by Kennedy Ryan
I don’t answer but absorb his promise to me. His devotion to me.
“And we need to talk,” he continues before hesitating. “Maybe you need to talk to someone soon? A counselor or something.”
“I have a counselor,” I answer softly.
“You do? When do you see a counselor? How did I not know that?”
“I plugged in with a counseling service for survivors at a local women’s shelter in San Diego.” I clear my throat. “I have a lot of baggage to sort through.”
“Can I come?” he asks. “Like talk to them and ask how I should handle things? Or how I can support you? I just . . . I wanna kill him, Iris.”
“I knew you would and that you’d have to see him all the time for games, events, whatever. That’s why I—”
“Mommy!” Sarai yells from the other room.
“Let me go see what she wants.”
“Tell her . . . Gus loves her,” he says, begrudging the nickname.
“She’ll grow out of it.” I grin, because he legitimately hates it. “Maybe.”
“Jared hasn’t.”
“I know, but Jared—”
“Mommy!” Sarai calls again.
“Go. You’re being summoned,” he says. “I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
Sarai is sitting up in bed when I enter the room we used to share. Her eyes are wide, her lashes wet, rounded arms with their dimpled elbows stretched up to me.
I sit down on the bed and pull her close, brushing down her hair, which now reaches the middle of her back. She’s growing up so fast. I can barely remember the time when I resented having her, didn’t want her. Now she’s everything to me, and I want time to slow so I have as much of it with her as possible.
“What’s wrong, princess?”
“I . . . I saw a monster,” she whispers, her voice trembling. She’s shaking in my arms.
I draw back and study her face. Real fear darkens the blue of her eyes.
“Bad dream?” I kiss her forehead and rub her back. “Wanna tell me about it? What did the monster look like?”
Her eyes fix over my shoulder, and she stares unblinkingly for a few seconds before answering, “Daddy.”
Panic vacuums the breath from my chest, and before I can ask what she means, a sound behind me turns me to ice.
“Hello, princess.”
I whip my head around. Caleb leans against the doorjamb with his arms folded over his chest.
I’ve never seen him look so disheveled. His jeans and shirt are wrinkled. Shadows and bags lurk under his eyes. For once, the gold is tarnished.
I stand up and position my body in front of Sarai.
“Caleb.” I smooth my voice, kneading out the lumps of fear and anxiety. “What are you doing here?”
His grin is diabolical, mocking my attempt to protect our daughter. “You mean you weren’t expecting me?” he asks, a dark stream of laughter running through his voice.
Maybe I was. On some level, I knew that without the restraints I imposed on him, Caleb would come after me, but I didn’t think he’d find me here.
He’s proven me wrong.
“Did you think I didn’t always know where my girls were?” he asks, his voice a cloaked threat. “I had eyes on you from the time you left the hotel ’til you arrived here that first night.”
He steps deeper into the room, and every step he takes closer to Sarai’s bed, a screw turns in my spine until I’m a taut wire ready to snap. I don’t want to make sudden moves or fight in here. If I can just get him out of this room. . .
“Sarai, you remember me?” He reaches around me to touch her hair.
Sarai nods and says, “Daddy.”
“That’s right,” Caleb says, looking pleased. “I’m your daddy. How would you like it if you and Mommy could come live with me?”
My throat implodes, trapping a scream inside. I dig my nails painfully into my palms, but that’s good. The pain keeps me sharp and aware.
“I wanna live with Gus,” Sarai says, clear as day.
I close my eyes, my head dropping forward, because I think my daughter may have just sentenced me to die.
“Gus?” Caleb asks, a frown pinching his dark gold brows together. And then his eyes latch onto the San Diego Waves T-shirt she’s wearing to bed. “Is that right?”
The words are stones hurled at the bed, but she doesn’t realize it and answers honestly, nodding.
“Let’s go talk in the living room, Caleb,” I urge him, forcing myself to touch his arm and tug. “Sarai was having a bad dream but needs to sleep.”
