by C. Hoover
My whole body jerks with the impact. I saw the eighteen-wheeler out of the corner of my eye, and then I didn’t. My airbag deploys. My car begins spinning. I know it’s all happening faster than anyone witnessing it can possibly even comprehend, but the crash goes in slow motion for me.
It drags. On and on and fucking on.
By the time my car comes to a stop, the blood is already rushing into my eye. I hear horns and people yelling. I reach down for my seatbelt, but I can’t move my right arm. It’s broken.
I get my seatbelt unbuckled with my left arm. I press my shoulder into the driver’s side door and push it open.
I wipe the blood off my forehead.
“Sir!” a man yells from behind me. “Sir, you need to stay in the car!”
Someone grabs my shoulder and tries to stop me. “Get off me!” I yell. I try to regain my bearings long enough to see which direction I’m facing. I catch sight of the convenience store on my right. I turn left and I push through the crowd beginning to form around my car. People are yelling at me to stop running, but I can’t run fast enough.
Two blocks.
I can do that in less than a minute.
The entire time I’m sprinting toward my apartment, I make excuses for why she’s not answering the phone. I pray I’m wrong, that I’m overreacting. But I know Sloan. Something is wrong. She wouldn’t not answer her phone.
She wouldn’t not take the trash out right at twelve.
Something is wrong.
When I finally reach the complex, I’m not in a vehicle, so the sensor on the fucking gate doesn’t open for me. I look around for a door to walk through, but it’s locked. I back up several feet and then sprint for the gate, somehow pulling myself over with my good arm. I don’t land on my feet. I land on my right fucking shoulder and the pain shoots through me like a bolt of lightning. It knocks the breath out of me. I’m forced to take a second until I can take in air again. Then I’m back on my feet.
I see Thomas, the surveillance guy. He’s standing outside of his car. When he sees me, his eyes widen at the sight of me, and then he throws his hands up. “I’m sorry, man, I was about to go check on her.” He backs up and I can’t help myself. I punch him right in the throat with my good hand. I keep walking as he falls against his car door.
“Stupid fuck!” I yell over my shoulder. I sprint toward the apartment and go straight past the front door, around the side of the building, to the wall our living room and bedroom windows line. I run up to the living room window and it takes all I have not to scream out her name when I see the lock on the inside of the window.
It’s unlatched.
I know instantly how it happened. The maintenance guy. It’s my own fucking fault. I should have been a step ahead of Asa. I don’t give myself time to think over it. I press my back against the wall next to the window and I try to listen.
I reach down to my side and I pull out my gun. I close my eyes and inhale.
I hear voices.
I hear Sloan’s voice. I want to cry a river knowing I’m not too late, but I’ll do that later. Right now, I inch over toward the window and try to peek inside. I can barely see anything because of the curtains.
Fuck.
My pulse is pounding. I can hear sirens in the distance and I have no idea if they’re coming here because Ryan called them or if they’re going to the wreck I just caused at the intersection. Either way, if I don’t do something in the next five seconds, whoever is inside this apartment will hear them.
And they’ll be forced to take action.
I drop to my knees and hold the gun in my left hand while I inch the window open with my right. I peek inside and I can see Sloan. I can also see someone else. His back is to the window. He laughs.
He fucking laughs, and I know instantly that it’s him. He’s in there with Sloan. He hasn’t hurt her yet. She’s standing in the kitchen.
If he hears the sirens, he will hurt her. He’ll panic and he’ll do something stupid. I don’t know how she has him this calm, but it doesn’t surprise me. My Sloan is smart as fuck.
I raise the window another inch. For half a second, Sloan makes eye contact with me.
Half a second.
A glance.
She drops her fork and I know she does it on purpose. The second she does it, she says, “Shit!” She bends over to pick it up. I raise the window a little higher as Asa is scooting back in the barstool. He’s walking around the bar for whatever reason. To make sure she’s not trying something? I lift my gun, barely able to grip the trigger with my right hand.
He takes the fork from her and tosses it in the sink and then hands her a new one. Right after she grabs it, she falls to the floor and screams, “Now!”
Before Asa can even comprehend what’s happening, I pull the trigger. I don’t even wait to see where it hit him. I push the window up and climb inside, running across our living room until I get to her. She’s crawling around the bar, toward me.
“Again!” she yells in desperation. “Please, Luke! Shoot him again!”
