Eleven
ELEVEN
VANESSA
I set the pen down in the middle of my journal and fold it closed, placing the hardcover book on the bed beside me. The night is cooler than yesterday, allowing me the small comfort of a thick blanket pooled at my legs. I tug the cover over my lap, studying the haunting outline of the juvenile maple trees in the front yard.
I’ve never been able to sleep with my door closed. My blinds fully shut. So many texts describe people who’ve experienced trauma as needing that comfort—that barrier between them and their demons. But for me, it’s always been the opposite.
Every shut door provides an opportunity for him to sneak up on me. Every closed blind shields the depravities inside from the world outside. Every closet is a giant box of secrets. Every sheet over my head is a cloak for the approaching danger.
I’d rather see my fate coming.
“Murph?” That fucking cat has abandoned me every night for a straight week. Perhaps he’s finally changed his mind, given the cooler weather. “What are you doing, buddy?” Or maybe he can sense how fucking wired I am, too.
Nothing. No response.
“Fuck’s sake.” I toss the covers aside and set my feet on the cold floor.
If the little asshole doesn’t come to me, then I’ll track him down and prove to myself that’s all I heard; his goddamn claws clicking across the floor.
“Where are you, you fluffy little menace?” Arms folded across my chest, I step into the dark hallway and peek at the visible space inside the spare room. “I can lock you out for good, you know? Don’t test the limits of my charity, asshole.” I veer left and head for the living room—the source of the noise.
The clock ticks an even tempo, faint moonlight struggling to illuminate the space through the shaded windows.
Everything seems as it should. The shapes twist and morph in the dark, my mind playing tricks on me. But I reassure myself by repeating my routine.
I itemize everything in the room from right to left.
“Bookshelf. Bookshelf. Chair. Table. Chair…” I catalog everything I own, reassuring the nervous parts of my mind that every dark lump belongs where it is. That nothing is amiss. “… tall lamp.” I finish with a sigh, closing my eyes briefly while I pull in a deep breath. Everything is okay. You are here. You are safe. My skin still prickles, but at least I haven’t felt the urge to curl into a ball. Yet.
Progress.
Although the nausea persists every time I think about my aunt’s arrival. Fuck.
What the hell do I say to her? How do I broach the subject without sounding cold? Selfish? “Hey, I know we haven’t spoken in a fucking long time, but do you know if my mother is still alive? Or has your sociopathic brother killed her with stress?”
My mother disappeared from public view when she took on his last name. It started small, with snide comments about her activity online and commentary about who she’d spoken to that day. Over time, it worsened. I recall afternoons with her in the navy armchair closest to the kitchen, talking with the one friend she was allowed about how his control disturbed her, but she understood his concern given who he was.
What he had to lose. As though nothing about her life mattered.
As though she had nothing of her own worth keeping.
Those conversations stopped fucking fast once that sole friend showed her true colors, reporting everything back to her husband, who then told him what my mother had said.
She lost her phone. The home computer was taken away.
He kept her busy with charity. With ‘women’s business’ as he called it.
She indoctrinated the new arrivals. Showed the younger women—the girlfriends, the mistresses, and the new wives—how they should behave. What to say. Who to say it to.
My mother became his lieutenant, keeping the womenfolk in line while their husbands prospered. While the men fell headfirst into the pool of hedonism that my stepfather filled.
I scrub a hand over my face and head left into the kitchen. As I creep across to the back door, the clock ticks louder, an ominous countdown to a long-overdue confrontation.
The fuck? I frown at the position of the door, slightly ajar, as though I didn’t quite push it closed hard enough. Swear I shut it. I lash out and shunt it closed with the heel of my hand, quick as if the fucking thing might bite.
My heart rate picks up. Shit.
There’s too much. Too many things happening that shouldn’t be. Too much deviation from routine.
Too many steps from safety.
A sudden yip from my right has me jump backward, hand to my chest to quell the erratic organ within.
“Motherfucker! Where the hell did you come from?”
Murphy saunters into the room, leaping nimbly onto the counter. I’m too busy willing my nervous system to take a fucking deep breath and chill to give a shit about his audacity. He nudges against my arm, whiskers tickling my face as he sniffs me.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I exhale long and slow. “Fucking hell. Don’t do that.”
He purrs, more than happy for me to scoop him off the counter and carry his ass back through to my bedroom with me. If I’m to suffer through another restless night because of him, the least the asshole can do is join me for it.
“Stay in here, alright?” I set his fuzzy ass down on the bed and then resume my position, cross-legged under the bundled edge of the cover. “Let me finish journaling, and then we can get some damn sleep, huh?”
Murphy promptly circles twice and curls himself amongst the folds of the thick blanket.
I pick up the notebook and open it, retrieving the pen. Re-reading the last few lines, I remind myself where I left off and finish my stream of thought, pouring out the problems and questions that have no answer. One of the few habits I maintain from my first therapy sessions after leaving him.
By the time I set the book aside and flick out the light, I feel as though my aunt’s visit could be a good thing after all. A chance to lay guilt to rest. To reassure myself that I wasn’t the bad child. That my departure wasn’t the reason for what he did to the others.
That men are responsible for their sins.
And that women are not only allowed to dream but to believe that they are worthy of such magic.
I close my eyes and sigh, Murphy happily purring at my feet.
Maybe, just maybe, this is it. This is my turning point toward everything being better.
Toward hope for the future.
Everything is wrong.
My eyes snap open, head swimming from the disorientation of waking too fast. It’s still dark outside, but even worse, it’s too dark in here.