Their dark violet–blue eyes hold for long seconds. Sarai, perversely, looks more alert than she has all day, not like it’s time for sleep at all.
Finally, Caleb walks into the hall. I turn the lock on Sarai’s door and pray she doesn’t figure out how to get out. Whatever happens in the next few moments, I don’t want her to see it. I have to know she’s safe, or I won’t be able to fully focus on getting out of this alive.
My mind is on spin cycle, whirring with possible weapons, escape routes, distractions—anything to hold him off until August arrives. I decide on redirection—stalling him by pretending he didn’t come here to kill me.
“I didn’t release that file, Caleb.” I gesture for him to sit on the couch while I take the seat a few feet away. He cocks one brow, asking if we are really going to play this game, but shrugs like he has all the time in the world to remind me how much he likes hurting me.
“I know that.” He sits back on the ugly couch, spreading his long arms across the back. “Andrew did. Bastard.”
“What did you have on him?”
He looks surprised for a moment before shrugging. “He accidentally gave his girlfriend in college too much of some drug he was experimenting with, and she died.”
“What? Oh my God.”
“I handled it for him,” Caleb says. “But, of course, he owed me. Idiot confessed and ratted me out.”
“I’m sorry.” I assemble my features into concern. “Has there been much backlash?”
Maybe it was the wrong thing to ask. The adrenaline coursing through me is muddling my thoughts and has my fight-or flight instinct in overdrive. There is no “sit down for banal chatter with your predator” instinct, but that’s the route I take because in a physical fight with Caleb, I’d have no chance.
Taking flight from him, I’d have no chance.
The longer I delay a physical confrontation, the closer August comes.
“Backlash?” He barks out a laugh like the rabid dog he is. “I’ve been cut from the Stingers, lost all my endorsements in a matter of hours, and my father has basically disowned me.”
“Your father?” I ask, shocked because Mr. Bradley has always navigated any rough waters for Caleb.
“Too damning, I guess.” Caleb shakes his head. “The league is taking a very hard line on this, and my father can’t be seen on the wrong side of it. Probably making me an example.”
“I’m so sorry,” I lie.
“Sorry?” he spits, sitting forward suddenly and shrinking the space separating us. “This is your fault.”
“No. I kept my end of the bargain.”
My mind hums like a machine, thinking on overdrive of a plan to escape as I watch his skin mottle, his eyes narrow, and his fists open and close, like he’s itching for something to pummel.
“So you did,” he admits. “But unfortunately for you, all of my . . . incentives, shall we say, for letting you go and leaving you alone . . .” His handsome faces creases with a half-grin. “Are gone.”
I don’t know if he moves first or if I do. I don’t know if the predator and prey are somehow psychically linked and we move in harmony, but it becomes a hunting party. He’s the hound and I’m the rabbit. I rush past him to the kitchen. Heavy, rapid steps eat up the floor behind me.
If I can just get to my purse on the counter.
It’s in sight when he circles my waist from behind and lifts me off the ground. My arms windmill and I flail,
kicking at his legs, a dervish of flying, fighting limbs. He hurls me to the floor. I skid across the linoleum and land in front of the sink. I’m scrambling to my knees when he grabs a fistful of my hair and rams my head into the cabinet.
I haven’t felt this kind of pain in a long time, but you never forget it—the hurt that blossoms from one single spot and infects your whole body. The room tilts, and blood runs into my eyes.
“Caleb, please.” I force my tongue to move. “I can explain.”
“Explain!” he screams, squatting so his breath blows over my face. “Can you explain why you fucked him, Iris?”
Oh, God.
He wipes the blood from my face tenderly but then grips my jaw in one large hand until I’m afraid it will crack.
“And you gave my daughter to him,” he hisses.
“No, I—”
The back of his hand sends my head swiveling on my neck, a flower on a fragile stem. The swelling has already started. My forehead and my cheek throb to the familiar beat of my racing pulse. He touches my thigh, just below August’s shirt. I scuttle away from his touch, but he drags me back by my ankle, quickly pinning me to the floor and planting himself between my thighs. He gathers my wrists in one large hand.
