by Kennedy Ryan
“Not my blood.” She grimaces and lifts her hand, painstakingly slow, to touch her shoulder. “Some of it is. He shot me in the shoulder.”
Motherfucker.
I squeeze my forehead and claw my hair to keep myself focused on her and not tearing his arms out of their sockets. The desire to kill him is an ache in my bones. It makes my heart contract.
“He’s shot, though,” she says weakly. “We fought, and I shot him.” Pride sparks in her eyes, dulled to brown.
“You did good, Iris.” I run a shaky palm over her hair, and my fingers come away red and sticky with blood. “Jesus, baby. Are you sure you’re—”
“Is he dead?” she cuts in, her grip on my arm tight. Her eyes are wide, urgent. “I need to know, August. He won’t ever leave me alone. Do you hear? He’ll kill me. And Sarai will—”
I press my finger to her lips, staunching the panic rising in her voice. “I’ll check.”
“Now.” Tears leak from the corners of her eyes and skid over her swollen cheekbone. “Check now.”
Smudgy marks from his fingers stain her jaw. My stomach turns at what he’s done to her. At the thought that this isn’t the first time. She lived with him. She slept beside him. For months. Alone.
Fuck.
I gently shift her and scoot across the blood-covered floor to the vermin pickling in his own reckoning. Rage overpowers me the closer I get. I want to stomp on his face and press my boot to his throat. His hand is tucked under his shirt, and when I tug the shirt back, he’s covering a hole in his belly streaming blood.
“West.” His eyes flutter open. His voice is thin, withering, agonized. He grimaces, tipping his head back. Life leaks from his eyes as surely as it’s leaking from his wound. “I guess you win.”
I look back to Iris, who has pulled herself to a sitting position and leans against the wall. Even now, with him clinging to the last threads of his life, she’s wary and guarded, watching him like, shot and bleeding out, he still might strike.
She lifts her hand, revealing a small ring in her palm.
“Lo told you your days were numbered,” she says, her voice wobbling.
With eyes narrowed, she cups her hand to her mouth and blows over it.
“Fuck you, Iris,” he says, voice rough and angry.
With one hand covering the bullet hole in her shoulder, Iris drags herself across the floor until she’s beside me. A scarlet line of blood trails her.
“Iris.” I pull out my phone and nod to her bleeding shoulder. “I need to call nine-one-one.”
“No.” She fires the word like a bullet, the last one in her barrel as she looms over Caleb. “Don’t call yet.”
“But your shoulder—”
“It’s fine.” Her soft mouth lopsides in a bitter smile. “I have a high tolerance for pain. Isn’t that right, Caleb?”
Her gaze is locked on his—on the last vestiges of life draining from his eyes, from his body.
“As long as he’s alive, I’m not safe and neither is my daughter. He tried to kill me.” She draws in a long breath, her eyes narrowed. “So we wait.”
She’s my Iris, but I’ve never seen her like this. I thought I had seen all her sides, loved all her sides, but I’ve never seen this. Ruthless and beautiful and bloodied, she emanates all the strength and determination it must have taken her to survive.
And I’ve never loved her more.
We stand in silent vigil for the few minutes of life Caleb has left. His moans and his pain don’t move me—they don’t bring me satisfaction either. It’s simply a necessary end. He deserves so much worse, but at least Iris gets to watch him die.
The absolute stillness of death settles over him. His gaze is vacant and fixed on Iris. I pass a hand over his eyes, closing them; denying him, even in death, one last glimpse of my girl.
I call nine-one-one and then turn my attention back to her. I take her face between my hands, aligning our eyes.
“He’s gone.” I press my forehead to hers, and the blood on her face smears against mine. I don’t care. I wish I could share her pain as easily. I wish I could wipe it away like it had never happened.
“Yes. Yes.” Her fingers dig into my hair and her head drops to my shoulder. She kisses my neck. “I love you.”
I pull back, tilting her chin and erasing her tears with the back of my hand. Carefully, I kiss her, tasting her blood and her tears and her pain.
