by Hope Stone
When I walked in, her back was to me as she filled up a glass with water at the sink. I paused, taking in the retro-styled kitchen and marveling that someone had purposefully designed this space with so much wood paneling. Walking to the trash can in the corner, I threw out the empty cardboard container. I was approaching Erica when she turned around. She must not have heard me enter the kitchen because the sight of me startled her so much that she jumped, and the glass in her hand slipped out onto the floor where it shattered at her feet. She was only wearing socks.
“Don’t move,” I barked, hurrying forward to get her away from the glass before she hurt herself.
To my horror, she flinched and backed up. There was stark terror on her face that made me freeze, despite the urge to lift her off her feet for her safety. I raised my hands up in front of me, palms up, in an effort to show her that I meant no harm.
Erica blinked. Once. Twice. Her expression cleared, but I could see her visibly shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. She started to take a step forward, but stopped, letting out a whimper of pain. I looked down and saw that there was blood on the floor under her right foot.
“Damn it,” I grumbled. Careful not to move too quickly since she still looked a little jumpy, I closed the space between us. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know that,” she responded immediately, sounding like she meant it. “I don’t… it’s not you.”
That was good to know, but I was going to need the whole story sooner rather than later. The pieces were starting to come together, and I didn’t like what I was seeing.
My boots crunched the glass pieces into powder as I wrapped my arms around Erica’s waist and lifted her into the air. I perched her on the edge of the countertop and stepped back.
“Give me your foot.”
Erica looked fragile and embarrassed as she lifted her foot straight out for me. I took a hold of her ankle and bent down to see the damage. It was hard to tell with her sock on and all the blood, but it looked like she had a piece of glass stuck in her heel.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“I can’t tell for sure yet, but I don’t think so. It’s just a good thing I’m not squeamish.”
I glanced up at her face, and she offered a weak smile.
“I think I’m going to have to cut your sock off to see it better.”
Erica reached over and grabbed a pair of scissors off the knife block next to her. I got to work cutting along the sides of her sock, making sure to avoid her skin.
It was funny, I’d stitched up myself and other Outlaw Souls in the past after knife wounds, but I’d never felt this nervous about it. Erica was delicate, and she needed a gentle touch. Too bad she was stuck with mine instead.
But I was going to do my best to help her.
“Mom?” Dominic’s voice was in the doorway of the kitchen, giving me no time to stop him from coming in and seeing the bloody mess.
“It’s okay, buddy. I’m all right.”
I turned to see Dominic with Gizmo at his side on the other end of the room. He didn’t look terrified like I expected. Instead, he almost looked angry.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked Erica as if I wasn’t standing right there.
“No. It was just an accident. I promise.”
Was it weird that he jumped to that conclusion? I wasn’t sure, but it sure as hell didn’t feel good to have him accusing me of something like that.
“Make sure you keep the dog back and don’t come any closer yourself,” I told him, trying to show that I wasn’t the bad guy here. “There’s still broken glass over here.”
“Why don’t you take the dog out into the backyard to use the bathroom?” Erica suggested.
Dominic did as she asked just as I pulled the sock from her foot. It looked like I was right. A single piece of glass was stuck in her heel, but it didn’t look too deep. I was no expert, but I’d say that it would be fine without needing stitches.
“Do you have a first aid kit around here somewhere?”
“Under the kitchen sink.”
I got it out and opened it on the counter, digging through until I found a tube of antibiotic ointment and a bandage.
“You want some pain killer?” I asked, holding up a bottle of Tylenol.
Erica held out her hand. “Yeah, it’ll have to do for now. I have edibles, but I won’t eat them until Dominic is in bed for the night.”
I handed over the bottle, and she shook out three into the palm of her hand. Before I could get her a glass of water, she took them dry.
“All right, I’m going to pull out the glass now,” I said, picking up a dish towel to grab the sharp edge with. “It’s going to hurt.”
Erica nodded, and I saw that fighter’s strength on her face that I had noticed when we first met. She may have had a moment of weakness before, but she was still a warrior.
“Ready? One… two… three.”
Erica yipped in pain as I pulled out the glass, dropping it on the floor and pressing the towel to her wound to stop the bleeding.
“Here, hold that in place. I want to get the glass cleaned up before Dominic comes back in.”
“You’re going to clean it up?” she asked, looking startled.
“Well, yeah. If you tell me where the broom is.”
“The pantry.”
She bent her knee to bring her foot closer and held the towel against it. I peeked out the window and saw that Dominic was playing fetch with the dog in the fenced-in yard. It looked like we would be alone for a while.
I grabbed the broom but leaned it against the wall. Coming close to Erica, I took her face in both of my hands, kissing her lips. I leaned my forehead against hers.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” I asked. It was a simple question but absolutely vital.
“I think I have to, don’t I?”
“No,” I said firmly with a shake of my head. “But I don’t see how we can have a real relationship if I don’t know what you’re hiding.”
Erica took a deep, shuddering breath. “Fair enough. You sweep, and I’ll talk, okay?”
