Disobeying Him

by M. K. Hale

  “Als, what did I tell you last time?” Logan asked threateningly in my ear.

  I whimpered on my knees in front of him as he pulled my hair into his fists. “I-I shouldn’t look at anyone else.”

  “And what did you do today?”

  “Please, n-nothing,” I pleaded with him, but my words did nothing to calm him.

  He slammed my head against the side of his car door. Something sticky started dripping down my cheek. Blood. Everything went fuzzy for a moment, and I only heard the end of his question when my ears stopped ringing.

  “—at him! You think he’s better looking than me? Huh? You want to go fuck him instead, you whore?”

  Uncontrollable tears streaked my face. The skin on my knees stung against the sharp, uneven asphalt of the parking lot, and the side of my head hurt like never before.

  “Answer me!”

  “No,” I shrieked before he could hit me again. He had a habit of staying away from my face, but I saw his fist rising toward my eye. “I love you! I would never be with anyone else. I never looked at him, I swear.” I had just asked the older man for the time. Why was I so stupid?

  Logan’s foot connected with my stomach, and I doubled over at the force, trying to get oxygen back into my lungs.

  “You know I hate this, baby,” he said, suddenly calm and caring in my ear. He sounded like the old Logan again. “I don’t want to hurt you; I’m sorry. I just need you to understand that you’re mine. You need to feel how much you hurt me sometimes.” His warm fingers cupped my cheeks, and he brushed away some still trickling blood. “I love you.”

  “I know,” I tried to kiss him because kissing might make him stop hitting me. He pulled back before I could.

  “I don’t want to do this, but…” Logan grabbed another fist full of my hair, ready to slam my head against his car again.

  I wish I could have blacked out from the pain, but I remember everything.

  And I screamed. And I screamed. And I screamed.

  Chapter 13

  Nate:

  * * *

  Hoarse, blood-curdling screams woke me up with a start. At first, it sounded like they were in my room, but once the cobwebs of sleep faded from my mind, I registered the screams were coming through my wall. Allie.

  My shoulder hit my door so hard while I ran, I might have dislocated it. I rushed to her room. Luckily, she had not locked it—I would chastise her later—and I stepped inside without pause. The light was off, but small rays came through the blinds on her window from light posts outside. She laid on her bed, her eyes closed, her hands tangling in her hair, and she was still screaming.

  Screaming.

  My heart tripled its beating at her screams.

  She shrieked, “Logan, please, s-stop.”

  “Allie.” I bent down and shook her shoulders. I did not know if this was similar to not waking someone who sleepwalked. What were the rules for sleep screaming?

  At my touch, her eyes shot open.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, trying to calm her down as I pulled her hands out of her hair. She yanked the red-brown strands so hard, I worried she would subject herself to early onset balding.

  “What?” Her eyes were wide and terrified as she hyperventilated. I needed to calm her down. “Nate?”

  “You were screaming. I came to check on you.” My eyesight adjusted to the darkness of her room. Her inflamed cheeks were covered in tears. I wiped them off, and she sat up on the bed. “It’s okay.”

  “Did everyone hear me?” Her voice rang full of humiliation and distress.

  “No,” I lied. Though maybe I had stopped her before she woke up anyone else. No one would know where the screaming came from anyway, and no one needed to know. My heart tightened as I stared down at her in her broken state, and one thought entered my mind. Protect.

  “Oh, God.” She put her head in her hands, and I sat next to her on the bed. A deep need to be close to her ruled my body.

  Her treating me like I was broken now made perfect sense: it was how she saw herself.

  No wonder she was obsessed with me. No one screamed in nightmares like that unless they had lived one. I had lived plenty. Even with my walls up, she had seen that. She knew I hid something, pushed something down deep inside of me. She had seen herself in me.

  She had not been drawn to me because of my last name, but because of what she saw in me.

  She had crossed the line plenty of times between us, but that was who she was. Allie had no sense of boundaries. Her trying to find me a girlfriend had pissed me off, less because she wanted to fix me, and more because I wanted her to want to be my girlfriend. Not that I wanted a girlfriend. I just…

  I wanted Allie to want me the way I wanted her.

  In this moment, I felt closer to her than ever before. Always, in our interactions, she claimed the upper hand, but now she was the vulnerable one. And I wanted to comfort the shit out of her. I wanted to buy different flavors of applesauce, soup, and tea, and line them all up as a Feel Better buffet. I wanted to wrap her in a cloud.

  Instead, I rubbed slow circles on her back the way I did to Blue when she got failing grades or a stomach ache. “Really, it’s okay.”

  Allie lifted her head to look at me again.

  “It’s not okay; nothing is okay,” she whispered in a hushed tone. Her throat had to be sore from the screaming. “I thought I was over this.”

  “Over what?”

  “The… My nightmares.”

  “It’s natural to have nightmares—”

  “They’re not,” she said. “They’re memories.”

  Who the hell had caused her to feel so horrified and afraid? Her screams had sounded like she was being murdered. I wanted to ask her what her nightmare had been about, but the difference between us was I knew when not to cross a line.

