by Zoey Parker
Casey called in. Again. The third time that month. I didn’t mind taking her office, but I was tired and my shoulder throbbed. Painkillers only worked if you took them and, since they made me sleepy, I declined the afternoon dose.
After Michael dropped me back off at home––and by dropped off I mean pushed his way into my apartment and didn’t leave until I had fallen asleep––I slept for nearly five hours. I barely caught my bus to get to the shelter in time.
The throbbing in my shoulder made the cleaning take twice as long. Vowing to slap Casey the next time we crossed paths, I pushed my way through the last hallway of vacuuming and put away my supplies. I didn’t need to look at my watch to know the midnight mark had passed. The cars in the parking lots surrounding the businesses on the street were gone. The third shifters of the small plastics factory across the street sat outside on their smoke break.
The bus ride home didn’t take long at that time of night. The only passengers were myself and one sleeping old man. I’d seen him plenty of times before. He used the bus as his personal RV, catching a nap in the air-conditioned bus before heading off back to the streets. The driver never seemed to mind letting him take his nap, and he didn’t bother me any.
“Working late tonight,” the driver commented as I stood on the steps by him, waiting for my stop.
“Yeah. Later than usual.” We didn’t speak often, but we recognized each other enough to have small talk now and then. I nodded toward the sleeping man. “He have his fair tonight?”
“Barely, but yeah.” The bus pulled to the curb. Before I stepped off, I handed the driver a five-dollar bill.
“That should take care of him for the week, right?”
The driver nodded and gave me a toothy smile. “It should. Thanks.”
“See you in few days.” Stepping onto the curb, I waited until I heard the whoosh of the doors close before I started heading down the street. It was a two-block walk to my building, and the street lights were dimmed––the city hadn’t come by for any maintenance in a while.
The skin on the back of my neck started tingling. I glanced over my shoulder but didn’t see anyone. I picked up my pace and held my bag closer to my body, ignoring the pain it caused in my shoulder.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I chanced another look. A man walked three buildings behind me, keeping the same pace as myself. Not faster or slower, but the exact same pace. His face was shrouded in the darkness of the night, and his hands were in his pockets. He didn’t look away when I saw him; instead he looked directly at me.
My heart sped up and I took longer strides, trying not to alert him to my quickening steps. My building was only another block ahead. The footsteps picked up speed and sound. He wasn’t even trying to hide that he followed me. I tried to dig my cell phone out of my bag while I continued making my way home, but it had slid down to the bottom of my bag and I couldn’t reach it without stopping to dig it out.
A cat howled from behind a trash can, making me jump. The guy behind me let out a low chuckle. I didn’t look over my shoulder again; I didn’t need to. I could feel him there, closer than before.
My building was within eyesight, I could see my steps. I worried about the stalker chasing me up to my apartment, breaking in. Asya would be home by then. She might have been asleep. If he made his way into the apartment it wouldn’t just be me who was in danger. I’d be putting her in harm’s way, as well.
Deciding to try to make a run for it, I dropped my bag and darted down the gangway, heading for the alley. I knew the streets around my house better than him, I hoped.
I barely made it to the backyard of the building before I felt a cold hand grip my neck. My breath was knocked out of me as I was thrown against the brick building. I hit my head against the rough surface and grunted from the pain of it.
The stench of cigarette smoke and beer filled my nostrils as he pressed himself against me, pushing me harder against the building. I tried taking a deep breath, but my lungs wouldn’t expand with his weight against my chest. “So you’re the little bitch,” he snarled. Yellowed teeth flashed at me just before another sparkle in the night became more interesting.
Cold, sharp metal pressed against my neck. I tried to lean away from it, to slip out from his grasp, but he only pressed harder. The bite of the knife drew my attention.
“Just hold still. I think I’d like a bit of fun before we get to the main event.” I heard a buckled being worked on, a zipper moving. I kicked my legs out, but hit nothing but air. The darkness didn’t allow me to see much. His body blocked the light from the alley.
Reaching up, I tried to claw at his face, his arms, anything that would get him to let up on the pressure he had on me so I could wiggle free. His weight was too much, the pain in my shoulder weakened me.
“Fuck,” he growled as he was ripped away from me. He landed on the ground, under the moonlight, flat on his back. My rescuer took no time in keeping my assailant down for the count, applying several hard punches to his face before shoving him to the ground and standing up.
I watched everything unfold as though I were sitting in a movie theater. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. My rescuer turned slowly back to me, and for a moment I tensed, worried I’d only swapped out attackers.
“Lauren.” The tenderness mingled with the roughness snapped my attention to his face. Michael.
Michael was there, and he’d saved me. Again.
