Chapter 45 #2
“You made me look like a fool!” He screamed, ripping open cabinets, pulling bottles down, throwing glasses across the room to shatter against the wall, yanking papers off the fridge and walls, ripping up memories as he spiraled.
His madness was everywhere, infecting the walls.
I got my body up on the side again, backing up to the wall as Danny destroyed the home I spent years building for my kids.
“You think you’re better than me now?” Danny snarled, flipping the kitchen table over into the wall, the catastrophic noise echoing through the silent house as I screamed against my gag.
“Parading around with those big-shot heroes, like they can give you something I didn’t?
You forget who made you, Frankie! You forget who taught you how to use your body for a man.
Whose name you wore before you fucked anyone else with a body that belongs to me! ”
He ripped the tape off my face, and I screamed from the sharp pain, even as I stared him down, letting go of my fear thanks to my anger. “I didn’t forget!” I rasped, throat burning from screaming into the rag, “I survived!”
He grabbed me by my hair and turned me over onto my back, twisting my legs and arms into a painful angle as he wrapped his hand around my throat, his smile stretching into that sick mocking grin I hated, “Survived? No. You belonged, baby. You still do. To me. Those kids? They’re mine.
You? Mine. You’ve just been playing house, and you’ve got the whole town fooled, but I see you. I know you.”
“Let me go, Danny—”
“You don’t tell me what to do!” His voice cracked, rage bubbling through.
“You spread your legs for them. Both of them.” He stood up, chest heaving, “Right here on this fucking couch.” He grabbed a knife from his pocket, and my blood ran cold as the metal flashed, “I watched you through the fucking sliding door as you let them fuck you like a dirty cheap whore. I watched you throw your head back and pretend you liked their touch on your body.” He swung the knife around as he walked to the couch, stabbing it into the cushion and ripping it wide open.
“But I know the truth, baby. You only like it when you have to fight. You only come when you’re screaming and fighting me off. I know the truth.”
My stomach turned, but I forced the words through my shaking lips, trying to help Travis find me, praying the call was still connected. “So what? Why bring me here if you hate my house so much?”
His angry glare came back to me, and I instantly regretted speaking at all. But if I had a prayer of getting free, I had to help Travis find me. I had to get help.
“To erase it.” He sneered, stomping back over to me. He cut the tie between my ankles and wrists, but my limbs were still bound to each other as he pulled me up to my feet. “To erase every single touch. Every kiss. Every fuck. You belong to me!”
The slap came sharp and fast, the sound ringing in my skull as I staggered on my bound feet, but he yanked me upright again, laughter spilling harsh from his throat.
“There she is.” He sneered, “The fighter. The cunt who knows how to take a hit and come back swinging. I missed that part of you. It almost makes my dick harder than when you go back to breaking for me.” He groaned, leaning in and biting my ear as I shook, trying to get him off me, “I love it when you cry for me, Frankie. I love when you beg.”
“Fuck you!” I sneered, refusing to give him my fear if that was what he liked best. “I hate you! You’re pathetic!”
He laughed, the sound was sick and twisted as he shoved me down onto the floor again, standing over me. “You’ll break for me again. Just like before. I’ll strip you down until there’s nothing left but the girl who begged me to love her.”
“Never.” I spat, tasting blood on my tongue from his hits. “I never begged you.”
His laugh was raw and cruel. “Oh, you did. For those fucking kids of yours you did.” My heart seized in my chest as he cocked his head to the side with a sneer, “And when I get the girl back, I’ll use her against you just like I used to until you’re on your knees for me again.”
He walked away from me, going from room to room, destroying what was left and I inched my way across the floor, trying to get to the door with my hands and ankles tied behind me.
Suddenly, his sick, twisted laugh came from the kitchen, and I dared to look over my shoulder at him as he pulled something out from under the sink, walking back over to me.
He held a can of lighter fluid, shaking it like a prize. “New house, new men, new life—you thought you could erase me. But I’ll erase you. If I can’t have you, then no one will. I’ll burn it all down until there’s nothing left but me.”
My blood froze.
“Danny—don’t.”
His eyes gleamed, fever-bright. “This is what it takes, Frankie! Wipe the slate clean. I have to burn the lies, burn their fingerprints off you, burn their touch from this place. When it’s ash, it’ll just be you and me again.”
He opened the cap and sloshed it across the counter, the sharp chemical stink stinging my eyes as he coated the kitchen. It dripped down the cabinets, puddled on the floor, soaking into the papers under his boots.
I went back to fighting to get out of the house, crawling across the floor toward the front door, flopping from side to side as the fear of burning alive fueled my adrenaline.
He worked behind me, spraying it over every surface of the downstairs, trapping me in the ring of death as he went on with his threats.
“You’ll watch it all burn, and then you’ll thank me when I take you from this place.
If you’re a good girl, I’ll leave those fucking cock-twits alive when I take you and our girl from here.
I’ll let them live their pathetic lives, taking care of your stupid son.
I should take him too, just to ruin you completely, but I hate the idea of you having any other man to love.
I’ll rip them all away from you until you only have me. ”
I jumped to my knees, bracing my shoulder against the front door as I climbed to my feet, and then I heard it.
The strike of the match.
I looked over my shoulder as the tiny flame flared in the dark, reflected in his eyes like madness itself.
“No—” My voice broke, raw with panic.
He grinned, “Yes. Finally.” He moaned, taking a step toward me. “There’s that fear I crave.”
