by R. K. Lilley
"I know you do, but I guarantee you'll like this one."
"It must be shoe-porn then." Shoes were always a good surprise.
He laughed, eyes twinkling at me.
My heart did a slow turn in my suddenly warm chest.
His laugh was like the first cup of coffee in the morning—warm and rich and exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. And God, did I need it.
"Even better," he said.
"Not possible."
With an irresistible, irrepressible grin, he pulled his hands out from behind his back.
In one of them was a little white ball of fluff that nearly passed for an oversized cotton ball.
"Meet Diablo," Dante told me.
My hands covered my mouth in that, 'omg I'm a girl and I am having an emotional overload moment' pose."
But I couldn't seem to help it. He'd gotten me a kitten. It was so perfect, and thoughtful, and reminiscent of old times that my eyes teared up as I scooped the little treasure out of his hand, cradling it to my chest.
Beautiful blue eyes blinked up at me. I'd thought the kitten was white, but it was really a sandy color, with gray on its nose, ears, and paws.
I sat abruptly on the floor, crossing my legs, holding the cat with one hand so I could stroke it with the other.
When I had it purring, I beamed up at Dante. "How did you know?"
His eyes were soft enough to melt me. "That you love cats? You always did. And all of the cat T-shirts gave me the idea."
"Is it a boy or a girl?" I asked him. I was lying on the ground now, playing with its paws.
"Girl."
"A girl named Diablo?"
"You're questioning that a girl could be the devil? That is rich."
I hid my smile in Diablo's fluff. The man had a point.
I had a three-day break from shooting the film. I brought Amos over, and we played house with childish abandon, doting on our new kitten like she was our child.
We were at a dangerous place then, he and I, where though I'd forgotten nothing—not a one of his sins and certainly not one of mine—they weren't crushing my mood into blackness as they usually did, as it was their job to do when he was this deep into my head.
"We're becoming one of those couples that we would make fun of," I told him the second day. We were in the backyard, making pet videos of all of the adorable interactions between Amos and Diablo.
"Joke's on you," Dante said with a soft smile. "We always were."
The time with Dante was good for me in a lot of fundamental ways. That was a fact. But always, running under our time together, over it, through it, was a bittersweet current of fear. This was not permanent. This was stolen time.
I'd steal it again, take and take, everything I could, because it was right. We were right together. He'd said it best—apart we were not ourselves. We only ever made sense together.
But no length of stolen time, no amount of righteousness, could change the past or the future.
"What's the plan here?" I asked him on the third day. It had started as a small weight, but as these things went, it became bigger the longer I didn't address it. "Are we just going to hide from Adelaide forever?"
We were in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. He turned to look at me head on as he replied, "For now, yes. For however long is necessary. I'm working with Bastian on trying to get some dirt on her, some leverage for counter-blackmail—"
I smirked at the counter-blackmail. It was so Durant it hurt, the manipulative bastards.
"But until we have something that will ruin her beyond a shadow of a doubt, she's always going to have the upper hand. That is a fact."
It all felt so hopeless all of a sudden that I couldn't keep it in. "You know we're being foolish. Nothing has changed, not really. You and I are still hopeless. I should just stay away from you. If I were smart, I would."
That set him off, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing. He stepped right into my personal space, so I had to look up to meet his eyes. I'd done it now. "Oh yes. Your incredible restraint. Don't remind me. You think I need to be reminded? That restraint breathes down my neck every minute of every day. You could stay the hell away from me indefinitely; I'm well aware. But what if I can't let you? What if I'm sick to death of trying?"
My heart was pounding, eyes devouring his passionate expression. Sometimes I felt I could feed on his rage alone. It was sick and twisted and irresistible. "Sooner or later, we all have to pay for our sins," I said softly.
He shook his head, "No. That's not where this is heading. No. I won't allow it."
He said it like he meant it, with absolute inflexibility. I tried to find comfort in that.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire."
~Charles Bukowski
PAST
SCARLETT
Harris didn't take me to the station.
He took me back to my grandma's trailer, which he knew would be vacant.
He dragged me kicking and screaming inside.
It was like a switch in my brain that I couldn't turn off. I'd fight him until he decided I was more trouble than I was worth.
I'd fight him until he killed me.
I scratched him until he bled. On the arms, on his face. I went for his eyes and almost got one.
I bit him on the neck and wouldn't let go. I tasted blood and wondered if I was close to his jugular. I ripped chunks of his flesh out with my teeth, but it still didn't slow him.
Finally he clocked me on the back of the head, and the world went black.
I came to tied spread eagle on my bed. I was naked.
The first thing I saw was my bedside clock.
11:23.
It's only 11:23, I thought. Not even an entire period has passed since he took me from school. It seemed impossible that it was still so early.
I kept my eyes glued to that clock for four solid hours. The ropes were so tight that I couldn't shift even an inch to fight him.
I've never been good at escaping into my own mind, at finding any sort of distance from the things that torment me. But I tried. I tried to reach for some kind of solace somewhere in my being.
