Hard (23 page)

“Okay.”
He kisses my jaw next to my ear. “Just make sure whatever you
decide to wear,” he whispers, “you can take it off easily
later.”

***

By the time Gunner and I pull into my driveway,
night has fallen. His headlights shine into the small windows of the
garage door, and I see my car is there alone. Jamie is, as usual, out
and about somewhere, I guess.

Gunner starts to open his door, but stops when
I say, “It’s okay. You don’t have to walk me in.”
I literally jump out of his Ford F-150 truck—the thing is
huge—and tell him thanks for the ride. “If you end up in
the ring tonight,” I say, “good luck. Not that you need
it.” He nods, and I think almost smiles as he sits back against
the driver’s seat.

He watches as I unlock the side door to the
kitchen. I flip on the overhead light and wave to him, clicking the
deadbolt with my other hand. The truck drives away, the diesel engine
roaring as Gunner peels off down the street. Men.

Walking upstairs, I try to think what I even
have that I can wear tonight. Having not shopped a lot since I’ve
been home, and definitely not having acquired too many dresses over
the last couple years, I may have to dig through my closet and hope
that I left something cute behind when I moved to England.

In my bedroom, I turn on my bedside lamp,
preparing a backup plan—Run by Shelby’s? The mall?—in
case I don’t see anything I like. But when I open the closet
door, I see only one thing: Sebastian.

He lunges at me, grabs me from behind as I try
to run, and wraps his arms around my neck, pressing, squeezing,
choking me until I can’t scream or breathe. I thrash in his
tight grasp, try to twist free or land a kick or a punch, but the
more I struggle, the less energy I have to fight. Without air, my
vision goes dim.

And then I see nothing.

CASSIE

I wake up cold and confused and I try to say these things out loud,
but no words can come out because my lips are pressed against my
teeth by something tight and soft that smells like stale cologne.

I blink quickly, as though the movement will
clarify what I’m seeing in front of me—a smooth wall of
white—and I try to touch the fabric tied across my mouth, but
my arms just jerk uselessly. My hands, I realize, are restrained
behind me, and when I move them, something rough and scratchy like
rope digs into my skin.

I’m not sure where I am or how I
arrived. But I’m positive I’d like to get the fuck out of
here as soon as possible.

My bare feet are free, and lying as I am on my side, I try to roll
onto one shoulder and kick myself up. But there’s not enough
space to unfold my legs in what I realize is a bathtub. A motel
bathtub. I can see the tiny wrapped soap on the ledge.  Not much
of a weapon to defend myself when Sebastian comes back to finish
whatever he started at my house.

There isn’t room for me to haul myself to sitting, much less
standing. I close my eyes, shutting out the harsh overhead light, and
listen for sounds of him in the rest of the room, wondering how long
I have to formulate an escape plan.

Silence. There’s no TV, no traffic from
outside, no footsteps. I can hear my heart. I can hear myself
swallowing, which hurts a bit, though maybe not as much as I would
expect from my throat being crushed in a choke hold. It makes me
wonder how long I’ve been here. If anyone has noticed I’m
gone.

I told Ryder I would come to fight night after
I got dressed, but if he’s caught up in managing his fighters
and handling his betters and watching the crowd, it might take him a
while even to realize that I’m not there yet. When you expect
things to occur, it isn’t always immediately apparent that they
haven’t.

And when you don’t expect things to occur, like being attacked
and kidnapped in your bedroom by your husband, it can be hard to
believe that they have.

My brain wants to play
woulda,
coulda, shoulda
—
I
would have been ready if I’d thought for a second he’d be
waiting, I could have let Gunner walk me in, I should have let Ryder
be late
—but I can’t let
it. I need to focus on
will
and
can
.
And I need to do it fast. Because someone’s opening the door,
and from the slow pace of the steps, I don’t think it’s
anyone coming to rescue me.

“You’re awake, love,”
Sebastian says, leaning over the edge of the tub, a plastic Rite Aid
bag hanging from his wrist. “Wonderful.”

He wears a white dress shirt, buttoned all the
way to the top. His black hair is combed, his silver cufflinks, the
ones he bought himself for his birthday last year, are polished, his
pants are pressed. Not a piece of him is out of place, as though this
were any other night: come home from work, kidnap a woman, watch the
news before bed.

He
takes me by the shoulders and adjusts me to a sitting position facing
him, my knees folded in front of me, my bound hands behind me.
Looking at me, he examines my face, picks up a strand of my dark
hair. I shiver as his finger grazes my ear. “So drab, this
color,” he says. “And your face. So much prettier without
makeup.”

I’m
not wearing any makeup, you insane asshole
,
I think as he puts his hand under my chin, titling my head toward
him. From the Rite Aid bag, he pulls out a box of hair dye—
white
lightning blond
—and a
packet of alcohol wipes.

“I’ll have you restored in no time,” he says.
“Everything will be back to the way it was. The way it should
be.”

He starts to clean my face, scrubbing under my eyes and over my nose,
and I cringe at the harsh smell of the alcohol but he only scrubs
harder, removing whatever makeup he thinks I’m wearing from my
cheeks, though there isn’t any. Whatever he’s removing,
it’s imaginary, something only he thinks is there—much
like our relationship, I suppose.

