Before he spoke the first word, I was already in the kitchen and punched the bitch dead in her bright red mouth.

"Get the fuck out!" I screamed at the top of my lungs and grabbed the nearest thing I could get my hands on. As luck would have it, it was the butcher knife that Collin had apparently used to cut the surprise cake that I had baked for him earlier that day. My hot homemade strawberry icing was still dripping from it.

At least the woman wasn't as dumb as she looked. I didn't have to tell her twice before she was out the door. I threw the knife at Collin, a trick that, ironically, Collin had taught me back in the day - don't ask - as he followed her out and closed the door behind them. The door barely closed all the way before the knife jammed itself into the wood frame like a Chinese fighting star.

When Collin finally came back inside, I was so pissed that I threw the rest of the cake right in his face. The glass plate shattered beneath my hand when I hit him in the face with it, but surprisingly neither one of us got cut. While he staggered back under the impact and took his time trying to figure out what had just happened, I went to my room and started packing. Even though I could afford the rent on my own, Collin's name was still on the lease. I knew that as long as I lived under a roof in his name, I would just have to keep taking anything that he was willing to dish out. As I felt the old, long-forgotten me rising back to the surface, I realized that I wouldn't - physically couldn't - put up with one more minute of his crap.

I just couldn't do it.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

I looked back at him and kept right on packing. When I didn't answer, he irrationally grabbed me and tried to kiss me. I slapped him, hard, and pushed him away.

I should have known that he was going to hit me back.

When he did, I felt my jaw snap out of place and then snap back. The sensation was more frightening than painful and I quickly snapped back to attention and remembered who the hell I was dealing with.

Now, I know how this sounds, but I think at that point he was trying, really trying, not to hurt me. He left the room and I could hear him in the living room breaking everything that he could get his hands on, probably trying to keep from alternatively breaking every bone in my body. When I heard what sounded like a window breaking, I went back to packing double time, trying to get out of there before he inevitably turned the fury back on me.

All the time he was cussing and screaming at no one in particular, like he had finally lost his mind completely, and then he redirected his comments toward me. I braced myself when I heard him coming closer to the door, but never stopped packing. He came up behind me and picked me up by the waist. Then he threw me on the bed, right before yanking me back down onto the ground and dragging me through the apartment and back into the kitchen. All I kept thinking was that even if I lived through this, my baby probably would not.

That's when I realized that the game had lost all rules. One of us was going to have to die that night, and it would not be my child. Of course, once again, I forgot who I was dealing with.

"Where the hell do you get off messing up my business connection, Natasha? I was just about to..."

"Fuck? Is that what you were just about to do?" He pinned me down and smashed the back of my head into the floor. I didn't even feel it. "There's no way in hell I'm about to believe that shit. Business connection? I've been playing stupid for you all this time, Collin, but I'm not stupid." I bit his hand when he tried to cover my mouth to keep me from talking. He hit me again and I couldn't tell if it was his blood or mine that I tasted trickling down into my throat. As I struggled to get up, I continued. "What business connection? What the hell do you even do but sit around on your ass all day...probably getting sucked off by that trick bitch every chance you get?"

"What?" he laughed crazily. I finally realized for the first time ever that maybe he actually was crazy.

"I...uh...I...said..."

Right around then is when his eyes totally blanked out on me and he just started swinging. I mean he beat me like Kenney beat the living shit out of him back in college. Collin had me pinned to the ground, so it was impossible to curl up and try to protect my baby, but luckily he never hit me there. I thought maybe, subconsciously, he was trying to protect the baby, too.

"You know what?" he yelled. "I am fuckin' that ho. You like that? We did it in your bed right before you came home. And on the couch, in the shower...we even fucked in here on the kitchen counter and I was about hit again right before you walked in on us. Is that what you want to hear. Huh? Huh?"

He stopped swinging and looked at me. Blood was everywhere. All over his hands, all over the floor...all over both of us. I actually think a lot of the swinging that he did was hitting the floor beside my face because I didn't feel as jacked up as I should have, but I could see that his knuckles were cracked open almost to the bone.

Collin rubbed the blood gingerly away from his hands and looked down at me. "Shit..." Then he got off of me and stood up. I stayed where I was. My only movement was to rub a shaky hand across my lower abdomen, like I would be able to tell just by doing that whether the baby was still alive. "I think..." he looked thoughtfully down at me, then squared his shoulders. "I think this is over. I want you to get the hell on and don't ever come back. I don't ever want to see your fat, ugly ass again. I don't want shit to do with that damn baby either. I knew you were tryna trap me when you first told me about it." His words were irrational, since we were already engaged when I got pregnant, but the blood-hungry look in his eyes kept me from saying so. "I hope I killed that damn thing. Probably should have killed you, too."

My blood went cold as his eyes silently flashed over to the butcher knife that was still wedged into the front door. The gentle kiss that he flicked softly across my lips after a statement like that confused and terrified me, which is what I think he was going for.

"Don't be here when I get back. I'm warning you." Then he stood up and walked calmly out of the apartment, leaving a trail of blood behind him.