That night we first met, we couldn’t have known what lay ahead. If she had only kissed me—if I had only pressed for more. If the night I won the championship, I’d managed to convince her that even though we’d just met, even though she had a boyfriend, even though it didn’t make sense – we should take a chance. If I had looked closer and hadn’t missed the signs. Life isn’t a road that forks or a line of numbered sliding doors. There is no alternate universe filled with only right choices. There’s just this one—just this life, and we go where our choices take us and grow wiser from our mistakes.
Standing on the porch waiting for the paramedics, I glance up at the blackened stretch of Louisiana sky. Life is a constellation of decisions, connected by coincidences and deliberations, painting pictures in the heavens. During the day, when things are brightest, we don’t see the stars, but they are there. It’s only in the contrast of night, when things are darkest, that the stars shine.
Iris is my constellation. She took the darkness as her cue to shine. It only made her brighter, stronger, and tonight, her hard-won glimmer lights up the sky.
OVERTIME
OVERTIME
“I have been bent and broken,
but - I hope –
into a better shape.”
* * *
-- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Epilogue – Iris
“Shitbag!”
I’m literally pulling my hair and grinding my teeth.
“Motherfucker, are you kidding me with this?”
I pace the floor and clench my fists at my side.
“Just . . .” I punch the air. “Ugggghhh.”
My Lakers are playing. And as usual, I’m at war with the refs.
“Grrrrr.” Another bad call.
I’m trying to keep my voice down. August is in his guest room reading to Sarai. We have these little “sleepovers” at his place from time to time, my concession since I haven’t decided to move into his condo yet. I’m especially keen for these semi-regular events at times like this when he’s coming off a long road trip and we haven’t seen him.
The Lakers score.
Yes!
Even though I’ve been a Lakers fan since I was a kid, and even though August knows that, I still feel a little disloyal. My Lakers did beat the Waves two days ago. I drove up to LA for the game and sat in the stands. I was torn, but I managed to sit on my hands whenever we—we, being the Lakers—scored. As competitive as August is, he gave me a “don’t talk to me” look after they lost the game.
I wore his Waves jersey proudly, number thirty-three.
But my panties were purple and gold.
The doorbell rings when the game goes to a commercial, and I turn off the TV in case August finishes before I get back to the bedroom.
I stare dumbly at the pizza delivery guy standing at the door.
“Pizza for DuPree?” the pimple-faced teenager asks.
“Um, I didn’t order pizza.” Would have been good, though.
He peers up at the number over the door and back to the delicious-smelling box of pizza, and then squints at a little slip of paper.
“Pineapple and pepperoni pizza and root beer?” he asks. “That’s not you?”
August.
“Oh, yeah. That is me.” I laugh and turn back toward the living room. “Let me grab my purse.”
“Already paid for.” He hands it over, offers a small salute, and leaves.
I lean against the door, holding the pizza in the palm of one hand, clutching the root beer in the other. August knows me so well—he remembers
that I like pizza and root beer when the Lakers play.
He knows me well, and we have no more secrets. No more shadows or shame. There are obvious disadvantages to Andrew leaking that file, but I can’t deny the good it did. Yes, the darkest, hardest parts of my life were put on display for everyone to dissect and judge, but now I have nothing to hide.
And no one to hide my secrets from.
Caleb is dead. I’ve held onto my humanity enough not to take joy in it, but I can’t say I mourned him. Never has ‘survival of the fittest’ been truer. There’s no doubt in my mind that if Caleb had lived, I would have died. I almost did. His eyes were cruel until his last breath, and he tried to diminish me until the very end. And with him gone, it’s like my entire existence exhaled.
There wasn’t any question that it was self-defense. If the file released wasn’t damning enough, the head wound, marks on my neck, and bullet in my shoulder testified against Caleb. I answered all the questions the police had, but I really wanted to leave it at that and go on with our lives.
But it’s not that simple.
