Breaking Free

by Ellie Rose

  “I don’t care.” I clench out between my teeth. Rage is slowly starting to take over my body. Feeling the adrenaline pump through my veins, I stare at him and repeat what I said. “I. Don’t. Care.” I slam my knee up. Connecting with my target, Joshua crumbles to the floor. “You are a worthless piece of crap.” I stare down at him. “You can threaten me all you want, but I promise you that you won’t get very far.”

  A noise comes from Joshua, and as it gets louder, I realize that its laughter. “Is that all you got? A knee in the groin? I would have thought you learned something at that little gym of yours.”

  I suck in a breath and try to make another run for it, but he grabs both my feet, making me trip. I hit the floor hard, slamming my head against it. I am dazed by the sudden impact, but before I can register what’s going on, Joshua is on top of me. “This is oddly familiar.” I try to kick out, but he has my hands and legs pinned beneath him. “You are weak. I told you that going to the gym wouldn’t make you stronger than me. You are…” Someone cuts him short, hitting him hard on the back of the head, making him fall to the side.

  I look up to see Anna staring at us with wide eyes, holding a textbook. “Anna!” I gasp at her. I scramble up and grab her arms, trying to drag her out of the classroom. “Anna, what are you doing here?!”

  “When you didn’t come back, I knew something wasn’t right. Seth wanted to come looking for you, but I told him I would go. Something told me to come here. I don’t know what it was...” She trails off, staring at the motionless Joshua, not budging from her spot. I finally realize what classroom we are in.

  My homeroom.

  “You are bleeding,” Anna whispers, pointing to a spot on my face. I reach up to touch the spot above my left eye. It must have happened when I hit the floor.

  A groan from the floor snaps me back into focus. “Anna, we need to run. Now before he wakes up again.”

  Anna seems frozen, and I shake her, making her look at me. “We need to go,” I say as steadily as I can, trying not to let the terror creep into my voice.

  We only make it right outside the classroom before Joshua is back up on his feet. He grabs Anna’s hair, making her scream in agony. He punches her hard in the stomach, making her double over. “Anna!” A scream tears from me as I watch her fall to the floor, coughing.

  “You stupid bitch. You will pay for that.” Just as Joshua goes to hit her again, I fling myself onto his back. Squeezing my arms around Joshua’s neck as hard as I can. Joshua backs up from Anna, trying to throw me off, but I tighten my grip.

  Joshua continues to back up until he smashes me against the lockers, making a sharp pain go up my back, breaking my grip.

  Twisting around, Joshua throws me off of him. “You will regret doing that.”

  “No, I won’t.” I spit out as I tackle him to the floor, bringing my hands to his throat, and just like that day underneath that staircase, I do what he did to me. I choke him. “I am not the weakling I was back then.” I spit out into his face. “I am not the same girl from that day. I used to think I lost myself because of you, but I realized something. I didn’t lose myself; I found myself. I found a strength in me I didn’t realize I had. I was afraid of you, but I’m not anymore. I’m not Wendy. I’m not going to live in fear waiting for you to strike again. And,” I push harder down on this throat, watching as the whites of his eyes turn red. “I am not Beth. I will not allow you to control me. I am breaking free from you.” I bend down to whisper in his ear. “You will be the one to regret ever setting eyes on me for the rest of your pathetic little life.”

  “Paige!” I hear a yell from down the hall, and I look up in time to see Seth and Rick running down the hall.

  Joshua takes this as a chance to throw me off of him, but before I can escape, he grabs me and holds me against him.

  Suddenly I feel something hard and cold against my temple. A gun.

  Seth and Rick stop a few feet away from us, their eyes watching the gun. Rick puts his hands up and steps toward Anna, who is lying on the floor. “I just want to make sure Anna is okay.”

  Joshua tightens his grip around me and takes several steps back from them. “I couldn’t care less about her.” He spats out. “The only person I want is Paige.”

