by Marni Mann
Maybe it’s over.
Maybe leaving with Brooks is the right thing to do.
Maybe he can change.
“I love you, Andi. I’ve never stopped loving you.”
Unable to say the words back, I nod instead. When I’m able to form a complete sentence and believe it, I’ll say the words—even if there’s a good chance Adrian’s face will flash in front of my eyes as I do. I’ll never be able to say good-bye to him. Never.
“I’m tired, Brooks. So tired.”
He rubs his hands up and down my back. “Just breathe, baby. We’re going home.”
Little by little, he slowly puts me back together.
But, as good as it feels to be cared for and appreciated, the best part of me is still missing. Left on a sandy beach in the middle of paradise, a piece of my heart will always belong to Adrian. No matter how many states separate us, I’ll always love him for saving me when I was at my lowest. For not judging me when I was held captive by my own fear. For seeing beyond the bruises and acknowledging that I was lovable. That I wasn’t someone who deserved to be thrown around and forgotten about.
“I’m scared, Brooks.” I’m scared I’m falling right back into his trap. I’m scared my life is going to get worse and that someday he will go too far and kill me.
“It’ll be different now, Andi. You’ll see.”
I’ve heard those words before. This time, I choose to believe them. It’s the only way I’ll be able to leave Adrian behind.
Before I can try to tell him that I love him, too, the window next to the bed shatters. Little pieces of glass litter the floor, some landing on me and nicking my skin, just like in my dream.
If I were in Adrian’s arms, he would have shielded me from what lies on the other side of the wall. Brooks doesn’t do that. Instead, he thinks about himself, letting go of me before jumping to his feet.
“Get down,” he says as he moves closer to the door and pulls a gun out of nowhere.
Swallowing, I wait to see if he’s going to point it at me or the busted window.
“I said, get down, Andi. Fucking listen for once in your life.”
Hiding in the corner won’t keep me safe, so I run for the small closet. It’s big enough that I can huddle in the corner and surround myself with the extra pillows on the shelf. For a minute, I think the layer of cotton might actually protect me.
What’s outside the door could be even more threatening than Brooks. A drug dealer in search of a junkie. A landlord trying to hunt down a tenant who owes money and didn’t pay.
Suddenly afraid of my own shadow, I crouch down until I’m flush with the bottom of the closet. I pray that, if the door opens, I’ll stay hidden.
Loud voices erupt, and the motel door slams against the wall so hard, it rattles the closet door. Little pieces of plaster fall off the popcorn ceiling like it’s snowing. I peer through the slats, trying to see how many men Brooks is up against. First, one and then two silhouettes linger a few feet away. Fists make contact with skin. Grunts and groans follow. All I can picture is two against one. Brooks doesn’t stand a chance on his own, and I need to help him.
Before I can get to my feet, my entire world stops moving.
“Where is she?” Adrian screams.
He’s here. He’s found me.
I wait for Brooks to tell Adrian a lie, that he has no idea where I am. But neither of them says another word.
One silent pull of a trigger.
One loud bang.
And I have no idea who is left standing.
With complete disregard for my own body, I push through the closet door, stumbling into the solid back of a man.
He turns around, and I’m face-to-face with Russell. His eyes search every part of my body for injuries.
“I’m okay,” I tell him. “He didn’t hurt me.”
Russell pulls me into the bathroom and closes the door behind him. I don’t get a look at the body on the floor. I can’t tell if there’s a chest still rising and falling or if the man I love is dead.
“It’ll be okay, Andi,” Russell says as he sits me down on the edge of the tub. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“What about Adrian?”
“It’s out of our control.” He says it with so little hope, I start to believe Adrian is the one on the floor. That Brooks shot and killed him.
Losing Adrian would be crippling. If anything happened to him, it’d be my fault. It would be like I pulled the trigger myself. I lured Adrian into my world. And I hate myself for letting him get so close.
Clay
“Don’t move, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!” I shout at Brooks after he sits down on the bed.
His gun is on the floor, resting underneath the sole of my flip-flop. It’s already gone off once while I was wrestling it out of his hand. That bullet shot into the mattress, the sound causing Andi to rush straight out of the closet. She made it as far as Russell’s back before I gave him the nod, telling him that I have Brooks under control and I want him to get Andi out of here. I have a feeling Russell chose the bathroom because of what little she has on. It’s a good spot to keep her. Close but not close enough to see what I’m going to do to her ex.
Since capturing Brooks’s gun and ordering him on the bed, I haven’t moved. I’m standing several feet away from him, my toes pressing onto the barrel of the gun. It won’t be going off again unless I’m the one holding it. But, for now, it needs to stay under my foot. I don’t trust it in my hand. I don’t know that I’d be able to stop myself from pulling the trigger.
After getting a quick look at Andi, death is what that bastard deserves. Her hair was a mess. Her white T-shirt was stained and holey. She looked tired and scared. He’d probably given her something to take the edge off, to make her more submissive. To get her ready for whatever the hell he was going to do to her—or to get her ready for another round if he’d already touched her.
