34. Jimmy
Jimmy
“ C alm down, Kurt.” Stefen’s voice trembled as he cowered before the gun trained on his chest.
“Calm down?” Kurt shrieked, his eyes bloodshot as all hell and full of fire. “You fucking hurt her again ! She sent me pictures of the bruises on the back of her neck from when you forced her to heel. Torn fingernails from her trying to rip your hands off her! Don’t tell me to fucking calm down !”
I didn’t so much as twitch.
Couldn’t.
My eyes stayed glued to the scene playing out before me as I tried to collapse in on myself and disappear like I’d always done with Dad when he was rip-roaring drunk and screaming at me.
Globs of spit landing on my cheek.
A fist to my temple.
My fingers bleeding from trying to untangle Dad’s grip in my hair to keep me upright so he could hit me again. The stinging pain of strands tore from my scalp as he hurled me across the threshold into the living room.
A whimper escaped me as my fingernails dug at my coat, desperate to scratch down my forearm.
“She’s a goddamned angel, you psychotic cunt!” Kurt continued his ranting, curses spilling from his lips along with spittle. “She deserves to be worshiped! How dare you call her a whore !”
I flew across the room, elbow and chin throbbing from hitting the hardwood flooring. The impact tore the air from my lungs, and I realized I’d bitten my tongue when I choked on blood.
“No son of mine is going to suck another man’s dick!” Dad hollered, looming over me, leg drawing back.
I curled in on myself, eyes clenched shut and muscles tensed while coughing over the taste of metal.
“You goddamned piece of shit!”
A boot landed against my spine.
Another on my thigh.
My shoulder.
I cried out, begging him to stop, pleading…sobbing for someone to rescue me because I was powerless to stop the drunkard. “Please,” I pleaded for mercy, wishing I could believe a god existed ? —
Sutton’s face appeared in my mind, and I felt his arms cradling me to his warm, strong chest. He held me while I got the shit beaten out of me, whispered words of edification and kindness, soothing what my dad attempted to tear apart.
“I have you. I won’t let anything happen to you,” my hero whispered against my ear.
I crumpled, sliding sideways onto the shop’s floor, reliving the afternoon I’d gotten suspended for sucking some kid’s dick under the bleachers at school.
I could feel phantom pain, the emotional turmoil, saw every drawn out second in vivid color as the memory continued to assault me.
While taking solace in thoughts of the chief had soothed me, the inescapable trauma had been ingrained in my head.
Dad had nearly broken me that day.
I’d peed blood for a week but had been too scared to tell the school nurse, Gram, or even Sutton, who probably would have tossed my dad in jail.
Didn’t want the chief believing I was a coward, and ending up in the state’s hands would probably have landed me outside Pippen Creek and far from his protection.
Worm .
“No,” I whispered, refusing to stay in the past where Dad’s voice dug claws into me, attempting to imprison me in the horror of my memories.
Kurt continued his screaming a few feet away from me, helping to keep me in the present, but I was fucked. I’d seen enough law enforcement and reality shows to know how this conflict between two men supposedly in love with one woman would end.
Cops would surround the building, attempting to negotiate with the unhinged drunkard hell-bent on protecting his lover.
Stefen would trigger Kurt somehow, and shots would fire, gun smoke filling the air.
Sarah would be prompted by shame to try to protect her abuser from the police and accidentally get hit by a bullet.
Even though I wouldn’t be able to scramble to safety, I would be a witness to Kurt’s crimes.
I alone would be the only person left living to doom him to his death with my testimony.
He would end me before I got a chance. I would become a victim when I had taken no part in any of their sins.
Gram and DJ would mourn me, seeing as they were the only family I had left.
Sutton...
A sob ripped from my chest, a whining wail that pulled Kurt’s gun my way. “Oh, God. Please,” I begged with a teary whimper, praying like fuck Sarah remained hidden back in the aisle, that Stefen would keep his goddamned mouth shut until my hero showed up. The oak of Pippen Creek would protect us?—
No.
Not this time.
He was at home—with her , his concern focused on the person who had never loved him like I did.
Same as that day Dad tried to kill his faggot son, no one was coming to save the day.
Tears soaked my cheeks as the past dragged me back into its clutches again.