I sagged against the building, letting the adrenaline run out of my system. A soft whimper escaped me as he scooped me up into his arms. Pushing my face into his chest, I took calming breaths. “Thank you. Thank you,” I said over and over again. I clung to his shirt, afraid he would leave me, afraid he’d disappear, or that he wasn’t real at all
“Shh, it’s okay, baby.” His hand ran over my hair while he soothed me. His other arm wrapped around me, blanketing me from the sight of the bloodied man on the ground. “He’s not going to hurt you.” How many times had he said those exact words to me growing up? Sheltering me from my mom’s boyfriends, her drunken husband, and then my stepbrother. Would there ever come a time I didn’t need him to save me, to say those words and make me believe him?
He pulled back from me, wiping my hair away from my face. I had started crying at some point and strands of hair stuck to my skin. With a gentle touch, he cleared them all away. “I’m going to check him, to see who he is, okay?” He waited until I nodded before he smiled. “That’s a good girl. Just stay here. Don’t look, just relax right here.” The tenderness of his voice didn’t fool me; I knew how hard he was. I could see how dangerous he had become over the years. He had tossed my attacker away with what seemed like a flick of his wrist.
I kept my eyes closed, focusing on my breathing while he dug through the guy’s pockets. “Don’t steal anything,” I whispered into the air. I thought I heard him laugh at my dictate, but I knew he wouldn’t.
The shuffling stopped and I felt his hands on my arms. “Okay, let’s go up to your apartment. Your bag’s just up here.” He led me back through the gangway and scooped up my bag as we passed it.
I’d never considered myself a wuss, but walking back to my apartment, leaning on him for support, I couldn’t help but feel every bit the damsel in distress.
“Is Asya home?” he asked as he dug through my bag, looking for my keys.
“She should be. Her shift ended over an hour ago.” I leaned my back against the wall in the hallway, waiting for him to get the key in the lock.
He nodded for me to go inside and he followed behind. I let him shut and lock the door while I threw myself on the couch, covering my face with my hand. A slight sting still resided in my neck and I touched it, feeling the small bit of moisture on my fingertips. Pulling it away I saw what I already knew. Blood. Just a trickle.
“Shit, let me see that.” He shoved my hand away and pushed my chin up and to the right to get a better look. “We need to clean that up.” He didn’t give me a chance to sta
nd, he merely swept me up into his arms and carried me to the bathroom.
He sat me on the counter and told me to stay still. I made a mental note to yell at him later for being so bossy, but, at the moment, I found comfort in his take-charge way. After he dug around under the sink, he came back up with some cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide.
I shook my head. “That stuff burns.” I pointed at the brown bottle he held in his hand.
“Just for a second,” he agreed, and unscrewed the cap.
“Don’t use that.” I tried to push it out of his hands.
He pulled away and gave me a pointed glare. “Stop it. You’re acting like a little kid. I have to clean the cut or it could get infected. Who knows what shit was on that knife.” He was right.
I knew it. But I was exhausted. “I don’t care. Don’t touch me with that or I’ll kick you.”
His eyes widened at my threat and he smiled at me. Not a comforting it’s going to be okay, baby smile, but a dangerous, animal off the leash smile. “If you kick me, I’ll spank your bare ass, Lauren. I promise you that. And it will sting a hell of a lot more than this cotton ball.”
There was no doubt in my mind he would do exactly what he promised. A small part of me wanted to find out for sure, wanted to know what that would be like, having his hand on my bare skin. My bare ass, at that. He took my hesitancy for compliance and started to press the wet cotton ball to my neck.
Like I predicted, it stung like hell and I fisted my hands and slammed them into the counter. “It’s not that bad.” He laughed at my outburst and finished the chore. “There, all done. It’s not deep, just a scratch really. Do you have any bandages? I didn’t see any down there.”
“No.” I shook my head, turning around to see myself in the mirror. “Ugh,” I groaned. Aside from red eyes from the crying, there were red blotches on my face, and a long red line covered a good three inches of my neck.
“See, not bad.” He pulled my hair back into a ponytail. “By morning, you’ll be fine.”
I looked at his reflection. “You aren’t going to try tying me to my bed and make me sleep for a week?” I asked cautiously. He was being too easy about this.
“Tying you to the bed has its benefits. But I think you’re too tired to deal with that tonight. How about we go back into the kitchen and get you some water instead?” He pulled me off the counter and grabbed my hand, half dragging me back to the kitchen.
I noticed a note leaning next to the coffee maker and snatched it up.
Hey, Lauren. Spending the night at Dean’s!
Asya hadn’t been home. I ran down that damn alley for nothing. I shook my head at myself and sunk into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Where were you coming home from so damn late?” A glass of water appeared before me. The gentle demeanor was over; he would now demand answers.
“From work.” I sipped the water, enjoying the chill as it slid down my throat. The AC in our apartment worked, but really only enough to take the edge off.
“The shelter keeps you this late?” He raised a brow at me as he took a seat.
“No. My cleaning job.” I took a longer sip, trying to delay the conversation.
