For good measure, I sighed and nestled into the cushions, muttering. “Thanks, Sheldon.”
More weight fell on the blanket on top of me. Hot moist air puffed into my ear and on my neck. “My pleasure, little girl.” Then his hands crept under the blanket and he felt the edges of my clothing, tracing up the seams like a blind man reading a Braille map. Goosebumps covered my arms and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Salty breath laced with the rot of beer and the spice of pepperoni filled my space. I gripped my knife harder, the muscles under my thumb pad spasming from desperate strength.
I’d allowed him to get too close. He touched my waist. I breathed slow and steady.
If he reached any higher, I might not recover.
Come on, Cassie. You can do this. You can do this.
Suddenly, his two hands seemed as if they were four, then six. He moved them fast, trying to reach all of me at once. Bobby’s face filled my vision. I couldn’t let Sheldon have my underwear or see them, get close to them. That had been the breaking point of my control with Bobby. Sheldon wouldn’t have that. I’d never allow that again.
My arm across my breasts and my legs pressed together saved my bikini parts from his exploration, but the yank to my upper knee promised his game was just beginning. He pulled the blanket from me, exposing me to his hands and his eyes.
The whirr of a zipper and slide of pants dropping shot my heart rate into an immeasurable range. Flashes of Bobby ditching his pants by the boulder blinded me for a moment. I’d forgotten the immediacy of the moment as Bobby had stalked toward me. The hunger in his stance.
More importantly, the fear in my stomach.
What am I doing? I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough. I clenched the knife handle, moved now to the pocket of my sweatshirt. Sweat gathered under my bra and at the small of my back. I opened my eyes. I couldn’t help it at that point.
Sheldon had moved himself above me, his eyes bright with lust – similar to how Bobby’s had been. He grabbed my pants, pulling me onto my back and straightening my hips.
Opening my mouth to protest, I jerked my head back when his closed hand covered my mouth and nose. I hadn’t been prepared and he shut off my breath in the middle of inhaling. Panic mingled with images of Bobby and the Js as they came for me, determined to finish what they’d started.
I couldn’t make a sound. Deegan didn’t know I needed help. But I cried out for him in my mind. Help. Deegan. Help.
My running muscles didn’t let me down. I closed my legs, hard. Anger tightened Sheldon’s features and for a second I couldn’t remember where I was – Kari’s house became the peninsula. Sheldon was Bobby back to life and I was still my thirteen-year-old self, scared of everything and certain no one saw me.
He reached for my legs, pulling with both hands to separate them – releasing my mouth and nose. I inhaled deep and refused to allow my knees to open. They didn’t budge. I was a runner and my legs did what I wanted. Not what some dirty-ass pervert wanted.
Pride and power filled me. I wasn’t powerless. I had a weapon. I wasn’t drugged. And I was stronger than some little man that had alcohol on board and was such a coward he raped young girls.
Chapter 5
All pretenses at being sleepy dropped. With my empty hand, I grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling him down to me. In a voice I couldn’t identify, I growled, “You going to show me the same good time you showed your niece, Sheldon?”
His eyes widened and confusion creased the skin between his eyebrows. Bracing himself on the armrest at the sides of my head, he looked down at me. “What are you talking about? How do you know about that?”
Mindful of his tighty-whities and what was underneath being directly in front of my chest, I smiled, feeling like a predator featured on Shark Week. Except this animal didn’t bite. I scratched. Hard. “Don’t worry about how I know. Worry about how and why you’re going to stop.” I pushed him, the sudden release and pressure to his chest added to the confusion of the moment and the alcohol he’d imbibed. He fell backward, legs splayed and his arms akimbo.
An inkling of understanding worked its way through the fog in his mind. “You think you’re going to make me stop?” His weasel laugh could’ve rivaled grinding glass. “She couldn’t make me stop.” He pushed himself up. “No. You’re going to get it as much as possible.” He licked his lips, his tongue wet and red.
The sight sickened me.
Where the hell was Deegan?
