by LP Tvorik
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Nate tried to walk me to the front door, but I stopped him by the old oak beneath my window. He frowned at the branches above us.
“I thought we were over this, Al,” he said, brow furrowing as he turned his gaze to me.
“I am. I was…” I trailed off, looking up at my window. “I just… I feel good tonight,” I said lamely, leaning back against the trunk of the tree and tipping my head back against the rough bark. “I want this night to feel more like the beginning. I don’t want it to feel like the last few months. I want to go through the window like I still have it in me to care if I get caught.”
Nate sighed.
“Fine,” he said, dropping to a knee and linking his hands together for me to step in. “Be careful, though.”
“Always!” I said brightly, letting him boost me up to the lowest branch. I straddled it and, wrapping my arms and legs around the limb, tipped sideways, letting myself drop and hang like a koala. I giggled at Nate’s sharp gasp and hung my head backwards to see him on his feet beneath me, arms out, ready to break my fall.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, hanging onto the branch with one hand and reaching out with the other to pull him close by the front of his shirt. He grudgingly accepted my kiss goodbye and stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest as I swung back up onto the branch and started climbing.
I’ve talked about fear before— about my theory that we are born fearless. Every anxiety is just a lesson learned. I imagine the wisest, most experienced people are also the most afraid. Somewhere deep down, beneath the serenity of understanding and acceptance, there must be a suffocating miasma of terror because they know every way every thing can hurt us.
I learned to fear water when I was four. It’s one of my earliest memories—sitting forgotten in the grass while my father pulled Tommy’s lifeless body from our neighbor’s pool. He was gray and limp, and even after they got him breathing again something was missing. I was too young to understand the nuances of oxygen deprivation and brain damage, but I understood enough to know that water had hurt my brother. I understood that water demanded respect.
I learned to fear cars when my childhood cat, Mr. Bug, escaped the house and ran out into the street, just as a shiny red sedan came tearing around the corner. I was chasing my wayward pet, but Momma snatched me up just before I reached the curb. Mr. Bug wasn’t so lucky.
I was always wary of small spaces, but that one makes sense too. Momma once told me I was born with the umbilical cord around my neck. I’d bet I have some deep, instinctual memory of being trapped, condensed, and suffocating before I even knew what it was to breathe.
I learned to fear falling on the night I lost my virginity. It happened as I was reaching for my window, legs and one hand wrapped around the bobbing branch, left hand outstretched, shoving the window up.
I heard the crack and froze on instinct, my mouth suddenly bone dry. Nate was saying something, his voice taut and frantic below me. The branch bounced with my weight, leaves rustling above me. I didn’t even breathe as another sharp crack rent the air.
Then I was falling. Falling through slapping leaves and stinging branches. Falling through time. My left arm hit a branch and I cried out as sharp pain lanced all the way up to my shoulder. Then my head struck something hard and I was falling through eternity, spiraling and plummeting through white light into inky darkness.
I never even felt myself hit the ground.
Chapter thirteen
nate
I caught her.
Not that it did much fucking good. I should have insisted she use the front door. Hell, it was probably my fault the branch broke, too. I weighed more than her, and I’d used it every day for a week when her mom died. The constant strain of my weight had probably weakened it.
Everything happened in slow motion. I heard the branch crack, and saw her freeze. Then there was a snap and she was falling, screaming, her limbs flailing as she tumbled through leaves and branches.
Then there was a sharp crack of what sounded like wood on wood, and she fell terribly, deathly silent as she plummeted toward the earth.
Somehow, I got beneath her, arms outstretched like an idiot. Her weight carried us both to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Her elbow struck me in the nose and I saw stars, every molecule of air crushed from my lungs as I landed on my back in the grass, her deadweight sprawled across my chest.
“Alex,” I choked, sitting up and cradling her head as her weight slid into my lap. Her eyes were closed and blood coated the side of her face, oozing from a terrifying gash on her temple. Her right arm flopped to the side, bent strangely between her elbow and her wrist. White bone glistened at me—an accusation.
