Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
MIA
“ T his is it.”
“Okay,” I say, unclipping my belt and reaching into my purse for the fare, my head firmly down.
I will not show my reaction.
When I finally look up and offer the driver thirty dollars for the ride, he waves his hand in front of him. “Keep it,” he says, passing me his contact card. “If you run into trouble, I’ll be around the area for the next few hours.”
I take the card and push open the door, leaving the cash on his back seat. “Thank you, but I can’t accept the free ride.”
The driver rounds the car, pulls open the trunk, and hands me my bag. “Sure you’ll be okay, ma’am?”
“Yep.” I smile at him, not nearly as convinced as my response sounds. “Thank you again.”
When he gets in his car and takes off down the long street, I turn back to the front porch of the house where Jessie grew up.
It’s devastating.
Honestly, I don’t know what I expected. I tried to imagine what having nothing looked like. What four walls of horror might appear like from the outside.
But no amount of visualization could have prepared me for the dilapidated state in front of me. Homes don’t need to be fancy or big or even tidy. It just needs to feel safe, like love and hope exist there.
By that definition, this isn’t a home.
Pulling the screen door open first, I push at the front door, the handle virtually redundant, and enter the house. The door closes on its own behind me with a creak.
The inside of the house looks like it’s been ransacked, barely resembling a livable space. But it’s not the mess that hits me first; it’s the smell.
If depression had a scent, I’m pretty sure that this house would be it.
Bringing my palm across my face, I peer down at the coffee table in front of me. No one is around, but the ashtray is full of butts, some look fresher than others.
My throat is dry and thick, but when I hear movement from upstairs, my heart beats faster in my chest. “Jessie?”
There’s no response as I stand and wait for a couple of beats. “Jessie?” I try again, feeling sure he’d said he was going back home.
A bang ricochets across the ceiling, followed by, “Fuck!”
The voice is male, but it doesn’t belong to my boyfriend.
Wayne.
As fast as my trembling body will carry me, I turn and head for the front door, pulling it open. When I get to the screen, it’s wedged in the doorframe. I keep pulling on it, but it won’t budge.
“Red nails.”
A hand wraps around my arm, spinning me around to face an older version of my boyfriend.
He looks like him, but he’s nothing like him, all at the same time.
His eyes are blue, but hold no warmth, like his son’s.
“I was looking for Jessie.” It’s the only thing I think of to say as he peers down at me.
When he releases my arm, I think about my chances of making a run for it. If Jessie isn’t here, then neither is Alice.
“Struggling with the door?” he asks, tipping his head up and over my shoulder.
“Is he here?”
Running his tongue across his bottom lip, he scans my body. The insidious tone in his voice that night on the phone is mimicked in the way he looks at me, and I take a step back into the screen.
“He’s at the hospital.”
“W-which one?” As much as I try to hold back my fear, it’s impossible to hide. I can stand up as straight as I want, but my voice gives me away.
He laughs, but there’s nothing amusing about the way it sounds. “I’d say, at this point, it really doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
He looks off to the side, and I follow his gaze to a picture on the wall. One with Jessie as a baby, sitting on his mom’s lap. “She died shortly after she got to the hospital. He’ll be there since I asked them to call him before I left.” He shrugs his shoulder and slides his hands into his pockets. “I don’t currently own a phone, so I couldn’t do it myself.”
“She’s dead …why aren’t you still there with her?” The question leaves my mouth before I can stop it.
He stares at me for a long second and then blows out a breath. “Did you not hear me? She’s dead. There’s nothing more I could do. Sitting by her side isn’t going to bring her back, is it?”
“I … I guess not.” I turn around to leave, praying this time, I can figure out how to get past the screen door. “I’ll call Jessie and find out where he is.”
“Not so fucking fast.” His hand comes around my arm again. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
In around half a second, my mind searches through the contents of my bag, remembering the pepper spray I stashed in there when I started college.
“He knows I’m here,” I lie. “He’s probably on his way over right now.”
With my back to him, I feel and smell his breath fan my ear. The stench of booze is unmistakable, and I shut my eyes in the hopes that it will disconnect my other senses too.