And quiet. Far too quiet.
My pulse pounds in my ears, breaths loud as I draw inadequate air. What the hell? I went to sleep so relaxed. I honestly believed things were better and that I was done with this waking to a panic attack shit. Why the hell? What triggered me?
The bed moves at my feet, which wouldn’t be strange given Murphy went to sleep there, but the weight is all wrong. It’s too much. Too heavy. Sure as shit, not a cat. The fuck?
I jolt upright, scrambling backward up the bed to push against the headboard, a scream lodged in my throat. I swallow twice before managing to croak out, “Who the fuck are you?”
The man lifts his head from where… no fucking way … he reads my journal, seated on the foot of my bed .
“Put that down.” I lift a shaky hand and point to the notebook in his hands. “That’s not yours.”
He lifts the book, flicking it in his hold to read the cover. “Yeah. It ain’t got my name on it. You’re right.”
Fucking smartass. I take a moment to study the treat before me, my heart thudding painfully against my ribs. His torn jeans pull open at the knees with how he sits, legs folded before him. Chunky boots dig into the underside of his calves. The pithy light in my bedroom makes it hard to see what’s printed on his T-shirt, but two distinct things give away precisely who this motherfucker is: the leather vest adorned with stitched badges, and his fucking two-tone hair—half blond, half a warm chestnut brown.
“You,” I growl deep in my throat. “You were at the fucking cafe.”
He lifts a finger as though to shush me while he reads.
The hell? I lean left, tilting to stretch my hand towards the floor.
“Looking for this?” The asshole lifts my bat in his right hand, head down, still engrossed in my journal.
“I’ll phone the cops.”
“Tell Marty I said hi.” He turns the page. “You’ve got great handwriting. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“No,” I snap. “Probably because nobody has ever read my fucking journal. ” Goddamn it. I dive toward the guy to snatch the notebook back.
He moves backward off the bed with such speed and grace that I can’t help but tilt my head, eyes wide, as I stare at the fucking anomaly. He’s not necessarily overly muscular, but he’s broad enough that I didn’t pick him for being so agile.
My gaze tracks the shadowed tattoos down his bare forearms and settles on my journal. “The things in there are private.” If he wants to know how much of a nutcase I am, he could get enough from simply watching me for twenty-four hours. He doesn’t have to read the scratchings of my soul.
“I figured.” He continues to read. “It was kind of why I picked the book up.”
“Huh?”
“Because the shit in here is private?” He lifts his bi-colored gaze, waving the journal in his hand. “I wanted to know more about you.”
“Most people just ask,” I sass, angered that I feel naked beneath his inquisitive gaze. “ Most people introduce themselves in public spaces , not other people’s homes.”
“I’m not most people.” He retreats toward the wall until his back hits it, then lifts the sole of one boot to the papered surface to continue with the great American novel. “And I’m not introducing myself. I’m introducing you.”
I’m struck speechless.
Not only by his fucking audacity but by the guy’s breathtaking profile. The pale moonlight creeping through my open curtain highlights the angles of his face—just as arresting as I remember from the cafe. But it’s the slope of his strong shoulders, the swell of his thick thigh as he braces his bent leg against the wall, and the tendons highlighted across the back of his hand as he clutches my innermost secrets in his fingers that have my heart quicken.
The devil disguises himself with beauty. Evil looks like temptation.
“I’d like my journal back, please.” I slide off the side of the bed and stand, shoulders back.
He glances over the top of the book and gestures toward me with the bat. “Cute pajamas.”
“It’s a T-shirt,” I deadpan.
“That’s my point.” His gaze drops pointedly to my exposed thighs.
I squeeze them together. “Journal?”
“Not finished with it.”
“Give it.”
“No.”
“It’s mine,” I whine like a frustrated child.
“And that’s why I want it.” He glances over the pages at me again, leaning his weight on the bat.
I burn beneath his scrutiny. “Who the fuck are you?”
“People call me Chaos.”
“Cool.” I roll my eyes. “People call me trouble.”
The fucker waggles my journal again. “I can see why.” His brow dives, and fuck it all if that doesn’t make him more intriguing. “Hey, who is this guy you keep talking about? An ex? You never use his name.”
I know I don’t. “He’s none of your business,” I whisper.
My midnight intruder glances up again, lips set in a firm line. “He scares you.”
“ You’re scaring me.” The throbbing pulse point in my neck proves so.
His lips twitch, and he drops my journal to his side. “I didn’t mean to. Fuck. ” He turns away, gently setting the bat against the corner of the wall. “Is it okay if I keep this for a day or two?” He lifts the journal high enough for me to see it over his shoulder.
“No,” I snap. “It’s not fucking okay.” Who the hell does he think he is? Breaking into my goddamn house and then taking my shit. My personal shit.
“Shame.” Chaos lifts the back of his leather vest and T-shirt, shoving my goddamn textual nightmares into his waistband. “Because I wasn’t really asking.”
I lunge for the asshole, determined to get the fucking journal off him.
He spins, holding one hand out before him, index finger raised. “Nuh-uh.” Fucker wags it side-to-side. “It isn’t wise to fuck around with things you don’t understand.”
“You don’t say.” I grit my teeth, fists balled at my sides.
“And that, my little enigma,” he coos, sidestepping toward the door. “Is why I’ve got this.” He reaches behind to pat my journal, bending at the waist as he smiles.
“So you can understand me?” I frown.
He nods. “Because I really want to fuck around with you.”