I look up and see the devil.
Caleb stands at the hood of the car, the stony lines of his face illuminated by the headlights, his eyes screaming obscenities. My stomach roils. This monster has been inside of me.
He opens the driver’s side door, and in the car’s interior light, his hair and golden skin appear almost angelic, but his eyes are demonic. His stare grows hungry and possessive as he watches me feed Sarai. My mind must like to torture me because it flashes back to the All-Star Game when I fed her while talking to August. Maybe in some parallel universe, I’m still in that room, soaking up his kindness and feeling sexy under the want of his stare.
I glance at Caleb’s implacable profile, the cruel promise of his mouth and the tightening of his hands on the wheel, like he wishes it was my neck. We don’t speak a word, but this won’t go unpunished.
19
Iris
“It’s not here,” I mumble to the empty bedroom. I rifle through the random items in my bedside drawer, none of which are my journal. I was completely, embarrassingly transparent in that journal regarding my conflicted feelings about motherhood—the resentment of my pregnancy. So many dark, lonely days I turned to the blank pages to pour out my emotions.
And it’s not here.
Did Caleb take my journal? I know how damning the turbulence of that season looks on paper. I’m ashamed to read it alone, much less have it exposed to someone else’s judgment. In Caleb’s hands, my most vulnerable moments are another weapon in his arsenal.
“Looking for something?” Caleb asks from the door.
I don’t answer, but face him, coaxing the drawer closed with my knee. I watch him and wait.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Iris.” His voice sends shivers over my nerve endings. “You shouldn’t have tried to leave me.”
“You left me no choice,” I sit on the edge of the bed, relieved to have Sarai fed and asleep while I deal with this—while I focus on how to untangle all these lies so I can get us away from him. “I told you what would happen if you hit me.”
“I hit you because you insulted me.” He tilts his head, coming to stand directly in front of me. “A dirty play, huh? You seem to have a soft spot for my old buddy August.”
I don’t respond, but wait for him to continue.
“I saw you looking at him,” he whispers, chips of ice in his eyes. “And I saw him looking at you.”
“No, you must have imagined it.” I drop my glance to the hands folded in my lap. “I barely know him really, Caleb.”
“You don t have to know him to want to fuck him, though, do you?”
My head snaps up. The rage prowling in his eyes is on a flimsy leash.
“But you don’t get to fuck him,” Caleb hisses. He jerks me close, palming the back of my head. He presses our noses and foreheads together, his breath fanning over my lips. “You only get to fuck me.”
He reaches into his pocket and draws out a small silver pistol. I’ve never seen this side of him, and I’ve never seen this gun. I’ve been oblivious. It may cost my life.
He brings the gun to my temple. Fear is the calamity of my heartbeat behind my ribs. It’s chaos in my veins, roaring in my ears and rushing to my head. Fear is a signal fire that puts my body on notice.
He uses the gun to tuck hair behind my ear. “I want you out of those clothes.”
“God, Caleb, please no,” I whisper. “Not like this.”
“You think you have options? Choices?” His vicious laughter rumbles from his chest. “You and that pathetic journal have made all of this too easy.”
“Where is it? I want my journal.”
“And I wanted you out of those clothes twenty seconds ago.” He nods to the jeans and T-shirt I wore to tonight’s game. “That journal is just another page of my insurance policy with you. I said, clothes off.”
With trembling fingers, I tug the shirt over my head, tossing it to the floor. I lift my legs just enough to slide my jeans down. My toes curl into the rug covering the hardwood floor.
“The underwear, too,” he says, his voice dipping to a pant. A pulse ticks in his jaw. He’s seen me without clothes more times than I can count, but when the bra falls away and the panties hit the floor, I’m violated by the stare of a stranger.
“Lie back,” he rasps, his hooded glare lacerating my nakedness.
I grit my teeth, determined to resist, but Sarai sighs in her sleep over the baby monitor, a sound of innocence and contentment. I’d do anything to preserve that—to protect her from the bastard that is her father.
