Darkness Before Dawn

by Contreras, Claire

  "Don't fucking move," he demands gruffly.

  "Please, Benny! Don't do it! Please!" I beg in a broken, dry sob as he walks me to the wall on the other side of the stairs. He pushes me onto it and holds the blade in place as I arch my back away from it. He places his ringing phone on the landing between the back door and the top of my head.

  When a man answers on the fourth ring, Benny tightens his hold on my hair, making me screech.

  "Liam! I'm here with your girl, Blake. I was just filling her in on the news. Figured I'd test out how true it is by decorating her face a lil' with this blade here. You remember when you did that to me, Liam?" Benny asks in amusement.

  I bring my hand out from under me to dry my tears and look at him in disgust as he talks on the phone, holding the knife close to my face with one hand and my hair with the other.

  "DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE!" Liam screams through the line.

  "Oh, but I dare, Liam. I do dare. You gonna take back what you said or wait until she's nothing but shreds?" Benny asks sharply.

  "SHE'S ALEX'S KID, BENNY!" Liam yells loudly. His admission makes my mouth drop open, and for a moment I wonder if the loud ringing in my ears is altering my hearing or if he really just said that. "CORY WAS PREGNANT WHEN I MARRIED HER!"

  "He was in jail, you piece of shit!" Benny yells back, the emphasis of his words spitting on my face. "Stop trying to get out of this one, Liam!"

  Benny positions the knife to the corner of my eye where my tears are running and he wipes them with the flat side of the knife, making me flinch.

  "Stop crying, girl!" he growls, narrowing his stark eyes at me as loud sobs rake through my shuddering body.

  "Benny! She got pregnant before Alex went to jail! He's gonna fucking kill you for this if I don't get you first!" Liam shouts over my sobs.

  I kick my leg up, trying to hit him and hoping to nail him between the legs, but he shifts and barks out a laugh. He looks at me with crazed eyes and pushes me down again as I struggle against him, trying to push off his heavy body. I kick again, making contact with his leg. He laughs as he pins me harder against the concrete.

  "You wanna do this the hard way, huh?" he asks through gritted teeth, turning my body to face him. From the corner of my eye, I can see his tight grip around the blade that he brings toward my face. I screw my eyes shut as I continue to struggle against him but await my impending punishment. A whimper, followed by loud sobs escape me when I feel the sharp blade meet my hairline.

  "Please don't!" I shout, my guttural voice a stranger to my own ears. "Please," I plead once more, feeling woozy when I smell the blood streaming down my face. I hear a shout from afar and feel the blade leave my face.

  My eyes pop open at the sound of ringing shots, immediately followed by the wind getting knocked out of me as Benny's body pushes fiercely into mine. I try to gasp for air before another shot rings off. Benny pushes into me again, driving me deeper into the wall. He languidly pushes his body away from me and turns around, bringing his gun out in front of him, as if in slow motion. He pulls the trigger twice, shelling out two bullets. My horrified eyes follow the direction his arm is pointing, and I let out a loud scream when I see his target. I feel my senses come back to me all at once, and I scream again before lurching forward and pulling Benny's shooting arm down with all my strength, making his body crash down to his knees. I wrap both hands around the gun in his hand and yank it out, tossing it aside before I start running across the alley.

  "NO!" I shriek when I see him fall on his knees before I reach him. I take off my shoes and throw them behind me and continue running as fast as I can, not caring what I may step on.

  When I reach him I crash down on my knees and put my hands over his face, over his hair, before my eyes trail to his stomach where his white shirt is drenched in blood. He shifts his body sideways and falls to the ground, landing on his side in a thump.

  "DEAN!" I shout desperately.

  "I'm fine," he rasps before going into a coughing fit. "You okay, chick?"

  "YOU'RE HURT!" I shriek, unable to hide the sheer panic flowing through my veins. My eyes brim with tears as I press down on the wound on his stomach.

  "Are you okay, chick?" he repeats, his voice dimming and his eyes blinking heavily.