That sounded like a good deal to me, so I picked up the broom and got to work. It was finally time to hear Erica’s story.
Erica
I had never told the truth to anyone. For a long time, I believed there was no one to tell. I had no friends, no family. I was afraid to report it to the police. What if they didn’t believe me? Jeff would have been furious, and I wouldn’t have a way to escape his wrath.
Now, it was finally time to unload this burden. I trusted Trainer. Some people might think it was too soon, but I had to follow my gut when it came to him. Watching him work his way around the kitchen, sweeping up a mess that would have gotten me a thorough beating in the past, I felt safe.
“My name is not Erica Mills,” I started. Trainer stopped sweeping and looked at me. I wasn’t sure what he expected, but it definitely wasn’t that.
“It’s a fake name that I took on when I moved here. My real name is Eve Donovan.”
Trainer looked out the window into the backyard once again. “And Dominic?”
“I thought it would be too difficult for him to adapt to a new first name at his age. He has enough to remember with a new surname and backstory.”
Trainer nodded and went back to sweeping, which I took as a sign to continue.
“I told you my parents died when I was eighteen. Well, I guess my story begins right after that. I was about to go to college to pursue a degree in business, but I didn’t take the death of my parents well. My life basically fell apart.”
It was a dark time for me, the period of my life up to that point. I didn’t like to think about it because it always led to dwelling on what could have been.
“I was sad and lost, trying to figure out how to come to terms with my parents’ deaths and move on with my life. It was during this time that I met Jeff.”
Trainer stiffened but didn�
��t speak, so I continued. “He seemed great at first, a dream come true. He gave me the attention that I needed and brought an end to my loneliness. He was rich and charming. I thought I was in love. So we got married just days after my nineteenth birthday. Jeff said he wanted to take care of me. He built us a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood. All I had to do was be the perfect housewife.” My voice was dripping with bitterness.
Trainer had finished sweeping up the glass and dumped it into the trash. Now he was leaning against the refrigerator, watching me silently. I was glad that he wasn’t interrupting. This was hard enough already.
“I got pregnant with Dominic quickly. We’d only been married a few months. Jeff had become overbearing after our wedding, taking control of every aspect of my life, but he didn’t lay a hand on me until after our son was born.”
Trainer’s jaw clenched, and I knew he wasn’t going to like this next part.
“He started beating on me just after Dominic’s birth. I remember the first time.” My voice was soft as the memory replayed in my mind. “We’d gone out to dinner with some of his coworkers and their wives. He’s a big-time businessman, you see, and I had gotten caught up in a conversation with one of the men. I don’t remember what we talked about… music, I think. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that Jeff thought that I was flirting with the guy right in front of him. He waited until we were home and the babysitter had left before he started calling me a whore. I used to argue back in the beginning, so it escalated quickly. He slapped me across the face.
“It shocked me more than it hurt, and I immediately started threatening to leave him. But he apologized, begged me to stay, promised it would never happen again. So I stayed.”
I shook my head at my stupidity. “You know, I want to say that was the only time I fell for those lies, but it wasn’t. I think I wanted to believe it, even though I knew damn well that it wasn’t true. It just kept happening, over any perceived infraction. I swear, he looked for reasons.”
“Bastard,” Trainer growled, and for some reason, I found his simmering anger comforting. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone in this horror story.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “He is. And I eventually realized that. The times that he was loving became fewer and fewer until I felt like I was living in constant fear. Dominic was a toddler at the time and starting to get an idea of what was going on.”
“What about Dominic? Did he-”
“No. He never hit him, thank God.”
Trainer crossed his arms over his chest, not looking relieved in the slightest. I twisted my fingers together in my lap. Why was this so hard to talk about?
“But no one knew what was going on?”
“No. Jeff is smart. He kept me isolated from people, as much as possible, to keep me dependent on him. And after that first time, when he left me with a swollen face and busted lip, he got more careful, only leaving marks in places that could be easily covered with clothing.”
Trainer opened his mouth to speak but seemed to rethink his words as his lips snapped closed once again.
“What do you want to say?” I asked.
“I don’t want to make it seem like I’m judging you… I just, I don’t understand why you stayed. Why didn’t you report him to the police?”
“I wanted to leave many times. But Jeff had me convinced that he had the power to stop me. The man likes to throw around money, and he always told me that he knew cops that he could pay off to make me look like a liar or a crazy person. Then I would be at his mercy. And he promised me that I would lose Dominic if I left him. He can afford the best lawyers, and I couldn’t take that risk. He never hit Dominic, but what would he do to him when I wasn’t around?”
“People like that need to have someone at their mercy,” Trainer said. His voice was cold, but it didn’t scare me. “It’s the only way they can feel good about themselves by pushing around others.”
“So I saved up as much money as I could, and I ran. We can’t let him find us. He has such a temper. Honestly, I think that if Jeff got his hands on me again, he might lose it and kill me.”
“Like hell he will.”
