Marin
My tears are wet on my cheeks as I hug myself, remembering Stevie screaming.
How did I end up right back in this God-damn truck?
One minute I was watching the sun glint on the beaded sweat across Davis’s abs and the polished blade of his ax, listening to the logs split and thinking of how he would want a shower when he came back inside and I was going to join him. It’s been close to a week of heaven and now this?
This?
Only, ten seconds after he hopped on the tractor and drove into the woods to pull out another felled tree, the front door flung open and an iron grip circled my upper arm, my feet shuffling on the wood floor as I was dragged out the front door.
Grandpa must have been watching to be sure Davis was out of earshot
He shoved me in through the driver’s side of the truck, never releasing his grip as his fingertips dug into the sensitive flesh on the inside of my arm, bellowing about how the devil was strong in me and how he’d find a way to beat him out of me.
“How did you find me?” I hiss, more angry than afraid. “How did you even know to come to that house?”
“I know things you do not.”
I smooth my dress as much as I can. I can’t wrap my mind around what’s happening. I can still feel Davis inside me, his cum wetting my thighs as the Jesus gang leers at me from the dashboard.
The preacher on the radio raises his voice. “In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders!”
“A-fucking-men!” Grandpa glares at me.
Thump-thump-thump on the steering wheel, and more bellowing, this time scripture from Deuteronomy. And that’s how I know he’s pissed. Really pissed.
Deuteronomy is the big guns.
I thought I was free of it. At least until Spring. A respite at least. Stupid, na?ve me. All this time in the love haze had me thinking maybe, just maybe…
“All of you! Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another! Because God opposes the proud! He shows favor to the humble!”
Grandpa thumps the steering wheel. “Hallelujah! Where’s your humility, Marin? Where’s your respect for your elders?”
The preacher starts again. And I reach calmly forward and turn the radio off.
“Respect goes both ways,” I say, sitting up straight and shaking my arm loose from his prying grip. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you that?”
“That’s enough, young lady—”
“No. I don’t think it is. I am not a temptress, Grandpa.
I am not impure. I am just me. I am an eighteen-year-old girl, who has all her life been policed and chided and made to believe that she is bad, through and through.
Just because God created me in a way people seem to find me pretty.
I’m eighteen, what you’re doing right now is against the law.
Kidnapping. False imprisonment. Assault. ”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never assaulted anyone in my life.”
I glare, then reach one hand across and lift the torn sleeve of my dress, shaking it at him, showing him the bruises from his fingers underneath. “Assault.”
He scoffs. “You want to talk about assault? I could tell you a thing or two about that animal you’ve been spending time with.”
This?
I almost laugh. He thinks Davis is holding secrets from me. He has no idea.
“I know all about the accident,” I tell him with a note of triumph.
“Davis was just taking care of his brother. Bad things happen. You think I care about that? You have no idea. He respects me, and I respect him back, that’s how it works.
Maybe if you cared about someone other than yourself you’d understand that. ”
He grins as he turns my way. “You don’t know anything, you stupid little girl. You don’t know the half of what Davis Ray is capable of.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means—” He falls silent as his eyes flick to the mirror. “Damn him!”
I hear the roar of an engine as I turn in my seat, my hair being swept out of the open window as I see the massive truck bearing down on us.
And the darkened face of Davis glaring from behind the wheel.
The front of his vehicle almost collides with the back of ours, but he swerves and mounts the bank to the left, his truck throwing dirt and melted snow in an arc behind.
I scream in panic as Grandpa tries to turn into Davis, gunning the engine, but he doesn’t have the courage to maintain that course.
Davis’s truck careens back onto the road at a sharp angle, brakes squealing in protest, suspension barely hanging on as he pulls right across our path, missing the front of our vehicle by an inch.
I scream again as his truck skids, barely holding onto the mountain path, almost toppling over the steep edge as the rear end fishtails then regains its hold.
Grandpa swears, slamming on his brakes as Davis slows in front, turning his truck to block the road.
Davis is out of his door in an instant, booted feet planted firmly in the dirt, a shotgun held loosely in his hands.
“Get the fuck out here, old man,” he demands, spitting at the ground at his feet.
“You wait here,” Grandpa tells me, but I no longer care about his orders. As he slides out of his seat, I open my door and bound onto the road. My slippers sink into the mud but I don’t care. I’ll go barefoot to Davis’s side if I have to, but I am going to his side.
“Baby, you okay?”
I don’t even look at Grandpa as I nod and squelch through the wet ground, pulling myself in beside Davis. “I am now.”
“I’m going to give you one chance,” Davis says as he turns to face my grandpa again, his voice a low growl. “One fucking chance. You get back in your truck and get the fuck off my land.”
“Or what?”
My fury is lit as I pull my shoulders back and he darts his eyes between us, I say, “We’re gonna pop all four of your tires.
Then you’ll have to call Larry at the tire shop and we don’t want to do that, do we, Grandpa?
” I say, cooing, “What will Larry do when he learns that you’ve been bonking his wife every Sunday after Bible Study for the last twenty years? Do we want to see that?”
Davis nods but adds, “And I’ll shoot you as a trespasser.”
“You will not!”
“You want to try me? You break into my home, steal my things and I’m supposed to just let you go?”
Grandpa huffs. “I didn’t break in or steal anything!”
“You took the most precious thing I have.” Davis puts an arm around me. “The two most precious things.”