  I touch my head and yelp at the sting my fingers cause on the cut in my hair line, but I'm not gushing out blood, and it doesn't hurt too much. I look down at myself, blinking tears onto my face, and find that my dress is drenched in blood. I pat myself with one hand, feeling no holes in my dress and decide that I'm fine. Rattled and cut, but fine.

  "Yes! Keep your eyes open!" I demand, looking into his exhausted hazel eyes. Before he can reply, I begin to sob loudly, my entire body shaking as I press into his wound with both hands. "What were you doing here?" I ask between sobs.

  "Followed him," he replies in a hoarse whisper. "Heard him talking to Liam. Heard."

  "Okay, no talking. No talking. HEEELP!" I yell at the top of my lungs despite the pounding headache I'm feeling. "I need an ambulance! HELP! PLEASE HELP!"

  "Shhh...'skay, chick. I'll be fine," he says, bending a leg to try to sit up.

  "No! Don't move!" I demand. "Oh my God, please don't die. Please don't die," I beg as my chest heaves in sobs, and I look down at the blood covering my hands and forearms.

  The doors bang open behind me, and I look over my shoulder to see Connor holding a gun in his hand, with Cole on his heels. They spot Benny on the ground and Connor aims at him and shoots him in the back of the head. I scream loudly, hurling over at the sight of blood and chunks of things splattering everywhere.

  "BLAKE!" Cole yells as he rushes toward Dean and me.

  I sob harder when he reaches us and wraps his arms around me. He looks down and sees my hands holding Dean and takes out his phone to call the police, not letting go of me with his other arm. After telling them where we are, he looks at Dean and explains his condition. As Cole is on the phone, I press down a little harder, making Dean flinch and grunt under me.

  "Sorry," I whisper. "You said you didn't kill for anybody."

  "I don't," he whispers back, the side of his lip turning up.

  I raise an eyebrow in question, my clattering teeth and shivering body not letting me argue. He coughs out a laugh before gasping for air a couple of times. I scramble to sit up on my knees and place a hand under his neck.

  "Okay, new rule, no talking," I say as tears roll down my face. He closes his eyes when I massage the back of his neck before pinching it to make him open them again. "Eyes open. Please let me see your eyes."

  They flutter open and he smiles sadly. "I don't kill for anyone, chick. You're not just anyone, though," he says, answering my question.

  I grit my teeth to keep my loud sobs inside. "Thank you for saving me again," I say, my voice barely a whisper as I gulp back the ball in my throat.

  He shakes his head slowly, the hair on the back of his neck brushing against my open palm. "Thank you for helping me right a wrong," he responds solemnly.

  My heart constricts in my chest as we stare at each other for what seems like an eternity, until I finally tear mine away from him and bury my face into the jacket of Cole's sleeve, letting his scent wash a sense of tranquility over me. He kisses the top of my head and hangs up the phone before placing his hands over mine on Dean's abdomen helping me hold him together.

  "Thank you for saving my girl again," Cole says, breaking the silence.

  "No big deal," Dean replies with a small smile. "She's been a good friend to me...my only friend, really. Other than Con," he adds looking at Connor, who's walking back to us with Sandra. Sandra picks up the speed when she sees her brother laying on the street beneath Cole and me.

  "What happened?" Sandra shrieks, falling to her knees beside his face.

  Sirens approach and lights hit our faces, making us squint our eyes and turn our heads unanimously toward them. The paramedics get a stretcher and run, pushing us out of the way and questioning what happened
as they load Dean onto the stretcher. We pick ourselves up from the floor, Cole scooping me up into his arms as he stands and walks toward the ambulance.

  "I need a minute," I tell Cole when we reach the paramedics that are loading Dean into the ambulance.

  Cole puts me on my feet and I climb into the ambulance, waving off their warnings.

  "I can still be your friend," I say when I reach Dean's face.

  "Good. I think I'll need one after all this," he replies before the paramedics ask me to get on or get off. I get off and let Sandra hop in to accompany her brother, promising that I'll visit him.

