Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Nyx
Oklahoma Smokeshow - Zach Bryan
Ihitched a ride with Lena to get back home.
Sunday nights are the only free time during the week that she has.
She usually spends it with her baby sister and her younger brother.
Instead, tonight, she had to pick me up from the abandoned development because I'm a fucking mess who got herself into more trouble than she can handle.
My stomach cramps painfully for the hundredth time. Anxiety eats me alive, and every few minutes, there's a new thought as to why I won't get out of this nightmare.
Chase won't cover my father's debts to Val Brolik anymore, and he's going to come after us. But I won't even be able to see that if Chase kills me first.
"How could Achilles do this to me?" I croak as my best friend parks in front of her trailer.
I hit the back of my head against the car seat.
"The real question is, how could I be stupid enough to believe him? Every single interaction I've had with him was just him proving to me that he was an asshole who couldn't be trusted."
"This is a lot, Nyx," Lena says gently. "You should get some rest and turn off that overworking brain of yours. It's not something we're going to solve by overthinking for hours."
I turn to her, smiling weakly. "Thank you for picking me up."
"Of course. I'll scold you about the men you choose to hang out with when you're feeling a bit better, okay?"
We both laugh, though they're the exhausted kind. She's working endless shifts, and I'm putting myself in trouble left and right. We need sleep.
"Your choice of not having any time for men sounds like a wise option tonight. I'll text you tomorrow when I get to campus. I love you."
Hopping out of her car, I walk home, looking around me before I unlock the door and rush inside. I lock it again, fast as lightning.
"Dad," I call out in the dark while reaching for the switch. "You home?"
The light turns on, and I jolt back, hitting the door behind me.
"He is," Chase says in a low voice, sitting on our sofa. "But he's taking a little nap."
On the floor, right by his feet, my dad is lying unconscious. And I'm sure the bat Chase is holding had a lot to do with it.
"Dad!" I cry out, rushing to him.
Chase is quicker. He stands up, pointing the bat at me just as I'm reaching them. I stop dead in my tracks.
"Don't hurt him. He's got nothing to do with this. Hurt me."
"Oh, I will, Nyxie. But unfortunately, you love this piece of shit despite everything he's put you through. So putting him in a fucking coma will probably hurt you more than beating you to a pulp, am I right?"
I gulp. The idea of being beaten to a pulp by someone as big as Chase makes my legs tremble.
I don’t want to die. No matter how much I've hated my life in the past, this city, the things everyone around me has put me through, I've never wanted to give up.
I'm a dreamer. I'm na?ve. That's what I do.
I always have hope that there's better somewhere and that I'll reach that place.
It doesn't feel like that now, though. Facing the man I used to have feelings for is a death sentence, and I'm coming up short on hope or solutions.
"Take a seat. You're going to answer some questions for me."
He grabs me by the upper arm, violently forcing me to sit on the sofa as his black eyes take me in. There's something that feels familiar in that deadly look. The night we met, he had the same intention in his gaze before he decided to spare me.
I don't think he'll spare me tonight.
"Chase—"
"No." The simple word is accompanied by a slam of his bat on my dad's TV, the violence making me shriek and retreat on the sofa. "No more sweet-talking me, Nyx. From now on, you only answer what I ask."
I bring my knees to my chest, pressure building in my stomach and behind my ears.
"What's wrong? Are you scared? Yeah, you get real terrified when someone breaks into your house, huh?"
There's one person in this world who knows what happened to me. I shared it with him in a moment of weakness because he wanted to understand what had made me so scared in life.
Achilles wants to know because he wants to use it for himself. Selfishly, to feed his sick, psychotic need to see people suffer. The thing that inspires him about me is my agony. That's who he is.
When Chase asked me back then, I still want to believe that it was out of a need to protect me. But does it matter since he's now using it against me?
The TV screen is destroyed in a million pieces by the time he's done releasing his anger on it.
He turns to me, and I bet he loves me like this. Trembling, eyes cast down, because I can't bring myself to face the situation.
"When did it start?"
I wouldn't even know how to answer that. Because once again, I've been a victim of men taking what they wanted from me, and I'm not sure when Achilles stopped taking and I started giving. That's how badly this man can fuck with your mind.