  “This happens a lot?” I offered an open question, which she could answer with detail or blow off.

  She chose the blow off option. She pushed away from me. “Why are you here?”

  “I already told you—”

  “Just go, okay?” She wiped the rest of her tears off of her cheeks. “You don’t even like me.”

  “That’s not true.” I liked her too much, that was the problem. Did she think I did not like her after the stunt I pulled with Hannah, the girl from Allie’s erotic sex-club harem? I had been trying to hurt her and myself. I had wanted her to be jealous, but she was not. “Allie, you were just screaming and crying in your dreams. You need someone to talk to.”

  She appeared to be on the edge of breaking down, like her walls were too crumbled to come back up. “I’m fine by myself.”

  “I’m sure you are. You’re strong.” I placed my hand on her head as a small, comforting gesture. It came across more like a human patting the head of his four-legged best friend. Why aren’t you better at this? “Who’s Logan?” I repeated the name she had said in her sleep.

  Before me the strongest, most impulsive, and wild girl I knew broke.

  She broke.

  Like a final explosion. Tears burst from her as her breathing roughened. She told me everything. She said she had been having reoccurring nightmares for a year now. They all related to her ex-boyfriend from high school. She did not tell me he hit her, but it was easy to figure out. I hated Logan. Who the hell could hurt Allie? She was a sunbeam or a little fairy. Pure, innocent energy. Well, not all innocent.

  I wanted to kill him.

  I wanted to hold her.

  She clung to me, seeking comfort, as I stroked her hair and back. “Why were you with him for so long?”

  Her back, which had turned to jelly, stiffened back into bone. She pushed away. “That’s always the question, isn’t it?” Her tone grew angry. “Everyone always wants to know why someone would stay with someone who hits them. Do they not realize a person who could hit a woman could kill one too?”

  I pulled her back into a hug, and she sank into my body like she was made for me. Like maybe I was made for h
er.

  “Fear. That’s why I stayed with him. It’s also why I left him,” she said in a way that told me not to ask any more questions.

  After what felt like an hour, she returned to her old self and put up her walls. I got up to leave, and her hand caught the back of my shirt.

  “Stay.” Her voice was so soft, I almost missed it.

  She probably wanted someone to wake her if she screamed again. However, as I laid down next to her and let her put her head against my chest, I told myself she wanted me to stay because she wanted me, and because I made her feel safe. I wanted to be there for her the way no one had ever been there for me as a kid. It was obvious she put on an act around others to keep from breaking, and I related to that more than she would ever know. The difference was she acted a bit crazy and did whatever she wanted, and I lived by every rule and restriction possible. There are a lot of different ways to suppress bad thoughts.

  Her breathing evened and her face relaxed as she fell back asleep. She looked angelic. Her hair spread out on my chest and her smooth legs lined up against mine. It had been a long time since I had slept with someone. I had a rule about people being in my space. Allie seemed to be able to break any and every one of my rules.

  God, she was so pretty. Up close, I could see a few freckles on her cheeks. Her warm body pressed against me, reminding me of a blanket of security to my soul. Her lips were made of fairytales. Red and glistening for a happily ever after. All I wanted to do was kiss her. It was all I ever wanted to do anymore. Everywhere I went, she seemed to be there. And every moment I saw her, I fought an attraction boiling me from the inside.

  She looked so peaceful and beautiful as she slept. But she was with Ryan. Her date with Ryan was tomorrow as he had made sure to tell me.

  After learning so much about Allie, how could I let someone as callow and shallow as Ryan have her? He had no clue what she had been through. He could not relate to her the way I could. Damn it, she was everything dangerous to me. Off-limits because of my job; off-limits because of the emotions I felt around her. I was out of control. I had never been out of control.

  One thing was for certain: I could not leave Allie alone anymore. Not now that I finally understood why she pushed me. She had pushed me so she would not have to push herself. She found “projects” in other people to feel less like unfinished work.

  She could fix me any day of the week.

  I knew too much after she had trusted and talked to me. Avoiding her would be malicious. She needed someone, and I wanted to be that someone.

  There could just be no touching, no attraction, and no romance of any kind. She needed a friend; I would be a friend. Nothing more. I could fight the heat that flooded my body when I looked at her. It would be fine.

  Everything would be fine.

  “I’m sorry, sir, it’s not working,” the dining hall worker told me and handed me back my silver credit card. I was buying lunch, and I had already tried two of my go-to cards.

  “Okay,” I attempted to keep the worry out of my voice. Those credit cards always had money on them. They were linked to my father’s account. “Can you try this one?” I handed her my debit card. It had money on it from my summer of working at a law firm as a file clerk.

  She scanned it and shook her head. I was shocked. Something had to be wrong with the machine because I had not spent a dime of my money from my account; I was saving up to buy a place for Blue and me after graduation.

  I handed some cash to the worker and exited the line after being embarrassed to hold up everyone behind me.

  Walking over to the tables, I saw Allie sitting by herself. I had slipped out of her room in the morning before she had woken up. How would she treat me now, after I knew what had happened to her? Would she be friendlier? Would her walls come down again?