The thought makes me look down at the gun.
I’m not going to pick it up, I tell myself.
Whatever his answer is, I still won’t pick it up. But I have to know.
“Did you touch her?” I ask.
The images inside my head are vile and bloody. I will fucking destroy him if I don’t like his answer. I ache for Andi, and my aches turn to anger.
How could he do this to her again? How could he break her down this badly?
Will my girl ever heal from all this pain?
“How is that any of your business?” he snaps.
This is only my first question, and he’s already fighting back. This shit needs to stop. Now.
“Listen, motherfucker, I have your gun right here.” I point at my foot. “It would take me less than two seconds to lift it into my hand and put a bullet through your chest. So, I suggest you answer whatever I ask you. Got it?”
He stares at me, but his face tells me how much he hates that I’m in control. “You came in before anything happened.”
“Since you’ve had her, you never touched her?”
“No.”
My teeth grind together. My voice rises as I ask, “Are you lying to me?”
“No. Ask her. She’ll tell you the same thing.”
The relief is there, but it isn’t enough. His words and presence can do as much damage as him raping her. Maybe even more since Andi can’t admit it’s rape.
“So, you took her from the beach. Then, what?”
“Then, I brought her here.”
This whole time, she’s been only fifty minutes away from me. Not traveling north, not tied to a tree, not in a basement or in a cage. But in this goddamn motel in South Florida.
“How did you find us?” I ask.
“I tracked Camille’s phone.” He licks the corner of his lip where there’s a streak of blood. It’d better be his and not Andi’s. “I just had to wait until they talked long enough to get your address. I knew Andi would eventually lead me right to her. And my princess did.” He’s still looking at me
, but I can tell his thoughts are someplace else. “Such a good little girl, my princess is. Missing me so much and so happy to see me.” Something changes in his eyes again. It’s almost as if they clear, and he’s seeing me for the first time. “You’re just a toy. You mean nothing to her. She loves me, not you. You could never be what she needs. Never.”
It doesn’t feel like he’s trying to goad me. It feels like this sick, delusional psycho truly believes what he’s saying.
“You really think she could love someone who hit her? Who abused her? Who controlled every move she made? Who she constantly thought was going to kill her?” My fingers clench at my sides. “I don’t set rules. I don’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. She’s with me because she chooses to be. When you love someone, Brooks, you don’t leave bruises on their body. You don’t force them to fuck you. You sure as hell don’t kidnap them from a beach and make them your prisoner.”
“I took what’s mine.”
“She’s not a possession. You can’t just do whatever you want to her. That’s not the way this all works.”
“She loves me. So, yes, I can.”
“You think love gives you the right to treat her that way?”
“Yes.”
His eyes confirm it. He’s even sicker than I thought.
Andi’s been nothing more than a blow-up doll. Someone he can manipulate, dress up, hurt, and fuck. I’m sure seeing her with me drove him crazy. Not because of what we have together, but because he isn’t the one controlling his doll. Because she got away. Because he had to go find her.
I look down at the gun again. It’s so close. Loaded. All I have to do is bend and aim.
“Do it,” he says. “Kill me.”
I glance up. “That would be too easy.”
“Suit yourself, but I’ll be the only one she ever loves. It’ll be me who she always thinks about. Me, she’ll see in her dreams. Me, she’ll meet on the other side. What we have is eternal, and not you or anyone else can take that away from me.” He smiles, like he’s picturing life with her in some perfect, peaceful place—a place that never existed between the two of them.
It’s pointless to try and rationalize with this fool. I’ll never make him believe that what he did to her was torture and abuse. He won’t learn anything from what I say to him. He’ll just keep doing it until someone stops him.
My toe rubs over the barrel again. I have the control and the power. I can end things. I can make his disappearance permanent.
But, at some point, I’ll get tired of running. I’ll yearn for normal. I’ll want a life different than the one I live now. Maybe not my old life but something new. A place where I can hang up my Clay costume and be Adrian full-time. Where I’ll no longer have to lie.
“I’m going to make sure you never fucking hurt her again,” I tell him.
“Then, kill me.”
“Nah.” I reach into my back pocket and pull out my cell phone.
I know what the result of this phone call will be. I know where I’ll end up. But Andi needs this, and she’s worth it. She’s worth everything I’ll have to go through from here on out.
“I’m going to do something that’s far worse than that. I’m going to make you suffer.”
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asks as I hold the phone to my ear.
“My girlfriend was kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend. I found them, and I’m here with them now.”
Brooks just stares at me. There’s no emotion on his face. No movement in his body.
“Is there a gun on-site?” the dispatcher asks. “Is this a hostage situation?”
“There’s a gun on the floor, but no one’s being held hostage anymore.”
“Is anyone injured?”
“No.”
Not physically anyway. Once the police get here, Andi will need to tell them about all the mental and physical shit he’s put her through.
“What’s the address?” she asks.