“Alex wake up,” I pleaded, holding my hand beneath her nose. When a puff of warm air hit my skin I gasped out a sob of relief. She was alive. Still alive.
I scanned her body for further injuries, but the broken arm and the head wound seemed to be the extent of it. Not that those weren’t enough.
“Please, angel,” I said, gently slapping her cheek. “Please open your eyes.”
She didn’t. She remained limp and motionless in my arms, her breathing so slow and shallow I could barely see her chest rise and fall in the darkness. I pressed shaking, bloody fingers to her throat and her pulse hammered against my fingers, racing against time.
“What the hell is going— Aly!”
I had lost all awareness of my surroundings when Alex fell, and hadn’t even noticed the light spilling out over the front lawn as the front porch light flipped on. I hadn’t heard the front door slam, or noticed her father circle around to the side yard. Startled, I looked up when I heard his voice and was blinded by a beam of light shining directly into my eyes.
“Get away from my daughter!” the older man yelled, stumbling towards us. As the stars cleared from my eyes, I saw that he was wielding a kitchen knife in one hand and a heavy flashlight in the other.
“She fell,” I tried to explain. “She hit her head. You need to—”
“I’ve called the police,” he snarled. “They’ll be here any second. Get the hell away from my daughter!”
Part of me appreciated his ferocity. I saw a little of Alex in his glare. The middle-aged, pot-bellied preacher raised his knife, ready to commit a cardinal sin to protect his daughter, and it almost made me smile. I’d tell her about this when she woke up. This aggressive display couldn’t make up for years of terrible parenting, but she deserved to know how much he loved her in a pinch.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll move.”
As slowly as I dared, and as gently as I could manage, I lowered Alex to the ground and backed away, hands held up by my head as her father scrambled forward, dropping to his knees beside her.
He dropped the flashlight but hung on to the knife, brushing the hair off her face with his free hand and scanning her body, as I had, for injuries. He cried out when he saw her broken arm, his panicked tears splattering against her bare skin.
“What happened?” he moaned, bending over her, stroking her hair. “What happened?”
“She fell,” I tried to explain, but he cut me off with a glare, brandishing the knife.
“Stay back!” he ordered. “What did you do to her? What did you do?”
He was weeping openly, his body curled protectively over hers, and my dumbass brain finally caught up with his. I’d been so preoccupied with her fall and my own fear that I hadn’t even thought of what this must look like.
Her father had heard her scream and run outside. He’d found her, apparently beaten and bloodied, in the shadows by his house. He saw her scant clothing and sex-matted hair. He saw the claw marks on my arms and neck, and my bleeding nose.
He saw his precious daughter, hurt and unconscious. He saw the man who had hurt her. Raped her.
“Wait!” I said, shaking my head franti
cally. My body told me to run, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave Alex unconscious, bleeding into the grass. “You’ve got it wrong,” I said, dropping to my knees, trying to make myself look as harmless as possible. “We’re together. We meet every night. She climbs in the window, but the branch broke. I didn’t hurt her. I swear to you, sir, I didn’t touch her.”
But that wasn’t expressly true, and he didn’t seem inclined to listen. He just waved the knife at me and bent over his daughter, blind with the need to protect. I respected him more in that moment than I ever had before.
Sirens screamed and flashing lights bounced off the walls of the house.
“We’re back here!” her father yelled, summoning two uniformed police officers who ran around the corner of the house, hands on their pistols. One of them saw Alex’s body and his eyes widened. He reached for the radio clipped to his lapel and called for an ambulance.
Thank God.
“He did this!” Mr. Winger said, dropping the knife and jabbing his finger at me.
I shoved to my feet, shaking my head, arms held up by my head. “She fell,” I said frantically. “She fell. I didn’t… she fell.” I sounded ridiculous, and some intelligent part of me— muffled by roaring panic— told me everything would go smoother if I just shut up and let them take me. But if they took me, we would be separated. I wouldn’t be there when she opened her eyes. If she opened her eyes.
