by Jax Hart
“Ugh. I can’t believe I kissed him. Let him touch me!” I scream out loud to my empty walls. I check the Internet, seeing more pics of him and some woman named Lucille. So, she has a name. These new photos are from a club. Her bed hair is perfect. Her dreamy eyes give her away. Maybe I’ll cut her ass up too if it hurts him even slightly. Fuck him and his crazy, exotic sea-blue break-your-heart eyes of his.
Slapping my laptop closed, I get busy packing up my few possessions, drop a rent check for six months in the mail and leave the lights of Vegas behind.
I’ll live right under his nose. I’ll silently stalk my prey and when it’s time, I’ll move in for the kill. I’m too angry to rush to Chicago. The old me would’ve done it. Just flown off the handle and booked a ticket. But I’m smarter know. More experienced than the starry-eyes girl thinking I could defy my fallen angel with Blue hair and fake tattoos.
I finally understand what Zio was trying to say when he told me I wasn’t ready. The problem with being young is thinking you know better—thinking you’re invincible. I won’t make that mistake with Roque twice. I’ll go LA, make some connections with the Chinese mob. Keep honing my craft and when I’m ready I’m going to burn his entire world down.
***
I keep telling myself it’s only angry tears smarting. I’m over Roque. Have been for years. But what is he doing with an almost legal girl? She’s petite, delicate and the hero worship in her eyes makes me crazy sick to my stomach. I used to look at him like that, once. A lifetime ago. And Yet if I close my eyes, it’s like time and space cease to exist and I’m still in his arms moving under the covers, soaring to the stars. It makes me sick to think he has some weird fixation for young girls. Some perverted twisted affection for them. And that maybe that’s all I was some sick, perverted kick of his. I’ll save that little blonde from his evil clutches. No one rescued me. I rescued myself. But that’s because I had training and a certain knowledge form birth that he was the enemy.
But I do get a perverted kick out of being so close to him again while he looks around feeling my stare, knowing something isn’t right without being able to put a finger on it. The hair on the back of his neck stands at attention as I duck around a corner just as he whips his head around.
Who knew stalking was so fun? Smiling, I toss my dyed mud brown hair back and scroll through the pics of took of him and the girl on my phone. He paraded her through boutique after boutique buying her thousands in clothes and good. The Louis Vuitton luggage was a bit over the top though. “Where are you taking her? What is she to you?” I ponder staring at the pictures on the screen. The heels of my boots click on pavement heated by the late August sun. I’m in his city, right under his nose, for the second time and just like the first, he doesn’t even know it. As I throw my bags in the back of my new Audi, I slam the door hard remembering the night I vowed he wouldn’t seduce me again…. The engine revs when I hit the Interstate. My foot is heavy on the gas as I race toward LA as if punishing the road can erase the pain in my past to the night I had fled Jersey…
CHAPTER 3
ROMINA
THE PAST
Tears fall down my cheeks. I don’t bother wiping them. How many times have I cried over him? How many times have I let him break me and yet I still haven’t learned? “You stupid, foolish girl.” I let the tears come, knowing by dawn they’ll turn to dust just like the ashes from the fire roaring in front of me. I’ve let Zio down. He saw this coming. Tried to warn me, but my stupid heart and hormones got in the way.
If I loved a monster what does that make me?
I plop down on a rusted chair while staring up at the night sky. He twists me in knots. I want to be more than a girl who fixates on a man for her whole life. I want my revenge, but I also want to be somebody more. He wins by being the center of my universe. It’s time I became the center of my own universe, not him. “I’m kicking your ass to the curb, Roque. When I’m ready I will finish whatever this fucked-up thing was that we started. But on my terms.”
Standing, I turn mt back to the fire and walk into the small house. Memories of Zio are everywhere. I can’t forget all the things he taught me. I have some money in our accounts but not enough to hide or live forever. First thing Monday morning I’ll register to take my GED and SAT’s. This is a small college town where there’s a satellite campus to one of the best state universities. I need to get in, earn a degree and get a real job. One where I can support myself and blend in.
