I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe and this is nothing like when Maddox was taking away my air. There’s no exhilaration in this, no bliss, not even any sound other than the slaps of my hands against his. There’s only fear.
I’m going to die tonight. Mama hadn’t committed suicide like I’d always been told. He killed her, and he was going to kill me. Mama’s lessons were meant to teach me how to survive my father, but she hadn’t survived him. They wouldn’t help me anymore. I had to fight now.
The second I think it, my body acts on it, flailing in his grasp. I kick, with no attention towhatI’m kicking, just hoping to kicksomethingthat’ll make him let me go. My foot makes contact with him and he grunts, dropping me, but before I can make another escape attempt, he has me by the hair again.
He pulls my head back, slamming it forward against the wall and the ache is instant. It’s odd how your brain has the ability to think about so many different things at once. One part of it is focused on the pain while another races through ideas to get away, and yet, a third part thinks about the cartoons I watched as a child and how the characters’ heads always seemed to vibrate when they were hit with something hard.
As my father pulls my head back to slam it forward again and blood rushes down over one of my eyes, I can’t help but think it’s a really accurate representation of how this feels.
When he pulls me back for a third time, I let my knees give out, sinking and pulling all of my weight against his hold on myhair. It hurts like a fucking bitch, but I’m hoping it shocks him enough to slow him down for a second, because a second is all I need to survive this, I think.
It doesn’t slow him down and I’m quickly starting to lose hope that anything will. He lets go of my hair, but only to shove me to the ground. My hands catch my fall again and pain shoots up one of my wrists, making me cry out.
The cry only seems to spur him on. Unable to blink away the blood in my eyes fast enough, I don’t see it coming when his boot meets my side. There’s a stabbing pain by my ribs, which were just starting to feel like they may be healing after the last time I’d pissed him off. My body instinctively starts to curl inward. It does nothing to stop his second kick, or his third.
I’m going to die.
I’m going to die here on the dirty floor, gasping for air that I can’t seem to find, choking on my own spit, blinded by my own blood.
I’m going to die in Cedar Creek, just like Mama.
When he pulls his foot back again, he somehow loses his balance. It’s the second I needed and I’m almost too slow to take advantage of it. I feel every millisecond that passes, as though time has slowed specifically for me to take this opportunity.
I’m off the floor before it makes sense for me to be, not even sure how I got myself up, given my injured wrist and hindered vision. He’s in between me and the door and I’m not stupid enough to try and pass him again. All I need is to get away. My phone’s in my pocket. I can call for help.
Someone would come, they’d see the drugs in the living room, they’d save me.
Someone would save me.
They have to, because for once, I can’t save myself.
I’m halfway to my bedroom when I feel his hand wrap around my shoulder, jerking me around to shove my back against the wall again. I’m so focused on the popping feeling that reverberates down my arm that his punch blindsides me,making my already-throbbing head worse. My brain screams at my body to fight, but I feel like I’m going to be sick.
His second punch saves my life, in a way. Bile rises up my throat and I don’t exactly have the ability to aim it anywhere in particular, so it hits him square in the neck. He swears, jerking back, and I manage to escape to my bedroom, shoving the dresser in front of it just as he starts beating against it.
It won’t hold him. We live in a decades-old single-wide mobile home. The door’s hollow inside and the screws on the strike plate aren’t long enough to hold the lock once he starts ramming it, but I just need time to call for help.
I rush into the closet and lock that door too, tugging my phone out of my pocket as I cower in the corner.
FORTY-THREE
MADDOX
To my surprise,my call isn’t met by an automated voice telling me Austin’s mailbox is full.
But what I hear instead is much, much worse.
Sobbing, banging, whimpering.
“Aus?” I stop in my tracks, in the middle of my living room, trying to make sense of what I’m hearing.
“H-Hello?” she whispers, barely able to be heard over the sound of banging in the background.
“Austin? What the fuck is that noise?”
She whimpers again as the banging continues and I can’t hear the exact words being said, but there’s muffled yelling, obvious anger. I rush back to my bedroom and hold the phone against my shoulder again, unlocking the gun safe in the bottom drawer of my nightstand to pull out my pistol.
“Baby, what’s going on? Is it your dad? Are you okay?”
