Chapter 11
Cade
The phantom scent of diesel hits like a wave of nausea, as I kill the engine of my Duramax. My feet ache from a long day of training with Knight. I spent the day with him screaming in my ear about his manifests of being a real fucking hero.
So much for a vacation.
Also, I hate this place. I hate Texas. I don’t want to be here.
I walk through the front door of the Airbnb. My hand drags against the wood frame, the paint is peeling like sunburned skin.
I hear the sound through the wall. It’s rhythmic, violent. It’s not a fight—not exactly—but it could have been. The sound is a slap, and then another, and then a voice.
“You want it rough, bitch? You want to fucking act up, I’ll show you what that gets.” Slap. Slap. Slap.
There’s another voice, high and muffled, but it’s not words.
I keep walking toward my room, passing Dylan’s, because I know what’s behind that door. Not just who, but what. I know the sounds, the cadence. It’s not the first time I’ve heard them doing it.
“You like this, don’t you?” Dylan grunts. “Tell me you like it.”
‘Tell me you like it,’ another distant voice echoes in my head.
I freeze. And then I back up two steps.
‘Take it, you stupid bitch!’
My head starts to spin.
The door suddenly swings in, and there’s a smell—body odor, cum, alcohol—all rolled into a single, punch-in-the-face scent.
Dylan is on the bed, knees dug into the mattress, jeans shoved down to his thighs. His ass flexes with every drive. Laney Rodriguez is face down under him, arms twisted behind her back, hair pulled tight in his fist. Her cheek is mashed into the blanket. Her eyes are half-shut, lashes wet.
She makes a sound that is so close to a child’s cry.
He narrates it, not even noticing I’m standing there. “You like that? You can’t even move. You can’t even fucking move.” Then he yanks her hair back and lets her face turn enough to say, “You like that, don’t you?”
But she doesn’t answer. She just pushes her face back into the mattress.
I watch, unable to move and unable to make this go away. My hands fist at my sides. I feel nothing but the hammering of my own pulse and the heat in my cheeks.
I am not angry.
I am not scared.
I am not anything… yet.
He puts a hand across her mouth and says, “Don’t you dare fucking scream.” And then, like he knows he’s being funny, he looks up and sees me, just standing there.
He grins. “Hey, fucker. You want a turn, or what?”
Laney’s eyes suddenly come alive and find mine.
She mumbles, “Get out,” through his hand. Her mouth is twisted in a way that looks almost like a smile, but it’s the kind that makes you sick when you see it.
“Get the fuck out,” she says again, louder this time, and it’s her voice that trips it.
Not the act, not the blood rising on her wrists where he’s holding her, not the sound of his cock slapping against her ass, but the fact that she says it and means it and doesn’t want my help at all.
‘Get the fuck out!’ I’ve said that before. But I meant it.
Fucking disgusting.
Dylan laughs, and the laugh hits me right in the chest.
He laughed, too.
Something comes loose in my head, and I cross the room.
“Yeah, come get a closer look of this ass. She likes it in the ass, Kellan,” Dylan says, like this is some special fucking thing, his hips still thrusting into her.
Fuck him.
I see red.
My hand finds Dylan’s hair, yanking him back so hard he loses the rhythm and half-falls off the bunk. Laney rolls off the side, knees together, and hits the floor with a thud. She doesn’t try to run. She doesn’t do anything.
I drive Dylan’s head into the bedframe with a wet, hollow crack. He yells and flails, but I don’t stop. I hit him again, again, again, knuckles breaking open on the sharp metal, until the screaming in my ears drowns out the actual sound of his face hitting the frame.
Laney is on her knees now, jeans half-up, hair in her face. She’s yelling at me, not at him, not at anyone in particular.
“You fucking psycho, what the fuck! You’re gonna fucking kill him!”
There is no gratitude. Fucking ungrateful slut.
My hands are shaking so bad I can’t unclench them. Blood from my knuckles spatters the mattress, turning the green to a brownish black that reminds me of nothing more than rust and old piss.
I look down at Dylan, who is crying, and his face is already starting to swell.
“Please, please, Cade, I was just fucking around, man, we do this all the time, it’s just what she likes, don’t do this, man, please.”
I see nothing of the friend who posed in my boot camp photos. I see nothing of the friend who once stayed up all night with me on that freezing goddamn mountain listening to wild dogs howl on the ridge.