Asa is lying on the floor with his hand against his neck. Blood is rushing through his fingers, spilling down his arm. His chest is heaving up and down as he struggles to drag in breath. I aim the gun at him.
His eyes are wide and he glances around, looking for Sloan.
She’s standing behind me now, gripping the back of my shirt in fear. His eyes land on her. “Fucking whore,” he manages to mutter. “I lied. I hate your fucking lasagna.”
I pull the trigger.
Sloan screams and buries her face against my back.
I turn around and pull her against me. She’s crying, holding on to me with all the strength she has.
I can’t stand up anymore.
I grip the bar and lower us both to the floor. I pull her onto my lap and she curls up against me. I try to ignore the pain in my arm as I hold her. I press my face into her hair and I breathe her in. “Are you okay?”
She’s sobbing, but she manages to nod.
“Are you hurt?” I’m trying to inspect her, but she looks okay. I put my hand on her stomach and I close my eyes and exhale. “I’m so sorry, Sloan. I’m so sorry.” I feel like I failed her. I did everything I could to protect her and he somehow still got to her.
She wraps her arms tightly around my neck and I can feel her shaking her head. “Thank you.” She’s holding me as tight as she possibly can. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Luke.”
The sirens are directly outside now.
Someone is beating on the door.
Ryan climbs through the window and assesses the situation, then walks to the front door and unlocks it. Several uniformed officers file in, yelling orders at each other. One of them tries to address Sloan and me, but Ryan pushes him aside. “Give them a minute. Goddamn.”
They do. They give us several. I hold her until the medics come inside. I hold her while they check Asa’s pulse. I’m still holding her when one of them announces his time of death.
I’m still holding her when Ryan slides to the floor next to us.
“I saw your car,” he says, referring to the wreck. “You okay?”
I nod. “Did anyone get hurt?”
He shakes his head. “Just you, it looks like.”
Sloan pulls back and looks at me. “Oh my God, Luke.” She presses her palm against my head. “He’s hurt! Someone help him!”
She crawls off my lap and a medic rushes over. He looks at my head for a brief second. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
Ryan helps the medic lift me up off the floor. I grab Sloan’s hand as I’m passing her and she holds it with both of hers. She’s in front of me now, walking backward as she looks at me, frantic. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I wink at her. “Just a little fender bender. You can’t drown in Fred water if the cruise ship is full of salmon tacos.”
Sloan smiles and squeezes my hand.
Ryan groans and looks at one of the medics. “You need to
check him for a concussion. He did this last time he was injured. Just started saying random stuff that didn’t make any sense.”
They put me in the back of the ambulance, but I’m still holding Sloan’s hand. She sits next to me and leans over and presses her lips against mine. She pulls back and smiles down at me, her eyes still full of worry. “Is it over, Luke? Is this nightmare finally over?”
I nod and bring my hand up to her cheek. “It’s over, Sloan. For real this time.”
I spent three days in the hospital due to my wreck. Sloan stayed with me because I didn’t want her to be in the apartment alone after everything that had happened.
She still doesn’t talk about what happened before I showed up that day. As much as I hope she can open up and tell me about it one day, I don’t push her. I know what Asa was capable of and I don’t even like to think about what she might have had to endure. She’s been going to therapy, and it really does seem to help, so that’s all I can ask of her. I just want her to continue to do what she can to help herself move past the situation, at whatever pace she needs to do it.
The day I was released from the hospital, there was a funeral planned for Asa. Sloan and I were at the apartment that morning packing a few belongings when Ryan called to let me know about it. I relayed the information to her, but knew that she wouldn’t want to attend his funeral after all he’d put her through.
Later that morning, on the drive to my parents’, Sloan told me she wanted to go to the funeral. She asked me to turn the car around. Naturally, I tried to talk her out of it. I was even a little upset that she would want to subject herself to that, but I had to remind myself that she knew him better than anyone. Even though she was terrified of him, she was one of the few people who meant something to him. As fucked up as he was in showing it.
When we arrived, we were the only two who showed up.
I tried to imagine what that must have been like for him. To have no family at all, and the friends you did have weren’t even real friends. He didn’t even have anyone to set up funeral arrangements, so it was a minimal burial. There was no one else there. Just a preacher from the funeral home, me, Sloan, and another employee from the funeral home. I’m not even sure a prayer would have been said had we not attended.
I don’t want to say that helped me to understand him better, because he was the reason no one showed up to his funeral. But I did feel sorry for him more in that moment than I ever had. But he harmed everyone in his path throughout his life and you can’t really blame anyone but Asa for that.