I slid to the side, off the couch, trying to regain my feet. He copied me on his end of the couch. I tugged at the knife, but the dang thing caught on something and I couldn’t pull it free. Walking backward, even in a house I knew, took my advantage and tore it in half.
He moved toward me, his hands held open like I was a ball he was intent on catching. The door to my right could be my escape hatch, but only if I could get there before Sheldon got to me.
I didn’t wait.
Jerking from the hold of his gaze, I whirled to the door. The second to turn the knob took too long and just as I pulled the door free from its frame, he slammed his body into my back which pummeled me against the door, closing it.
He reached around me and clicked the chain into place, grinding his hips into the small of my back. My cheek grated on the wood grain, some of the skin tearing free. I whimpered.
“Think you’re so tough, huh? Let’s see how strong you are when I ride you long and hard.” He chuckled, and then licked the nape of my neck. His tongue slid over my skin like it was coated in grease.
Bile, oh hell, I could taste bile.
I raised my hands and pushed my face off the wood. “Deegan! Help!”
“No one can hear you, little girl. But keep trying. I like it.” He removed his left hand from my shoulder and fumbled with something at my back. My pants? No. Not that. I couldn’t handle that.
A growl from a foot or two behind me broke through the terror ruling my present. “Yeah, but do you like this?” The solid thud that followed dropped Sheldon to the floor with a crash.
Before I could turn myself, Deegan pulled me around to face him. He searched my face, my neck, felt down my arms. “Are you okay?”
To steady myself, I wrapped my fingers in his shirt. “Where were you? He almost got there. Too close. Like Bobby.” I couldn’t breathe. All too similar, the memories of the events chilled my blood. “Where were you?!” My screech covered the sob dying to fold me into his arms.
“The door was locked. It wasn’t supposed to be. I had to come in through a bedroom window.” He rubbed my arms. “Okay, breathe. It’s okay. I’m here.” Deegan ducked his head to see me clearer. “We need to take him to the police, Cassie.”
While the statement seemed drastic, I understood perfectly what he meant. Sheldon wasn’t the type to let something like that slide. He’d either take it out on me or Kari and her brothers. I wiped the moisture from under my eyes. I had to learn to hold in my tears. I could do that. “Okay. Should we take his car? Or call them?”
“Probably a call would be enough. We need to get out of here, though. Maybe call anonymously? Crap, I don’t know.” He stooped to sling Sheldon over his shoulder. “Let’s get him to the couch. They won’t believe a drunk man, if he says a girl beat him up.” His grin warmed me. Again. Weird since it also covered me in goose bumps and delicious shivers.
Setting him on the cushions I had just left, Deegan stepped back and cocked his head to the side. I stayed by the door, arms crossed over my stomach. The house had a tainted feel. No wonder Kari hated staying at home and always came to my place. Deegan crooked his finger. “Cass, come here. Something’s not right.”
Sticking close to the wall, I came around to see what he was talking about. “This whole night isn’t right, Deegan.”
“No, look. What’s wrong with his head? Does it look lopsided to you?” He motioned to the right side of Sheldon’s face. “Right there. See?”
And yeah, I did see. Sheldon’s face
had a distinct concaved shape where his temple should only have been a slight slope in. “He doesn’t look like he’s breathing. How hard did you hit him?”
Sheldon’s head lulled to the side. His chest didn’t move.
“Wait a minute, I didn’t hit him that hard. I don’t think.” Worry creased his forehead, his blond hair half-covering the lines. He pressed his fingers to the side of Sheldon’s neck, and then felt around under his chin. Large eyes turned to me. “Crap. Cassie, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I hadn’t done this one. Deegan had, but my guilt swelled inside. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, I did this. You’re okay. Why don’t you get home? I’ll take care of this.” He stood and looked around the room, as if searching for a hole to shove the dead jerk.
“No. You wouldn’t have been in here, if I hadn’t come. What should we do?” The weight of my knife no longer comforted me. The pull on my sweatshirt dragged like intent and stung with purpose.
He wiped his face with his hand. “I don’t know. It’s hard to make a hit like that look like an accident, you know? It isn’t from a sharp object or even a blunt edged one. They’ll know someone hit him.”
