by M. Never
“CJ?” They never, ever call me CJ. I start to sweat, the morphine’s effects completely dissipating.
Jett and Kayne flank my bed, and then Jett sets the tablet down on my lap.
“You know him right?” He points at Slade walking into the Long Island house.
“Yes,” I confirm, confused.
“Keep watching.”
And I do. I watch Slade as he converses with Nino as if they’re old friends, watch as he pours drink after drink while the house fills with dirty, disgusting men. I watch as he slips into the corner of the room as girl after girl is auctioned off right in front of him. I become physically sick. Then I watch as Tara is pushed into the room. I watch as Nino puts her up like property, and Slade steps forward to claim her on the spot. I force myself to watch as he humiliates her in front of half a dozen people, and then I try to throw the iPad across the room.
“I’ve seen enough.” I’m boiling with rage. “Where the fuck is he?”
“Dead,” Kayne informs me.
“During the raid?” My stare is as sharp as a razor blade.
Jett shakes his head and flips over the white device.
“I don’t want to see.”
“You’ll want to see this.” He punches a few things on the screen and the images change. My eyes widen to the size of satellites as I see Tara strung up like a fucking fish in front of Slade. I shake excessively as I witness him torture her, and listen to her scream as he cuts all over her skin, blood running like a river down her back. Then I watch as Philly breaks down the bedroom door and takes Slade out, lickety-split. I get a second’s worth of satisfaction in the way he kills him execution style, but it’s squashed immediately as a tidal wave of conflicted emotion pulls me out to sea. Where I drift at a loss. Alone and confused. Slade saved my life. He wasn’t only a friend, he was a brother. And I realize now, I didn’t know him at all.
Tears actually escape down my cheeks. Fucking tears. I haven’t cried since I was twelve, but today is a solemn day.
“We only showed you so you could believe it for yourself.” Jett puts his hand on my shoulder.
I nod silently. I understand, I really do.
“I want to see her.”
I need to see her.
“Don’t you think you should take a few minutes?” Kayne asks. “Process all this?”
I gaze up at him dangerously. “No.”
THE REASON I NEED TO see Tara is because my world is in mass chaos right now, and she is the only thing that makes sense.
She is the only thing that can pull me back from completely losing my mind.
Betrayal. It’s a tough pill to swallow. Today, tomorrow, forever. I find myself questioning everything. I’m trained to see through lies, and I missed one of the biggest lies of all. Our friendship blinded me; that’s what Jett would say. It’s normal, human. The rational part of me knows he’s right. The irrational part—not so much. The irrational part wants to bring Slade back to life and kill him all over again.
I watch Tara sleep peacefully. I don’t have the heart to wake her. After everything she’s been through, she deserves the rest. I do, however, spy the bandages covering her entire back. She’s sleeping on her side, her hospital gown open just enough for me to see.
I sit down on the edge of the mattress. I can’t even begin to imagine the hell she’s been through.
I take a piece of her hair between my fingers and run my thumb over the bloodstained end. My heart breaks and hammers all at the same time.
This is my fault. I should have never left her side.
As if she senses my presence, her eyes pop open to find me.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Hey.” I try to smile, but the sentiment is empty. I’m too upset to even fake it.
“Are you okay?” she asks meekly.
Am I okay? She was the one sexually assaulted, tortured, and mutilated, and she’s asking if I’m okay.
I choke back the emotion. “It takes more than losing a few pints of blood to get rid of me.” I slide my hand across the sheet and link our fingers together. Tears instantly well in Tara’s eyes as she takes in the bandages wrapped around both of my wrists.
“I’m so sorry.” She apologizes distraughtly. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.” She starts to sob, and I nearly lose my mind.
“Tara, there’s nothing to be sorry about and nothing is your fault.” I scoot closer to her and rest my forehead against hers.
“People keep telling me that, but I don’t believe it.” She sniffles. I take her face in my hand as gently as possible and drop kisses near the corner of her eye, tasting the salty tears that are staining her skin.