I’m in a relationship with one of the NBA’s rising stars, one who leads a very public life. Two of the league’s most popular players were ensnared in a “love triangle” that turned violent and tragic. One of them ends up dead, and the woman caught in the middle was holding the smoking gun. It was the juiciest basketball story in decades. In the locker room, after games, in interviews, reporters always found a way to bring up “the scandal.” It was awkward.
August was evasive, impatient, ill-tempered. And I was . . . not sure. Not sure I was ready to talk about the things that almost destroyed me—to talk about my life like it was some telenovela. Like some sensationalized soap opera with a fairytale beginning, a villainous prince, and a grisly end. And the last thing I wanted to be was the poster child for domestic abuse, not with the way our culture finds ways to blame the victims.
But none of that was the ultimate deciding factor in why I finally spoke. I spoke because maybe there’s some girl like me. Young. Vulnerable. Naïve. Flattered by his attention. Maybe she thinks his jealousy means he loves her more or that it’s cute. Does she realize that slowly, surely, she’s being cut off from her friends? Isolated from her family? Being molded into something she’s not? Into what he wants her to be?
The heart speaks in whispers, but sometimes by the time we listen, it’s too late. I learned that the hardest way. And maybe that girl can change her course before it’s too late.
That’s why I spoke.
I sat down with Avery Hughes one-on-one. She was thoughtful and compassionate, but she didn’t let me get away with telling only part of the story. And I didn’t want to tell it in sugar-coated half-measures. Once I decided to speak, I wanted to roar. Not just for all the women who might end up in a toxic relationship, but for those in one right now.
I get it. I know how real the fear is. That leaving doesn’t always mean getting away for good. That it just might cost you your children. That leaving just might cost you your life. I know the system fails us too many times, protecting rights the abuser shouldn’t have and offering us little shelter. I’m not recommending women kill their abusers. I just hate that our system leaves us with so many shitty options—difficult options that many survivors must negotiate even after leaving. Our choices are sometimes catch twenty-twos that catch us around the neck—that choke us and make difficult, dangerous situations more difficult and dangerous. Our laws don’t make common sense and don’t offer any real protection until the perpetrator’s done something to prove he’ll hurt you.
And sometimes by then it’s too late.
The pizza burns my hand through the cardboard box.
“Shoot!”
I shift the box, propping it against my chest and grabbing it by the edge. I drop off the pizza and root beer in the kitchen and wander down the hall. The closer I get to the guest room, the softer I tread. I love watching August and Sarai together. My daughter is one of those kids you think is adorably precocious when you first meet her. After about the fiftieth question and a few of her “sage” ponderings, most search frantically for an escape. Never August. He answers her fiftieth question with the same patient thoroughness that he did her first.
By the time I reach the door, she’s already asleep. My heart contracts at how beautiful she is, how peaceful. I’ve fought hard for that peace—to protect her from the violence that lived under the same roof we did the first year of her life. How many times did Caleb beat me, rape me with her just a wall away? And yet she hasn’t been touched by it. If there is one thing I got right, I hope it was preserving her innocence while he stripped mine away.
August stands and sets the book on her bedside table. He doesn’t otherwise move but stares down at her for long moments before bending to leave a kiss in her hair. My heart contracts again, harder, longer, watching him watching her. He loves her like his own. I know that. I also know he wants us here every night, all the time.
My beautiful prince in sweatpants.
His body has changed since I met him that night in a bar. He was leaner, lankier then. Playing in the NBA he has, by necessity, added more muscle, reduced his body fat to almost zero. The ridges of his abs, the chiseled line of his legs, and the cut of bicep where his shirt sleeve catches and strains prove it. All over, he’s harder and more defined.
So am I. Harder. Defined by all the things I’ve experienced and what it took to survive. I’ve been through a lot since I was a college senior on the verge of graduating. I’m not that bright-eyed girl in a bar whose biggest concern was bad calls by the refs. I’ve had a daughter. I’ve lived through hell. I’ve killed a man.
