Chapter Twenty-Seven
Shattered
Crystal
I’d just gotten showered and into some comfy clothes, when Jay messaged. I laid the marriage license on my bedside table, running my nail over the blue print along the edges and picked up the phone.
I need you here within the next ten minutes, make it happen.
Ten minutes?
My mind raced to recall where I left my shoes as I stripped out of the jogging pants and threw on a pair of jeans. He knew I didn’t have a car. I had to walk, and that wasn’t happening in ten minutes!
I opened the door of the club half an hour later. A bike backfired on the highway out front, and I darted inside a little quicker than necessary. I knew it wasn’t Anthony, but I still gave a glance toward the road when I identified the sound.
It was a bit of a distance across the parking lot, but I could have sworn it was a Steel Disciples vest the rider was wearing.
“Crystal,” Zandie gushed, as she came out of the hallway.
She lifted her arm up and wiggled her fingers, drawing attention to the cast she was wearing.
“Oh, my gosh.” I sucked in a sympathetic breath, and instantly decided that was why I was called in.
If Zandie was in a cast, I might get scheduled for a few night shifts after all.
I relaxed at once, “What did you do, girl?”
She fanned the good arm in front of herself, “My kid slammed the trunk when we were emptying groceries.”
The horror must have registered on my face. The child had behavioral issues but I didn’t know it was that bad.
“It was an accident; he was in a hurry to get back to his game and didn’t realize I’d reached in.” She rolled her eyes.
“Jeez. I hope you get to mending quickl–”
“Crystal!” Jay snapped, causing me violently startle. “Get the fuck in here.”
I shot Zandie an apologetic look and hurried that way.
“I said ten minutes. You simple or just can’t fuckin’ tell time?”
My shoulders instinctively climbed toward my ears, as I turned sideways to slip past him into the office. I tried to remain calm, and unmoved by his rage, it sometimes helped if I didn’t react. I placed a hand on the arm of the chair and bent my knees to sit.
“Don’t bother. You won’t be here that long. Here is your final check. I have some parting advice from your friends.”
“Wh–what? What the fuck are you talking about my final check?” I straightened back up so quickly my knees popped.
“You don’t work here anymore. If you want to work in this city at all, you’re gonna take your ass North of the hospital. I got a friend that owns a spot up there he said he’d put you on.”
“Jay, you can’t fucking fire me. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Go to the North side. His name is Flynn–”
Jay’s lips kept moving, but the name he’d dropped took me back like I’d been hit by a boulder. I started to shake from the inside out.
“J–Jay.” Tears pricked my eyes as I grappled for my senses.
“Go. To. Flynn.”
“Fuck you.” I lost it hearing the name a second time. “I’m not going to that dirty motherfucker. Never again. Do you hear me? I got away from him. It wasn’t easy. There is no way I’m going back… and you can’t make me.”
He shoved me back into the chair, and in my head, I screamed, but no sound came out. I hated this part of myself. The broken part that forgot how to function.
Why couldn’t I be normal and flee or fight like everyone else?
Instead, I fawned or froze like a goddamn gazelle for the slaughter.
Jay’s nose scraped mine and spittle flew between us as he caged me in that chair, his hands on either side of the armrest.
His words bled together and boomed at times.
“Your boyfriend and his friends say this is how it is now. So, this is how the fuck it is going to be. You picked him. Not me, sweetheart. You want to play in the dirt with bikers, now look at you... Filthy. Ruined with no place to go.”
I couldn’t stop blinking, but at least my thoughts had stilled.
“My–my boy–boyfriend?”
“Well, was. He was your man. I guess that is the better way to say it. They don’t want to see you again. They want you gone. Off to Flynn you go. Bye, bye now.”
I shot off the chair and hit my knees with a thud, my arms snared his trashcan and I heaved, unable to hear the name a third time.
Jay jerked his foot back and kicked the can, sending it flying across the room. I stumbled backwards with a shriek, and spidered my way toward the door.
“You get your ass down to The Oasis by midnight, or else don’t bother looking for a job in this town. Hear me? They’re gonna tell everyone else you’re not employable. So, you best be listening!” he roared, as I found my feet and fled.
Tears streaked my cheeks as I darted into traffic over a symphony of horns and curses.
I barely noticed. I should have just stopped and called Anthony, but I was so off-kilter and inwardly battered that I just needed sanctuary.
I needed to get to the safety of my own room and figure all of this out.
My vision blurred and I dropped the keys on the steps as I struggled to get it together. I needed to be right in order to work the door. It was hard enough.
“Are you high?” Tindra’s voice cut through my inner panic, and I jerked my head up and stopped flipping keys. She was seething, but it wasn’t her that caught my attention, it was the shattered glass behind her.
I didn’t need a key, the glass wall that had been beside the door was gone.
“Wh–?” I didn’t have time to spit the question out, before she flew out the broken area and shoved me back down the steps.
I landed on the grass rather than the sidewalk, thank God.
My heart hammered in my chest as I scrambled to get up before she made it off the porch. She stopped at the top step and pointed down at me, “You’re fucking done here. Get your shit and get the fuck out. I’m not dealing with this drama.”
“Wh–what the fuck, Tin-Tin?” I sobbed, bewildered.
“That’s what I was saying while your boyfriend and his thugs tore the hell out of my apartment.”
The keys slid from my hand, and I slowly started toward her, leaving them to lay in the dirt. Had he really been here?
Was it possible?
“Anthony wouldn’t–”
“Shut the fuck up.” Tindra snapped. “He dicked you down once or twice and now you know him, that it? Well, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but he did. They probably have it on camera.”
Her gaze lifted to the opposite side of the road. The houses there were decent, and she was right, someone probably did have a camera.
I sighed and shot upstairs, unsure exactly what to believe.
The front door was cracked where it met the frame, leaving me to believe someone had kicked at it.
Splinters of wood lay on the floor inside.
The coffee table had been flipped; it’s glass top was shattered all over the kitchen.
The sofa cushions were everywhere and the upholstered part where my back usually rested was slashed open and destroyed.
“This is bad,” Etta whispered, from her doorway.
I started toward her but stopped outside my own room.
The door was hanging on the hinges. Through the lopsided positioning of it, I could already tell that my bed was as diced as the sofa.
A picture of my sister was smashed on the floor beside the bed, and on top of it were dozens of tiny pieces of–
“No,” The words flew out of my mouth when my brain made sense of the blue printed pattern on the snippets of paper.
I scooped up the pieces like I thought I might glue the marriage license back together. Hot, silent tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked. I’d begged him to be real with me, and now all I had were shards of what my heart had already known was too good to be true.