In the emergency room at Memorial General Hospital, the nurse asked her twice whether the burn had been an accident. Skylar almost said yes—out of habit, out of shame, out of that absurd fear of getting the man who’d just hurt her in trouble.

But when she opened her mouth, another truth came out instead.

“My husband threw boiling coffee at me,” she confessed.

They photographed her injuries, wrote a detailed medical report, and called a social worker to the room. Skylar signed the official complaint with a shaking hand—but she signed it, because she knew she couldn’t go back to the way things were.

Then she returned to the apartment, accompanied by two police officers. She didn’t come in crying. She came in with empty cardboard boxes.

She packed her clothes, her computer, the hard drives, the bills, the apartment documents, her grandmother’s jewelry, the coffee maker she’d bought with her first paycheck, and even the blue dishes Derek called “theirs,” though he’d never paid for a single plate.