And found none.
For the first bit, I held onto a tiny grain of hope—maybe it wouldn't go that far.
Maybe he wouldn't take it that next step. Or the next. Or the next.
And, most wretched and unfair of all—perhaps Dante will come bursting through the door at any moment—somehow he'll sense what's happening to me—that his angel is being damaged beyond all repair.
Somehow he'll rescue me.
By the first half hour, my eyes still glued to that clock, I gave up all hope of that.
I'm not sure why the words came to my brain then, but they did. Gram had once told me that God answers all prayers.
I worshipped Gram, but I had not agreed. In fact, I was skeptical of God in general.
But just then, I was desperate enough to try. I prayed. With an anguished heart, I prayed.
Maybe God does answer all prayers, I really can't say, but if he does, sometimes the answer is no, I won't help you out of this.
And so it was. No one helped me. No one stopped it. No force of nature lessened the horror or the pain of it. No act of God cut it short. It went on until Harris was finished, and I'd lost what little faith I had that there could be some benevolent force watching over me.
And all throughout, I wouldn't look at him, though he wanted me to. Ordered me to.
He started slapping me when I refused, then pinching me, twisting my flesh, biting me hard.
He changed tactics and pleaded for me to look at him. I still wouldn't do it.
He started punching me in the stomach.
I still wouldn't look at him, and I swore I wouldn't cry for him either, but tears had been seeping steadily down my face since he'd first begun.
Still, I wouldn't sob for him, and I wouldn't beg him either.
He
started screaming in my face. "Look at me. Look at me." Over and over.
No matter what he did, no matter how angry it made him, I would not look at him. I kept my eyes on that clock.
I didn't fear punishment. What was worse than what he was already doing?
He could beat me. He could kill me. Somewhere around hour number two, in fact, I wanted him to.
At hour three, I begged him to.
"Don't be silly," he panted into my ear, back on top of me again. "I'm nowhere near finished with you. Trust me, you'll learn to like this."
I stopped begging and tried to think of something, anything else, but I quickly stopped. I didn't want to taint any of my good memories with this, and the nightmare I was trapped in now was bad enough without adding to it.
When he was done with me, for some reason I cannot fathom, and I go back to it often, he untied me.
I tried to get my bruised, overused body to sit up, had started to, but he quickly joined me in bed, yanking me to him, wrapping his limbs around me so tightly that I couldn't move.
"Shh, go to sleep, dear girl," he told me, and promptly passed out.
As soon as his body went limp, I slipped from the bed.
I tried to move quietly from the room, but I was trembling so powerfully that I was sure the sound of it would wake him up with every limping step I took.
I saw his gun, but it was close by the bed, close to him, and I couldn't make myself move toward him. I struggled for a minute, trying to, but I could not do it. I could only make myself move away from him.
Once I was out of the room, my body just started to work of its own accord. It moved fast, fluidly, ignoring all of my soreness, ignoring the fact that my spirit felt broken, and I still wanted to die.
I went mindlessly to my grandma's room.
Feeling completely blank, I took the gun from her nightstand, checked the clip, and glided quietly back to my room.
He'd shifted in his sleep, turned so his back was to the bedroom door.
I didn't linger. I didn't stare at his sleeping form. I did not contemplate.
I don't remember making a decision. I just remember clearing the door, raising the gun, aiming it, and emptying the entire clip into his back.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."
~Rainer Maria Rilke
I don't know if I fainted, dozed, or blacked out, but what brought me back was a consistent, warm drip, drip, drip of fluid onto my chest.
I was huddled outside of my old bedroom. I'd shut myself out.
I didn't look down at my body. I was numb in a way, but still coherent enough to know that I wasn't ready to see the damage. Wasn't ready to face it.
My jaw was slack, and so my first assumption was that I'd been drooling on myself, but as the drip, drip, drip continued, I realized there was too much of it, whatever it was, for that.
Had I thrown up on myself? I wondered. It seemed as likely as anything. My mouth tasted foul enough for it, acid burning in my throat.
I kept my eyes trained straight ahead, at the stained yellow wall in front of me as I took a shaking hand and wiped my chin. I held it up all the way to eye level, not lowering my gaze even an inch to see what it was.
Red. So much red, but as I saw it I was not completely surprised. I felt at my lips, and to this day I wonder, I honestly have no recollection, which one of us had ravaged them, bit them bloody, that monster in his depravity, or me, in my anguish?
What do I do now? I thought. Call the police? Bitterness filled me at the thought.
Someone was pounding on the front door. I went from numb to trembling again.
But then I heard a frantic Dante calling, "Scarlett! Are you in there? Scarlett!"
I broke. Into a million pieces. In relief. In renewed horror.
I started sobbing and made my unsteady way to the door, fumbling with the lock in my rush to let him in.
Some part of me had shut off, slipped inward, gone dead, perhaps, for the duration of the nightmare.
It took seeing Dante's face to bring me back, to realize, and start to deal with the horror of what had happened to me.
