Chapter 24
It didn’t surprise me when I heard the pounding of his fist against my motel door. If anything, it surprised me how long it took him to figure it out.
I wasn’t playing games with him. That wasn’t why I drove to Dayton, the small town where he grew up.
In part, I chose this spot because I didn’t know where else to go.
But I knew eventually he would come looking for me.
I made it easy for him. Honestly, I didn’t want him to go through too much trouble.
In the end, he would find out it wasn’t worth it.
I wasn’t worth it.
“Ali, I know you’re in there. Open this damn door,” he hollered, rattling the locked knob.
I arrived at the motel nearly twelve hours ago. I had all day to prepare; and yet, as I stood to let him in, I did so on unsteady legs. When I reached for the lock, I noticed my hands were shaking.
On the other side of the door was my heart.
I could feel him through the barrier. After the agony of ripping my insides to shreds the night before, I didn’t think I could ache anymore.
The absence of him, the emptiness which remained after walking away from everything we were and everything we could have been—it was compounded by the loss of the only place I’d ever felt at home.
I had been scraped raw. How it was possible to hurt even more simply hearing his voice, I didn’t know.
Then I opened the door, I took one look at him, and I realized—in spite of everything—I hadn’t known hell until now.
I don’t know how long we stood there, neither of us speaking a word; but with every second that passed, my vision got a little blurrier as my eyes welled with tears.
For as long as I could stand it, I didn’t blink, hoping to delay the return of my clear vision.
I knew by the way he was looking at me—curiosity bordering on pity—my secret wasn’t a secret anymore.
It was after my first couple of tears spilled over my eyelids that I decided it was time to get this over with.
“He told you,” I murmured, breaking the silence.
“Would rather hear it from you,” he said before he took a step toward me, compelling me to let him in.
I let go of the door, backing up until I was in the middle of the small room. He shut us in, and I began to let loose memories I’d been keeping under lock and key for years. This was it. This was my chance to come out of hiding, to reveal myself to the man who never hid from me.
The most delusional part of me once imagined the truth could set me free.
Now, reality was here to set the record straight.
The truth wouldn’t free me, but it would force him to let me go.
It would free Ben from the fantasy that was us—and after all my pretending, I owed him that much.
“I met him when I was nineteen. He was wealthy and handsome—but it wasn’t his money I was after. I thought he wanted me. I thought he could be my escape. A month after we met, we flew to Vegas and got hitched. I didn’t know it then how I’d tied myself to a man worse than any I’d ever known.
“He owned a night club in Denver, and he hired me on as a waitress. But not just any waitress. I served only those rich enough to buy their way into the VIP section. My first night, one of his buddies touched my leg. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t experienced before.
In fact, it was so minor a thing, I didn’t even think about it.
But that night, when we got home—Sean made sure to express exactly how major an infraction it had been. ”
I paused long enough to take a breath, then continued without blinking.
“He never beat me hard enough to put me in the hospital. That would have been inconvenient. And somehow, even in his rage, he was always careful to hurt me in such a way that my bruises could be easily hidden. He didn’t hit me every night, and he was always so sorry.
For a day or two after, he would shower me with gifts and affection—but then something else would happen that would set him off.
And even though I let this go on for years, I was never quite sure what could unleash his monster, so I was always afraid. Always.”
My tears had slowed to a trickle—this part of my story being the easiest to tell.
“When I was twenty-three, I’d had enough, and I ran.
But I was so desperate to get away, I didn’t think it through very well.
Neither had I gone far enough. I got a job at a bar in a college town a couple hours up the road.
I managed to stay there a whole two weeks before he found me.
He dragged me back to Denver, beat the shit out of me, and then got off on it and raped me.
“He raped me whenever he fuckin’ felt like it for a year. Lucky for me, he liked a willing pussy every once in a while, so he brought other women home when he wanted to hear her moan for him.
“It wasn’t long after he dragged me back that I met Wesley.
” My nose tingled, and I could feel another bout of tears coming on at the mere thought of him.