  I put on a smile and sat down in front of her.

  “Nate,” she said in a surprised tone.

  “Hey,” I greeted her softly, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Don’t act differently around me.”

  I frowned at her. “I wasn’t.”

  “You never smile at me. You also never eat lunch with me.”

  “I just didn’t like you sitting alone.” My tone became defensive, and she relaxed a bit. She read me so well, she was fluent. She saw through my fake smile and, apparently, preferred my normal colder voice to my nice, comforting one.

  “Why?” she asked.

  I got up. If she did not want me to join her—

  “Not that I don’t want you to sit with me,” she added. “I just… Why?”

  “RAs are supposed to sit with and talk to any residents who seem lonely.” My words seemed to hurt her because the edges of her lips sunk in disappointment. An emotion flashed behind her bright green eyes before I could place it.

  “I’m already sitting with someone.” She said it like “so, bye.”

  If she needed space, I would give it to her. But we were linked now. She had to understand that. I got up and turned to walk to a different table. “Fine.”

  “But Nate?”

  I glanced back at her. God, she was pretty. “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  I went to the gym hoping to work out my issues, even though adding muscle to my arms would not make my home or school life any easier. I also wanted to work out, hoping to forget about how Allie was doing on her date with Ryan. Ryan made her laugh. What if she fell for him? What if she told him everything and she no longer needed for me to be a shoulder to lean on? What if they slept together?

  I hit the punching bag in front of me with a loud smack. I needed to forget about Allie. I would be her friend, and as her friend, there was no reason for me to worry or think about her and Ryan.

  I hit the bag until the skin on my knuckles bled. Damn it.

  After an hour on the elliptical machine, I went to buy a water from the vending machine. When I swiped my normal credit card, it said, “Denied.” I paused and frowned. There was no way. The cash register at the dining hall had been malfunctioning, so why the hell did it not work on this machine? I tried my gold credit card, and the machine flashed in red letters “Denied” at me again.

  Taking a deep breath, I scanned my debit card. It had to have money on it. I never used it. It was my savings. There was no—

  “Denied” flashed on the screen.

  “Shit!” I shoved the machine. Why was this happening? Maybe my phone had messed up the magnetism of the strip. What other reason could there be?

  As I walked back to the dorm building, I pulled out my cellphone and called my father.

  A female voice answered, “Hello?”

  “Who the fuck is this?” My frustration flared. Why was a woman other than my mother answering my dad’s private phone?

  “No need to be rude.” I heard a muffled sound from the phone and a lower volume, “George, I think it’s for you.”

  “Hello?” My dad sounded as agitated as I felt.

  “Who was that?”

  “Oh, um, just a new secretary. Training her on the new phones and such.” I heard a light giggle through the phone speaker, and my stomach twisted.

  “Do you let every new secretary answer your non-work phone?” I held back on also asking if he slept with all his secretaries.

  “Why did you call, son?”

  “My cards keep getting denied.”

  “Yeah…about that, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. We’re having some money problems at the moment. I think you should try to decrease your spending for now, son.”

  “My spending? I’m not the one who always takes a limo and eats nothing but lobster while my family sits at home eating microwaved ravioli every night.” I let out another heavy breath. “My debit card got denied too, though. What’s going on?”

  “Well, I may have taken some money out—”

  “What?” The rage in my tone rang clear. “Those were my savings. How could you even do that?”

  “My name was still on the account fro
m it being joint when you were a minor, so I had access—”

  “I wasn’t asking you how you were able to. I was asking how you could do something like that without telling me or even, it seems, without remorse.” Without access to my money, I could not send my sister, Blue, cash for food.

  “It’s my money too.”

  “No. No, it’s not. I’ve worked every summer since I was fifteen for that money. It was all mine.”

  “And you’re my son.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, frustrated. “If I called your driver, would he tell me you’re still paying for a limo to drive you everywhere?”

  “Nate—”

  I summoned the confidence of the girl with auburn hair and red tips. The girl who stamped her name on each of my thoughts. The girl whom I had called crazy when she was one hundred percent herself with no remorse, even though at some points—specifically, the harem—she should have felt some regret. “Transfer my money back to my account, dad. I need it; you don’t. Oh, and maybe send some money to your wife and daughter so they can eat some real food.”

  It was the first time I dared to hang up on my father. It felt good.

  Chapter 14

  Allie:

  * * *

  Ryan was amazing, he was. Funny and charming. But even as we bowled together on our date, I could not get Nate out of my head. The way he had held me, his eyes full of familiar pain. After having told him almost everything about my past, I felt linked to him.

  What if only broken people can fix each other?

  But it bothered me when I had asked Nate why he wanted to sit with me and he had said it was his job as an RA to comfort lonely people. It reminded me of him calling me a lonely stalker. I was not lonely. In fact, I was on a date…and I was also thinking about a different man. Welp. When in doubt, figure it out.

  My therapist in high school had told me a side effect of being in an abusive relationship was problems with intimacy, so I had started having one-night stands as a “Ha! I’m fine.” In reality, I had just messed myself up worse by separating sex from feelings.