“Who’s they?” My cheeks fell slack, dropping all expression. “Oh.” His dad. The cops. Everyone we didn’t want to suspect anything was going on.
“Yeah.” He punched the wall. “Damn it.”
“What’s wrong?” Maybe he’d hurt himself. The punch had been pretty hard.
“I killed someone. That’s not something I’m particularly proud of, you know?” He leaned his head on the wall, directly above where his fist had connected. His shoulders sagged.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. He deserved it.” I wanted to scream that it was Sheldon or me and I’m glad you chose me! but I didn’t. I went for bravado, tried acting like I wasn’t close to throwing up like I had by the river after Bobby. Throwing up was definitely not an attractive trait.
Head still on the wall, he turned enough to see me, sadness in the tilt of his lips and the downturn of his eyes. “You know better than that. Nobody deserves this, Cassie —”
“No! The things he did to Kari…” I gritted my teeth. Shame had me biting the inside of my cheek. I closed my eyes long enough to remember the feel of grinding against my backside, Sheldon pressing my face into the door, the threats he’d delivered like promises. Barely able to move my lips, I ground out, “He deserved this.” I pointed at the body with all the force behind my anger. Spinning him by pushing on his shoulder, I leaned into his personal space. “He. Deserved. This.” And I nodded to punctuate my meaning.
“I know. I was here. But I’m saying, we could’ve turned him in. Kari would’ve corroborated, you know? I should’ve pulled him off you and avoided hitting him. I think I could’ve done that.” He plucked a piece of string from my shirt. “For you, Cassie, I should’ve done that.”
“No, Kari…” I hugged myself in the sudden chill. I hadn’t told anyone. Nobody knew about the things I stored in my head. Other people’s suffering. My suffering. My friend’s. Overwhelming vulnerability nauseated me. I threw my arms wide. “Kari tried! No one believed her. No one, Deegan. I made the mistake of letting her clean up at my house, so they couldn’t do some rape kit. Even her own parents didn’t believe her.” I laughed with sadness. “And after meeting Sheldon, I can’t understand why. He’s creepy and gross. He makes my skin crawl.”
Deegan didn’t say a word, but closed the space between us and wrapped his arms around me. I melted into his chest. Maybe he’d kiss me. Maybe I could look at Kari’s place with the memory of my first kiss in the forefront rather than the second place I’d killed someone – okay, not me, but it might as well have been.
I withdrew enough to look up into his face. “So we agree, we did this, right?” I pointed first at his chest, then at mine. But what I was really asking was, are we in this together? Are we dealing with this one-on-one or as a duo? Did he accept that we shared the responsibility, the pain, the guilt?
He hesitated, unraveling the meaning behind my hand motions and question. After a long drawn-out pause, he winked, his lips soft and full. “Together.”
Kiss me, Deegan. Come on.
Relief filled me. This wasn’t a journey I had to travel alone. The pressure lifted and tears formed under my lids. I turned to the window, parting the blinds by only a minute amount. Deegan didn’t need to see my weakness wrapped up in him. He didn’t think of me the way I did of him. He couldn’t. I thought of him all the time. And the fact that we ran together didn’t matter. There were only so many topics we could talk about on our daily jogs. I wanted a real date, real time with him, and not over a dead body.
The urge to punch something filled my gut. We had to get the body out of there. At Kari’s house wasn’t exactly hidden. But I didn’t drive and Deegan had only just gotten his license a few weeks before. Not that it mattered anyway, the only car in sight was the dead guy’s.
I pushed off the warm fuzzies being with Deegan gave me. How did we get rid of the problem? “It’s not like we can hide him, you know?”
Deegan joined me at the window, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I pretended we were together. He bent down and peeked out the lifted blinds. “Actually, I wonder if we could.” He pointed at the crap-mobile outside and looked behind us at Sheldon. “What if we put him in the car and parked it down by the river?”
I stared at the boxy vehicle, thinking, analyzing. Slowly, I nodded my head. “Okay. You’ll have to drive. But I don’t have any way to pick you up. How will you get back?”