My gaze is on my dad on the floor, and all I can do is watch obsessively as his chest slowly goes up and down.
He's breathing. Don't worry. He's breathing.
That's all that matters. I've seen him in states that were way worse than this. Chase isn’t the most dangerous man he's owed money to, and not the most violent either.
But I'm starting to wonder if that was because I played along in our bogus relationship.
I jump when the bat lands on the coffee table in front of me, destroying everything on it. The empty beer bottles my dad must have been drinking tonight. The ashtray, cigarette buds and ash flying, and the half-empty plate of food.
"Stop," I whimper, putting my arm in front of me to protect my head from flying glass.
"Answer the fucking question!" he roars.
"I don't know!"
He stops hitting, turning to me and pointing the bat at me.
"You don't know?" he seethes. "You don't know when the fucking rich boy from your dreamland started sticking his dick inside you?"
He hisses a breath, steps to the side toward the kitchen counter, and off goes everything on there. The weak cabinetry is made of cheap particleboard, and it starts breaking as he hits over and over, with more strength each time.
"Chase, please!" I shriek. "Please, stop!"
The sound is deafening, and I cover my ears as he goes through the whole kitchen.
"Stop! I-I—" I can't believe I'm about to say those words. "I don't want to break up. I can make it right. Please…"
Whipping around, his red face is sweating as he pants and strides back to me. He throws the bat to the side, and I crawl back on the sofa, but it makes no difference.
"Don't, don't—" My plea is cut off when he backhands me so hard I stumble off the furniture.
I barely avoid falling onto my dad, crawling on the floor as he comes after me. The taste of blood is evident, but the pain hasn't hit me yet.
"You think I want your disgusting ass back? What, so I can keep paying for you and your daddy?"
He grabs me by the hair, but my scream for help is cut short by his hand covering my mouth.
"How did it start between you and him, Nyx? Huh? Like you and me? Did he promise pretty things? Did you think he was going to save you from your shitty life with me?"
I try to shake my head as he pulls me up. Tears flow from my eyes when he drags me around by my hair. He has to release my mouth to pick up the bat, and I scream for help at the top of my lungs, hoping a neighbor will hear me.
"Shut the fuck up!" He throws me to the floor again, and my eyebrow hits the corner of the table, blood bursting from my brow ridge.
"I love you," I lie, not knowing how to get out of this anymore. "P-Please…" More blood spills out of my mouth as I try to talk. "I didn't want him. I'll fix this."
"You didn't want him?" he sneers, kicking me in the stomach when I try to crawl to him and hold on to his legs.
I fall back, going into a fetal position to protect myself from more kicks. But he doesn't touch me. Instead, he goes for my dad's liquor in the cabinet and starts pouring it all over the living room.
"It just seems you never want the guys who come after you, isn't that right, Nyx?" He laughs.
He takes a swig of liquor before pouring the whole bottle on the sofa and going for another one.
"You always said you didn't want to be fucked by that masked guy Brolik sent to your place when I came back empty-handed to him."
"Don't," I whimper, dizzy from the hits. "Don't talk about him." I can barely breathe just hearing him talk about that night.
"Yeah, you say you didn't want him to tie you up and blindfold you."
A flash burns before my eyes, and I drag in a painful breath.
"Help me, Chase." He mimics my feminine voice as he pours more liquid, this time on my dad. "Help me. They want the money. He hurt me."
He drinks more alcohol, throwing the empty bottle at me. I barely have time to plaster myself against the floor before it crashes into the front door.
"Hurt you," he snorts. "Didn't you enjoy the choking, Nyxie? Because you told me you didn't want him, and now you're telling me you didn't want that rich fucker either, but I'm starting to see a fucking. Pattern."
"Stop," I plead weakly, tears running down my face, lost between this nightmare and the one from the past.
My limbs feel numb when he grabs my right hand.
"Shh," he murmurs mockingly. "The victim card isn't working with me anymore. You came when Brolik's man fucked you. You come when I pay you to keep you and fuck you. I know you're no victim. You're a fucking slut."