All I see is the inside of a locked room, a mattress, a ceiling with a water stain, the sound of someone laughing with their hand around my neck as they put their fucking cock where it should not be.
‘Be a good boy, Cade. Be a good boy.’
I keep hitting him until the voices blur into one, until there is no present, only the memory of something that never fucking stops. My hands burn. My eyes blur. I think I’m screaming, but I don’t hear it.
“Please, Cade, you don’t have to do this.”
“Just shut up, Laney!” I scream at her.
“Cade, you’re being a fucking psycho—”
I cut her off with my hands.
When my eyes flutter open, the everything is dead silent except for my own ragged breathing. My hands are curled into claws, dug into the hay. The new shirt is so soaked through I feel like I’m underwater.
My calf feels like it’s on fire, and when I try to move it, the pain is electric, pure white. My vision tunnels, and then widens out again.
What the fuck? Where am I? Texas? Colorado? The Brig?
For a second I’m sure I’ve lost time. Days, maybe. Then I register the light, different now, angled in through the gaps in the wall. The sun is up and burning. It’s probably just hours later.
Then I hear the scrape of a boot heel on gravel up the slope.
Right. The barn. I’m in the fucking barn, trapped by the crazy lady.
I’m awake, alive, and ready for a fight in the half second it takes the sound to reach my head.
My whole body goes into lockdown. I flatten myself against the wall of the barn, silent.
My eyes focus on the gap in the plank, heart rate dropping to the combat-ready forty beats per minute they drilled into us.
If you can’t make your body go silent, you’re dead.
I look through the horizontal slit in the siding. I can see up the draw, through the morning haze. There’s Sadie, standing at the fence line, her hands at her sides, posture perfectly neutral.
A few feet to her left is her husband, the sheriff. He’s in uniform, but you can tell by the slouch he hasn’t been on duty long. The way he stands is all cop, though—feet at shoulder width, hands on hips, chin tucked to look just slightly down on the person in front of him.
Fucking cocky loser.
I can’t hear every word, but I get the sense. He’s talking about the dog again. Flint. The hound’s been pacing the property all morning, nose in the wind, tail low, tracking something it doesn’t understand.
Clayton’s voice floats down more clearly. “A dog with no job is a liability, Sadie. Either give him something to do, or I’ll handle it.”
There’s a beat where she doesn’t answer.
He goes on. “You fix the fence line?”
“Most of it,” she says. Her voice is so small I think I might feel it rather than hear it.
“‘Most’ isn’t what I told you to do. I need it all done before the well men come out. You hear me? I also told Josh he could keep his cows out here. Can’t do that if the fence is shit. Your stupid horses might stay in, but his cows won’t.”
“I hear you,” she says.
He walks a circle around her. He runs the tip of his boot along the bottom wire of the fence, tests it, then lets it go with a snap.
“It costs money, you know. All of this. The feed, the water, even the trash you leave out by the barn. You know how much it costs to keep this place running while you’re out here doing jack? ”
There’s nothing from her.
He sighs, like she’s the child and he’s the only adult for fifty miles. “I don’t want to talk about Flint again. Or the lack of chores being done. Handle it.”
“Yes, sir.”
He walks away, peeling off toward the house.
But Sadie doesn’t move. She just stands there, staring at the fence, the dog panting at her side. The husband’s back gets smaller as he heads up the slope. I watch until he’s gone, until the screen door slams shut and the dust settles back into place.
Sadie stays by the fence, as the moments keep on passing by. She doesn’t pet the dog, doesn’t even acknowledge him. She just breathes, the rise and fall of her shoulders barely perceptible in the heat.
What’s wrong with you, Sadie?
I exhale in time with her, letting the sweat cool on my chest. I count backward from ten, like Bradford told us to do after a blackout—which is almost laughable. I try to name all the parts of my body, moving from toes to scalp, just to remember where I am.
Stupid fucking therapy doesn’t work when you’re this fucked up.
As I stare at Sadie, I wonder if the whole world is just a loop consisting of the same shitty power dynamics, the same locked rooms, the same cycle of doing violence to each other and calling it love, duty, or just the fucking price of being alive.
I try to read in the set of Sadie’s shoulders and what it is she wants or fears…
And if she ever thinks about burning this whole place down.