“Majority opinion rules.”
She gazes back at me like she wishes that were true. “Besides, if anyone should be apologizing, it’s me.”
“For what?” She creases her eyebrows causing that cute little wrinkle to pop out right between them.
“For Slade. Tara, I had no idea. He was one of my closest friends, and I had no idea the man he was.”
“He wanted it that way,” she divulges.
I search her weathered face; I have so many questions and she has all the answers. “What … What did he say to you?” I regret asking it immediately, but I need to know. I need to know what was going through his mind during his final moments of life.
“He was so angry.” Her voice strains.
“What did he say to you exactly?”
Tears roll freely down her cheeks. “I asked him why, and he told me because he needed to. Because pain and suffering are the only things that got him off. He said he was a different person when he saved you. That he was trying to hide who he really was and that when you grow up around monsters, it was inevitable you become one.’”
My eyes widen. I didn’t expect … any of that. Things so deep. So disturbing. I knew about Slade’s shitty upbringing. At least as much as he would reveal. He never went very far into detail, just a lot of offhanded comments about how his father was a drug dealing, womanizing scumbag who would beat up on him and his mom. That’s where the scar on his eye came from. When he was twelve, he stood up to his father, and in return, his father sliced him up with a scalding hot fireplace poker. The scar on his eye isn’t the only one from that night. Half of his back is disfigured with slashes. I remember the first time I saw them. We were bunkmates, and he pulled off his shirt to shower. I’d never seen anything like it. Twenty raised, angry white lines stared back at me. I didn’t ask at first, and Slade didn’t offer an explanation. He just grabbed his towel guardedly and left the room. It wasn’t until close to a year later did he finally tell me what happened. Did he finally warm up to me at all. Like I said, he was always a loner, and now, I finally know why. I’m positive it’s why he attacked Tara the way he did. Pent-up hostility and trauma from his past.
“I wish I was there. I will always regret not being there. Not protecting you.”
“You did protect me.”
“How?” I ask confused.
She reaches under her pillow and pulls out my pocket watch. “I had it with me the whole time. You were with me the whole time.” She places it in my palm and then moves her hand down to my bandaged wrist. “I will always regret that any of this happened.”
What a predicament. Both feeling the same way for different reasons.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask, clutching my watch.
She nods faintly.
“You were with me the whole time, too.” I recall seeing her face and hearing her laugh and smelling her skin as I drifted in and out of consciousness. She’s the only thing that forced me to hang on. Love is truly a strange and powerful thing. One I barely believed in until Tara took over my life. “You have been a part of me since the moment I met you.”
Tara smiles sadly. “What do we do now?”
“We move forward. Together. If I have learned anything in my thirty-three years, it’s that the past helps shape who you are, but it never defines yo
u. You should always follow your dreams, and life’s definitely too short not to have sex or eat chocolate cake.”
I actually get a tiny little giggle out of her. I promised I would make her laugh as much as I make her come. And I plan to keep that promise, as long as she’ll let me.
I’m optimistic there’s hope for us yet… .
I WAIT IN THE TINY interrogation room with my leg bouncing compulsively.
I know I shouldn’t be here but I need closure and answers.
Nino is escorted into the room by a uniformed guard, still sporting that cocky grin. You’d think after everything, he’d wise up, but I guess that old saying is true, leopards never change their spots.
He sits down across from me and rests his chained hands on the table.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks, his face still black and blue.
I smile to myself.
“I thought you always won?” I shouldn’t taunt him, but I do. I know better than to poke the snake with a stick, but I just can’t help myself. His smiles fades.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I want to know how you knew Slade.” I get straight to the point.
“Slade?” he asks confused.
“Think I was here for another reason?”
He eyes me cautiously. It then dawns on me why he’s questioning me. Tara.
“How did you know him?” I ask again. We’ll address Tara in a moment.
