Chapter 10
TEN
AUSTIN
Dad isn’t passed out in his chair like he normally is when I get home from work, which is odd, but I don’t think too much of it. I switch on the lamp by the door so he’ll have enough light to stumble to his chair when he gets in, and head down the hall with a yawn.
I only stream when Dad’s passed out drunk or if I know he’ll be gone for a couple of days.
It prevents any surprises—like him coming home mid-stream and hearing his daughter fake-moaning for strangers on the internet.
Even though I really need the money, especially now that Maddox won’t be watching anymore, I’m sort of grateful I won’t be able to stream tonight. I’m exhausted.
Or at least I was. Now, I’m on high alert.
My bedroom door is open, even though I know I locked it when I left this morning, like I always do. Unease creeps in and I know before I even go inside what I’ll find. It doesn’t make the sight any less painful.
My bedroom’s in shambles. The drawers of my dresser are all pulled out and my clothes are scattered around the room. Even my box of sex toys has been dumped out on my bed, which I really, really don’t want to dwell on considering I know it was my dad that ransacked the room.
The sight of my closet makes the muscles tighten in my throat and my eyes sting.
I’ve always kept the boxes my boots come in because they make handy storage containers.
When stacked on top of one another and tucked against the wall, they’re also a handy way to hide a loose floorboard in the back corner of the closet.
Under that loose floorboard, I keep an old metal coffee can with a plastic lid.
Every penny I make from bartending goes in that can and I do my best to keep it there unless I absolutely have to dip into it.
There should be just about five grand stashed in that coffee can.
But I don’t have to step over the torn up boot boxes and walk over to the gaping hollow in the floor to know my money is gone. I do anyway, because hope is a bitch, swallowing past the lump in my throat.
I used to keep my money in the only bank in town, just like everyone else, but the head teller frequently welcomed my father into her bed. She had no issue telling him how much was in my account.
Once, she’d even withdrawn money from it for him—off the record, of course. There was no one to hold her accountable so I’d just had to deal with it. Small towns are like that.
As far as my Dad is concerned, it is my duty to take care of him now that I am grown up because he’d taken care of me for eighteen years. Apparently, that also entitled him to my money.
The bank teller agreed with him, but he wouldn’t surround himself with anyone who didn’t.
Dad sitting on his ass in his recliner day in and day out, drowning his liver or snorting coke while I worked fifty hours a week to pay all his bills?
Well, the good Lord says they ought not judge, so they just turn a blind eye.
When I feel tears in my eyes, I take a deep breath. I fucking hate crying. I refuse to. Instead, I try to calm down so I can think clearly.
I still have money from streaming in an online bank he doesn’t know anything about. Thanks to Maddox’s most recent contributions, there was a decent amount in there, but not so much that a loss of five grand wasn’t an issue.
The front door slams, destroying my attempts at calming myself and causing me to make reckless choices. Storming down the hallway, I nearly bump into him as he stumbles towards the kitchen.
“Where’s my money?” I demand, like the dilation in his eyes and the sweat on his forehead isn’t proof enough. Dad isn’t just drunk. Five grand doesn’t just get you drunk.
It gets you enough coke for a week-long bender.
His hand drops from where he’d been rubbing his nose, surprise flashing on his face at my sudden appearance. It only lasts a second before it flips to a defensive rage. Despite his stained tank top and ill-fitting jeans, he looks stronger than he has in months as he towers over me.
“Your money?” he booms, eyes wild. The veins in his forehead bulge. “You mean the money you make in my house, using my wifi to whore yourself out?”
My stomach drops like I’m on the 82nd floor of the Empire State Building, but I do my best not to let it show on my face. Somehow, word had either gotten out, or he’d seen the container of sex toys and assumed. He wasn’t smart enough to put those pieces together himself though.
Had Maddox told someone?
Was the whole town gossiping about me? I guess it wasn’t considered gossip if it was true.
“The house is yours in name only. If it wasn’t for me whoring myself out, the mortgage and Wi-Fi wouldn’t even get paid,” I reply with more courage in my voice than I feel.
Perhaps it’s not courage.
Perhaps it’s stupidity, because the next words out of my mouth could only come from someone who has no sense of self-preservation or common sense. “You won’t even hold down a job, so I don’t know where you get off on—”
Before I even feel the pain, I hear the ringing in my ears. It takes a second for me to register that he hit me, punched me so hard that it knocked me off my feet. I fall against the TV stand on the way down, the impact against my ribs knocking the breath out of me.
Fuck, that hurts. Worse than his fist had, if I’m behind honest, though I’m sure I’ll feel that pain later, too, if the copper taste in my mouth is any indication.
He creeps closer, and every bit of the audacity I had a moment ago vanishes. Suddenly, I’m eight years old again, cowering in the corner as he approaches with his belt. Not for the first time, I envy my mother. At least she found a way out of this, even if it was through death.
I hate her for leaving me behind, but at least she taught me how to survive him before she’d gone. It rolls through my brain like a command prompt on a computer:
Don’t reach up to check if your lip is split.