Panic spiked and I stumbled backwards. “I didn’t fucking hurt her!” I said, louder, as the two officers advanced. One of them pulled a Taser from his belt, but I hardly noticed it. My eyes were glued to Alex. A third officer had rounded the corner and was kneeling by her head, gently pushing her father aside. He peeled her eyelids back, one by one, and shined a light in them.
“Get on the ground and put your hands behind your head,” someone yelled, but I could barely hear it. The officer examining Alex was frowning, and I didn’t know what that meant. Was he just a frowny kind of guy, or had his light-in-the-eyes assessment turned up something unsetting?
“Please let me stay with her,” I pleaded, unable to tear my eyes from Alex’s still form. “She’s my—”
Get on the fucking ground,” they told me.
Just then, Alex moved. She groaned, and her head rolled to the side, eyes cracking open. Suddenly it was just her and me. Her good arm twitched, reaching for me, and I staggered toward her, tears of relief breaking loose from my eyes and streaming down my face.
Then something bit into my arm and my chest, and the world turned orange and tipped sideways. A crackling sound clicked in rhythm with the muscle-locking agony that pulsed through every tendon and bone in my body. I hit the ground hard, unable to break my fall. My lungs refused to expand and my body twitched and jerked as electric fire clicked through me.
When the Taser finally stopped I was on my stomach with a bony knee in the small of my back and my arms pulled taut behind me. The familiar feel of cold steel on my wrists accompanied the snapping buzz of locking handcuffs.
My head spun as they hauled me to my feet and ripped the Taser leads out of my skin. Alex was unconscious again, but I heard more sirens and knew the ambulance was on the way. I let the cops march me to the front yard and shove me in the back of a squad car. My left shoulder protested loudly, but I ignored it, pressing my forehead against the glass window and trying to make out what was happening as my two arresting officers jogged back to the side yard.
Flashing lights announced the arrival of the ambulance, and two uniformed medics appeared in my frame of view, dashing toward the side of the house, one of them carrying a backboard.
It felt like an eternity before they reappeared, and in those eons my mind flashed through every nightmare scenario my corrupt imagination could conjure. I envisioned blood in her skull, pressing down on her brain until her heart forgot to beat. I pictured horrific internal injuries bleeding her dry from the inside. I imagined her waking up and crying out in pain, searching for me, and thinking that I had abandoned her. I saw her lungs collapsing in her chest and her breathless gasping as she fought for air.
When a crowd of people rounded the corner of the house, I squinted in the dim morning light, straining to see through the smudged, tinted glass. Alex was strapped to a backboard, a brace around her neck and an oxygen mask over her face. Her eyes were closed, but her breath fogged the mask, and I let out a ragged breath of relief. The cops carried the backboard between them, while the paramedics scrambled into the ambulance and pulled out a stretcher. They secured her, backboard and all, on the stretcher and covered her with a blanket before wheeling her out of sight.
I leaned back against the seat as best I could with my arms twisted behind me. Alex was safe. She was in good hands. She would wake up with her teary-eyed father by her side and know that he cared about her. She’d be okay.
Nothing else mattered.
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I’d been arrested before, but it was always for stupid shit. Shoplifting, fighting, loitering… crap like that. Criminals like me were a dime a dozen, and I fit like a beige couch into the decor of the crowded police station. Nobody ever looked at me twice.
Being arrested for rape and battery of a young girl, though? That gets you some attention. Special treatment, too, dished out in small, easy-to-deny increments.
The first offense were the handcuffs, which were painfully tight. They dug into my wrists hard enough to draw blood, which trickled over my hand and dripped off my pinky finger when they hauled me out of the car at the station.
The second treat came when I ‘fell’ during the walk from the car to the exterior door of the station. Someone’s booted foot tangled with mine and I slammed into the pavement, concrete digging into my chin and drawing fresh blood. Neither officer spoke. They just hauled me to my feet and shoved me forward.
