I picked up Megan’s phone before I could stop myself.
The message on the screen was from Caleb.
“Did you tell your mom you were sick again? You know how dramatic she gets when you involve people.”
Under it was another one sent ten minutes earlier.
“Don’t start crying when I get out of the shower. We already talked about this.”
My stomach dropped.
Not because couples never fight. Because suddenly every weird little moment from the last few months fit together too neatly.
Megan came back into the kitchen drying her hair and froze when she saw the phone in my hand.
I asked her quietly if he talked to her like that all the time.
Immediately she started defending him.
“He’s stressed right now.”
“You don’t understand how hard his job is.”
“He just gets frustrated sometimes.”
Word for word like she’d rehearsed it already.
Then Caleb walked into the kitchen and the second he saw her face, his expression changed completely.
Not guilty. Annoyed.
He looked at Megan first, not me.
“What did you show her?”
Megan instantly started apologizing.
Actually apologizing.
That was the moment my fear turned into anger.
I told Megan to grab her shoes and come eat dinner at my house for one night. Just one. Caleb laughed softly and said I was overreacting.
Then he added, calm as ever, “See? This is exactly why she gets overwhelmed around your family.”
Megan looked down at the floor like she was a child in trouble.
But she still came home with me that night.
Around midnight, after she finally stopped crying, she admitted Caleb tracked her location constantly, read her messages, got angry when she visited friends without him, and once punched a hole through their bathroom door because she ignored his calls during a movie.
She kept saying, “But he’s never actually hit me.”
Like that sentence alone was supposed to make everything okay.
She moved out two weeks later while Caleb was at work.
And even now, months afterward, she still apologizes sometimes before answering simple questions.