  I rush back into Cole's arms, burying myself in them and suddenly feeling lightheaded. Aubry and Aimee rush toward us from the other side of the police tape the cops are putting around us. My vision tunnels as I look around, the lights dimming around me, noises fading and my body weakening. I feel my knees and body sag before falling into a hard cradle that smells like Cole. Like home.

  It's been two days since Benny's attack. Two days of me waking up in cold sweat nightmares because the look of his face is haunting me in my sleep. Two days and I'm still scrubbing myself and taking four showers a day. Two days since my freedom was promised to me, yet his words have done nothing but clink around in my head. Dean is still in the hospital and today is the day that I'm going to visit him. Two days after he saved my life. Again. I toss around before sitting up and swinging my feet over the edge of the bed and standing.

  "You okay?" Cole asks groggily.

  "Yeah, going to get water. I'm fine."

  I walk to the door and unlock it, opening it slowly before striding to the kitchen and opening the fridge. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to sleep with my bedroom door unlocked. I'm not sure if I'll ever learn to let go of minor details that have kept me locked up inside myself for so long.

  Footsteps startle me as I lean in to get a bottle of water and I gasp, pulling my hand out quickly and dropping one on my foot.

  "Babe, you need to see someone," Cole says, flicking the light on, making me blink rapidly while he rubs his eyes.

  "I'm fine," I mutter under my breath and lean over to pick up the water bottle, but he stops me midway.

  He picks it up for me and unscrews the top as he hands it to me. His tired eyes are serious as he looks at me. "If I'm not fine," he says, air quoting, "there's no possible way that you can be. We can go together."

  My shoulders slump and I cast my eyes from his, leaning into his bare chest when he steps forward and holds me. "I just keep seeing him, hearing him," I whisper against him.

  "I know," he whispers as he finger combs my hair softly.

  I close my eyes and nod slowly. "He said Alex is my father," I whisper, voicing it out loud for the first time since I heard it.

  His hand stills in my hair and he holds me tighter, his chest pushing into my cheek as he breathes in deeply. "It doesn't matter," he murmurs against my head. "It doesn't matter who our parents are, Blake. We are our family. I am your family. You are my family. That's it. That's all that matters."

  I move my head up and down, robotically in agreement, but when I close my eyes I picture Benny's face, his words, and Alex crying over me in that basement. Apologizing to me for what he did. Apologizing to Cory. His one brown eye looking at me in agony as he saw me, and for a moment, it all makes sense—he saw her in me.

  "Blake, breathe," Cole says as he lowers my body to the floor and holds my shoulders down. "Breathe in. Breathe out." He repeats the steps until I begin to follow his directions. When I take the last deep breath, I know I beat the impending panic attack. I close my eyes and fall into his body, hoping he'll catch me again.

  The next time I blink my eyes open, I'm wrapped up in Cole's warm arms and he's tracing the stitches on my hairline-courtesy of Benny's knife.

  "You didn't go back to sleep?" I ask quietly, pulling away a little, not wanting him to touch things that taint me.

  He tilts his head and gives me a small smile. "You're beautiful, you know that?" he whispers, going back to tracing my stitches.

  Water pools my eyes and I shake my head softly. "I'm going to have a scar...forever," I whisper back.

  "So am I," he responds gravely. He leans into me and sprinkles soft kisses around my stitches before pulling back and looking at me, his eyes so full of intensity and love that it makes my heartbeat quicken. "Scars are a part of the healing process," he says quietly while tracing it again with his fingers. "We're going to be okay."

  I nod slowly and close my eyes as I lean into his touch. We lay together for a while, holding each other.

  "I made an appointment to see a therapist today," he says after a while.

  My body goes rigid. "Can we go another day?" I ask in a whisper.

  He tightens his hold on me, burying his face into my neck and taking a breath. "Normally, I would be okay with that, Blake, but no. We're not going to start pushing this back. The appointment is at two o'clock and that's when we're going. Today."

  I feel myself stop breathing. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can speak to somebody about my nightmares, about my past, about what's happened to me in the past year. I don't know if I want to. It's not like I haven't been to a therapist before, I have. But I usually leave out things I don't want to delve into and with Cole there with me I know that won't happen. And ultimately, I'm scared.