  “Why don’t we talk about this? Without the gun.” Seth says, eyeing the gun. His face is pale. Rick edges towards Anna, all the while keeping his eyes on Joshua and the gun. He slowly picks up Anna and backs into the classroom.

  “Shut up. What do you know? You know nothing about this.”

  I can see the wheels are turning in Seth’s head as he tries to think of something to say to calm Joshua down. “I know that you didn’t mean to hurt her. Did you? You just wanted to show her how you felt. Am I right?”

  I feel Joshua slowly nod his head behind me. “Yeah... Yeah, that’s right. I love her.”

  Seth’s eyes are no longer on us, but on something directly behind us. “If you truly love her, why not let her go? She’ll retract whatever she said about you. Because it’s not true, right, Paige?” Seth’s face is completely blank from any emotion, but his eyes tell a different story. He is pleading with me to play along.

  “Ye-yes. I will tell the police I made it all up. You said they won’t believe a stupid girl like me anyway.” Joshua’s arms slacken as he listens to me talk. For just a second, I have a small glimmer of hope that this will end. “We can talk, just you and me. Maybe we can talk about that night. That night…” I gulp. “That night we shared.”

  Something I said makes Joshua tense up again. “You are lying.”

  I shake my head. “No… No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are! You hesitated!” Joshua is now back on the defense, and he jams his gun back into my skull.

  “Okay, Joshua, I think it’s time to calm down,” says a voice from behind us. Joshua swings around, and I see that Officer Cunnings has her own gun drawn. “You don’t want to hurt Paige. Do you?”

  “What is this?! When did you get here?” Joshua takes the gun away from me and points toward Seth. “Did you know she was here this whole time?” Seth is shaking his head.

  “No, I didn’t see her until just now. Please. Please don’t hurt Paige.” Seth begs to Joshua.

  “Joshua, we just all need to calm down. We can sit and talk about this with level heads. Nobody needs to get hurt.” Officer Cunnings eyes are on me. Something in them made my heart drop to my stomach. She had a plan.

  At that moment, I understand what she is asking me. She is asking me silently if it is okay to shoot, if it comes down to it, meaning I might get hit in the process. I glance over at Seth, who doesn’t notice our small interaction because he is talking to Joshua again. “Joshua, man, don’t do this. I understand how you feel. I do. Paige is an amazing person, and I definitely see what attracted you to her. She’s beautiful inside and out. You don’t want to continue to hurt someone you love. Right?”

  Seth is trying to distract Joshua, trying to calm him down, but he only seems to anger Joshua more. “You want to steal her from me. You have been hanging all over her every chance you get. Driving her to school, walking her to class, and taking her out on dates. You can’t have her. I won’t let you. Paige has been mine since the very first day I saw her. When my GHB didn’t work on her that night at the party, I knew she was the one for me. Wendy wasn’t. She was pathetic. Thinking she was better than everyone else. I just had to knock her down a peg or two. When she went running to the police like the scared like brat I knew she was, I made sure nobody would believe her. Now that little bitch has her own little brat she thinks is mine. Do you know how many guys she hooked up with while she was here? Now, Paige, Paige was perfect. She never even looked at anyone else. Her eyes were only on me. Her little looks she gave me every now and then when she saw Beth wasn’t looking. She always used my favorite smell for her shampoo. Those roses taunted me. Begged me. And I only took what was mine. She will always be mine.” Joshua turns the gun toward Seth again. “She will
never want somebody like you.”

  A shot rang out, and a piercing pain shot up my left side. Joshua’s arms slacken around me, and his gun clatters to the ground. I fall to my knees.

  Seth is in front of me on his own knees, his hands on my sides. “Paige, are you okay?” He pulls his left hand back to see blood. Black circles dance in front of my eyes. “Help!” Seth’s screams sound far off. “Paige, answer me!”

  “Don’t worry, I will be okay,” I whisper to him before everything goes black.

  Chapter 30: Present

  Continuous beeping and low whispers are what I hear first. Cracking my eyes open, I see my mom and dad standing in the doorway, talking to a smiling doctor. My mom’s shoulders were shaking as she cries. My dad has an arm around her back, his whole body tensed as he listens to the doctor.