With my knees bent and my legs hanging over the edge of the bed, I lie back. He walks to the side and towers over me, his smile crafted from meanness and glee.
“We’re going to negotiate new rules, you and me.” He places the pistol against my lips. I whimper and begin trembling. Violence is poised to strike.
“Shhh.” He leans down, brushing my hair back and gently, carefully pushing the pistol into my mouth, tapping my teeth.
A scream slices through my mind. I taste my fear—roll it around on my tongue like a tart mint. I wait for it to dissolve, but it never does. It slides down my throat whole, plunges into my chest and scrapes my ribs. It puddles in my belly, a sludge of dread. I dare not move. My eyes plead for mercy, but there’s none in his eyes. They’re just mirrors for his black soul.
There’s a shadow on his soul.
Lo was right, and it’s too late. If only I could go back and see things differently. Do things differently. Choose differently.
Oh, God. Please get me out of this. Please spare me for my baby.
“New rule number one.” His eyes fix on my lips wrapped around the gun’s muzzle. “You don’t drive. Ramone will stay here with you when I’m on the road, and he’ll take you anywhere you need to go. He’ll make sure you always come home to me.”
I’m having trouble swallowing with my lips open around the gun. Saliva pools in my mouth and runs from the corner to mix with the tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I would advise you not to bother Lotus with the details of our arrangement,” Caleb continues. “I know what she does. Where she works. About her fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn. You saw what I did to August tonight. That’s nothing compared to what I’d do to her. Anyone who tries to come between us, I’ll dispose of.”
For the first time, I’m glad Lotus and I are on the outs. I don’t want her near the mess of my life. I can’t handle anyone else being hurt because of me. I have to focus on Sarai. Worrying about anyone else’s safety will only distract me.
“We understand each other?” he asks.
I nod with the smallest motion of my head, not wanting to jar the gun resting on my tongue.
“Good.” He laughs harshly. “And I don’t have to worry about your mother. We both know what a mercenary whore she is. I’m paying for her silence.”
My eyes widen with an unspoken question.
“Yes, I’ve been paying her bills down in Atlanta,” he confirms. “She has a much better apartment now. In Buckhead, no less. You know how many men she would have had to fuck to get that? I’m doing her a favor, and she’s much too grateful to ask questions about how I’m treating you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, betrayal and shame for my mother burning a hole in my heart. He bends to whisper in my ear, slipping the gun free of my mouth and running it down my neck.
“I hope tonight has demonstrated that I hold all the cards.” He circles my nipples with the muzzle and stops to dig it into my belly button. “If you try to leave me, I will at the very least gain partial custody of Sarai. You have no money, and whatever court-appointed lawyer you’ll get will be no match for what I have—the best legal representation money can buy. Between that, your Dear Diary entries, and the ‘concerning behavior’ Ramone reported to social services, I think I’ll have a pretty strong case.”
He walks to the end of the bed, slides the pistol down to the juncture of my thighs, and my blood slams in protest against the
skin at every pulse point.
“Add your exploits with the police tonight and you’ll be lucky to even see her on weekends by the time I’m done with you.”
He slides the gun another inch downward, nudging it against my pussy, separating the lips. My chest rises and falls with anxious breaths. Tears run over my cheeks and collect around my neck like a noose.
“But beyond custody of Sarai, and beyond your mother and Lotus and anything else I could use to keep you with me,” he says, each word a brick in the fortress he’s building around me, “the only thing you really need to understand is this.”
He glances up from between my thighs, and if everything he’s ever told me before was subterfuge and lies, I have no doubt that what he’s about to say is the absolute truth. His eyes are finally honest. “If you ever try to leave me again, Iris, I will kill you.”
A sob rattles my chest, and I bite my lip to contain it.
“Have you ever thought about the similarities between a gun and a dick?” he asks, pushing my knees open wider with his free hand.
“Please don’t do this, Caleb,” I beg, pressing my lips together against a moan.