“Come on now, Mia. He has no idea you’re here, does he? I’d go so far as to say he doesn’t even know you’re in Texas.”
A shiver licks up my spine when he says my name. As Jessie predicted, the minute we went public, Wayne would know my identity. He only needed to check the gossip sites to work that one out.
Not waiting for him to do it himself, I spin around and face him, tipping up my chin. “Why are you so bothered, Wayne? I mean, I could stay here and talk with you, but you sounded pretty busy up there.” I motion toward the stained staircase. “So, I’ll be on my way and leave you to do … whatever it was you were doing.”
Assuming he has a system full of alcohol, his reflexes take me by surprise as he reaches up and snatches my bag off my shoulder, throwing it across the room and onto the couch, the contents spilling out, including my cell.
“If he’s on his way, then there’s zero point in you leaving.”
“I don’t want to stay,” I reply, my voice significantly less steady than before.
He leans down, bringing his face inches from mine. “Why not?”
I know it’s an illusion, but I can’t help believing it’s real when I stare past Wayne’s shoulder and into the tiny kitchen behind him, seeing an image of a young Jessie climbing onto the counter to search the cupboards for food.
I wonder where Wayne beat Jessie when he was last here. Maybe right in front of the broken TV or upstairs and away from his now-dead mother.
Rage builds inside me, impossible to push down. I can’t ignore it, and I don’t want to anymore.
My heart aches for the man I love because, today, he lost his mom, and I know deep down in my gut that it was to the same monster he fights every day of his life—alcohol.
As I bite my cheek, I know this is a mistake. But somehow, an error in judgment has never felt so good.
My lips curl into an involuntary snarl. “Because I can’t stand the sight of you.”
I don’t know how I expected him to react, but it’s not the hysterics he breaks into, practically doubling over.
He holds up a hand, his other arm wrapped around his waist. “Sorry … just give me a second. That was way too funny.”
I’m confused and intimidated, but the sight of my phone ringing silently on the couch catches my attention. Dad lights up the screen.
Maybe I should’ve listened to him and Jessie. Why didn’t it click that his mom would be in the hospital? Why am I so goddamn stupid?
“Okay, I’m good now.”
I’ve only ever felt like I couldn’t breathe twice before in my life. The first time was when I fell off a pony as a young girl, and the second was when my dad told me my mom had passed away.
This time, it’s when my back hits the wall so hard that all the air is knocked out of me.
His fingers wrap around my throat, giving me zero chance of catching my breath as he holds me against the wall, my feet dangling above the floor.
This is it. Where I die.
At the hands of a man Jessie repeatedly told me was dangerous.
At the hands that have repeatedly beaten down my boyfriend.
“Please,” I beg, my voice strangled and barely a whisper, the tears flowing freely from my eyes. “You don’t want t-to?—”
“Don’t want to what, Sweetheart?” He brings his face to my neck, inhaling my hair. “Why are you all the same? Alice used to beg and plead too. It’s not attractive.”
Thrashing my body from side to side, I try to kick him in the shin, but he jumps back, and laughter spills out of him once again. This is all a game to him.
“Oh, now, maybe I get it. Why my boy likes this pussy. It’s got fight. Does he make you fight him, Mia? Does he like that his posh little rich bitch is feisty?”
My attempts to fight back slow as my energy reserves dwindle, and the room around me starts to dim.
“Get your fucking hands off her!”
I fall to the floor, but the thud I hear is way louder than the noise my petite frame should make.
“I should’ve done this way before now!”
On my hands and knees and still gasping for air, I lift my head, trying to find the voices.
When my vision slowly recovers, I see Jessie over his dad as he lies flat on his back, his hands shielding his face.
“You killed her, didn’t you? You let her fucking die on the floor,” he shouts between sobs and punches. “You could’ve called for help earlier, but didn’t.”
He continues to beat down on his dad, his fists connecting with whatever part of Wayne’s body he can find.
“Jessie,” I whisper.
The sobs he releases ricochet through my own body, and my tears tumble to the matted carpet beneath me.
“Jessie,” I repeat, a little louder this time, but it still doesn’t register.
