Chapter 19 – Juliette
NINETEEN
JULIETTE
I heard the truck pull up and I sat up from the couch. I was still in my overalls and shirt, but I’d lost my shoes before I’d tucked my feet into the cushions, because it was our brand new couch and I didn’t want to get it dirty with farm shoes.
What if he was still mad? What if he was drunk? What if he brought someone home?
My eyelids were swollen from crying, and my hair was probably all over the place, but I needed to finish this out. I wasn’t some coward who would hide in her room.
The front door opened.
Voices. Plural. Drifted into the living room.
“I don’t understand why I couldn’t get you to dance, cowboy.” Anonymous woman, who I wanted to kill.
“Don’t dance much.” Said Creed, who I wanted to kill more.
“Hmm. Okay, but you promised me a drink.” Back to anonymous woman.
I pushed myself off the couch and felt unstable for a second until I got my balance. My head was lightheaded from so much fucking crying and probably not enough water.
“Creed,” I barked.
Together, they stepped into the living room.
“Oh, is this your little sister? Hi, I’m Angie.” Angie was short, big ass, tits in a blue halter top, a denim skirt and cowboy boots. Her blond hair fell in perfect waves around her face and she wore make up like she knew what she was doing with it.
I didn’t know her, which meant she wasn’t local. He hadn’t been gone long enough to go to Jefferson and back, I didn’t think. Or maybe he was just that fucking smooth when he wanted to get laid.
Little sister. My eyes darted to him. “I’m not his little sister.” My voice was raw. “I’m his wife.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a joke she plays,” Creed said, dismissively. “Don’t pay attention to her. Bedroom is in the back, there’s a bathroom back there, too. I’ll bring us something to drink.”
“You got it, cowboy,” she said, batting her eyes at Creed before they turned back to me. “And honey, I hate to tell you this, but you got some luggage under those eyes. You might want to put a cold compress over them before you go to bed. Does the trick every time.”
I immediately rushed forward as if to tackle her to the ground. In my head I had visions of giving her luggage under her eyes with my fists.
But Creed must have interpreted my thoughts because he cut me off with his hands wrapped over my shoulders.
“You haven’t been drinking, have you, sis?” Creed asked, pushing me away from her and toward the steps upstairs. Moving his hand so that it was under my upper arm. “Best thing you can do is sleep it off. Angie, doll, put on some music, will you? Crank it as loud as you like.”
“Ooh, fun.”
She bounced out of the living room back toward his bedroom, and the next thing I heard was Zac Brown singing “Chicken Fried” coming through the Bose speaker in Creed’s bedroom. One of the few things Creed had brought with him into this house.
“Don’t do this,” I told him, even as he was hauling me up the steps. The way he was gripping me under the armpit, I couldn’t dislodge his hand, but I had to stop his momentum. I let my weight drop and planted my ass down on the steps, hard.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Knock it off. You’re going to separate your shoulder.”
“I don’t care. Don’t do this. I’m sorry. I screwed up. I know I did, but it wasn’t intentionally to hurt you.”
He was trying to find an angle now, under both my arms, but I wasn’t giving an inch. I braced my foot against either side of the staircase. One foot on the wall, one foot locked into the spindles along the open side of it.
He yanked me and I screamed in pain as my foot was caught. If he pulled again hard enough, I might break a bone and he’d have to take me to urgent care in town. That would ruin his plans with fucking Angie.
Except now, he was bending down and trying to grab me around the waist. I was scrambling to dodge his hold, so that when he lifted me this time my foot came loose from the spindles.
“You’re going to ruin everything. We can’t go back if you do this,” I shouted at him. I was kicking against him, against the wall, but my weight was nothing to him.
Finally, he pushed me into my bedroom at the top of the stairs. “Shut the fuck up!”
“What I did was an honest mistake. I’m a twenty-one year old virgin, for fuck’s sake. I wanted to know if any of it was real!”
“What? What was real?” he snarled, his ugly face pressed into mine.
“You. How I felt. If kissing you was different. Should be different. It wasn’t about hurting you. You do this and it’s only to hurt me. You do this and it’s over!”
“Over?” he asked. “Are you listening to anything you’re saying? There is nothing to go back to. There is nothing to be over!”
“Don’t do it,” I said, pulling on his t-shirt, even as he tried to back out of my bedroom. His hands pulled me off and held mine out to the side. He was stronger than me in every conceivable way. There was no fighting him physically and winning.
