19. Jackson
Jackson
I watch Ozzy sleep.
Curled up on her side, her breath is warm against the pillow, lashes fanned across her cheeks with her hair loose and wild. I tuck the blanket around her tighter and back out of the room like she’s made of glass. Because she is. Beautiful, breakable glass.
It’s three in the goddamn morning, and I can’t sleep. Not with everything I know now. Not with everything I’ve seen.
She told me some of it. Just enough to crack open the door, but not enough to walk through. And maybe that was mercy. Maybe it was her protecting me from how bad it really was.
I thought I could hold it. Thought I could be strong. Just lie beside her, listen to her snore like a dying animal, and think, ‘Yeah, this is the woman I’m falling for.’
Instead, I laid there, staring at her scars in the dark. They cover her from the neck down. Some are thin and straight; others are thick and jagged. And that brand made me want to cry, vomit, and murder someone all in the same instant.
While lying in the bed, all I could think was, what did those fuckers look like? How many? Are they in prison? What all did they do?
I end up in the garage. It smells like oil, sweat, and rust. Familiar.
Safe. But I’m not here to fix anything. I let out a sigh.
What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to be okay with feeling those scars?
Seeing her brand and not being allowed to go and kill the people who did this to her?
I grab my phone and do something I’ve gone to do a thousand times but never could.
I pull up the web browser and tap out her name before hitting enter.
Ozzy Davenport.
It doesn’t take but a second to locate her; with that kind of original name, I knew it wouldn’t.Her name lights up across every local news station. Top result: “Local nurse reappears after five-month disappearance—evidence of prolonged captivity and sexual abuse.”
I click the article.
LOCAL NURSE MISSING FOR FIVE MONTHS APPEARS IN HOSPITAL ONE CITY OVER
Ms. Ozzy Davenport claims to have been held captive in a small shack on the outskirts of town for months while being sexually assaulted, beaten, drugged, and forced to wear a correction collar.
The first line guts me: "Authorities say Ms. Davenport endured extended sexual assault, starvation, physical branding, and repeated torture before escaping captivity."
I skim through several more articles until I find one about the trial. She did press charges. Jesus, they were just put away, right before she came here. That must’ve been why she couldn’t come here sooner when Mama broke her hip. I continue to read over the information on the site, and…
“Oh my god.”
My phone falls from my hand when the evidence photo appears.
How? How can they put that on a website for anyone to see?
I cover my mouth as I look at the photo of my Ozzy.
She’s so skinny, with sunken and bruised eyes, highly infected wounds, cut lips and snarled hair.
I want to cry while looking over her tattoo-free body.
The picture has her privates blurred, but all the cuts, burns, bites, and what looks like stab wounds are fully displayed.
But that’s not what is haunting me. It’s her eyes. The fear, the hopelessness that fill those dark eyes…
Curling my lip, I pick up my phone and am about to hurl it against the wall when I hear talking from it. Looking down, I realize I’m playing a police interview with Ozzy. Quickly, I rewind the video to start from the beginning.
“Can you state your name for the record?” the female officer asks, and the camera sits on Ozzy. Her hair is cut to almost nothing, and she has bandages around her neck. I can see sores on her face and arms.
“Ozzy Davenport,” she replies, her voice small and timid.
“Ozzy, can you tell us what happened to you during your captivity?” I watch as a woman, presumably Ozzy’s lawyer, looks at another woman sitting on the other side of Ozzy.
The other woman speaks.“As her psychiatrist, I will say that Ozzy’s mental state is fragile, and while she’s free to answer, we will end this interview if we feel it begins to cause harm to her.”
Ozzy scoffs, and it’s the first time I see my girl in there. “Right, because she can hurt me? Please, ain’t nothing you can say could hurt me.”
“Ozzy.” The therapist touches her arm, but Ozzy jerks away, causing the chair to screech across the floor.
“Alright, Officer McCallister, what do you want to know? How they drugged me and took me from the bar? How they chained me up like a dog? How I was their carving board? How they branded me? How I was starved or fed rotting food? How my body was sold? Huh? Tell me!” Ozzy screams while smacking the table.
“You interested in hearing how they tore my cunt to shreds when they raped me with their gun?”
I fall to my knees, unable to stand anymore.
No.
No, no, no.
I slam a fist into the concrete floor. The pain doesn’t register.
With their gun?
“Or would you like to hear how Officer Reynolds over there enjoyed fucking me in the ass with his nightstick after shooting me up with heroin?”