  He pulls back from me and tilts my chin to look at him. "We're scars, baby, we need to start our healing process...together. You don't have to be scared. I'll be there with you. We'll hold each other's hands through it, like we always do," he says softly.

  I blink back my tears. "Can we visit Dean in the hospital after?" I whisper.

  "Yes, baby. We'll go there when we're done," he replies as he kisses the tip of my nose. "And when we're done there, Aimee is going to come pick you up and you're going dress shopping with her while I go pick out suits with Aubry."

  Once I manage to close my mouth and swallow, I furrow my eyebrows. "We don't have a wedding date yet. Or a location. We haven't even talked about it!" I reply with a short laugh.

  "Next week. Courthouse," he says, getting up from the bed and adjusting the elastic of his black boxer briefs.

  I blink a couple of times to make sure that this isn't some weird dream I'm having, and sure enough looking around, I realize that it's real. I lie back in an exhale and watch his back retreat to the bathroom as I try to figure out what I wanted for a wedding and come up short. I never really wanted anything because I never thought I would actually get married. I mean, of course it was fun to pretend that Cole and I would get married someday, but we were teenagers when we used to talk about it. I guess the courthouse is fine. My eyes drift closed again with that thought in mind.

  Vibrating sounds wake me up, making me swing my hand to my nightstand as I blindly feel around for my phone. I pick it up and swipe the screen with my eyes still closed.

  "Hello?" I mumble groggily at the still vibrating phone. I suck my teeth and finally pull my eyes open to look at it and swipe over Aubry's sapphire blue eyes. "What?" I bark out.

  "Somebody's moody. Why are you still sleeping? It's like twelve," he says.

  "What do you want?" I groan.

  "Just checking to see how you're doing."

  "Fine. I'll talk to you later," I respond, really hoping to go back to sleep.

  "Wait! Cowboy, I have a question for you," he says, making me rub my eyes and sit up with a sigh.

  "What's up?" I ask, trying to stifle a yawn.

  "Cole called me about looking for suits later for your wedding. He says you're just gonna go to the courthouse. You okay with that?"

  "I guess," I respond with a shrug. "I hadn't really thought of a wedding or anything. Why? What do you think?"

  "I think you guys deserve a real wedding. You have the money. I know Momma wouldn't want you guys just going to a courthouse and getting married. I still own her house, you know. Haven't been able to sell it," he says, letting his sentence floa
t around in my mind for a bit.

  "I thought you were renting it?" I ask, confused.

  "Yeah well, they didn't pay me for the past three months so they got booted."

  "I don't know, Aub. I mean, as nice as that would be, I'm not sure Cole would be okay with it."

  "Just wanted to put it out there, Cowboy. I think you guys should think this through a little. I know you just wanna be married and it doesn't matter where you do it, but it should be memorable, don't you think?"

  I nod my head in agreement before realizing he can't see me. "Thanks, Aub. I'll think about it."

  I stretch my body before getting up to get ready. Once I'm out of the shower, I wrap a towel around myself and step into my closet, stopping at the dying sunflowers on my little table. I smile at the memory as I step into my jeans and put on my blouse before taking out the skeleton key to put around my neck. Aubry's words swim around in my head as I put my hair up in a high bun and I wonder how I should bring it up to Cole.

  "Hey, beautiful," Cole says, making me jump and turn around.

  "Hey," I reply with a smile.

  "You're in a better mood, I hope," he says with a grin as he pushes off of the doorframe and strides over to me.

  I wrap my arms around his neck and stand on my tiptoes, leaning into him when he scoops me up and sits me on the table behind me. I place feather kisses on every inch of his face before reaching his lips and placing one there. Not letting me back away, he grabs both sides of my face and groans deeply as he delves his tongue into my mouth.

  "I love you," he murmurs against my lips. "Even when you're being a pain in my ass."

  I laugh, rolling my eyes and slap his shoulder lightly. "I love you too."

  "I love how that looks on you," he says, picking the key up from my chest before letting it fall back in place.