“I’m sorry, but please don’t do this. Please.”
He dropped my hands. “Stay in your room.”
“I won’t!” I screamed in his face. “I won’t fucking stay in my fucking room in my fucking house!”
He pushed against my shoulders hard enough that I had to take a step back. The music blared from downstairs so that all I could hear was twang and strings. I charged for the door, but I was too late. He was already in the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
And the sound…
I knew that sound. He was messing with the lock, so that it locked from the outside.
“Don’t do it, Creed,” I wailed, my back sliding against the door until my ass hit the floor. “It won’t feel good. Trust me, I know.”
The tears were back and I knocked my head back against the door, once, twice. If I could have done it hard enough to black out, I would have.
As it was, it didn’t take long to cry myself into unconsciousness.
When my eyes blinked open I saw the sunlight beaming through the curtains. The window in my bedroom was cracked open to let the fresh air seep in and every bone in my body felt the pain of sleeping on an old wood floor beside the door.
The music was gone. I heard nothing. My eyes barely opened and my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls.
I might have thought I’d gotten drunk last night like Creed had accused me, if I wasn’t absolutely positive I had scoured this house for some hidden bottle of whiskey, only to come up empty.
Fuck Herb and his commitment to temperance.
This was just the result of a long, hard crying jag.
I had to pee. I had to put some cold water over my eyes. I needed to brush my teeth and rehydrate.
I sat up, my back against the door, and reached behind me for the door knob.
It turned.
At some point last night he had unlocked the door.
I got up, and waited to see if my legs would hold me. They did. Then I left my bedroom and crossed into the bathroom.
After taking care of business, a cold shower helped to clear my head.
I knew in my bones what I had to do now.
Back in my room, I threw on jeans and a t-shirt that barely reached the top of my jeans. Clothes that I’d long ago outgrown but still wore because this was what I had. This was the only thing I had.
I got down on my knees next to the bed, and lifted up the wood slat under my bed where I’d hidden my stash of cash.
With the extra twenties I’d accumulated, I had more than thirteen hundred dollars now.
It wasn’t enough, but depending how long it took Creed to shut off the debit card, I might be able to add another three hundred in cash plus whatever I could put on credit.
I grabbed a duffle bag from the top of my closest and stuffed everything I could fit inside, which was basically everything I owned, summer and winter gear.
The only thing I left in the closet was that fucking pink dress and the ballet slippers. Plus, the corsage that I’d dried out and kept in a box.
You need to take that dress. You could interview for jobs in that dress.
Staring at it hard, I willed the emotions away. The feelings I’d felt when I’d been wearing it.
Happiness.
There was no such thing for the likes of me. Those were just the breaks for a girl born to Herb Clarke on a sugar beet farm in Montana.
I pulled it off the hanger, rolled it into a ball, stuffed it into the bag, and shoved the slippers on top of it. Once I got a job interview, it would iron.
But the corsage. That could stay.
Stepping back out onto the upper landing outside my bedroom door, I listened for any sound inside the house. Not that he would care that I was leaving.
He won.
With zero sense of stealth, I walked outside and made my way to my truck. I tossed my duffle bag in the back seat, got in behind the wheel, and pulled the keys out from the cup holder. Except when I tried to turn the engine over, nothing.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, my head falling back against the headrest.
It was most likely a dead battery, I thought. Not a big deal. I could deal with that. Ever since Creed had given me his little speech about what he could do to disable an engine, I’d been studying up. I had jumper cables and could jump a battery if I needed to.
Popping the hood with the lever underneath the steering wheel, I got out and used the metal stand to hold open the hood. I looked at the labyrinth of belts along with the engine and came to a dead stop.
That motherfucker.
He was kneeling out by the chicken coop again, his hands pulling on the work he did yesterday, maybe to test its strength.
I knew I only had one shot. I lifted the shovel high up over my head and aimed for his shoulder.
I was looking to hurt, not to kill.
But his damn instincts were too fast. The second the head of the shovel got close to him, he grabbed the wood shaft where it met metal and stopped its momentum.
“What’d I tell you about trying to hurt me, Jules? You’re only going to hurt yourself.”
I pulled on the handle to try and jerk it back, but he was right. There was no point, so I let go.
“Give them back.”