  “She’ll be awake soon. The trauma of the recent events took a toll on her body. It’s only been a day. Just give her some time.” The doctor’s eyes shift to me on the bed, and his smile grows wider. “Actually, she’s awake now.”

  My mom and dad whirl around with one shocked expression mirroring the other. “Paige!” My mom flings herself on to me as sobs wrack her body. “Oh, Paige!”

  I stare at my dad over my mom’s shoulder. His face is pale, and his eyes glassy with unshed tears, but the smile on his face shows how relieved he was. “I’m glad you are okay, bug.”

  My mind flashes back to the final moments at school. I feel the dread set in, remembering Joshua, and then Anna. Oh god, Anna. “Is…” My voice cracks and I try swallowing to moisten my dry throat. “Is Anna okay?”

  My mom pulls back, and she swipes a strand of my black hair out of my face. “Anna is fine. She and Seth are so worried about you. I sent them home a couple of hours ago. They didn’t want to leave you until you woke up, especially Seth. But their parents wanted them to go home and get some rest. They will be so happy to hear that you are awake.”

  My dad clears his throat and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll go call them right now. They wanted us to call them if anything changed.” My dad gave me one last smile before heading out the door, his phone already at his ear.

  “Can I have some water, please?” I ask. While my mom grabs the pitcher of water to fill up a cup, I slowly sit up. Doing this makes me wince when I felt a pinching pain on my left side. “Ow.”

  “Don’t move too quickly. The shot was ‘through and through,’ the doctor said, but it will take a few days to heal.” She hands me the cup. “Paige, when we got that call…” Fresh tears fall down her face. “We were so worried about you.” I see the worry lines underneath her eyes, and I felt a tug of guilt.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Anna said you fought hard. We are so proud of you.” My mom squeezes my hand and gives me an encouraging smile.

  A thought strikes me after a few seconds, and as much as I don’t want to ask, I need to know. “What about Joshua?”

  The smile on my mom’s face freezes, and she looks down at our conjoined hands. “They have arrested him. He was treated for his injuries and then taken down to the station. He’ll live. Even though your father and I would prefer otherwise.” When she looks up again, her lips are in a tight, thin line. “He’ll never hurt you, or another living soul again. He’s right where he deserves to be. And he’ll stay there. We will all make sure of that.”

  My dad comes back into the room, followed closely by Officer Cunnings. “Good to see you are awake young lady.” She closes the door before grabbing one of the hospital chairs and sits down beside the bed. “I’m sorry I had to do it. There was no other way. I prayed and prayed after I shot you that you would survive it. They said you passed out so quickly because of the shock of it all. That young man of yours, Seth? He’s got a good head on his shoulders for trying to talk down a suspect. For a second there, I really thought he could calm down Joshua long enough to disarm him, but it didn’t work out that way.”

  “Thank you,” is the only thing I could bring myself to tell her.

  She shakes her head at me. “No, thank you. If you didn’t come forward, who knows how many more girls he could have hurt.” She leans towards me. “Beth showed up at the police station and told us everything. She couldn’t live with the guilt of anything else happening to you. That’s how I knew he was at the school. I also wanted to tell you Wendy came forward to.”

  I draw in a breath at the mention of Wendy. “She did?”

  “She was scared. But she told us everything. She agreed to let her daughter go for DNA testing to strengthen our case against Joshua.”

  I know it was hard for Wendy to come forward to tell the police her story, but I was proud of her. I was proud that she let go of her fears and took the first steps to her recovery. When I get out of here, I want to thank her.

  Then I remember something Joshua told me. “Officer Combs has a drug business. It’s how Joshua was getting his GHB supply.”

  Officer Cunnings nods her head. “Yes, I know. After they treated Joshua for his injuries, we took him in and questioned him for hours. At first, he wouldn’t give in until we told him your status.” Officer Cunnings shifts uncomfortably and shoots my parents a guilty look. “We, uh, told him you died from your injuries to get him to talk. Which it did. He started spilling everything out right away. He told us all about the girls he raped, why he raped them, who supplied him with GHB, he told us he stalked you and Wendy. That he used multiple burner phones to contact you. This morning, we found the cell phones and the room he used after a thorough search of his home.”