Since I don’t know, I give her the name of the motel, and she tells me an officer will be here shortly. When I stick the phone back in my pocket, Brooks reclines onto the bed. His hands move behind him, and his foot crosses over his knee. This motherfucker is somehow getting off on all this. And I don’t know why because he’s going straight to jail.
“They won’t keep me,” he says.
I sigh. This is pointless, but we have time to kill, so there’s no reason to keep quiet. “What makes you think that?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You kidnapped her. You held her against her will. You were on the verge of raping her.”
He continues to smile, and that goddamn grin makes me sick. I have to hold my hands behind my back, so I won’t reach forward and strangle him.
“So, yeah, they are going to keep you, Brooks. They’re going to prosecute you, and Andi is going to testify against you.”
“She wouldn’t. She loves me. She has nothing but…”
His eyes change again. It seems like something I said has finally broken through. A realization maybe. Because he starts to move on the bed.
“Andi has nothing but memories of you beating her,” I say. “Of you punching her in the face. Hitting her in the ribs. You hurt her, Brooks. You abused the hell out of her.”
I hear sirens. They’re getting louder by the second. And I know he hears them, too, when his expression slowly begins to fill with terror. His hands move beside him, and he pushes himself off the bed.
“Sit down.”
He doesn’t listen.
“Sit the fuck down!”
He takes a step toward me. Then, a second step. His hands reach down toward the gun.
I have to stop him.
I kick the gun behind me, feeling it slide across the carpet before it clears my foot. When I hear the clang, I know it’s hit the bathroom door. Now that it’s out of his reach, I knee him in the face, which sends him upright, and then I clench my hands around his neck.
“Let go of me.”
He tries wiggling out of my grip, but I hold him too tightly. My strength is more than he can handle. He isn’t used to being restrained and having to fight back. He isn’t used to pain, and I can tell how much it affects him.
“Let go of—”
I sweep my foot across the back of his knees and take him to the ground. My forearm then goes over his chest to hold him in place, and I lean my weight into him, so he can’t move. He finally stops fighting and lies flat.
“She thinks about my cock when you fuck her,” he spits.
That is it; my restraint is gone.
But this isn’t for me. This is for Andi. For all the times she wanted to fight back but couldn’t. For every hit, every break, every nightmare.
Maybe I can’t end things, but I sure as hell can make him feel something.
I crank my arm back and drive my fist into the middle of his nose. He screams and moans out in pain while blood shoots onto his shirt and mine.
“Clay,” Russell shouts from the bathroom, “do you need help?”
“I got this. You stay with Andi.”
Blood seeps onto his lips and over his cheeks. His whole body shakes. He tries curling his legs into a ball like he’s a child, but he can’t because of the way I’m holding him.
I lean my face down close to his, so he can feel my words. “When the inmates get ahold of you, you’re going to wish I had killed you. Do you know what they do to rapists inside there? They rape you back. Then, they beat you and stab you and leave you to bleed out on the floor. Alone. Shivering. Crying. All by yourself with no one to save you. That’s what’s going to happen to you.”
“I just wanted her back. She’s mine. Mine…mine.”
“She’s not yours, and she never will be again.”
“Hands in the air where I can see them,” a cop says from the window that Russell and I broke to get into the motel room. The cop’s gun is pointed at me.
“I’m holding him down beca
use there’s a—”
“Hands where I can see them,” the officer says, cutting me off.
I lift my fingers off Brooks and move them into the air.
“Stand over there,” the cop says, pointing toward the dresser.
As I follow his command, his gun stays on me the whole time. Then, the front door bursts open, and another cop comes through with his gun aimed at Brooks.
“Get on your knees,” one of them says to me.
The second I get down, my hands are cuffed behind me, and I’m told to stay where I am and not to move. Brooks is then ordered to kneel in the same position as me, and the officer cuffs him.
“The girl he kidnapped is in the bathroom,” I say to the cops, nodding toward Brooks. “She’s in there with one of my friends.”
As I look over my shoulder, I watch one of the officers open the bathroom door, and Andi comes running out.
She rushes straight over to me and falls to her knees, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Are you hurt?” she pants. Not waiting for me to answer, she asks, “Why are you in handcuffs?” She pulls her face out of my neck and looks at the cops. “Why is he in handcuffs?”
“Ma’am, we need you to tell us what’s going on here,” one of the officers says. “The nine-one-one call that came in said you were kidnapped. Which one of these men took you?”
She points at Brooks. “That one. He took me off the beach and put me in his van, and then he wouldn’t let me leave.”
The cops move over to Brooks, and they stand in front of him and ask him questions.
Andi leans her face into my neck again. “I was worried you’d never find me and give up looking.”
I don’t tell her I’d never stop looking for her. I don’t want to waste these moments talking about Brooks or the darkness surrounding us. I want to spend the next few minutes breathing her in.
She’s lost the scent that I’ve grown to love. There isn’t even a little vanilla on her skin, and there’s definitely no buttercream. She smells like him now, like dirt and fear and pain—everything he’s filled her with.
After tonight, so much is going to change. This will be the last time I’ll speak to her without bars between us. The last time I’ll be in her embrace.
