Chapter 9 #3
I was a whore because he raped me. Makes sense, huh?
Real sweet guy, Larry's BFF. Of course, Larry was a piece of shit himself, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was doing something similar to some poor girl somewhere.
He'd left me, then, and I'd lain there awake for hours, weeping silently before I could summon the courage to sneak into the bathroom to clean up.
Which meant getting in the shower and scrubbing myself till my skin bled.
I jolted awake, sobbing in relief when I realized I was twenty-two and alone in my apartment, not fifteen and waiting for Danny to sneak in again.
"Fucking fuck me," I rasped, sitting up and wiping my face. “How the fuck did Danny find me?"
I fixed myself coffee and tried to enjoy it, but every time I blinked, I saw his evil little eyes widening as he realized it was me. The nasty things he'd said to me even before he knew it was me.
My skin crawled, and I clawed at my forearms, my chest between my breasts, my stomach. Fuck. The crawling, creeping, slimy, grimy sensation coating my skin worsened with each successive heartbeat until it felt like I had spiders under my skin, slime mold growing from my pores.
I dumped my coffee down the sink and all but sprinted for the bathroom, ripping my clothes off as I went, keening through gritted teeth, fighting the mother of all breakdowns.
I twisted the hot water on and climbed in before it was even hot—the abrupt cold shocked my system and the breath out of me, leaving me paralyzed and gasping until the water started to slowly heat up until it was just off a boil.
Which is what I needed—to scald off the filth.
Yet even after scrubbing myself raw in water hotter than the fires of Mt. Doom, I still felt filthy and violated all over again.
I was afraid.
Sick to my stomach.
And I realized, as I stood naked in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my closet door, that I've spent the last several years hiding from this feeling. Running from it. Burying it. Ignoring it. Pretending that Danny didn't exist unless someone else brought him up, or what he did.
Last night made it agonizingly clear that this approach wasn't fucking working.
I have to face him.
I have to look him in the eye—without giving in to the urge to claw that eyeball out of his skull—and find a way to make peace with myself. Not with him. Not with what he did. With myself.
I chose my outfit with care. It started with my favorite pair of booty-lifting underwear and a matching push-up bra.
My best leggings, which make my ass look great—with lifting underwear plus the leggings, Dane would take one look at my ass and spontaneously combustWHYtheFUCK am I thinking about him right now?
I put him out of my mind and pulled on the pièce de résistance of my outfit: a fitted V-neck tank top that took my cleavage to eleven.
I styled my hair loose and wavy. Smoky, dramatic makeup.
Bombshell.
It was a fuck-you outfit.
I stuffed my shit into my purse and headed for my car; there was only one hospital within a thirty-minute drive of the bar where I worked, which is the only place Saleh could've taken Danny.
I drove there, parked in the back of the lot, and made the long walk to the ER desk.
Yes, they'd had a patient by that name last night; he had been admitted to the ICU last and was upstairs.
I pretended to be his worried girlfriend and wheedled his room number out of the lady behind the desk.
Which, might I add, was some god-tier acting on my part.
There was a teary-eyed sniffle, a catch in my voice, and a wobble in my lip. I was good.
I marched down the hallways feeling like Beatrix Kiddo, just needed an eyepatch. I even whistled that jaunty melody as I catwalked toward his room, catching the eye of doctors, nurses, and orderlies alike. I reached room 1244 and hesitated outside.
I had no clue what I was going to say or do. I reminded myself sternly that I was there to talk to him, and only talk…no matter how tempting it was to steal a syringe and inject air between his toes.
"Do not kill him, Lindsey Snelling," I murmured out loud.
A mammoth orderly paused as he passed me, pushing a cart. He lifted an eyebrow in my direction. "I need to worry about what's gonna happen in there?" he asked me.
I faked a laugh. "Oh god, no. He's my boyfriend. He vanished last night, and I'm pissed at him. I spent the whole night searching the hospitals for him."
He peered at me, and I'm not sure he believed me. "Mmmm-hmmm." He pushed his cart full of cleaning supplies into motion again. "Hope you're not lying to me."
"I would never," I scoffed.
He lumbered off with more than one suspicious backward glance—I must be radiating palpable fury or something.