Don’t show any sign that you’re hurting, because he’ll claim you’re faking it and being manipulative.
Don’t cry, because he’ll say there’s no reason to, and you don’t want him to have to ‘give you a reason to.’
Don’t stand up—the second slap will hurt worse than the first, so it’s best to stay down.
Just agree.
Just apologize.
Just say and do whatever you have to to get him to go away.
“You think you’re better than me?”
“No, sir,” I say quickly. There’s no point trying to stick up for myself, and I should’ve remembered that from the get-go. When he’s drunk, he’s easier to fight off, but when he’s drunk and high? I don’t have a chance in hell.
“You sure sound like you do. Selling your body online and thinking you can squirrel away all that money. What were you saving up for? You thinking of leaving me, girl?”
Spit flies as he yells, warm against my face, but I also know better than to flinch. Any and every reaction will only make him angrier. Submission is the only way to avoid being hurt worse, so I make myself appear weak.
Maybe I don’t have to make myself appear weak. Maybe I just am weak. As it is, every breath aches and my head is throbbing so badly I can’t even think straight.
“No, sir,” I repeat. A roach crawls across the filthy carpet and hides under the couch.
I’m envious of it, too.
He bends down and I try to be surreptitious when I lean back. There’s a pocket knife clipped to the back of my jeans, hidden along my waistband. If I could reach it, I might be able to fight him off.
But I’d need to hate him to want to hurt him, and as hard as I try, I can’t ever seem to squash the part of me that refuses to.
“You’re not going anywhere, is that clear? Your stupid mama might’ve left me, but you don’t get to.”
I don’t know if the question is rhetorical or not. If I say more than what he wants to hear, it’ll only extend this. But if I don’t answer him and it wasn’t rhetorical, I’m being insubordinate.
He tugs me up onto my knees by my hair, using the other hand to grab my chin.
His fingers and thumb squeeze my cheeks until my lips pucker out like a fish as he forces me to look up at him.
My head swims at the sudden movement, my stomach churning.
He leans over me, forcing my neck to crane back at an odd angle that makes it hard to swallow.
Almost nose-to-nose with him, I can smell the alcohol on his breath, see the residue on his nose.
“I said, is that clear, girl?”
“Yes, sir,” I whisper meekly.
His grip on my hair eases a little, and he repositions the hand holding my chin, using his thumb to stroke my sore cheekbone.
“The only way out of here is death, sweetheart,” he tells me with mock sympathy. “You’re no better than me, no better than your mama, no better than any other two-bit whore. It’s time you give up your precious little fantasies of running away. You’re a grown woman now, Austin.”
“Yes, sir.” My voice breaks this time.
He lets go of my hair and uses his hold on my face to shove me sideways. The dizziness I’ve felt since he slapped me causes me to lose my balance. I fall back on my hands, pain shooting up my wrist. “Go clean your fucking room.”
I’m twenty-two, not twelve, but the quickness with which I scramble to stand and escape to my bedroom would make you think otherwise.
I head straight to the now-shattered mirror hung on my wall, touching my cheek gingerly.
It’s bright red and already a little puffy, so it’ll probably bruise.
It would be a bitch to cover up with my cheap makeup, but not impossible.
Luckily, my lip wasn’t split after all, which would’ve been harder to hide.
I grab a bag out of the wreckage that is my closet and shove handfuls of clothes inside of it.
I don’t even know if I can make full outfits from what I choose, but I’m way more focused on escaping while Dad’s guard is down than being practical.
I just barely remember to shove my toothbrush, laptop and chargers inside.
Slipping out the window like I’ve done so many times before, I slide behind the wheel of my pickup, grateful at least that he didn’t block me in tonight.
Thanks to how loud my truck is, I’m not able to sneak away.
The second I have it cranked, I high-tail out of the yard, skidding on the ice a little.
I watch in my rear-view as Dad stumbles onto the porch. He’s yelling, but I can’t hear him.
I don’t have anywhere to go. I try not to sleep at the bar unless it’s too dangerous for me to sleep in my truck. Dale’s wife wakes up early and no matter what crevice I tuck myself away in to sleep, she always finds me. Her pity has a way of making me feel two feet tall.
Kendall is my only friend, but she’ll take one look at my face and ask too many questions or get her brothers involved. I can’t handle Maddox seeing me like this on top of everything else.
Instead, I drive the truck to the old make-out point and park at the edge of the cliff. I sit behind the steering wheel for way too long, contemplating how freeing it would be to just… drive forward.
But I don’t. I don’t have the guts.
I was hoping to be out of Cedar Creek by summer. I thought by then I’d have enough saved that I could leave without having to choose between starving to death or fucking someone just so I’d have a place to sleep each night, but losing five grand was a massive setback.
I keep the truck running, lock the doors, and lie down on the bench seat, using my bag as a pillow.
It takes a lot of repositioning before I can find a way to lay that doesn’t put too much pressure on my sore ribs.
It’s gonna be a long, cold night, and an even longer week, but at least I’m not stuck in the house with my drugged up father until his bender is over.