“I’ve missed you, Iris.” He breathes the words into my neck, his dick pressing through my panties. I squirm my hips, trying to dislodge him.
“No. Caleb.” My breath heaves with fruitless exertion. “Don’t.”
“Is that what you say to West?” he screams in my ear. “Do you say don’t to West, Iris?”
“Mommy!” Sarai’s voice reaches us from behind the locked bedroom door.
“It’s okay, baby,” I call back, fighting the tears that would make her more anxious. “We’re playing a game, okay? Mommy will be there soon.”
“Is that what you think?” he asks. “That we’ll just go back to business as usual? After this?”
“If you get help,” I say in as reasonable a tone as I can manage with a man determined to take me by force, “you can see her. You can be part of her life. You may get back on the Stingers. Your dad’ll come around. There’s no telling what your father can accomplish.”
“And you’d come home?” he asks, his eyes almost sad, his mouth a wistful line drawn through the middle of his madness.
What do I say?
“Maybe,” I lie. “If you get the help you need, we could see, Caleb.”
His grip on my wrist relaxes just a little, just enough. I pounce. I shove him with all my strength. His bulk shifts. I surge to my feet and dive for my purse on the counter. It’s barely out of reach when he catches me, pressing my stomach painfully into the counter’s sharp edge.
“I’m done talking,” he rasps into my hair. One hand loosens his belt while his thickly muscled arm circles me, pinning my arms to my sides. His hand fumbles under my shirt, and I hear my panties rip.
“No!” I screech and struggle and fight with every ounce of resistance I have.
Sobs shake my shoulders, and my head droops forward helplessly. He’s nudging, hard and aroused, when he shifts and tries to get in. I wiggle one arm loose just enough for me to turn, and the edge of the counter digs into my back. I slap at his head and punch wildly. His fingers, thick and long and strong, manacle my neck, squeezing mercilessly, not budging even when I claw at them, desperate for air. My vision darkens and the stars come out, bright pins of light penetrating the velvet blanket falling over my eyes. With the last of my consciousness, I stretch to my purse, drag it toward me. I pull out MiMi’s jeweled knife. Angling down, I thrust blindly, sinking the blade into flesh.
He howls, jumping back to grab his leg gushing blood. I stumble past him out of the kitchen, gasping for breath, massaging my throat, tripping across the floor. If I can just get him outside, away from Sarai.
I’m almost at the front door when a sound fires behind me. Pain explodes in my shoulder with atomic force, sending me to my knees. I clutch my shoulder, blood running through my fingers.
He shot me.
In all those months he held me against my will with that gun, he never actually shot me.
He means to kill me.
“It’s useless to run, Iris.” He drags his injured leg behind him and over to the wall where I slump, so disoriented with pain, I can barely move.
“I never wanted to hurt you, baby.” He pushes my hair back with the barrel of the gun, making me shudder. “I only wanted to love you, but you messed that up.”
A bitter laugh cracks my lips. “You lying piece of shit,” I whisper. “I can’t even count all the ways you’ve hurt me.”
I don’t wait for him to answer, but go on, ignoring the seething crater in my shoulder.
“I have a cracked tooth.” I tap a molar on the side. “Right here. I lost twenty percent of the hearing in my right ear when you busted my eardrum. You fractured my wrist, and it never healed properly. It aches all the time.”
I ache all the time.
“You’ve done nothing but hurt me.” Tears and blood from my head wound mingle on my face.
August.
His name whispers through my thoughts. I say a silent prayer that Sarai will make it through this, that August will take care of her. That he and Lo will make sure she doesn’t forget me. Sorrow, wide and deep, swallows me, for all the lost moments with her and August I’ll never have. My stolen second chance.
“New rules,” Caleb says, pushing the gun into my side. “We either live together, or we don’t live at all. Those are the rules. I do have one gift for you, though.”
