Chapter 43 #2
The kiss broke softly, and I rested my forehead against hers, breathing unevenly. I didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to break whatever magic was holding me together. But the real world was waiting. Just twenty feet away.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope. I laid it carefully on the console between us.
“What’s this?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Her lips were puffy from our kiss, her cheeks were flushed, and I felt pride that I had put that look on her face. “Read it after I leave the car,” I said.
She didn’t ask me again. She just looked at me with that same softness.
I saw grief behind her eyes that I’d never seen on anyone’s face before for me.
Knowing that she felt sad for me, that she had come here for me, that she had given her first kiss to me…
It was what gave me the final push of strength that I needed.
I opened the door.
The cool spring air hit my face, slapping me out of my terrified stupor. Waking me up from the lust that had crept into the peripheral of my brain. I stepped out slowly, feet feeling like lead on the pavement, the car door clicked shut behind me.
I walked toward the house. The wind blew the wreath on the door just enough to make it creak.
The sound made me flinch. But I didn’t stop.
I climbed the steps I hadn’t touched in more than a decade and a half, and stood in front of the door I’d once pressed my ear against, hoping to hear someone—anyone—coming to save me.
And I knocked. The door was beige now. Not red like it used to be. The siding was cleaner, the lawn freshly cut, the bushes manicured because all he gave a damn about was how things looked from the outside.
But it was the same house. The same porch. The same crack in the step that used to slice my shin when I didn’t move fast enough. My hand trembled as I lifted it to knock again. Just once more. Quick. Cowardly.
I half hoped he wasn’t home. That maybe I’d imagined him. That maybe I was still a kid, and this reality was all a nightmare, and maybe none of this had ever happened at all.
But then I heard the sound. Footsteps. Then a pause. Then the door handle jiggled. Then it opened. And there he was.
His hair was grayer. He was thicker in the face, with jowls now where there used to be sharp lines. His eyes, still small and piggish, narrowed in confusion. He blinked once, then again. And then he smiled.
“Danny boy,” he said, voice syrupy, like we were old friends catching up.
My breath halted. The sound of it—that name—hit something raw in me like salt in a wound that had never healed. I stared at him, stunned.
“You came back,” he said, like I had just gone out to get milk at the age of seventeen and had finally returned all these years later. “Look at you. All grown up.”
I didn’t respond. The word no was in my throat, but it got stuck. He pushed the screen door open wider, like I was an invited guest. “What’s it been? Twelve years?”
Fourteen.
“I wasn’t sure you’d ever come around again.”
I took a step back, not forward. My palms grew slick.
“I didn’t come to reminisce,” I managed, voice sharp. “I came to say what you never let me say back then.”
His smile flickered. But it didn’t go away fully.
“Alright,” he said, stepping outside to join me, arms crossed. “Go on then. Say what you came to say.”
I hesitated. Because I hadn’t planned the words. I hadn’t written a speech. I hadn’t thought I’d actually get this far.
“You ruined my life,” I said finally. “You took everything from me. My safety. My childhood. My fucking sanity.”
He tutted softly, as if I’d disappointed him.
“Now, now,” he said. “That’s not fair.”
My hands curled into fists.
“Fair?” I spat. “You want to talk about fair? You drugged me. Touched me. Gaslit me into thinking it was love. You said I was your favorite.”
“You were,” he said, matter-of-factly. “You were a good boy. Obedient. Soft.”
My stomach turned.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” I hissed. “Not anymore.”
He took a step closer, voice lowering.
“You came here for closure?” he asked. “Or maybe for more of something else?”
I shook my head, disgusted. “I came here to reclaim my life.”
He chuckled.
“You always were dramatic, Danny boy.”
That name again. Like a switch, I snapped.
“Don’t call me that,” I growled.
But he did. He said it again. Slower this time. “Danny boy.” Like it was his to say. Like he still owned it. Owned me.
The world shrunk. I heard a high-pitched ringing in my ears. My vision pulsed around the edges; a red fog crawled in like smoke through broken glass. He leaned closer, smiling like he had won.
“Be honest,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t be here if a part of you didn’t want it again.”
Something in me obliterated. I didn’t remember making the decision.
My body just moved, and I lunged at him.
My fist connected with his jaw, my knuckles cracked against bone.
His head jerked sideways with a sound like wet paper tearing, and he stumbled backward through the door frame.
The porch creaked beneath me as I followed him inside, shoving him hard enough that he crashed into the entryway table and knocked over a decorative bowl that held a bunch of keys.
He scrambled to push himself up, but I was on him before he could move.
I punched him again. And again. Blood sprayed—from his lip, his cheek, my wrist. I didn’t care. I didn’t fucking care.