“What’s that supposed to… You don’t answer your phone, what am I supposed to think?
I told you one day I’d call on you and you needed to be there.
Tit for tat. I kept your secret but by God, I won’t anymore.
I get here and find her gone from where I left her and having a goddamn vacation with you and your fucking brother! ”
“You left her for the fucking wolves, old man.”
“I left her to repent! You’re going to jail for the rest of your fucking life, Davis Ray. God only knows what you’ve done to her. What you’ve forced my granddaughter’s soul to endure.”
I fling myself around, arms crossed, and my heart pounding. I feel powerful and exhilarated and utterly…myself thanks to Davis. “I love him. He hasn’t forced me to do anything. And I’m eighteen, anything me and Davis have done is our business—”
“Shut your damn mouth! I don’t want to even think about what you’ve done!”
“You don’t talk to her like that,” Davis growls, stepping forward, raising the shotgun. “Get the hell off my land.”
“Tell her,” Grandpa says, pointing from Davis to me. “Tell her what you did.”
“You’re too much,” I scream, laughing hysterically. “I told you he already told me all about it. I know what happened and it wasn’t his fault.”
Grandpa folds his arms over his chest, glaring at Davis. “Tell her, or I will.”
What is it going to take to get through to him that I know everything and I still love this man? That we’re going to be together forever…
Turning to Davis, his eyes are on the ground, jaw locked. He’s…shaking.
Davis raises his eyes to my grandpa, but his face is a riot of emotion that’s written in the dark lines between his brows and the frown that pulls his lips down into his beard.
“What’s he talking about?” I ask. “Davis?”
I touch the exposed skin of his arm and he flinches, turning with darkened eyes that look right through me. I want to kiss him and take away the pain, but I want to know. I need to know.
“Davis?” I repeat, as he exhales so hard it looks like his body deflates, letting the gun drop. He slides down, sitting on the ground with his elbows on his knees, face in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, baby…” Anger contorts his features as a single tear falls down his cheek.
“Sorry for what? Don’t cry.”
“He was going to kill her.” He starts but I’m lost as I stare at the man I love looking defeated. “That guy was pounding on her. His knuckles were bloody, her face…”
“What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?”
He shakes his head. “The man I killed. Not my father, another man. A guy in an alley. He was fucking beating on a girl. Screaming she was holding out on him. All I saw was my fucking father, screaming his excuses for why he was hitting my mom. I lost it.”
“Bullshit,” Grandpa laughs. “Bull fucking shit. You enjoyed yourself. Who knows how any other people you’ve killed.”
“No.” Davis chokes then looks at me. “There’s no one else, baby. I promise you. No one else.”
My heart is breaking as the world seems to dim and sway.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“I saw the whole thing.” Grandpa spits. “He’s a murderer, Marin, and he’s going to go to prison for a long time.”
“You saw?” I turn and gape. “You saw and did you help?”
Grandpa scoffs. “What was I going to do? That junkie deserved to die, waste of the life God gave him but that doesn’t mean the law will let this animal off the hook—”
“You didn’t try to help that woman? You didn’t, I don’t know, call an ambulance? Or the police?”
“Ran off as soon as she got free.”
“You saw the whole thing and you did nothing,” I repeat. “What kind of a man does that?”
I kneel, not caring about the mud and the cold. My grandpa may as well not be here. He’s dead to me.
Taking Davis’s face in my hands I stare into his eyes, even as he tries to turn them away.
“You protected a girl you didn’t even know. You risked yourself for her. I love you so much for that.”
“I killed a man. Two men,” he says. “I don’t deserve you.
You are all the goodness in the world, baby.
And I’m a fucking killer. I can’t risk—” He shakes his head, kicking the heel of his boot in the mucky dirt.
“Losing you, going to prison, leaving Stevie. I don’t see a way out.
” He glares at my grandfather, the anger returning to his eyes.
“I could kill you, old man, then my secret would die too. My sin will die with you.”
A knot forms in my throat.
“I love you,” I say, ignoring the threat to my grandpa, “and I’ll go on loving you no matter what. For better or worse, right? That’s what it said in our vows.”
“Vows?” Grandpa’s voice cuts through. “What vows?”
“Marriage vows,” I answer, keeping my eyes on Davis. His face relaxes, brow smoothing and a flicker in his eyes returns. He knows that I mean what I say, that what he did was right. “I’m pregnant and married, Grandpa.”
“You’re pregnant?”
Silence stretches on the dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t care. I have everything. My Davis, the baby growing inside me, the brother I never had in Stevie. Everything.
I’m the luckiest girl alive.
And as Davis draws a deep breath and stands, pulling me into his arms, I know none of it will be taken from me.
“Damn right,” he says in a low growl, turning to my grandpa.
“Damn right she’s pregnant. And mine. You watched that girl getting beaten bloody and you did nothing.
You took notes so you could blackmail me later.
You come forward with that information, and there will be plenty of questions for you to answer too about that.
And kidnapping my wife. Threatening her.
Leaving her to die in a cabin. Do what’s right.
Not what you preach, but what’s right. Then, I’ll let you live. ”
Davis pulls me against the solid muscle of his body and I inhale his scent, feeling the tension melt away.
“Get in the truck, baby. Go on now. He isn’t going to do a damn thing. Because if he does, I’ll be coming for him. Marin is mine now. Anyone hurts my family, they better be ready.”
My life is still level-10 bananas. But now, I’m not alone. And I’m all in.