“There’s the obvious,” he goes on. “You cock a gun. Get it. Dick. Cock?” His laugh is low and breathy, excited. He pushes the muzzle to my opening, exerting the slightest pressure.
“Oh, God, Caleb. Please, stop.” A sob breaks my words up. “Pl-pl-please. Oh, God, please, Caleb.”
With one hand he undoes his belt, the jangle of the buckle and the harshness of the falling zipper a knife cutting across my ears.
“With a gun, you have to consider safety,” he says. “Just like sex. Not that I’ll be using a condom tonight. Another new rule. I’ll be fucking you raw from now on.”
My eyes are closed, and everything blares on my senses. The fresh smell of his recent shower mixes with the scent of my terror. The rough muzzle biting into the sensitive tissue of my vagina. The sound of his pants slithering over his legs and hitting the floor.
“What a relief.” He laughs. “No more holey condoms.”
Anger slices through me. I open my eyes, waiting for him to continue, because I know he will.
“Yeah.” He grins unabashedly. “I may have used a few condoms with holes, but we got Sarai, so it all worked out.”
Lo was right. God, I’ve been such an idiot, trusting someone else with my body, with my future. And now I’m paying for my naivety.
“Sorry,” he says with a laugh. “I took a little rabbit trail there. Back to the similarities. A gun discharges, and so does my dick.”
He squeezes my thigh so tightly, I bite my lip to lock down a scream so I don’t wake up Sarai.
“So, I ask you, Iris.” He reaches up to grab my chin, tightening his fingers there until I meet his eyes. They’re obsidian, hard and black with lust. “Choose. Do you want this cock or mine?”
He presses the gun deeper, not quite inside me, but deep enough, hard enough to leave abrasions on the most delicate part of me. My head lolls to the side, and I squeeze my eyes into complete darkness as I weep. Weep for my little girl, whose father is so evil. Weep for my innocence, squandered on a man worse than any of the ones my mother ever brought home. Weep for lost chances with a good man like August West, who will never have me now. I can’t imagine anything beyond these walls. I can’t think of anything other than the weapon between my legs.
“I asked you a question.” Caleb’s voice comes sharp and harsh, a cat o’ nine tails, a whip dragging my flesh with its hooks. “Choose which cock you want, Iris.”
If it weren’t for the tiny sighs, the faint, steady infant snore coming through the baby monitor, I would beg him to shoot me. Shoot me right now instead of what is about to happen. But there is Sarai.
She makes the word I finally whisper not surrender, but survival. “Yours.”
“I didn’t hear you,” he says. But the gun is already gone, and he lowers himself on top of me, his elbow on one side of my head and the gun on the other. His dick is hard against my entrance, a hammer poised to strike a nail. “This cock or mine?”
I open my eyes and look right at him. The cruel mouth, the lawless soul, the beauty God wasted on this animal. I want him to see my pain and the refusal I can’t voice while he dangles violence over me. I want him to see the hatred in my eyes when he takes this from me. In this awful moment, it’s the only brave thing I can do.
“Yours.”
It starts as a sharp pain that dulls with every thrust. I’m dry and unready, and he is thick and aroused. He tunnels in and out of me, a raw passage for his lust. He’s a ravenous beast, biting my nipples until I cry. He hurts me until I’m dizzy—he feeds on my whimpers. He stiffens, emptying a virulent stream into my body.
I want to hide behind my shame, behind my closed eyelids, but he jerks my chin and holds my stare long enough to make sure I know who’s inside of me. He’s rotten, and the golden façade is gone. He swipes at the wetness on my cheeks and shoves his thumb in my mouth so I taste my own tears.
Even after he rolls off and walks away, I still feel him. I fear I always will. His cum leaks out, a trickle of violence that scalds the vellum-thin skin inside my thighs. At the bathroom door, his eyes maraud my body, studying the bites and bruises. He looks at me like he’s the conqueror and I am his scorched earth.