I will never be the same.
Some things imprint us so deeply, we can never return to what we were before. But would I want to? Sure, I’m more guarded, but I like to think I have more compassion because I’ve known true suffering, and I hurt when I see it in others. I may be more cynical, but I like to think I’m wiser, too.
When I told my story, some said I was a hero. I’m not. I’m just a woman who ended up in a bad relationship with a bad man and had to fight my way out of it. I did what I had to do to protect my daughter and to protect myself. That doesn’t make me special, but it does make me a survivor. It’s happening to women just like me and nothing like me all the time. To our neighbors, to our best friends, to our sisters. It’s happening behind closed doors, or even out in the open, documented in redacted police reports or in a million views on viral videos that we judge and poke at and debate.
Even when I shared my story, everyone had opinions. I should have left sooner. I should have pressed charges. Why didn’t I trust the system to “punish” him? Why didn’t I tell everyone? Was it really self-defense, or was it revenge?
If you’ve never had to fight for your life in your own home, if you’ve never had someone you thought loved you hurt you the most, then you don’t know. But I do. I know how it feels to wake up every day living in a nightmare and sleeping with a monster, and I told the world in my own words and on my own terms.
Maybe for women like me, after what we’ve lived through, what we almost died through, love is harder to come by. But it can come. August is living proof that it can come. Truly. Richly. After all I’ve been through, August is my reward.
When he sees me at the door, he startles a little, then grins and puts a finger to his lips, shushing me. He walks to the hall and closes the bedroom door.
“Don’t shush me,” I whisper-hiss with a smile.
“I don’t want you to wake her up.” He turns me by my shoulder and pops my bottom, making me squeak and jump a little. He urges me ahead of him down the hall. “I have plans for you.”
He walks behind me toward his bedroom, and I’d know his footfalls anywhere.
They say I’d follow you to the ends of the earth. When he pauses, they say I’ll wait until you’re ready. And he has. August has asked me to marry him three times in the last year, and every time I’
ve said no. It has nothing to do with not trusting him, and everything to do with not trusting myself. I know that sounds weird and I can’t explain it, but these are the issues I work through in counseling.
“Plans?” I ask teasingly, turning to face him and walking backward. “What kind of plans, Mr. West?”
He gives me a gentle shove into his bedroom, closing and locking the door behind us. I’m immediately pressed into the door, crowded in the most delicious way by his big body. I’m crowded by his affection and pressed by his love. His hands, commanding and gentle, skim my sides and mold to my waist. He lifts my breasts with his thumbs. My breath hangs in my throat while I wait for a stroke across my nipples that never comes. He knows, damn him, grinning, his hands melting away. His fingers meet when he splays them across my back. He’s so much bigger. Someone standing behind him wouldn’t even see me on the other side of his broad shoulders. He’s a wall and a fortress. He’s twice my size, but I feel no fear. Only trust. Only sheltered.
“Road trips suck.” His chin, a sexy scruff of bristles, scrapes the curve of my neck and shoulder when he kisses me there. “I missed you.”
Cradling my head, he sinks his fingers into my hair and lowers his head to hover over my lips. For a few seconds, our breath mingles. We share the very air keeping us alive, and then our tongues touch, tease, and tangle. We torture each other with tiny licks and half-kisses until I need more, need to hold and clutch and grip him. I roam the hardness of his chest, caress his biceps, trace the strong sinew in his forearm, and search for his hands. I thread our fingers together, our palms fused by a connection as electric today as it was the night we met. He coaxes my off-the-shoulder sweatshirt completely off my shoulder, so my naked breast comes into view.
“Hmmmmm.” The hungry monosyllable rumbles in his chest, rattles behind his lips. He frees his hands to scoop under my arms and lift me until my feet leave the floor. The wet, velvety warmth of his mouth surrounding my breast, the tantalizing bite of teeth and suction at my nipple, leaves me boneless. I’m limp and suspended in the air while he drinks from me like a man dying of thirst.