"H-He…" I can't breathe. The ghost of his hand tightens around my throat.
My head pounds from the hit, and I'm starting to feel the pain everywhere in my body.
"He. He…" he imitates me. "He what? Come on, say the little lie you keep telling yourself. What did Brolik's guy do?"
"He raped me," I sob. The word dies on my tongue, barely a breath out of my mouth.
"Liar."
With a grip on my wrist, he slams my hand on the coffee table, and with the other, he smashes the bottle of alcohol on the corner.
I don't understand what's going on anymore, stuck between the past and present. All I hear on repeat in my head is that I'm a liar, and that the masked man Brolik sent to my house didn't hurt me because I enjoyed it.
"So much time wasted on you," he hisses.
"I love you," I lie again, as if it’s somehow going to save me. As if he doesn’t already know the truth.
"You ruined my fucking life," he replies. "And now I’m going to ruin yours."
That’s when I realize what he’s doing. He raises his hand holding the broken bottle, his eyes on my right hand.
"No!" I shriek, strength coming back to me. I pull with all my might. "Not my hand! Not my—" I gasp as he fights to hold me in place.
I would never be able to play the violin again. My life would be over.
"I'll do anything, please! Please…please…"
Time freezes.
His hand is coming down when the door bursts open. He startles, missing me by less than an inch as the bottle smashes on the table. Glass explodes everywhere, shards breaking into my skin. But at least he didn't hit my hand.
"Bitch." He spits on the floor next to me as he’s pulled away.
I catch Achilles from the corner of my eye, but all he does is throw Chase to the side with ease, focusing on me instead of him.
"Are you okay?" It's the first time I hear anything but arrogance or lust in his voice. Achilles sounds like me; worried, unsure, like for once, he doesn't hold fate in the palm of his hand.
But my gaze is on Chase. One second, he's pulling out his lighter, and the next, my trailer is on fire.
My home, the place where I grew up and lived my best and worst memories, where I hugged my dad when he would cry and ask for help, where I used to dress up with Lena, where I watched my mother walk away and never come back.
The mobile home that was broken into the night my safety was shattered forever, where my music teacher would visit to teach me the violin for free.
Where people came to collect debts, where Kayla King promised she'd protect me against the gangs of the North Shore. It all lights up in flames.
There's liquor everywhere, accelerating the process, and black smoke surrounds us before I can find a way to get my dad out.
I don't know where Chase or Achilles are anymore. All I know is I hear a struggle and someone falling.
"Help!" I scream as I try to grab my dad’s ankles.
Then two arms wrap around my waist, making me scream again.
"It's me," Achilles calls out, coughing in my ear.
"My dad! Take my dad first."
"In your fucking dreams. Let's go."
I fight him, hard enough that we both fall back.
"Take my dad! I can walk. Achilles, I'm begging you. Help him."
He helps me up, and before I know it, he's got my dad's limp body flipped over his shoulder.
"Go," he orders. "What the fuck are you still doing here if you can walk?"
I can hear the sirens of a fire truck on its way here the second we go outside. Lena’s there, catching me as I step out.
I cough my lungs out as she takes me with her, walking me far from my home going up in flames.
My eyes are on my dad, though, watching as Achilles walks the road with him before putting him down on the side. The second I see him safe, his eyes opening as Achilles's strong stare looks down on him, something else comes to my mind.
"My violin," I gasp.
Lena holds me tighter. "Nyx, it doesn't matter—"
"My violin!" I shout, shrugging her off and running back to the house.
My lungs feel heavy, like I've got a terrible flu, and I can't take a single breath. All I do is cough continuously as I attempt to sprint back to my place.
I'm grabbed at the waist from behind, lifted until my feet are kicking into the air.
"Don't you fucking dare go back in that house," Achilles hisses in my ear.
"My violin. You know how much it's worth. Let go! This is all your fault!"
"You're not thinking straight. It's an object."
"An object that means everything to me," I sob. "I need it… It's my life."
I hear him mumble some insults as he puts me down. "You'll be the end of me, woman."
And I watch, mouth agape, as Achilles Duval strides back into a burning house to save my dream.