Phenomenal

41 ~ Catch My Breath

Clarissa stood in the middle of the room, looking at the closed door for a while, her body tense. She half expected him to come bursting back through the door, to pick up an argument or do something, anything.

But Brett didn't come back.

Clarissa was alone.

She looked over at the shattered coffee mug and stain on the floor, then to her bedroom door as Miffy peeked out, looking up at her with huge bright eyes.

She walked over, picking her up and hugging her tightly, cuddling the warmth as she took a seat on the sofa.

Her muscles started to unwind. Her breath escaped her, she was breathless and she came to the sudden realisation of how suffocated she had felt for the last few months. She took a breath, a deep, deep breath, filling her lung, stretching the muscles, forcing them to work, breathing in a way she hadn't done in so, so very long.

And then a huge smile spread across her face and she hugged Miffy tightly, a laugh starting to escape her as she got to her feet, bouncing across the room on the balls of her feet, swinging into the kitchen to gather stuff to clean up the mess.

Maybe this wasn't finished.

Maybe she would have to face Brett again.

Maybe he would come back and try to make things go his way.

But she wasn't going to give into him if it happened. She wouldn't bend to his will again.

Not when she had felt what it felt like, truly felt like, to catch her breath for a moment and expand her lungs, relax her muscles and settle her nerves again. To take control of her space and make 'her' only hers again.

She cleaned away the mug and coffee then went into her room and threw open the wardrobes. Miffy looked at her as she hopped up into her bed, curling up, watching and Clarissa hit play on her speakers, threw open the window to let cold, fresh air blast through the room before she turned to her clothes and started to pull out everything Brett had bought her.

Everything went. She folded it all up, packing it into a suitcase before starting on the jewellery.

In went the earrings, the bracelets, the hair pieces and the diamond chokers.

Never again would she have to wear a diamond choker unless she herself decided she wanted to. She would choose to wear it and it would no longer be a collar.

Gone went the clothes, gone went the shoes, gone went the jewels.

She would send it all back to him tomorrow.

He had spent thousands upon thousands on her.

She knew it had originally been his way of showing how much he cared but eventually it had felt like she had to go along with his whims because he had paid so much for her.

Not anymore. The money could never guilt trip her again. She would earn her own money and she would depend on her family but she would never let a man control her with finance.

Everything he'd ever bought her would go back and she would be free of those chains.

He had shattered his favourite mug against the wall but she pulled out his other one, packing it away with everything else. Any clothes of his that he had left at hers, any music and films – even the t-shirt she had liked to wear so much during the first few months of their relationship – everything went into the suitcase.

Everything was packed, zipped away, hauled out of her room.

It was planted against a wall; she walked to her bag and pulled out her phone, sending a message to her mother.