“I used to run drugs for his father. In the nightclubs. I’ve known Slade since I was fourteen. Never expected him to be mixed up with a pretty boy like you.”
“We served together.”
“Lotta good enlisting did him.” He grunts.
“What do you mean by that?”
“He was running. But it didn’t matter how far or how fast. He always knew who he was. So did I. That’s why it didn’t shock me when he came looking for me a few years back. He had an itch that needed to be scratched. Big time.”
“And you obliged.” I curl my lip, disgusted.
“It was my business.” He shrugs. “Drugs, money, women. You saw,” he says haughtily.
“I did.” I saw way too much. I will never be able to erase the image of Slade torturing Tara for as long as I live. I’m confident her screams will be the star of my darkest nightmares.
“How many women did he torture and kill?”
Nino laughs manically. “You think I know? And even if I did, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to incriminate myself. All I can tell you is the man craved pain the way a junkie craves blow.”
It kills me to hear that, because I knew someone completely different. Someone who had so much good in him. I saw it. It confounds me that he could be two completely different people at the same time.
Sociopath is a term that springs unwanted into my mind.
“Why Tara?” I question.
Nino’s egotistical smirk returns. “Because he wanted her.”
“And you agreed knowing what he was capable of?”
“I agreed because he was willing to pay a hundred grand for her. Bitch always had a golden pussy.”
I slam my fists against the table startling him. “Don’t fucking talk about her like that!”
Nino laughs condescendingly. “She’s got you whipped, too. Huh? Been in your shoes, brother. I wised up though.”
“Don’t fucking compare yourself to me. We don’t even breathe the same air.”
“Maybe not, but we fuck the same pussy. You’re no better than me whether you want to believe it or not.”
“I don’t believe it because it’s not true.” I stand up. We’re done here.
“Whatever you say, but I can tell you this, we’re both men and we both live for the same reasons, money, power and pussy. You sit on your high horse all you want. At the end of the day we eat, piss and fuck the same way.”
“I hope that notion keeps you warm in cell block six.”
“It won’t, but I won’t be there forever.” His tone is hostile. I stop dead in my tracks and turn on my heel.
“I will say this only once. Don’t get any bright ideas about retaliation. Or I’ll bury you. Literally, while you’re still breathing. I live outside the law and I can guarantee no one will come looking for a scumbag like you.”
Nino remains silent, but his sharp eyes say it all. He wants to rip me apart, but will think twice before he does.
I bang on the door. “Guard!”
“Make sure you change the bandages on your wrists, wouldn’t want to get a life threatening infection.” He mocks.
“I will be sure to take your advice.” I snarl at him as I walk out the door.
Goodbye and good riddance.
I head back to the hospital hoping Tara is still asleep. It’s still fairly early in the morning, and they have her doped up on some pretty serious pain meds. I don’t want her to know where I went. I don’t want her to have to think about Nino or Slade ever again.
I received the answers I came for, now it’s time move on.
I STAND NAKED IN FRONT of the mirror as the bathroom fills with steam. CJ and I were discharged from the hospital only three days ago, yet it feels like a lifetime since we were there. I often question if it was all a dream, question if something so horrific was actually capable of happening. But every time I move, I’m reminded it was real. My heart starts to pound in the dead center of my chest as I twist in front of the mirror and peel a little corner of the bandage away. I see just a small bit of the raw, pink flesh, and I become lightheaded. I lean on the countertop and breathe through the panic. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. Slade is dead, and Nino is in jail. But I will always be scarred. I will always be reminded of my reckless decisions and the consequences of my actions.
I feel disgusting. Like a mutilated monster who should be hiding in a dark, damp, secluded cave. Not living in a penthouse suite with all the amenities, including the handsome prince. Disney sure as hell would never animate this fucked-up fairy tale.
“Tara?” CJ calls before he enters the bathroom. I turn the faucet on and splash my face as fast I can, attempting to pretend like I’m holding it together. He turns off the running water in the tub and then comes to stand behind me.