A dozen expressions flitted across his face as he took me in. First shock, then horror, then anguish as he started to connect the dots.
I looked down at myself. I was naked, which I'd as good as forgotten, but that wasn't the worst of it.
Bruises were already mottling my torso, my wrists and ankles raw, open wounds from struggling against the ropes.
And there was blood, a lot of it, all over my thighs.
I crumpled with a sob.
With a low sob of his own, he caught me.
He didn't ask me anything at first, just held me, stroked me, carried me inside, sat down on the couch and tried, around his own helpless sobs, to calm me down.
And when I'd quieted, and was just lying against him, hoping that I never had to leave his arms ever again for my whole miserable life, he asked me only one thing.
"Where is he?" His quiet voice bled like murder into the air.
Of course he'd connected the dots as soon as he'd seen the state I was in. Harris's car was right outside.
I started trembling anew. I shut my eyes and leaned heavily into him. I couldn't bring myself to answer him, and after a time he tried to stand, but I clung to him and cried.
It had sunk in. What had happened to me.
But more than that. What I'd done.
Who I was and what I'd done.
Eventually he had to pick me up and take me with him. I didn't make it easy for him to search my grandma's house, but at least there wasn't much to search.
It took him extra time to get my door open while still holding me clutched to his chest, but he managed.
I didn't look, but his reaction was far calmer than I'd expected.
His breathing barely changed as he took in the cop I'd killed.
"I'm going to jail," I said wretchedly.
"Shh, angel, shh," he said into my temple. "It was self-defense."
I shook my head. "He was sleeping when I shot him. He'd already finished with me. I wasn't thinking. I shot him in the back. Don't you see what's going to happen? With all the trouble I've been in? All the fights? All the reports from times when I've lost my temper? The cops hated me when I was a victim. What do you think they're going to do now that I've killed one of them?"
"He was a rapist," Dante said dully, but I could tell that what I was saying was starting to sink in. "He deserved it."
"They won't think so. What do you think they're going to do to me now when I've killed one of them, and then I accuse him of being a rapist?"
"He was a rapist," Dante repeated, an absolute concentrate of hatred in the words. "I'm so sorry, angel." He was crying now. "So sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know this was happening. I had no idea. I've been looking for you for hours, but I was looking in the wrong place." He was breaking down now, sobbing, screaming, "I'd have killed him myself, I swear it."
It was funny how I only realized later that he never asked me if I was okay, and how that had comforted me. Because he knew me too well to ask such a stupid question.
Of course I wasn't okay. Of course I wasn't fine.
I'd been defiled, degraded, debased beyond all repair. I was covered in that monster's filth. Sticky with it.
I was wretched. Unhinged. Suicidal.
"I don't know what to do," I sobbed. "I don't want to go to jail."
"They can't put you in jail for this," he argued, but he sounded less and less convinced.
"I wasn't thinking right, Dante. My mind was just . . . gone. I shot him in the back. Emptied a full clip into him. Do you really think this is going to go my way?"
He was silent as his mind worked, and eventually I could see he came to the same conclusion as I had, but his next words floored me. "I'll say I did it. I'll say I caught him raping you and shot him in the back."
/> I started to struggle in his hold.
"No, no, no," I spat. "You think I'd let you go to jail for me? After you already killed someone for me, you think I'd do that? And with your record, do you think it could end any other way?"
"Don't be like that. I can take this hit. Gram will get me the best lawyer out there. It'll be fine."
I kept shaking my head. "No. Never. I'll confess myself before this ever goes on you. I fucking swear it. I won't let you take this on yourself."
He took a few deep breaths. He was thinking, I could tell, his mind racing, trying to figure out what to do.
"Does anyone know he brought you here?" he asked finally.
"I don't think so. People saw him take me out of school, but not to come here. He lured me into his car by saying he needed to talk to me at the station."
"He planned this," Dante said slowly, the pain in his voice excruciating to me. "He planned out a rape, and he's a cop. What are the odds he didn't cover his own tracks? What are the odds there is a soul on this earth that knows he was bringing you here?"
I studied him, feeling hope for the first time at what I saw. "What should we do?" I asked him.
He looked down at me, bent, and gave me a very careful kiss. "You don't have to do anything, angel. I'll take care of it. Do you think you can shower by yourself?"
It was pathetic, but I shook my head. I didn't think I could walk across the room by myself.
"Okay. That's just fine. I'll help you. We'll get this sorted out, I promise. No one's going to hurt you again. And no one is going to take your freedom. I swear it."
I believed him, had absolute faith in everything he'd said.
He showered with me. He was very tentative, after what I'd been through, to get naked in front of me, so he showered with his boxers still on.
I couldn't even wash myself. I made him do it. He was excruciatingly tender as he lathered me up, head to toe, rinsed me off, then did it again.
We both cried like babies, in great, heaving, helpless sobs, when he washed the blood off my thighs.
Only after he was done with his soft ministrations did I take the loofah from him and scrub myself raw.