“You have two jobs, and go to school?” Leaning forward, he pulled the glass away from me to keep me from avoiding him again.
I sighed. “Yes,” I finally answered, looking at him full on. The wrinkle in his brow and the concern in his eyes tore away my resolve to be defensive. “I clean offices three nights a week. I’m not usually this late, but a coworker called in sick so I picked up her slack.”
“And you took the bus home.”
“I’ve done it often enough. My car overheats a lot, so a lot of times I’ll bus it at night to be sure it’s okay for the morning. School’s farther away than the shelter or the offices I clean.”
“Well, you don’t have to do it anymore. Your car won’t overheat once I get it fixed up, and if something happens you’ll call me to pick you up.” He sounded so matter of fact. As though he’d already made up his mind about what I was going to do, and I had no say.
“Why didn’t you answer any of my letters?” If he was going to be pushy, I would have to be just as stubborn back.
“Lauren, we don’t—”
“No. You expect me to answer all of your questions, to follow your little demands, but you won’t give me the truth? Why? Why did you disappear? If you don’t blame me for what happened, why?”
Indecision crossed his expression. He leaned back in his chair and jammed his hands into his hair. I’d seen him do that all the time when we were younger. Mostly it was because he wanted to stay cooped up in my bedroom watching movies when I wanted him to take me a party I’d heard about in school. He always won back then, but this wasn’t then, and I wasn’t a scared teenager anymore.
“I didn’t want you to see me in juvie. Not because I blamed you. I didn’t. I chose what I did. Not you. It wasn’t a horrible place, but it was messed up. You didn’t need to see that place. Patrick checked in on you for me while I was gone. He told me that your stepdad finally ran off and it was just you and your mom again. By the time I got out, you were already graduating, had gotten a scholarship to the junior college. You didn’t need someone like me messing it up for you. You were on your way to doing exactly what you said you’d do. And, look, you’ve done it. If I had come back, all my baggage and bullshit would have followed. I wasn’t good for you.”
I stared at him in silence for a long minute. “So you took the decision away from me? You let me think you hated me all these years?” The need to smack him nearly overwhelmed me.
“I didn’t know that’s how you felt. I heard how great you were doing, how happy you looked.”
“Of course I did. On the outside!” I took a deep breath. Yelling at him wasn’t going to get us anywhere. “What happened after you got out? You didn’t go to live back home. I checked in with your dad every now and then.”
His dad always had a minute to talk with me when I stopped by his house. Mr. DiMarco probably could have been a better father figure for Michael. Maybe he could have drunk a little less, dated a little less often, but not once did he lay a hand on him. Even when he had been arrested, his father had tried his best to get in front of the situation and get him home. But Michael seemed to have cut his father out as quickly as he had me. Mr. DiMarco asked me to let him know if I heard from Michael. I wondered if I should call him.
“No, I couldn’t go back there. Dad didn’t need me hanging around causing trouble. I stayed with some guys I’d met in juvie for a while. Got some work, took care of myself.” There was more he wasn’t telling me. His eyes didn’t lie to me, secrets lurked there.
“Where’d you work?” I pulled my glass away from him and took a sip.
He shook his head. “Here and there. It’s late, and you’ve had a really fucked up night. Let’s get you to bed.” His chair scraped against the floor as he stood up.
I wanted to push him more, but he’d already thrown up that wall. And once that wall was up, breaking through it would be hard. And he was right. I’d had a really fucked up tonight.
“I need a shower first.” I nodded. “A long hot shower.”
“I can fill the tub if you want a bath,” he offered, already starting to walk in the direction of the bathroom.
“No. Just a shower.” If I lay in the tub, I’d probably fall asleep.
He looked me over, as though assessing if I had the strength to handle standing under the water. “Okay. But I’ll be right out here if you need anything. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!” I mocked. His jaw tightened and his eyes flashed something, and that tingling started in my body again.
“There are some phrases you don’t say if you don’t mean them.” He stepped toward me. “That is one of them. Now scoot. Which room is yours? I’ll get the bed ready for you.”
Unsure of how to take what he said, I pointed to my room. “I can—”
“I know you can,
but I want to. Get that sexy ass of yours in the bathroom before I change my mind about not jumping in there with you.”
I stared at him for a moment, heat rushing to my cheeks. He didn’t look the least bit sorry for his comment. With a nod toward the bathroom, he disappeared into my bedroom.
How was I supposed to relax knowing Michael was in my bedroom?
Chapter 8
Michael
Once I heard the shower running, I sat on the bed in Lauren’s room. Being there, in her bedroom, didn’t bring about the claustrophobic grip that always came when I went home with some girl. Something about being their place messed with my head. Pictures of themselves scattered throughout the place would try to convince me they were more than just the girl I was going fuck for the night. But here in Lauren’s room, the pictures she had on her bookshelf over her dresser of her and her mom didn’t behave in the same aggressive manner.