My hands pick up the envelope with the fake birth certificates, passports, and ID’s. I out Zio’s to the side, picking mine up. I’m no longer Romina, his Blue or the girl from Princeton. Who am I going to be next? Do I even want to be some revolving door? I want to evolve not revolve. I’m sick of hiding and the game. But I can’t win. Not like this. Not yet. All it took was a few months of his touch and his fake marriage to topple me. I’m not strong enough yet. Not by a longshot.
Jamie. Jamie Goodwin. American. Boring. Vanilla. Just like Ralph Smith was. I sit at the table, booting up the laptop we had left here. In no time Jamie Goodwin is on Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. Sighing, I open a kitchen drawer, taking out an iPhone and charge it. I download TikTok and sign up Jamie Goodwin. I take it out to the fire and prop it up on an old trash can. I find an old Britney tune, “Stronger” and hot record.
Jamie Goodwin is now TikTok official. I snap some photos of the fire and post to Insta: #letitburn #noregrets.
“I’m too good at this.” I shake my head. All of it. The lies. The hiding. The fake personas. If only there was a way to use all these fucked-up skills into a way to make a living. Getting caught by the police is not an option. I wouldn’t be able to explain who I am and why I have so many unregistered guns and fake passports. The families would find me. Of that I have no doubt.
Too wound up to sleep, I grab a hooded sweatshirt and the keys to the car with PA plates that we kept in the barn converted to a garage. I grab a charger to my “new phone” and a burner just in case.
“Start you fucker!” My fist pounds the wheel. But the battery’s dead. Sighing, I slam the door and grab the keys to the car I drove down here in, parking it close. Popping both hoods, I apply jumper cables. “Yes! You sexy bitch!” I thump the Volvo SUV’s side. I can’t be too careful in case Roque taps into the closed-circuit cameras and makes my getaway car. I can’t drive it. Not for a long time. Hell, maybe I’ll sell it to a chop shop for cash.
I hop into the Volvo and drive with the windows down. I just need to clear my head of the image of that viper’s kiss on his mouth. Hell, they’re both snakes. But there’s still a stupid, foolish part of me that wants to cling to the memory of how he was with me when I was still his Baby Blue and he was my tame black-hearted beast who showed signs he could change.
After driving for thirty minutes to make sure this old battery gets a bit of a charge, I stop at a convenience store for fresh gas. My throats’ dry so while the gas pumps, I head inside for a soda and a pack of cigarettes.
“I saw you. You cheating bitch!”
“Stop! Leo! I told you it’s not like that with us. He’s my bio chem partner!’
“You playin’ me Keisha? You get wet for him, K? Like you do me?”
What the fuck? My sneakers pound the pavement as round the corner of the building. Some baller has a girl pinned to the wall. He’s breathing down on her face while his hand cups her sex while she struggles. His boys watch from a car with the bass booming. I glance through the glass windows of the store. The clerk is busy cashing someone out. I’m sure they can see what’s happening from the screens streaming from the security cameras. No one cares. No one stops to help the girl. People pumping gas look the other way.
I don’t hesitate. I come up behind him, kicking my foot between the back of his spread legs.
“FUUUCCCKK!” He drops cupping his balls. The laces of my sneaker and the top of my foot got him good.
“You okay?”
The girl looks at me. Wet tears are s
econds from falling. Her caramel skin has turned white where his hands had her. There’s some at her throat and her upper arms.
“You’re dead girl.” I whip around. The guy is now on his knees still cupping his balls. “This is between me and my girl. Get your white trash ass out of here.” He reaches for the for the girl’s ankle. She whimpers in pain as his hands wrap tight. He’s big. Strong. So muscular he could snap her leg like a twig.
“Let her go. Now.”