“He was one of the bouncers at the club. He was kind and smart and he knew where all the cameras were and the best blind spots. He knew when he could talk to me and when he couldn’t.
“It was his idea to teach me self-defense. He bought me my first blade. We would meet at his gym a couple days a week. It took some time for me to catch on, but he was—he was patient.”
I choked on a sob and Benson took a step toward me. Shaking my head, I retreated a step, swallowed the knot in my throat, and continued.
“I ran again when I was twenty-four, but I had a well thought out plan. I was going to disappear, and so I did. I made it to Cheyenne. I got a job at a bar. I settled in, and I could breathe for the first time in years.
“I kept to myself, to be safe. I didn’t make friends.
I didn’t date. But it didn’t matter. I was free.
Or so I thought. For two years I didn’t see him.
I didn’t hear from him. Nothing. Until one day—one day he walked into the bar.
He pretended to be sweet. He pretended like he’d missed me, but I saw through all his bullshit.
“It was getting late and I went out back to take out the trash, and he followed me. Cornered me. He told me how amusing he thought I was for believing I ever had any privacy. He told me how it hadn’t been hard to find me, but that he assumed I’d come back when I got tired of having no money.
And when I didn’t run back to him, he decided to let me have my fun for a while. ”
My hands were shaking violently as that night played vividly in my mind’s eye.
I closed my eyes and shook my head as I admitted for the first time in eight years, “I wasn’t going to kill him.
But then he told me about Wesley—about how he’d found out about our secret rendezvous .
That’s the word he used. He thought we were fucking, and in his jealousy, he put a hit out on him.
“I just sort of lost it. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop it.”
Benson’s huge, warm hands were suddenly holding my face, and I snapped my eyes open with a gasp.
“It’s okay, baby,” he murmured, wiping at my wet cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.
“No!” I wrenched out of his hold, stepping out of his reach. “Don’t! Don’t absolve me.”
He knit his eyebrows together, inching toward me slowly as he asked, “You think I’m some angel? Huh?”
I shook my head at him, continuing my journey backwards. This wasn’t tit for tat.
“You don’t understand. You can’t understand.
I’m damaged goods, Ben. You call me beautiful, but that’s just hair and tits and ass.
Inside,” I paused long enough to smack my open palm against my chest before I continued, “In here, I’m a monster in disguise.
I am the monster they made me. Sean and Scorpion and fucking Tommy!
And for a minute—fuck, for a minute I thought I could be someone else.
With you , I thought I could be someone else… ”
My tears were coming faster now, but I needed to get it all out. I needed him to know—to understand.
“I can’t be who you want me to be. Not now. Not now that you know everything.”
“Know what?” he asked, his voice gentle, his approach careful. “That you’re a monster? Baby—you’re not a monster, you’re a fuckin’ warrior.”
His words gutted me.
It wasn’t true.
“I’m not,” I managed on a whimper.
“You are. You’re a warrior, Ali?—”
“No. Stop,” I insisted with a shake of my head.
I took another step back, but found I’d run out of room.
Benson was close—too close—and then his hand was wrapped gently around my neck, his thumb and forefinger applying enough pressure to make me tilt my head back, until all I could see was him.
His handsome face.
His bushy beard.
His perfect brown eyes.
“You wanna know why I call you sparky?”
I hesitated as I blinked, sending more tears down my cheeks.
“To annoy me,” I whispered.
He smirked, and I wished I could hate it.
“I call you sparky because the first time you took my dick inside you, my world caught fire. And baby, it’s been burnin’ ever since.
” He paused, leaned in close, and murmured, “Ali-Mae, you are not a monster. You got it right. You’re a Phoenix.
And the woman who has risen from the ashes is everything . ”
For a split second—one blissful blink of the eye—I let myself believe the lie.
But I’d known since the very beginning, this was never going to last. It couldn’t.
He didn’t understand, and I didn’t have it in me to wait around until he did.
“Stop,” I muttered, pressing myself back flat against the wall.