He pulls something small from the pocket of his jeans, opening his hand to reveal MiMi’s gris-gris ring. It glints against his palm, so unassuming, so powerful.
I know I can’t actually hear her voice, but the sight of the ring MiMi crafted to protect me brings her words, spoken to me in this very house, back to mind.
You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.
He can’t hurt you.
Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.
Strength. Dignity. Courage. All these things belong to you. Take them back.
“I only wanted us to be together,” Caleb says, his sorrow, his madness and ruthlessness twisting in his voice. “And one way or another, we will be. It all ends tonight.”
The hell it does.
His rules. His dictatorship. His girl. For too long, he’s acted like he owned me, but I’m not his. He doesn’t get the last word. It’s my life. My body. My spirit.
Yours to keep and yours to share.
There is a reservoir in my soul. A pool of strength, lying in wait. Like MiMi’s Mississippi, it surges through my veins, cleansing me, renewing me, imbuing me with the power of a thousand priestesses. Lending me ancient courage born a thousand years before.
I slam my fist into his injured leg, scrambling out of the way when he grabs at the wound. I push against him, shifting our bodies until the gun flies from his hand. We both dive for it, blood leaking from my shoulder and gushing from his leg. Our hands wrap around the barrel and the handle. He presses me to the floor, and we fight and fumble until our fingers overlap on the trigger, the gun wedged between our bellies. It’s him or me.
Or maybe it’s both of us, because together we pull the trigger.
51
August
Every horror movie on the bayou I’ve ever seen comes to mind while I drive the long road to MiMi’s place. “Secluded” was the word Iris used. That’s a daytime word. At night, “scary as hell” seems more appropriate.
When I finally pull into the driveway, the rental car is the first thing I see. Iris was adamant that security not stay. I can’t even think about her reasons without nearly busting a blood vessel. Caleb has so much to answer for, and I plan to personally see to it that he does. Not his money, or his family’s power, or the rug we like to sweep shit under will save him this time.
The car makes no sense, and the closer I get to the house, my duffle bag in tow, the more ca
utious I become. The door is cracked open, an eerie invitation to come inside.
The house is so tiny, making the scene in the front room unavoidable. It’s the first thing I see, and I’m sure it will haunt me until I die.
“Iris.” I say her name out loud, but I don’t hear it. I don’t hear anything. The words are muffled. I’m underwater and drowning, burning lungs, weighted limbs, struggling to the top, fighting for air.
My Iris.
Lying in a pool of blood—still. And that monster on top of her—still. There’s so much blood, and I can’t tell where he ends and she begins, and whose blood is coming from where. For a second, I’m immobile at the door, trapped in a tragic snapshot, but then all the sounds rush in and I’m in motion, desperate and frenzied. I push the dead weight of Caleb’s body aside.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Iris lies on the floor, wearing one of my shirts. It’s shoved up past the top of her thighs. Blood blossoms across her torso, dousing the shirt from belly to shoulder.
“Iris?” I touch her arm, gentle and hesitant and desperate. “Baby?”
I search for signs of life. I don’t breathe while my heart waits to know if it’s irreparably broken.
When her eyes slowly open, it’s daybreak. It’s dawn. This moment puts everything in perspective because despite all the things I have, if Iris is gone, I’ve got nothing.
“August!” She tries to sit up, and I scoot my body under her so her head can rest on my knee. “Sarai. Where is she?”
My heart seizes when I don’t see Sarai. Did he do something to her? But then a sound from the back of the house filters into my consciousness, insistent, but faint.
“I hear her in the back. She’s calling you.”
Iris releases a long breath out and nods. “I locked her room. She must still be in there,” she rasps, her voice hoarse. She squints, focusing on the prone man a few feet away. “Is he dead?”
Her lips tremble. She’s shaking in my arms. Her cheekbone is swollen, and blood streaks down her face. Black marks stripe her throat.
God, I hope he’s dead.
“I . . . baby, I don’t know,” I say. “I need to call nine-one-one. There’s so much blood.”
