Chapter 45 - Dove #2
The screen shows the bus pulling up again, the whole street shifting backward like he can control time.
My pulse spins.
He switches to another tab, a black window filled with green letters streaming down like rain. I don’t understand any of it. I only know he taught himself this stuff when we still had parents.
“What else can you do?” I inch closer to the screens.
“I can break into school records.”
He shows me how he changes my grades when we move, so I don’t have to repeat classes. He digs up addresses of foster families before I meet them, tracks bus schedules and routes so he never loses me, and disables door alarms so he can sneak into houses and get supplies.
All of it is for me. Every single thing.
He clicks another screen. A live feed from a camera near my school. Then another from the porch at my foster house. Then one I don’t recognize at all.
“You can’t do this,” I whisper.
“I already am.” That angry line between his brows deepens. “I’m not letting anyone touch you. Never again.”
A part of me knows this isn’t normal. Other kids don’t have someone watching every sidewalk they step on. But the bigger part of me, the part that aches when he’s not near, loves it.
If Jag is watching, I’m safe. And if I’m safe, he’s calm.
He rewinds the footage, frame by frame, eyes narrowed as he scans every person on the sidewalk.
He’ll find her.
“Jag…” I step between him and the screens, twisting the hem of my shirt in my fingers.
His eyes drop to the movement of my hands. Then lower.
He chokes. “You’re bleeding.”
“What?” I look down.
A thin red river trails down my thigh. It’s dark and sticky and startling.
“Oh.” I have no idea what else to say.
“Did you cut yourself?” His eyes dart around the room, trying to find what stabbed me. “Where did you—?” Slowly, his head lifts again. He studies my face, his mouth opening, closing, and opening again. “Did you get your period?”
“My… Period?”
“Your cycle.” His voice drops even quieter. “Like… Your monthly. Blood.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had that. What do I do?”
“Okay.” He blows out a breath and rubs his jaw like he’s trying not to panic. “Okay. Come with me.”
He takes my wrist, and I follow him into the bathroom again.
“Stand in the tub.” He clears his throat and looks away. “And take off your underwear.”
I climb into the rusty bathtub and pull down my underwear. The red-stained fabric looks unreal, like someone else wore it.
“This is my only pair.” I hold it out and away.
“I’ll take care of it.” He takes it from my hand and brings it to the sink.
With bucket water and a sliver of soap, he washes it the same way he cleans away other blood, fast and silent. I’ve watched him wash blood from his hands more times than I can remember. But never my blood.
Red drips along his fingers, mixing with the water and twisting into little spirals before disappearing down the drain. It’s weirdly beautiful. Mesmerizing.
When he’s finished, the underwear is white again. He wrings it out and hangs it on the line next to his socks.
I’m still standing in the tub. Still bleeding. Still confused. So I take off the shirt, too. I don’t want to get it dirty. It slides up over my head, and the air in the room hits my skin, making me shiver.
Jag turns around. His eyes go wide, then snap away so fast he stumbles and spins toward the wall.
“What—?” His fists flex against the tiles. “What are you doing? Cover yourself!”
“Why? You’ve seen me naked.”
“That was different.” He presses both hands behind his nape like he’s trying to hold his skull together. His elbows stick out like wings, and every muscle in his back goes tense. “You… Dove… You can’t just— God. Fuck!”
“Why are you acting weird?”
“I’m not… Fuck. Fuck.” He bends at his waist and straightens again. “You don’t look like a little girl anymore.”
I stare at his back. His spine moves when he breathes, jagged and rippling.
“What do I look like?”
“Like a woman.” He shakes his head sharply. “But you’re not. You’re still a kid. You can’t take your clothes off in front of anyone. Not ever. Not even me.”
“Well, that’s not true. I know what people do together without clothes on.”
“Kill me now,” he whispers under his breath. Then louder, “The shirt. Tell me when it’s on.”
“Fine.” I pull it on and cross my arms. “Done.”
When he turns around, he doesn’t look at me first. He looks at the doorway like he’s about to sprint into the night to avoid this whole thing.
So I say one word that will grab his attention. “Sex.”
He looks at me now. Really looks.
“What do you know about that?” His eyes narrow, then widen, then do this panicked flicker.
“I know you’ve been doing it for years.”
His face drains of color.
I push on. “Sometimes when you sneaked out of our forts and tents in the middle of the night, I followed you.”