  “It wasn’t his bedroom?”

  “No, he used one of the many bedrooms they had in the house. He made it look like his bedroom. In the closet, he kept pictures and names of all his victims on the walls. He was fascinated by you, though. We aren’t sure why. Maybe because you are the first victim to fight back?”

  My dad reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “And from what Anna told us. You are one hell of a fighter.”

  My mom scolds my dad playfully. “Language.” But she’s smiling again.

  The sound of the door opening makes us all look over to see who it is.

  Seth is standing in the doorway looking out of breath and tired, but to me, as sexy as ever. His eyes are on me, and I can see the relief and warmth in them. A giddy feeling spreads from the tip of my toes all the way up. My eyes never leave his.

  Someone clears their throat. “I think we shall leave you both alone.” They all get up and file past Seth. My dad puts one hand on his shoulder, breaking Seth’s eye contact with me. “Thank you. I can never thank you enough for helping my daughter become stronger.”

  “It wasn’t me, sir. It was her fighting spirit.”

  My dad clasps him on the shoulder before moving out of the room.

  Seth shuts the door and is sitting on my bed in three quick strides. Putting both of his hands on either side of my face, he stares at me. “I’m so glad you are okay.”

  “I told you I would be, didn’t I?”

  He kisses me. His lips moving slowly over mine as if he doesn’t want to rush it. Wrapping my hand around his neck, I pull him closer, wanting to feel every bit of him. These last few months have been the hardest of my whole life, but I couldn’t be more thankful for Seth. Seth pulls back and presses his forehead against mine. His eyes smoldering mine. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  And I know I do. The love I feel for him is beyond measure.

  “Never scare me like that again. Deal?”

  I laugh and peck him on the lips. “Deal.”

  A knock on the door and Anna walks in with her eyes covered by her hand. “Is it safe to come in now? I don’t think my stomach can handle seeing my best friend and brother kissing.”

  Seth and I laugh. “Yes. You can come in now.”

  Anna wraps her arms around me in a tight hug. “You really know how to scare people, don’t you?”

  “Eh, it’s just a bullet hol
e. No harm, no foul.”

  Anna looks at Seth mischievously. “No harm, she says, but who is sitting in a hospital bed?”

  Seth shakes his head, chuckling.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask Anna.

  Anna shrugs. “I’m fine.” Then she grins, “my room is full of sunflowers now.”

  Seth groans, and I raise an eyebrow. “Sunflowers?”

  “Yup! Mom and dad were so proud of me that they bought me a whole bunch of sunflowers and told me to never do it again. My dad told me in secret he’ll buy me them whenever I want.”

  “They might as well put in a garden outside for one,” Seth says.

  Anna gasps, “Dude! That’s such a great idea!”

  Seth rolls his eyes in my direction, and I burst out laughing, causing me to wince. Seth, catching this, frowns. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time.”

  It’s Anna’s turn to roll her eyes. “Seth, I love you, so don’t get me wrong when I say this: not all women need men to be their hero. Women are just as strong.”

  Seth grumbles something under his breath I don’t hear, and I reach out to grab his hand. “You may not have protected me yesterday, but you are my hero.” Then I take Anna’s. “You both are.”

  Anna’s eyes fill with tears for a second before she quickly blinks them away. “Alright, enough sappy talk. Can we talk about the Harry Potter movies, and when are we going to finish them?”

  Sitting there with Anna and Seth laughing together, I feel like everything has changed. But for the better this time, and not for the worse.

  And I’m a whole lot stronger than I was before.

  Chapter 31: Present

  After being let out of the hospital, my parents kept me home most of the time, refusing to let me out of their sight. I couldn’t blame them, but after the first week home, I was feeling suffocated. A small part of me was more than ready to go back to school.