Sloan didn’t cry during the funeral. It was just a graveside burial that lasted about ten minutes. The preacher relayed a quick sermon and said a prayer, then asked if either of us wanted to say anything. I shook my head, because I was honestly only there for Sloan’s benefit. But Sloan nodded. She stood next to me, her hand in mine, and she looked down at the casket. She exhaled a careful breath before speaking.
“Asa...” she said. “You had a lot of potential. But you spent every day of your life expecting the world to repay you for a few really shitty years you were dealt as a child. That’s where you went wrong. The world doesn’t owe us a thing. We take what we’re given and we make the most of it. But you took what you were given and you shit on it and then expected more.”
She stepped forward and released my hand. There were no flowers, so she bent down and picked up a dandelion, placing it on top of his casket. And then in a quiet whisper, she said, “Every child deserves love, Asa. I’m sorry you were never given that. For that, I forgive you. We both do.”
She stayed quiet for several minutes. I’m not sure if she was saying a prayer for him or if she was silently saying goodbye, but I waited for her. She stepped back eventually and grabbed my hand, then turned and walked away with me at her side. In that moment, I was happy we decided to attend. I think she needed to be there more than I knew.
Since that day over seven months ago, I’ve thought about that moment a lot. I thought I understood what she was saying in that moment at Asa’s funeral. But right now, standing over my son’s crib and looking down on him as he sleeps peacefully, I think it just hit me what she was saying when she said “...I forgive you. We both do.”
At the time, I thought she was referring to the two of us. Her and me. That both of us forgave Asa for all he had put us through. But I’m not so sure she was referring to me now that I look back on it. She was referring to our son. When she said we, she meant herself and our son.
She was telling Asa that they forgive him, because even though she was only a few months pregnant at that point, I think she’s known all along that Asa is most likely our son’s biological father. I believe that’s the reason she needed to go to the funeral. She didn’t need closure for herself. She needed closure for the child that Asa would never know.
We’ve only spoken once about the fact that our son, Dalton, may not biologically be mine. It was two weeks after he was born. Sloan had purchased a paternity test because she feared that it was bothering me not knowing if Dalton was mine or Asa’s. Sloan was afraid that not knowing for certain if I was the father was going to eat at me, and she didn’t want to be what stood between me and the truth.
That paternity test has been sitting in our bathroom cabinet since that day. I haven’t opened it yet. She hasn’t asked about it. And right now, staring down at my little boy while he sleeps, I feel like I already know the answer.
It doesn’t matter who fathered this baby, because Sloan is this baby’s mother.
There was a moment once, the first time Asa introduced me to Sloan. She was standing in her kitchen, swaying back and forth, washing dishes. She was absolutely mesmerizing. And there was this peacefulness on her face that I’d soon come to know was very rare.
I see that same peacefulness in Dalton when he sleeps. He has her dark hair, her eyes. And her spirit. And that’s all that matters to me. I wish she believed that. I wish she knew that whether or not those test results would prove that this baby is biologically a part of me or a part of Asa, it changes nothing. I don’t love this child like I do because I have a biological responsibility to love him. I love this child because I’m human and I can’t help it. I love him because I’m his dad.
I reach into the crib and I run my hand over the top of his head.
“What are you doing?”
I turn around and Sloan is leaning against the doorway to the nursery. Her head is resting against the frame of the door and she’s smiling at me.
I pull Dalton’s blanket up a little higher and then I turn around and walk toward Sloan. I grab her hand and pull the door to the nursery halfway shut. Sloan intertwines her fingers in mine and follows me as I make my way through our bedroom and into the bathroom.
She’s still behind me, gripping my hand, when I open the cabinet and take out the paternity test. When I face her, I can see a quiet fear in her eyes. I kiss her to wipe her fear away, and then I keep my hand wrapped with hers as I make my way toward the kitchen. I open the door to the small room off our kitchen that contains our trashcan, and I take the lid off of it. I take the paternity test—still in its packaging—and I throw it away. I replace the lid, close the door, and turn to face Sloan.
There are tears in her eyes, and as hard as she’s trying to hide it, there’s a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. I wrap my arms around her and for several seconds, we just silently stare at each other. She’s looking up at me and I’m staring down at her and in this moment, we both know everything we need to know.
It doesn’t matter how the members of my family came to be. What matters is that this is my family. We’re a family. Me and her and our son.
The End
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