“Back off bitch. I’ll deal with you next.” He’s about to stand. So, I do what I got to do, by swiftly kicking him under his chin. His head snaps back. Keisha screams and the boys in the car start cursing and getting out. Finally realizing barely five foot me just dropped their boy. I grab her hand, quickly running to my Volvo. “Get in!” I disengage the gas, letting the nozzle hang and peel out.
“Where’s the police station? You’re pressing charges.”
She shakes her head as I press the gas going through a yellow light that turns just as I move under it. “Why?” I can’t turn my head to look at her as I’m busy checking the rearview for their pursuit while trying not to get pulled over for driving like a street racer.
“Because no one believes girls like me. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care.”
My hands jerk the wheel to the right and I enter a maze of residential streets. After a few turns I pull over.
“What do you mean? We have to try. Guys like him don’t change.”
In her eyes I see myself. How broken I was that day in the woods when something was taken from me, I’d never get back. Her sadness washes over me like a wave. I blow out a deep breath. “I believe you. I saw what he was doing.”
“He didn’t rape me.”
“But he molested you and put his hands on you. There’s already bruising.”
“You think the cops care what happens to an out of town Black girl living on scholarship money?”
I bite my lower lip. “I know what it feels like when no one cares.”
She laughs. “Your skin is paler than snow. I doubt you can relate. No offense.”
“You’re right and wrong. You might think I have some privilege. Maybe I do. But as a woman… I can relate. Girl to girl—I’ve been abused too. Been hit hard.”
I blow out a breath about to reveal a truth to a stranger. “When I was eleven. A teen boy I knew choked me. He put his hands around my throat and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe all the while whispering in my ear how he enjoyed it. I even think he was hard. He eased up at the last moments and gave me CPR, leaving my unconscious body in the woods by a stream. I had no family. And I knew if I reported him, I’d be a dead girl for real. There would be no second escape for me. His family would end me, or they’d hand me off to a home where eviler men would do worse. I feel you okay?”
“It’s not the same.”
“I know it’s not. But it’s something. Who was that guy, anyway?”
“My boyfriend, Leo.”
“Did he always treat you like that?”
“No. He just acts like that in front of his boys. But he’s never put his hands on my like that before.” Her phone starts lighting up with his name flashing across the screen,
“I can’t go back to my dorm. He’ll find me.”
“Where are you from?”
“Jersey.”
My eyes cut away. I put the SUV in drive and set the nav for my place. “Do you live on campus?”
She nods.
“Fine. Then we’ll go to the campus police.”
She snorts, “They’d lock me up. Leo is here on scholarship too. Basketball. His GPA is shit though and unless he aces his summer semester here, he can’t play next season. Leo’s a big deal at State. They sent him down here to the satellite campus so they could water-down his chem and calc classes and get away with it. I’m a sophomore. Biochemical engineering major. And so stupid for thinking he was into me. All he was into was getting me to help him do his assignments.”
I turn, facing her in the dark. “If you’re a biochem major that makes you a genius. I don’t even have a high school diploma. I skipped out.”
“What’s your name anyway?”
I don’t even hesitate. “Romina. But I go by Jamie now.”
She nods. “I get that. My aunt’s running from somebody, too. She left her baby daddy and went into a shelter. They helped hide her from that point on so he can’t find her. Can I crash at your place tonight?”
I nod. “Sure.” As we drive in silence, thoughts twist and turn in my mind. I could do that. Hide people. Help them. But I’d need a link to the underworld… the black web… people who can do what Zio’s hookup did for us. Somehow, someway, someday—deep-down in my gut I knew I had found my calling. I was going to help women. Rich women. Poor women. Fat women. Any woman who needed a safe haven from abuse of any kind. I had mad skills and it’s time I harnessed them but first I need a degree and some money.
“Sweet crib.”
“Thanks. It’s a special place. My uncle… he just died and well. It’s the only thing left of him.”
“Shit. That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
I lead Keisha inside. “I just got here and don’t have much,” I shrug.
She plops on the couch. “It’s a safe place to sleep. That’s all I need.”