I pushed into the room. It was dark, the lights dimmed, curtains drawn. A shape was at his bedside, doing something; when finished, the figure turned and saw me. The nurse was a young woman about my age, pretty, with black hair and lovely brown eyes. "Are you family?" she asked in a whisper.
"I'm his girlfriend," I whispered back. "What happened?” I endeavored to sound worried. “How is he? No one would tell me anything on the phone."
She winced. "He was assaulted last night, I'm afraid. Someone stabbed him through the hand with a fork. I know it sounds kind of like a joke, maybe, but I promise you it is no laughing matter. He will have permanent nerve damage to that hand. He will never have full use of it again.”
"Ohhh, poor baby," I tutted, in a saccharine, concerned tone.
"Well, that's only part of it, unfortunately.
" She hesitated, leading me out to the hallway and speaking in a low murmur.
“His testicles were…ummm…crushed. Very, very badly. No one saw what happened, as someone did a drive-by dump. Whoever did this to him must've really hated him. I’m no detective, but this was deeply personal.”
I acted shocked. "Holy shit. Is he, ummm…will he ever…you know?"
She winced again, shaking her head with a shrug. "Unlikely, I'm sorry to say. The damage is pretty comprehensive. He'll almost definitely suffer permanent impotence and/or erectile dysfunction."
Fuck yes.
It was so hard to not pump my fist like Rocky at the top of the stairs.
Look, I'm normally not a violent person.
I don't like horror movies or war movies or shoot-em-ups.
I like reality shows where out-of-touch rich women yell at each other about transparency and starting a new chapter.
I like dating shows where douchebags with jobs like "amateur donkey jockey" get drunk at each other and whine about everything.
But knowing I possibly, hopefully, please-baby-Jesus ruined Danny's ability to get a hard-on ever again?
Chef's kiss.
"Can I see him?" I said to the nurse.
She nodded. “He's on a lot of painkillers, so he won’t be entirely lucid." She scanned me, looking perplexed. "Sorry, he just didn't mention a girlfriend."
“Well, he got his balls kicked in," I said. "I'm sure he wasn't entirely coherent."
"I suppose." She glanced back in at the still form on the bed. "Don't keep him up too long. He needs to rest."
"Forever," I muttered under my breath.
"Sorry, what was that?" the nurse said.
"Nothing." I patted her shoulder. "Thank you, nurse…"
"Joanna," she supplied.
“Thank you, Joanna. I won't keep him up too long."
When she was gone, I let out a breath, hesitated, and then entered the dark room. Closed the door behind me. Drew the curtain around his bed, blocking him from view from the hallway.
Drew a chair up to the bedside and sat back in it, one leg crossed over the other. Danny was sleeping peacefully, right hand bandaged. A thin hospital blanket covered his lower half, so I couldn't see what was going on down there. Spikes through the dickhole, with any luck.
I looked at him for a moment or two. It was the same face, just older.
Same weak jaw and chin, same beady, bulging eyes.
Same hooked nose, crooked from being broken multiple times.
His face was pocked and scarred—acne, meth sores, scars from fights.
He was actually decent-looking…at first glance.
Look closer, and you saw the wear of age, and you realized he was much younger than you thought.
He was only thirty-two, but he looked fifty.
His hair was thinning at the widow's peak and crown, and the stubble along his jawline was salted with gray in places.
There was a pillow that had slid out from under his head and was about to topple off the other side of the bed. I had to sit on my hands to stop myself from holding it over his face.
My god, when did I become so murdery?
I watched him sleep peacefully for a few minutes, until my hate bubbled over. "DANNY COHEN, YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!" I shouted.
He jolted out of his sleep, scrabbling and gasping, looking around frantically until he saw me. He stopped thrashing, his face full of anger. I saw his hand slithering toward the little controller dude that would let him summon the nurses, and I took it away before he could push any buttons.
"Don't worry, fuck-bag," I hissed. "I'm not here to finish the job."
"You ruined me," he mumbled, his voice muzzy and stoned on opiates. "Balls're ruined."
"Less than you deserve."
He tried to look around—for some other way of summoning help, probably. "I'll call…th'p'lice."
"Oh yeah?" I opened my phone and dialed 9-1-1, handed it to him so all he had to do was hit the call button. "Do it."
He turned his head away. After a minute, he looked back at me. "Why're you here?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "Testing my self-control, maybe. It's taking a lot of it to not finish murdering you."
"Don't. Please. Please."