There are gasps and shouting before the video cuts off, and I’m left staring at the phone screen. A cop knew? And he…
Running my hands through my hair, I stumble back as the picture enters my head. How could they do that to her? My beautiful Ozzy…
“Goddamn it!” I roar as I grab my hammer and drive it into Jensen’s truck that we’ve been fixing.
I’m about to try and calm myself when I see it in the reflection of the truck’s window—the modified correction collar for the animals they made her wear.
Anger floods through me again as I heave an empty oil drum over my head and slam it down.
“FUCK!” I scream from deep in my soul.
How is she still walking? How is she still smiling ?
They didn’t just try to break her—they tried to destroy her.
I slide down the wall, chest heaving, hands shaking and tears falling down my face.
I want blood. I want to find those fuckers and break them like they broke her. Slowly. With purpose.
But all I can do is sit here, covered in dirt and shame and rage, trying not to throw up.
I was afraid of her scars. She’s survived war. And I’m the goddamn coward who thought he was protecting her by keeping things light.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in the garage.
My knuckles are shredded, blood trailing down my wrists and drying in the creases of my palms. Jensen’s truck door is crumpled in like it took a punch from a wrecking ball.
The oil drum lies split open at the seam.
My chest heaves like I’ve just run for miles and I’m hunched over, soaked in sweat, gasping through teeth clenched so tightly my jaw aches.
I think I’m crying again. Or maybe it’s just blood and adrenaline and rage, leaking out of me however it can.
The door creaks open behind me.
“What the actual fuck happened in here?” Derek’s voice slices through the static in my head. I don’t look up. I can’t.
“Jesus, Jackson.” Jensen’s softer, more wary tone follows, and I can hear the crunch of glass under their boots as they step inside.
I finally force myself to look up.
They’re both staring at me—me, covered in sweat and blood, shaking like a leaf, surrounded by wreckage like a man who lost his goddamn mind.
“I need…” My voice comes out cracked, dry as gravel. “I need help.”
Derek goes still.
Jensen’s face tightens with worry as he crouches beside me. “Okay. What kind of help? What happened, Jackie?”
I try to speak, but a sob rips its way up my throat, uninvited. I double over, arms wrapping around my stomach like I can keep everything from falling out.
“She’s been through so much.” I force the words out, breathless. “Ozzy… the things they did to her—I can’t even wrap my head around it. I don’t know how to hold it. I don’t know how to look at her and not see what I saw tonight.”
They’re quiet. I feel the weight of their eyes on me, waiting.
“I looked her up,” I admit, shame curling around my spine. “I typed her name in. And it was all there. Photos. Court records. A video interview. Everything.”
Jensen sucks in a breath. “You did what ?”
“I had to know!” I snap, voice cracking under the weight of my own disgust. “I needed to understand what she went through, Jensen. And now I do, and I?—”
“And now you’re breaking apart over it,” Derek cuts in flatly.
“I can’t unsee it , ” I whisper. “She was—she looked like a corpse, Derek. Her eyes… her goddamn eyes looked dead. And the things she said…” My stomach turns again, and I have to fight to keep my voice steady.
“She was tortured beyond anything a human should be able to endure. And she still smiles. She still laughs. She’s asleep in my bed right now and trusts me enough to touch her. ”
I swallow a sob, my throat burning.
“I-I don’t know how to hold all of this. I want to protect her so badly, but I feel like if I touch her wrong, I’ll break what’s left of her.”
Derek doesn’t speak right away. Instead, he walks forward slowly, then grabs my shirt in both fists and yanks me to my feet.
“What are you doing?—”
“You need to get the fuck out of this garage,” he growls. “Now.”
“D—”
He shoves me again. “Get your ass outside before you lose your goddamn soul in here.”
I don’t fight him.
He tells Jensen to head back to bed and pulls me out the side door into the night air. I realize he’s dragging me toward the lake when I catch the glint of moonlight off the water.
The quiet hits me first. Just wind and frogs and the distant creak of trees.
“If you brought me out here to give me a handjob…” I mutter, trying to distract myself from the shaking in my bones.
Derek glares at me. “I’ll knock your fucking teeth out if you finish that sentence.”
I smirk, remembering finding him and his girlfriend out here earlier this year stargazing or some shit.I snort despite myself, and for a second I remember we’re just brothers again, fucking around like we used to before life came in and ruined everything.