I grab two beers from the fridge, handing her one. “How sad is that? In this day and age and we’re all still searching for that…”
“Girl. That shit won’t ever change. Not as long as men rule the world.”
“What if we did instead? What id I could?” My mind started turning.
“Hilary tried. Women are beat for premarital sex on the other side of the world. Some can’t drive or even show their face. You are whack thinking shit will ever change.”
I take a sip of my beer. Maybe I could make a difference. Even if I saved a hundred or just one—it still would be a difference.
She yawns and I nod over to the folded blanket laying on the chest under the window. “What happened to the guy who choked you out? Did you ever find out?”
I nod. “I did.”
“And?”
My fists ball on their own accord. “I gave him my V-card on a platter with my heart.”
“Girl…,” she clucks, shaking her head.
“I know. Trust me. I thought he had changed. He didn’t recognize me, and I was so stupid for thinking… for believing we were some kind of fucked-up destiny.”
“I can’t hide from Leo forever. He’s going to show up at my dorm or my classes until he confronts me.”
“Let him,” I shrug. “You’ll be ready.”
She arcs an eyebrow. “I doubt that.”
“He won’t mess with you. I have my ways. After coffee tomorrow I’m going to give you a few self-defense tips with a can of mace.”
“Thanks. Good night, Romina. You saved my life tonight. Leo was trying to get me into the car with those guys and I just had an unbelievably bad feeling they were going to take me somewhere and—” she shudders.
“I know. I sensed it too. It’s some fucked-up bullshit. What were you doing down there by yourself anyway?”
“Grabbing a Red Bull. I walked from my dorm. I was working on synthesizing some proteins at the lab but was burning out.”
“You’re like really smart.” I sigh. “I know I can pass my GED, but I want to score high on my SAT’s so maybe I could get accepted to campus. I’m not good at math.”
She shrugs. “I could help you.”
“Is this weird?”
“Not as weird as having the guy you date cup you in an EZ MART parking lot then threaten you.”
“True. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. I need to get some air.” I walk past the box containing my diary and old laptop, carefully taking it with me as I walk out the backdoor. My one roaring fire is nothing but smoldering ashes. I tap my new phone against my leg. Tati. I swallow another lump in my throat. I lost everybody. Zio, Roque and Tati.
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She didn’t deserve how I went out like that. But I know she’s the first person Roque will go after in his search to find me.
Biting my lip, I drop my butt on the stone steps, lifting the lifting the lid to my laptop with shaky fingers. I need to quit my old life and accept it’s gone. But Tati was my only friend. I need to make sure she’s okay.
I login to Insta and Snapchat.
What the…? Tati’s relationship with Le Blanc is now Instagram official. I quickly click through ten photos of the two of them each sweeter than the next. Good for her. But the last one I click on stops my heart. It’s a selfie we took the night I first became Blue. She posted it with multiple hashtags: #bringbluehome #missingbff #heartbroken.
Sighing, I push the hair from my crestfallen face, cloaked in guilt for the first time. I can’t post or email. He’ll trace my IP address. I only have three burner phone left in my stash. But Tati deserves to know I’m okay. I take on out, turn it on, placing a sim card in. She might not answer so I text:
Tati… it’s me. I’m fine.
Seconds later the phone rings in my hand.
“Hey.”
“Is it really you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where the hell are you? I’m so pissed at you. You just up and left. Your house looks like a tomb. Most of your things are still there. You even left dished in the sink. I thought… you’d been abducted. I filed a police report.”
I twist the ends of my shirt and take a deep breath. “I can’t stay on long. I just wanted to you to know that you were the best. I’ll never forget you, Tati.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“He has your phone tapped, doesn’t he?”
She goes silent for a few beats. “I’
Did never betray you. But he says you’re in danger.”
“Only from him,” I retort.
“No. He’s going loco trying to find you. Sebastian said he hacked into every surveillance and Ring door app within a hundred miles.”