“I just wish I was strong enough to stop him from hurting me, to protect Dominic from the things he’s seen. If I wasn’t so damn weak…” I bit my lip.
Trainer was in front of me in the blink of an eye. Placing his large hands on my shoulders, he looked into my eyes, his brown orbs burning into mine.
“I don’t want to hear you talk like that ever again. I’ve seen your strength since the moment we met, shining through in your eyes. Just because some pencil-dick asshole took advantage of his physical strength over you doesn’t make you weak. Look at that little boy out there, running around like he doesn’t have a care in the world. You did that for him. It can’t have been easy to leave behind everything you knew and go into hiding from a fucking monster.”
No, it wasn’t. I wanted to believe Trainer’s words because I could see that they were sincere, but I’d spent so long feeling ashamed of myself that it was hard to let go of that feeling. Still. My heart warmed, knowing that he saw me as strong.
“You know, my real hair color is red,” I said. I wanted him to know the real me as much as possible. I had been trying to embrace this new persona, but I couldn’t help feeling like an imposter every day.
“I wondered about that. Your reaction to that picture I saw on your phone makes a lot more sense now.”
“Yeah.” I grimaced. “I haven’t been great at hiding my secrets, have I?”
“Well, I had my suspicions, but I’m glad you finally trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”
“And you still want to stick around?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? There’s a looming threat in the picture. Lots of people wouldn’t want to get wrapped up in that.”
“Any man that would walk away from a woman he cares about instead of protecting her is a piece of shit that doesn’t deserve her in the first place.”
“How poetic,” I teased.
“I never claimed to be good with words.” He shrugged. “Now let’s look at that foot.”
I looked down, seeing that the bleeding had stopped. I’d been so wrapped up in my story that I’d nearly forgotten about it. Now that I was thinking about the wound, I started to notice the throbbing pain. I’d been stupid to freak out like that when I dropped the glass. Trainer wasn’t Jeff. I was sure that he’d never hurt me.
That belief was solidified as he took my foot into his hand. Using a wet washcloth, he cleaned the blood off the bottom of my foot, taking his time and being extra gentle around the wound. It still stung a little, but I suppressed any reaction. Trainer slathered the bandage in antibiotic ointment and covered the cut. He helped me off the counter just as Dominic came in the back door.
“You okay, Mom?” he asked, eyeing the blood that remained on the floor.
“Yep,” I said brightly. It was true. My foot was sore, but it would heal. It was the sharing of my story with Trainer that had had the biggest impact on me. I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my chest, and I could breathe easier. “I just have to mop up this mess, and we’ll be good.”
“No way,” Trainer said. “I’ll do that. Why don’t you and Dominic go pick out a movie to watch?”
“Are you sure?”
“Hundred percent. Now go.”
Dominic and I picked out an animated feature, putting it into the DVD player and cuddling up on the couch until Trainer joined us.
By the time we got through the opening credits, my eyelids were heavy. Trainer’s arm went around my shoulders, and I rested my cheek on his chest. Relaxing, I let my eyes flutter closed as the steady beat of Trainer’s heart lulled me to sleep.
Trainer
I was harboring a murderous rage. Where was a punching bag when you needed one?
Not that I would trade my current location for anything else. Sitting on the couch with Eri
ca nestled into my side, I felt her curvy body relax into mine, and her deep breathing told me that she’d fallen asleep. I glanced over at Dominic and saw that he was still awake, watching this cartoon movie that Erica had put in, but he was blinking slowly, and his head was dropping. I figured he’d be out like a light soon enough.
That meant my mind was free to roam, and there was only one subject that I could focus on right now. That fucking husband of hers.
I wanted to teach him a lesson that he’d never forget. It had taken all my willpower not to curse and rage against the man while I was in the kitchen with Erica, but I could see that it was taking a lot out of her to share already. The last thing I wanted was to make her regret it.
What kind of a man does this to a woman?
I didn’t have any answers.
All I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be away from her right now. So I waited until Dominic had fallen asleep. When he was out for the night, I rearranged Erica so that I could get off the couch without disturbing her. Scooping Dominic up, I took him up the stairs to his room. Gizmo was curled up on his new pet bed on the floor, and he lifted his head as we passed, watching his boy. He stayed in place, though.
Dominic didn’t wake up at all, even when I put him on the bed, pulling off his white tennis shoes. I felt a curious affection for the boy as I covered his body with his blanket, and he shifted in the bed, letting out a contented sigh in his sleep. Up until today, I’d been viewing Dominic almost as an obstacle on the path to Erica. He was important to her, so I had to get to know him.
It turned out that I liked him. He was a good kid that had been dealt a bad hand in life up until now. I could relate to that.
I turned on a nightlight in the wall socket before I slipped out of the room. When I got back downstairs, Erica was curled up on her side on the couch, looking so small that all I wanted to do was protect her. I turned off the TV and was struck by how normal this domestic stuff felt. I’d never considered myself a traditional man, certainly not the type to hang out with a kid, but I was comfortable here.