He flinches like I hit him.
“I saw you.” I stand taller. “With men. And women. In their cars. In alleys. In empty buildings. I saw you put money in your pocket after.”
His whole body turns to stone. Then something else. Something cracks.
“Little Bird.” The words break in his mouth. “You… God, no. You weren’t supposed to—” He drags both hands down his face, scrubbing hard like he wants to erase himself. “You followed me?”
“Of course, I followed you.” I shrug. “You’re mine.”
He staggers back a step, bumping into the cracked wall. He looks sick. Not angry. Sick. He grips his stomach. His jaw grinds back and forth, and his nostrils pulse wide.
“I did that to feed you.” His voice strains. “When we were sleeping on the streets. When we had nothing. When you were freezing and hungry and small. I couldn’t get a job. I didn’t have anyone. I didn’t have a choice.”
“I know.”
“That was never supposed to be something you watched. Never.”
“I wasn’t scared. I just wanted to know where you went.”
He shuts his eyes like he can’t stand looking at me. Or maybe he can’t stand me looking at him.
“I’m not proud of any of that,” he says. “I’m not proud of the way people touched me or the way I let them. I did it so you could eat. So you didn’t have to do anything like that. Ever.”
I don’t know what to say. My throat hurts.
When he opens his eyes again, they’re angry and sad. But he looks at me like I’m the whole reason he survived those awful years.
“You can’t talk about sex.” He steps forward, stops himself, steps back again. He’s rattled. Really rattled. “Not with anyone older. Not with anyone who wants something from you. You don’t let anyone see you naked. You don’t let anyone touch you. You don’t—”
“I already have.”
“Have what?” He goes deadly still.
“I had sex.”
He pins me with a look so terrifying my insides fold up.
“Who?” His shout hits like a fist.
“Why are you mad?”
“Who?” he roars.
I step back until my legs bump the tub’s cold edge. “A boy at school.”
“Which boy? What’s his name?”
“He’s…” My hands shake. “Just a boy in my English class. His brother.”
“His brother?” His face contorts. Not confusion. Fury. Pure and simple and lethal. “Where is this brother? Is he in school?”
“No.” My toes curl inside the tub. “He’s too old for school.”
He inhales sharply, his chest lifting with a dangerous, animal breath. “How old?”
“He has a car.”
“That’s not an age, Dove.”
I press my legs together to stop the blood, my entire body heatless and tight. I can’t answer. I can’t say it. Because if I tell him more, he’ll walk out and come back with more blood on his hands.
And it’ll be my fault.
He watches me struggle, sees the fear, the hesitation. Then he realizes he’s losing control.
“Clean yourself.” He grabs a cloth and a bucket of water, holding it out without looking at me. “I can’t… I can’t help you with that. It’s not proper.”
His arm shakes.
I take the supplies.
He steps into the doorway with his back turned, arms crossed so hard his shoulders bunch like boulders.
I know every twitch in his neck, every shift in his legs, every tiny flinch that means he’s barely keeping himself from breaking things.
Quickly, I wash myself with the cold water, wiping away the sticky blood that keeps appearing between my legs. It hurts. Not the washing. The looking. The understanding of it.
When I finish, he leads me back to the main room and pulls out a pencil and paper.
“Write down everything you know about him.” He slams them onto the desk. “Write his name. His parents’ names. His address. What he looks like. His tattoos. His car. Where he works. Where he hangs out. Everything.”
Shame slithers up my throat. Shame for letting this happen. Shame because I know what Jag will do. Shame because I put that hurt look in his eyes.
I pick up the pencil with trembling fingers and write what he asks.
When I’m done, he scans the paper and shoves it into his pocket.
“I’ll get what you need for your period.” His tone is flat. Not calm. Not angry. Worse than both.
I don’t want him to leave. Not like this. I don’t want him to do this terrible thing for me, even though, deep down, I don’t feel guilty about this particular death.
I don’t want Jag to feel guilty about it, either.
Telling him was the right thing. The only thing.
When he grips the doorknob, the words tumble out of me.
“I told him no.”
Jag goes still.
I nod toward the paper in his pocket. “I said no over and over, and he wouldn’t stop.”
The change in him is instant.
And horrifying
And familiar.