“No. Not until you believe it.”
“I’m a murderer, Ben,” I spat.
A spark of anger lit inside of me, and I grasped hold of it with everything I had. I resented him for making me do this; for pretending his opinion of me hadn’t diminished.
“You’re a survivor,” he countered.
“I’m a fucking whore! ” I screamed, unable to take much more.
He didn’t even flinch.
“No, baby, you’re not.”
I coughed out a humorless laugh.
“Stop lying to me. Stop lying to yourself. I fucked him. I fucked Scorpion in exchange for his silence over and over and over again. Every time he was in town. For two years, Benson!”
“Don’t care,” he said easily.
“Liar!”
“Sparky, you did what you had to do. That’s not you anymore.”
“Don’t you get that’s what I’m trying to say?” I argued, uselessly shoving at his chest. “You don’t know me! You think you do, but you don’t. You can’t. No one does.”
“I know you, Ali. You can be as hardheaded as you wanna be, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I know you drink your coffee black with a drop of liquid stevia. I know your favorite dessert is fuckin’ dry cereal—just not the kind with food dye, cause my woman likes that organic shit.
“I know you like to feel the wind in your hair out on the open road nearly as much as I do; and when the ride is over, I know home is where you want to be. And home to you isn’t merely a place to lay your head at night.
It’s a feeling. It’s an experience. It’s where the purest most beautiful part of you comes to life.
“And, baby, the fact that you could walk through all that shit and come out the other side so vibrant and alive, so feminine and strong—it damn near makes me wonder if there’s a God out there, after all, cause you’re one hell of a miracle.”
By the time he was finished, I was numb.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep his words from penetrating into the weakest parts of my mind.
I didn’t want to remember this moment. I didn’t want to remember the way he saw me.
It wasn’t a complete picture—it was only the fragments of me he wanted to believe were real.
The pieces of me I’d been reckless enough to let him have.
“You’re wrong. Let me go,” I insisted, desperate to be free of his touch.
“No.”
“Let me go!” I yelled.
“No. Not until you believe it,” he repeated.
“God—I fucking hate you!”
His hand around my neck tightened and he pressed in even closer, touching his forehead to mine before he muttered, “Well, I love you, and that’s pretty damn close. I guess that makes us even.”
I jerked in his hold, his declaration sending a jolt straight through me, shattering my numbness and reigniting my anger.
“Don’t say that to me,” I whispered.
“Why not?”
I shoved at his chest again, and still he didn’t move. I all but growled as I spat, “I don’t want your pity, asshole.”
“It’s not pity, and you know it. I don’t say shit I don’t mean.”
“Yeah, well, it’s like I said— you don’t know me . Whatever we had, it was just pretend. It was me pretending I could be more, but it was a lie. It’s all a big fat lie. You don’t love me because the version of me I gave you isn’t real; and I can’t love you because I don’t even know what that is.
“This? You and me? It’s over. Please go. Please.”
He lifted his head away from mine so he could look me in the eye as he muttered, “You don’t mean that.”
I freed a hysterical laugh. “Seriously? Stop tellin’ me I don’t know what’s in my own fuckin’ head. Just leave, Ben. Leave! Please.”
Benson stood there, silently staring down at me for a long moment. I didn’t look away, feeling both desperate for him to let me go and devastated that he probably would.
When he made up his mind, I saw it. His eyes grew vacant somehow as his face went blank. He freed my neck, and it was like he’d tossed my heart at my feet, where it shriveled up and died.
He took one step back, putting just enough space between us to make it difficult for me to breathe. The panic I felt the night before was back—only bigger and bolder than before.
“You’ve locked yourself in a cage, Ali,” he began, his voice as deep and resonate as ever. “It’s a prison in which you do not belong. But you’ve got wings. You can fly, baby—and the door is open. It’s always fuckin’ open.”
When he was finished speaking, he turned his back to me, headed for the exit. I watched him leave without a second glance. No sooner had the door shut softly behind him than I collapsed onto the floor and wept.