Then he dropped the match.
Fire roared to life in a heartbeat, racing across the fluid-slick floor, licking up the walls and consuming the couch in a single breath. Heat blasted my face, the air turning thick with smoke as my numb fingers fought with the dead bolt, finally flipping it free.
Danny’s triumphant laughter filled the room, unhinged and awful.
“See?” He shouted over the crackle, with his arms spread like a conductor. “This is what freedom looks like! No one can take you from me now!”
The smoke clogged my lungs, searing and choking me as I twisted the knob and pulled the door.
I screamed as it snagged; the chain catching it, giving me only a few inches of fresh air.
Hope faded as fast as the flames grew behind me when the chain held the door shut above my head.
With my hands tied behind my back, I couldn’t reach it to free it, and I screamed as the heat nipped at my skin, turning my mind crazed with fear.
I turned my face into the gap, screaming out into the fresh air, sucking oxygen as I tried to rip the door open.
“Please help me! Please, someone help me!” It was pitch black outside, darkness fell quickly in the wintertime, but the orange glow of the fire reflected off the snow all around the house. It was burning—fast.
Danny stomped across the floor toward me, stumbling through the flames, still laughing, but the fire moved faster than he did, and it caught him by surprise. It licked the laces of his boots and then climbed his jeans in a single heartbeat.
His manic eyes found mine through the smoke, and for the first time in all the years I knew him, I saw fear looking back at me.
So many times, he had broken me, beating me, terrifying me, tormenting me, and usually there was sick obsessive pleasure in his gaze when he did so.
Sometimes, early on, there had been remorse in them after a fight, but not in many years.
Seeing the fear in his eyes, and then the pain, broke something in my chest, even though he deserved it.
He fucking deserved it and so much more.
But I was human, and I couldn’t celebrate his pain like he always did mine.
Still, I couldn’t look away from it, so I froze, watching it consume his body in half the time it took to engulf the whole house. His screams echoed through my ears, horrible and ragged, sounds that ripped through me even as I screamed my own.
I felt like my skin was melting, my flesh scorching as the flames danced across the ceiling. My lungs burned from the smoke, and I coughed hard enough to break ribs, but still I found no relief from the pain.
I wasn’t going to make it out of the house.
That single thought raced through my mind as I collapsed to my knees, searching for reprieve from the choking smoke and burning heat.
I wasn’t going to survive Danny, after all.
I fell back against the wall as I watched him fall to the ground, no longer screaming as the flames swallowed him whole.
At least I was going to die knowing that he was dead too.
At least he could no longer torment anyone, even if it cost me my life.
Fire nipped at my feet, burning through my shoes and pants, and I watched helplessly in some sort of dissociative state as the flames danced across my jeans.
I smiled grimly as Emmie’s giggle filled my mind, a calming balm on my soul as I neared death. Toby’s silly baby-tooth smile flashed in front of my eyes, covered in chocolate and chaos.
I felt Travis’s rough hands on my skin, tender and slow in that special combination I craved in the darkness of our home. Then I heard Elliot’s warm voice, calling my name in ecstasy, shouting for me.
The door beside me exploded into the house, and the flames danced higher from the fresh air that kissed my face.
Still, I couldn’t move to embrace it the way I wanted to. My mind locked up, so I couldn't feel the fire's pain anymore.
Movement through the door caught my attention, and then a massive body crashed through, in full firefighter gear.
I watched with a sense of separation, as if I wasn’t inside of my own body anymore as the masked firefighter turned and grabbed my body, lifting me onto his shoulder as if I weighed nothing at all and carried me out into the cold crisp winter air.
“Frankie!”
I fought the fog in my mind when I realized Eli’s voice was coming from the man carrying me out into the dark night.
“Eli—” I coughed,
I saw Elliot’s face in my mind, his smile and dimples, the view easing the pain in my heart.
Ice-cold pain engulfed my body, a stark contrast to the searing heat that had been killing me as I fell onto my back in the deep snow.
It was the shock to my system that I needed, and then suddenly I was staring up at the night sky as a scream ripped from my lips, the pain coming back to me in full force.
The impact of me falling to the ground ripped the ties off my wrists, and I swung my arms at the flames burning my body.
Eli ripped his helmet and mask off as he covered my body with snow, burying my burning clothes in it with desperation as I thrashed, clawing at him wildly with hands black with soot and smoke.
“Easy, baby,” He drawled, as other firefighters surrounded me, helping him put out the flames on my legs and cover my skin with the blessedly painful snow. “Don’t move, baby!”
A loud screeching of tires echoed over the sound of the fire engines and their sirens as Travis’s truck bombed through the snow, sliding to a stop in my peripheral vision before his massive frame raced around the vehicle, falling to his knees at my side.
Another scream ripped from my lips as my brain felt like it was going to explode in my skull from the pain as he helped Eli hold me down in the snow.
“Shh, Shade.” Travis stared at me with a broken look in his eyes. “We’ve got you. I’m so sorry, baby. We’ve got you now.”
I fell back into the snow, sinking into it as my screams felt like they were still ripping through my throat, but I could no longer hear them. All I could do was stare up at the two men I loved more than I could have ever hoped for, as darkness started to pull me under.
Damnit.
I was still going to die, my heart raced so fast in my chest there was no doubt in my mind that it would eventually give out, right before their faces vanished completely.
Life was really fucking unfair, but at least now I felt no more pain or fear. Just darkness.