Everyone stopped and stared when they marched me through the station. An elderly woman in a pink sweater— a receptionist— glared daggers at me. Detectives in plainclothes wrinkled their noses. Uniformed officers smirked at my scraped-up face, probably recognizing the evidence of some understood ritual.
I wasn’t angry. If I really was a rapist I’d deserve to get roughed up. The only issue was that I wasn’t a rapist, I would never hit a woman, and I didn’t have time for this bullshit. I needed to find Alex and make sure that she was okay.
They left me in an interview room with my arms still cuffed behind me. I tried to ask about Alex as the officers left, but they ignored me. For an offense this serious, they had to call me a lawyer, right? Maybe I could ask the lawyer to call the hospital for me.
There was a clock beside the two-way mirror on the opposite wall. It was protected by a wire cage, bolted in place. Everything in the room was bolted down. The chairs, the table. The camera in the corner, blinking at me as it recorded my every breath.
The hour hand on the clock was stuck between five and six, and the minute hand had just passed the seven when the police officers left me alone. I watched that minute hand trace its full circle three and a half times before the door finally opened again. A balding man in an off-white button up, stained khakis, and a thin brown tie marched through the door and planted himself in the chair across from me, dropping a yellow legal pad on the table between us. There was a badge on his belt and a compact firearm holstered at his side.
Not a lawyer, then…
The other officers had already read my rights and I’d been arrested enough times to know the drill. I didn’t have to say a thing, and I knew the smartest way forward would be silence.
Intelligence is overrated.
“Is Alex okay?” I blurted, my voice hoarse from thirst and disuse.
The investigator glared at me, the bald surface of his head shining in the fluorescent light.
“The young lady you assaulted is in serious condition,” he said sharply, jotting something down on the notepad as he sp
oke. “She has a concussion and the break in her arm will require surgery. She has defensive wounds, and it looks like she got in a few good blows before you rendered her unconscious.” His eyebrows drew down and he met my eye, his gaze flinty. “Believe me when I say that we can and will bury you in forensic evidence, Mr. Reynolds. The best thing for you to do is cooperate fully with our investigation. If you’re honest with us from the start, maybe we can see about reducing your sentence and giving you a chance at parole.”
That was bullshit. Smart-sounding bullshit, but bullshit all the same. He didn’t have the authority to reduce my sentence. He was just trying to get information. Fine.
“Alex and I are friends,” I said. “I would never hurt her.”
“Do you care to explain to me why your ‘friend,’” he put the word in air quotes and I wanted to cave his face in with my fists, “would want to hurt you?” He waved at my nose which had finally stopped oozing blood. With my hands locked behind me, I couldn’t wipe it away, and a film of dried blood cracked and itched on my chin.
“I tried to catch her when she fell,” I growled. “Her elbow hit me.”
“What a hero,” the investigator said sarcastically, chuckling without humor. “What about all the marks?” He gestured at my neck, where her nails had scraped across my skin. “Did her cat scratch you up while you were rescuing it from a tree?”
No way in hell was I going to tell this asshole that my girl turned into a wildcat when I fucked her. Her nails had gouged deep grooves in my back, sides, and neck, and I didn’t mind a single bit. I fucking loved it.
“They’re unrelated,” I said lamely.
“I’m sure they are,” he said absently, annotating something on his notepad.
The questioning went on for an hour. I tried to answer honestly, and stayed stubbornly silent for those questions I couldn’t answer without telling the asshole things he had no right to know.
He left after the hour, taking his notepad of scribbled condemnations with him.
Minutes turned back into hours. I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore, and blood trickled slowly over my hands, dripping onto the tile floor. My mouth was so dry I could barely swallow. My nose throbbed, my shoulder ached, and every time I started to doze or daydream, an image of Alex’s lifeless face flashed in my vision and jerked me awake to buzzing, yellow-white fluorescents.