“Are you trying to turn the bathroom into a sauna?” he asks with big, brown inquisitive eyes.
“No, I was just …” I don’t come up with a good lie fast enough.
Because I have to keep my bandages dry, I am reduced to taking sponge baths for the next few weeks. That was my intention when I first came in here, but I was sidetracked. I should have never taken my clothes off in front of the mirror. I’ve avoided looking at myself for the last three days, but I guess my curiosity got the better of me.
“You were just what?” he probes.
“I was just …” Tears brim in my eyes. “Just looking.” I breathe out. “I’m deformed.”
CJ’s face drops. “You’re not deformed. Tara, you’re beautiful.”
“How can you say that? I’ll never be able to wear a bathing suit or a tank top or even a wedding dress without everyone seeing it. Without everyone wondering what happened to me. I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t even want you to look at me.”
“Tara.” CJ spins me around to face him. I cover my breasts with my arms and slouch.
“No one has to know. We can have it fixed. There are procedures or you can cover it up with a tattoo.”
“Over my entire back?”
“Why not? It can be a work of art. Something you identify with, maybe sheet music of the same song that’s on your leg?”
I ponder this. I never even considered covering up the scars.
“It doesn’t turn you off?” I ask self-consciously, lifting my head only slightly to look him. “Seeing what he did.”
CJ smiles warmly, cupping my cheeks in his hands. “No. You are beautiful, scars and all. And I didn’t fall in love with you because of the way you look. I fell in love with you because you are the fiercest woman I have
ever met. Your confidence turns me on more than your body. I’ve told you. I’m yours until you send me away.”
“I will never send you away,” I cry, a complete fucking mess, pressing my face into his palm. “You’re the only one I want.”
“Then you never have to worry. I want you just as much now as I ever have. We’re what’s important. I’m going to help you get through this. We’re going to get through it, okay?”
I nod firmly, trying to pull myself together. It astounds me how just CJ’s words can calm my hyper spirit and quiet my raging thoughts.
“Stay here. I have something for you.” He kisses me softly on the lips before he leaves the bathroom.
When he returns, he motions with his finger for me to turn around. With curiosity, I do. Once I see our reflection, I watch as CJ lifts his hands over my head and drops a necklace in front of my face. My necklace. He clasps the luxe gold chain around my neck as I fiddle with the small diamond music note.
“There.” He kisses my collar. “Back in its rightful place. Right next to your heart.”
I smile, feeling fortunate for the first time in a long time.
I realize as I stare at the tattered couple in the mirror that we have a very long road ahead of us. But at least I know we’ll be walking it together. Side by side, hand in hand.
CJ’s right—in the end, we’re together and we’re the only thing that really matters.
Six months later
I BEND TARA OVER OUR brand new vanity, in our brand new master bathroom, in our brand new brownstone. Like, literally, signed the papers for this morning.
As soon as they handed us the keys, we headed straight over to christen the place.
We barely got through the door with our clothes on before we dropped in the middle of the living room floor. We’ve fucked all over the house—kitchen, stairs, bedroom—finally making it to the bathroom. Our intention was to wash off, but we somehow deviated.
I push Tara’s long platinum hair off to the side and rub my hands up and down her back. This day has been a long time coming. We’re finally in a good place, a healing place. I press my fingertips into the music notes tattooed on her skin. Her entire back is covered with a bright pink piece of sheet music. The same song that is tattooed on her leg. “Stars” by Grace Potter. She listened to that song compulsively for months as she recovered. In the middle of the sheet music is a huge graphic treble clef. The design is pretty sick and took close to a month to finish, but when it was completed, I could see the difference in Tara immediately. She hated her scars, and it showed. She was self-conscious and angry; many times internalizing what she truly felt until it bubbled over and surfaced in a panic attack. Today, she’s nearly the same woman I fell in love with. Fiery, vivacious, and outgoing. A sexual powerhouse.