Forcing my exhausted body to move, I crawl toward him.
“I hate you. HATE YOU!” he screams, landing another blow to his dad’s nose, blood spraying everywhere. “Piece of fucking shit.”
Jessie isn’t a violent person, and these punches aren’t aggression. With every strike, he’s purging years of abuse, of silence. Every hit and wail he releases carries a different purpose than to simply inflict pain. His dad’s body might be traumatized, but Jessie is the one bleeding out.
“Jessie.” I try one final time, bringing a hand to his shoulder as he straddles his father.
It’s then I catch the first glimpse of something I hope never to see in his eyes again. Fear. True fear. Unadulterated fear that I’ve only read about in books and tried to describe in assignments I submitted.
“You’re going to kill him. You don’t want that on you,” I whisper.
“He watched my mother die and assaulted my girlfriend!” he spits.
I’m not even sure he recognizes that it’s me he’s talking to.
“You don’t want to do this, Jessie. He’s not worth it. You’re worth more than all of this.”
Sliding my hand down the arm that’s closest to me and currently wrapped around his dad’s throat, I trail my fingers over his as his other arm hangs in the air above Wayne’s bloodied face.
“It’s okay.” I soothe, hooking my little finger around his.
I barely use any force, pulling his hand away with ease.
His dad stirs but is barely conscious when Jessie climbs off his body and onto mine, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.
“I need you, Mia.” He brings my legs around his waist and lifts me to straddle him. Rocking us back and forth, he buries his face into the hair over my shoulder, his tears soaking into my shirt. “I need you.”
As I stroke a palm down the back of his head, I don’t say a word, just rock with him.
When he releases a gut-wrenching wail that shakes the foundation of the house, I hear it echoing in every room, every wall. This roar of pain is on behalf of his brother, his mother, and every year of his own life where he’s seen and felt indescribable torture.
Looking down at the zip-up hoodie he wasn’t wearing when I last saw him, I notice the initials JJ stamped on his chest as I unzip it and pull one side open and then the other. “Wrap it around us, baby.”
He lifts his head from my shoulder, and the dark circles under his red eyes are still visible in the fading light outside as he takes me in.
“You’re safe under here,” I reassure him.
As he stretches the large hoodie around us, we don’t say anything for at least thirty seconds; the only noise is the traffic outside and the shallow breathing of his father lying next to us.
“We need to call the police and nine-one-one,” I finally say to him.
Nodding slowly, I know he understands why.
“We need to make statements,” I whisper as calmly as I can.
“The doctors said the internal bleeding my mom died of was advanced. They couldn’t be sure, but they suspected she’d been like that for a while before he used her phone and called the paramedics. He’d left her. I know he did. His body shudders with another sob as he delivers the earth-shattering reality.
“Tell me he didn’t hurt you,” he pleads. “Tell me you’re okay.”
I close my eyes and run my palm across the nape of his neck, and he collapses his face into my chest.
“I’m okay. You got to me in time.”
“It’s okay, Mia. I got you both.”
Two hands land on my shoulders from behind.
“Dad?”
Crouching down beside us, my dad checks Wayne’s pulse and then pulls out his phone, hitting three numbers and the Call button. “I knew you’d find a way to get here. I’m just sorry I don’t drive a rocket ship. He’s messed up pretty bad, but the fucker deserves worse.” Putting the phone to his ear, he scans my body quickly, landing on the red marks that no doubt paint my neck. “Are you okay, Mia?”
I nod, still clinging to Jessie. “We’re both okay, but I need to get him out of here ASAP.”
Jessie tangles his fingers in my hair, twisting the strands around.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve listened to you. I shouldn’t have come. I just made it worse.”
Inhaling a shaky breath, he brings his lips to my forehead. “You should’ve listened, but when Kate called me to say she hadn’t heard from you since you’d landed in Texas, I knew where you’d be. I knew because I’d stop at nothing to be right here, too, if this were you.”
“I’m a stubborn bitch at times,” I reply as my dad stands and walks to the other side of the room, confirming the address.
“I just want to go home with you.”
“We will, baby,” I say, rocking him again. “Promise.”