“Was I asking for it when I was ten?” I roared, shaking him by the collar. “Or did you know how much I hated it? Was that what turned you on?”
Something wet smeared from his face to my hand. Was he crying? Or maybe it was sweat. I hoped it was blood.
“You ruined me!” I yelled louder this time. “You made me hate myself. I’ve spent every year since wanting to die because of you.”
He tried to speak, but I slammed him into the wall.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
His eyes were wide. Terrified. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to undo what he had done.
“You raped a child,” I hissed, dragging him by his shirt and slamming him into the other side of the hallway. Picture frames fell. Glass shattered. The skin around his eye was already turning purple. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
“You stripped away everything good in me. Everything human. And then you made me think I was crazy when I asked you to stop!”
He sputtered and coughed, blood dotted his lips.
“You’re sick,” I said. “You’re a monster hiding behind prayer and lawn fertilizer and fake-ass church sermons.”
He tried to crawl away. I grabbed his ankle and yanked him back.
The back of his head thudded against the floor.
He groaned. Whimpered. But I didn’t feel sorry.
Because I remembered the sound of his belt sliding through the loops on his pants.
I remembered the way he used to hum. I remembered him whispering, “You like this, don’t you, Danny boy?
” And I saw red all over again. I hit him.
Again and again. My hand went numb, I thought it might be broken, but it didn’t matter.
I heard a scream. My name in the distance. And I grew panicked. Was that Iris?
And then came the sirens. They split through the fog that had taken over my brain and reality slammed back in.
I looked down and saw what I had done. He was a mess of blood and bruises on the floor, moaning softly, eyes rolling in his head.
I staggered back, my heart pounding. What had I done?
My right hand wasn’t working. It was bent wrong.
Bone jutted out slightly from beneath my skin.
I shoved it in my jacket pocket. Hid the damage against the recorder that was still on.
Just like I used to hide everything else in this goddamn house.
I stepped outside, blinking in the sudden flood of red and blue lights. Cops were everywhere. Guns drawn. Screaming.
“Hands above your head!”
I couldn’t react fast enough. Not because I was resisting.
Because I was gone. I was completely dissociated out of my body.
I was not thirty-one. I was twelve. I had just been cornered in the garage with his breath in my ear and my throat too tight to scream.
My hands stayed in my pockets. Iris yelled my name.
Screamed something as she began to run toward me.
“Danny, put your hands up!” she cried. “Please!”
I turned. My hand bulged in my pocket, pushing out the thin material.
“He has a gun!”
And then—BANG. Oh fuck. The bang wasn’t like the ones in the movies.
There was no dramatic echo, no slow-motion fall.
Just a pop—short, sharp, and cruel. And then the weight left my body like it had been yanked out of me by something invisible, and I dropped to my knees.
Then the pavement rushed up and kissed my face.
I somehow managed to turn onto my back. I blinked, and the world blurred.
Everything sounded like it was underwater.
The sirens, the yelling, someone saying my name, I knew they were all there, but I couldn’t connect the sounds to anything real.
There was a tightness in my chest. Then heat.
Then—oh. The pain came. It tore through me, savage and wild, not sharp like a stab, but hot, like something was boiling inside me, melting muscle from bone.
My breath caught. My lungs refused to work.
I coughed—and blood spilled out of my mouth, thick and metallic, warm against my lips.
I couldn’t feel my legs, couldn’t move anything.
But my mind was aware. Hyperaware. Of the cold concrete.
Of the sky spinning above me. Of a high-pitched screaming that didn’t stop until it was suddenly close. Iris. She was here.
“Danny—no, no, no, no—Danny—look at me!” Her hands were on my face, my chest, trying to stop the blood, trying to hold me together in one piece. I tried to smile, but my lips wouldn’t cooperate. I tasted the blood. I could feel it dribbling over my lips and down my chin.
“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.” Her voice cracked. “Stay with me. Please.”
Her hand lifted and I saw all the blood.
There was so much of it. Too much. It soaked through her sleeve.
Streaked her cheek. Turned her whole body frantic.
I looked at her. Really looked. She was crying, and somehow she was still so beautiful.
She was sobbing, and somehow she was still so strong. She was here. For me.
“Iris,” I whispered, coughing, voice barely there. “You did it.”
Her face crumpled. “Did what? Danny, no—please—what did I do?”
I blinked again. The sky was brighter now. Or maybe it was just my vision going white at the edges.
“I really don’t want to die.”
Her mouth opened in a sob. “Then stay. Please stay.”
I tried to nod. Tried to tell her I would. That I was sorry. That I loved her. That I wished we had more time. That she’d given me everything and then some. But the words got lost somewhere in my throat, swallowed up by blood and silence. Then everything went dark.
And I died.
I finally fucking died.