Shea just shook his head as he laughed at his beautiful drunken girlfriend.

“It sure is, baby.”

Elli threw herself into him, causing him to swerve before breaking down into a fit of giggles. He couldn’t be mad at her. She was harmless, but he would monitor her drinking from now on.

“Shea, I’ve missed you sooooo much,” she slurred against his neck, “So much.”

“I’ve missed you, too, baby.”

She grinned up at him and he returned it before turning off Broadway, heading towards his condo. After a few minutes of silence she asked, “You know what?”

“What, baby?”

“Sometimes I think I love you.”

He looked over at her and she was looking down at her hands. He could see that her eyes were filling with tears.

Aw shit, she was one of those drunks?

“But every time I think I do, Justin comes along and he gets in my head telling me I’m no damn good and that I don’t know how to love a man. He was so mean to me, so mean,” she said as she shook her head.

Shea didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything, but he did wish he would have at least gone over to the guy and pushed him into the wall. “You wouldn’t believe half the shit that ass**le did to me, and I thought it was normal. I was so naive.”

“You were young,” Shea stated, hating the guy more and more with each passing second.

“I know, but I should have known better. Especially when we had been dating for years, and he never told me he loved me. The day he chose to tell me he loved me was the day my grandparents died and I got my inherence.”

Shea looked over at her, “You’re kidding.”

“No,” she said, taking a deep breath, “When we would have sex after I gained all my weight, he would put a blanket over me or turn off the lights, so he wouldn’t be able to see anything.”

Okay, that was just crazy.

“Elli, why did you stay with him?”

“Because he said he loved me,” she started to hiccup and he thought she was done talking, but she went on, “before, when we were just dating, I didn’t care that he didn’t love me, but after my grandparents died and he said that, I said it back because I was so sad and I felt so alone. We moved in together in New York, and everything was fine, until I got fat. We had moved back home, and my family had turned on me, he turned on me, and shit was bad. I craved the ‘I love yous.’ They were slim to none, but I tried to do everything to make him happy, but nothing worked. At least once a month, I would come home from school and my shit would be outside the house that he owned. Harper would take me in and then three days later, he would show up begging me to come home.”

The tears started to fall and Shea reached for her hand. She took it, using her other hand to wipe her face.

“And I did.”

Shea noticed she was starting to look green when he looked over at her, but she just went on, so he assumed she was fine.

“Finally, I started to notice something wasn’t right. I was in school, something he said was a waste of time because when we got married I wouldn’t need to work since I would be taking care of the babies, which how we were gonna make those babies was beyond me since he never wanted to have sex with me, but whatever-”

She stopped suddenly and Shea looked over.

“Pull over,”

He did as she asked, and she opened the door, puking her brains out. Her body shook violently as she threw up on the side of West End Ave. He ran his hand up and down her back, trying to move her hair out of the way as she expelled some of the beer and tequila she had consumed.

Shea had thought Grace was a talented drunk. Nope, she had nothing on Elli. Right after she got done, she sat up, grabbed the bottle of water that sat in her console, washed her mouth out and went on with her story.

He was amazed once more by her.

“So anyways, we weren’t having sex, and he had made me go to one of them stupid dinners through his daddy’s firm. When I stepped into that place in my plus size dress without him because he went earlier than me, no one looked at me. That’s when I knew that I was nothing.”

Shea sat listening to her, not moving the truck. He wanted to hear her. Plus, in case she needed to puke, he was already pulled over.

“The night went on. When he would introduce me to the women of the firm, they couldn’t even look me in the eye. That’s when I knew he was cheating on me.”

Shea’s heart hurt for her and it seemed with every word that came out of her mouth, it made him want to kill Justin Yates more and more. When her face turned green again, he was glad he was already pulled over so she could continue to throw up on the side of the street again. She repeated the rinsing of the mouth routine and then went on like she hadn’t been throwing her guts up on the side of the road.

“So that night,” she let out an empty laugh, “he actually had the gall to climb on top of me. I got so mad that I pushed him off me. Oh, Shea, he got so mad. Called me everything in the book, smacked me up against the wall, told me I was nothing and that no one would love me. I don’t know what got into me. It must have been him hitting me, but I swung back and hit him as hard as I could. He fell to the ground and I threw my ring at him, telling him I did not love him and I was leaving. And I finally did, and he never came after me.”

Shea wanted to beat the living hell out of Justin. No man lays a hand on a woman. It was disgusting, and Shea couldn’t believe that he let that man stand beside the bar with that smug look on his face. Let him see him out in the streets, Shea would beat him to a pulp.