20
August
It’s my first surgery.
I’ve been balling most of my life and this isn’t my first injury, but it was my first time under the knife. The pain is being managed with medication, but I don’t want to become too dependent. I take less than I should, and my leg hurts like hell. It’s been three days, and I’m finally home. At my real home here in Maryland, not the empty condo in San Diego. If I have to rehab the entire off-season, I want to do it surrounded by the people I love and in the place that’s most familiar to me.
We’re at least six weeks away from physical therapy. This first chapter is all about keeping weight off the leg, letting time and titanium do the healing. That means being more sedentary than I have been since I could only crawl. It’s driving me crazy and leaving me too much time to think. Too much time to dream.
I dreamt of Iris last night. We were by the water, surrounded by trees, and the sun was high. The sky was an explosion of color, vivid, vibrant just before sunset.
We were happy.
How can I dream about Iris when, in a roundabout way, she’s the reason I’m here? I’m flat on my back, staring at the same spackled ceiling I fell asleep under when I was ten years old. And just like then, my mom stands at the door, ready to take care of me.
“You hungry?” she asks, walking in to fluff the pillows behind my head. “I can make those crab cakes you like so much.”
“Nah.” I shift my left leg on the bed and the right one on the small platform that elevates and stabilizes it.
“You need to eat,” Jared says from the door. He was an athlete in high school and still carries traces of a baller’s swagger, though it’s usually hidden beneath a suit these days.
“Okay,” I say, more to get my mother out of the room so I can talk to Jared than because I’m hungry. “Your famous crab cakes would be great, Mom.”
Her face lights up. She’s felt helpless over the last few days, like she wasn’t doing enough. Laid up and barely able to leave this damn bed for the next few weeks, I feel helpless, too. I wish making me feel useful again was as easy.
I study the walls, still plastered with childhood heroes, the idols who shaped my game: Jordan, Magic, Kareem, Kobe. I’ve been staving off depression ever since I hit the floor, and the thought of Kobe Bryant and the Lakers makes me think of the first night I met Iris.
“What’s the league saying about Caleb?” I ask Jared, balling my fists on the bed to contain my anger. “They rule it dirty?”
Jared grimaces, pulls a chair beside my bed, and flips it around to straddle. He rests his crossed arms on the back. “Everybody knows it was a dirty play,” Jared
says. “But his dad is a Hall of Famer, part-owner of a team, and a front office executive. That’s a lot of power and influence. It’ll always be hard to make shit stick to Caleb even in a shit storm.”
“Are you kidding me?” I point to my leg. “I’m missing the end of this season and part of the next because of what he did. I knew he wasn’t the saint everyone thinks he is, but even I didn’t know how low he’d go.”
“What’s up with you and Caleb anyway?” Jared tips his head, his look probing. “I mean, I knew you were never fans of each other throughout college, but it seems to have gotten worse since you guys turned pro.”
Jared is one of the best agents in sports. If we hadn’t needed to keep our family connection on the low, there’s no way I would have chosen Lloyd as my agent over him. Part of what makes Jared so good is his BS detector. He sees through bullshit excuses and lies from a mile away, but there’s no way I’m telling him I jeopardized my career over a girl, much less one I barely know.
“Same old shit, I guess. Just higher stakes.” I shrug. “We’ve been going at it for years. You know that.”
“You sure that’s all there is to it?” Jared asks. “He doesn’t live far away from here. You rehabbing at home doesn’t have anything to do with him, does it?”
Maybe subconsciously I did stay here with the hope of running into Iris, but I won’t make it happen. If our paths are supposed to cross again, they will. I have other things I want to accomplish while I’m sidelined.
“We need to talk about Elevation.” I’m hoping the abrupt change of subject will pull my stepbrother away from talk of Caleb. Thinking of her with him makes my head hurt worse than my leg does.
“Exactly what do we need to discuss?” Jared asks. “We’re in year one of our five-year plan. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
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