His face warps. The tendons in his neck stand out like ropes. His nostrils go wide. His eyes go bright. His shoulder veins rise. His fists open and close, and his entire body expands with rage. Monstrous, hellborn rage.
I brace myself.
But he shoves it down. All of it. He forces his lungs back under control, unclenches his hands, and drags that rage inward like he’s swallowing fire.
“Did he do your eye?” he rasps.
“No. I fought with a girl. I told you. That was nothing.”
“Do not leave unless the building is burning.” He opens the door and glances up and down the crumbling hallway, then back at me. “Lock the bolt on the inside and let no one in. No one.”
“Please, come back.”
“I swear it.” He lifts his hand, pinky out.
That tiny gesture hits harder than all his shouting, all his anger, all his everything.
I rush forward, hook my pinky with his, and bring our knotted fingers to my lips. He turns our hands, pulls the joined pinkies to his mouth, and kisses them.
Then he walks into the hallway, carrying all my shame, all his fury, and the promise he’ll keep.
I bolt the door behind him, and silence settles over the room. For three seconds. Then…
Bang.
Another.
Bang. Bang.
The sound vibrates through the cracked tiles under my feet.
I move without thinking, sliding back the bolt and cracking open the door.
Jag stands at the end of the hallway, destroying the wall.
He slams his fists into the sheetrock over and over, hammering, pummeling, and shredding. White dust explodes around him. Chunks fall to the floor.
“Jag!” I step out.
His head snaps toward me, his eyes too wild to be human as he roars, “Told you to stay in the room and keep that door locked!”
My stomach drops to my ankles. I’ve seen him angry, but not like this. Not this stripped open and out of control.
I caused this. All of it.
“S-Sorry.” I close the door fast and shove the bolt in place with shaking hands.
The banging stops.
Hours pass.
When a light knock sounds, followed by my name, I unbolt the door.
He steps inside, hands stained in dried blood.
Exactly how I knew they’d be.
He avoids my eyes.
Without a word, I follow him into the bathroom and grab a water bucket. He leans over the sink, shoulders slumped, muscles twitching with all the leftover electricity trapped inside him.
I pull off his jacket and pour the clean water over his hands.
The blood runs in thin rivers along his forearms, swirling down the rusty drain. I wash him with a cloth, wiping the raw skin, tracing the ridges of his knuckles. I’ve washed his bloody hands before, always from bad people, never from walls.
When his skin is clean, he removes a crinkled plastic bag from his jacket. Sanitary napkins and a new pair of underwear.
He opens the box and reads the instructions like he’s defusing a bomb. His brow furrows. Then he nods to himself.
“Here. This is how you use them.” His ears turn red as he explains how the wings fold and where they stick.
When he’s sure I understand, he leaves me to it.
Doesn’t take me long to wash up and get the pad in place. Then I join him on the cushions.
He opens his arms, and I crawl into them the way I always do, chest to chest with his heartbeat rumbling under my cheek. Our legs pretzel together, and all my cold edges immediately warm.
“We’ll have to leave by morning.” He exhales into my hair.
“I know.”
It’s what we do after he washes blood from his hands. We run. We start over. We change names like other people change shoes. But it’s harder now. He has all this equipment.
“Will you leave the computer stuff behind?”
“I’ll get a car.”
“By morning?” I pinch his ribs. “You already know which car you’ll steal.”
“Maybe.” He pinches my ribs back, making me giggle. Then he falls still. “I’m sorry. For yelling. For scaring you.”
“You didn’t scare me.”
“I’m sorry for what that monster did to you.” He tightens his arms around me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
My throat aches again.
“I’m getting better. Every day. I’m learning all the things I can do with a computer.
Hacking, tracking, watching. Next time…” His hand slowly travels up my back like he’s counting my bones through the shirt.
“Next time, I’ll see the threat coming before it happens.
I’ll be able to stop it. No one will hurt you again. Not while I’m alive.”
I nod into his chest. I love hearing it, but I’m afraid of it, too. The way he watches me and kills anyone who hurts me… It’s wrong. I know that. But it’s also the only thing that’s ever made me feel like I matter.
His arms loosen enough for him to stare at my face, brushing hair from my cheeks, gentle again. He studies me like he’s memorizing me. Like I’m his secret, his obsession, and his home.
I nestle closer and fall asleep with the thud of his heartbeat against my cheek, safe in the only place I’ve ever been safe.