His expression almost made the work visible as he thought. “I might be able to take a bus home.”
Deegan alone on city buses late on a Friday night made me more nervous than the dead body behind us. “No. If you can get to the cinema a few blocks from the river, I’ll have my mom bring me down to get you. I’ll come up with something to say since you’re supposed to be running with me. Maybe we can just say your date ditched you or something.” The idea he’d be on a date instead of with me brought waves and cramping to my stomach. I couldn’t handle the thought.
Our loose plan might work, but it didn’t stop me from shaking. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
Moving to Sheldon’s head, Deegan grabbed under the body’s armpits. “Grab his feet.”
“Uh.” I looked at Sheldon, grimacing. “Um, I’m not sure I can touch a dead body again.”
“No messing around. Come on, Cass. Let’s get him out to the car and go.” He motioned to the body with his chin.
“We can’t just take him out the front door and onto the lawn. Do you know how many nosy people live around here?” Kari’s family didn’t have an attached garage, but… “I’ll get the lights. Just a sec.” Flipping off the porch lights would be less suspicious than two people dragging a body down the stairs. It’d make it difficult for us to work, but not as hard as if cops surrounded us because of someone’s frantic 911 call.
Time had become tighter because of the body. Accidents sucked. I approached Sheldon on legs that didn’t want to work. He’d tried to hurt me. What if he wasn’t really dead? Squatting down, I grabbed under both ankles and tugged. “Crap. He’s heavier than he looks.”
“That’s why it’s called dead-weight.” Deegan grunted as he hoisted the larger part of the body over the side of the couch. I followed, Sheldon’s ankles positioned at my waist. We shimmied and pushed and pulled his body out of the house, struggling at the door and down the steps. I tripped on the last step. Dang, it was dark.
On the grass beside the old Chevy I dropped Sheldon’s feet. Huffing, I rested my hands on my hips. “I need to start lifting or something. Whew.” I looked around for any bystanders. As long as I pretended Sheldon hadn’t died, that Deegan and I hadn’t made some kind of silent agreement we were in it together from there on out – whatever it was – I could maintain my sanity. I didn’t need to know what would happen to the body once Deegan drove away with it.
If I kept in mind that the situation with Sheldon had gone the way I hadn’t wanted it to go and that I hadn’t planned his death – how could I? Deegan had planted that fist – I could keep my shaking and shivering in a more manageable state.
Deegan let Sheldon fall, the thump similar to a pumpkin as it plopped from someone’s grasp. He opened the passenger side door. I expected a dome light to turn on, but nothing. Deegan ducked his head into the car and pushed a pile of items onto the floor. “Okay, let’s shove him in here. Oh, no.” He jerked out of the front seat, waving his hands in wide arcs. “That is just wrong.” He manually rolled down the side window.
The odor wafted toward me, attacking from all sides. I scooted backward on my butt. “Holy crap, Deegan, what is that?” We kept our voices low, even filled with indignation.
“I’d guess it’s a mix of pot and, I don’t know, maybe he used the car as a toilet?” Deegan grabbed Sheldon’s arm and muscled him into the front seat. Slamming the door shut, he jumped when Sheldon’s head hit the partial piece of glass. “Can you get home alright?”
I pushed myself off the cooling grass. “No problem. I’ll meet you at the cinemas in an hour?”
He nodded, but stopped when I put my hand on the bend of his elbow. I wanted to kiss him but would die of embarrassment. “Be careful.”
“Always, doll.” And his wink again warmed me while speeding me into a jog. He winked a lot, but oh man, I loved it!
I had to hurry, if I wanted to get to the cinemas in time.
Deegan and I had our first date – true, we wouldn’t be watching movies together or anything, but I just wanted to refer to it like that.
I could handle the happenings of the night. I’d store the memory away with the ones of Bobby. I’d run off the pain and hurt with Deegan. Maybe he and I were going to become something, like dating or something. Giddiness lightened me and I flew home instead of jogging – well, it seemed like it.
Psycho Inside Me Page 5