“No matter what you look like, Cassandra, no matter what you
do, no matter who you’re with or where you go, you will always
be mine,” he says. “And I will never let you forget that
again.”

He pulls down the fabric from my mouth and wipes my raw lips with the
burning alcohol, then kisses me. I wince at the sting, even more so
at the physical contact, but my back is literally against the wall,
and my movement away from him only makes him push his face harder to
mine.

My
mouth finally free, I think of yelling for help, of screaming like my
life depends on it, which it very well might. But if no one comes, if
no one hears, then all I will have done is piss off Sebastian. I’ll
have less power than I have now, and Sebastian will still have
nothing more to lose.

“Please, Sebastian,” I say. “Please, you have to
let me go.”

He smiles at me, his face crooked and as unrecognizable as a
stranger’s. When we first started dating, I liked how deeply
brown his eyes were, so dark compared to my fairer blue ones. They
never gave away what he was thinking, and I still can’t tell
now. But where I used to think that made him intriguing, now I see in
them that he is just very, very far away, hidden and out of earshot,
out of sight, like the bottom of a black hole that consumes all the
light around it. Destroying it.

He
coils one hand around my neck, holding me in place, and with the
other, he reaches into the Rite Aid bag again. He lays a large black
t-shirt and a pair of heavy, silver scissors next to him on the ledge
of the tub. “Be a good girl,” he says, picking up the
scissors, “and don’t squirm.”

He lifts the bottom of my tank top and begins to cut up the middle,
past my bra, the sound of the sharp metal fraying the thin material
like a bitterly cold wind whipping through empty tree branches,
hollow and eerie.

“Why
are you doing this?” I say. I swallow and try to concentrate on
controlling my breathing, wanting to fill my muscles with as much
oxygen as possible, summon all the strength I can.

“These
clothes, so tasteless,” he says. “I’m afraid the
pharmacy didn’t have anything stylish, but at least you’ll
be covered up.” He makes the final snip, the tip of the
scissors brushing the underside of my chin. The tank top falls open
into two halves across my chest. “Such a lovely figure,”
he says, placing the scissors back on the ledge. “I’ve so
missed seeing you.”

“You’ve
never seen me,” I say.

He clucks his tongue. “What a thing to say to your husband,”
he says, running a finger across my sternum. “All I’ve
ever done is watch over you.”

“All you’ve ever done is hurt me,” I say, my anger
unstoppable now, breaking like a tidal wave, soaking everything in
its wake. “I don’t love you, Sebastian. Get it? Do you
see me now? Our marriage is over.” I lurch toward him, my voice
low and gravelly. “You mean nothing to me and when I get the
fuck out of here I will never see you again and all you will see is
the inside of a prison cell.”

He
cackles. “Nothing is over, Cassandra, until I say so. And as
for getting, as you so crudely put it, the fuck out of here,”
he says, yanking my head up by the back of my hair, “I don’t
suggest making any assumptions.”

His
voice is so cold, so certain, that I can’t hold back my tears
any longer. Sebastian only tsks at my silent weeping, shaking his
head as if I’m a wayward child that has disappointed him. I
don’t see the slap coming, and after it happens, and he’s
cradling my head against his chest, I feel myself go somewhere else.
It’s a familiar feeling, but one I haven’t experienced in
a long time.

There’s
a pounding coming from somewhere, and at first I think it’s
just my heart, which throbs in my chest, beating like it’s on
borrowed time as I’m pressed into Sebastian’s shirt,
forced to breathe in the scent of his cologne.

And then I hear my name.

“Cassie,” Ryder says, his voice muffled from outside as
he knocks quickly on the room’s front door. “Cassie, are
you in there?”

Sebastian
releases me. Still sitting on the tub’s edge, he looks over his
shoulder at the door. He tries to muffle me with his palm as he
pushes me back against the wall of the tub, but I manage to wrap my
mouth around his hand, driving my teeth into his flesh until I taste
blood.

He jerks it away and I scream and scream and scream, wanting Ryder to
hear, the entire city of Atlanta, the whole fucking universe:
I am
here. I am alive. Help me.

“Shut
up,” Sebastian yells as he smacks me across the jaw with his
good hand. Unlike the first slap, this one wakes me up, snaps me back
to reality. And unlike all the times before, when I didn’t
holler my head off like I should have after every slap, every shove,
every blow, I don’t shut up, and the volume of my screams
competes with the sound of wood splintering and hinges snapping as
Ryder breaks down the door.

Before
Sebastian can stand, Ryder bursts into the bathroom, his eyes
blazing.

“Get away from her,” he says, springing onto Sebastian
like a hungry wolf attacks a deer, both hands on Sebastian’s
shoulders, pushing him backwards off the tub ledge, the t-shirt and
scissors and hair dye scattering under the sink.

Sebastian’s body flies into the toilet, the sound of his head
hitting the ceramic seat echoing off the tile floor, his body as limp
as a dead flower, his eyes shut. Knocked out.

Ryder kneels in front of me, taking my face in his hands.

“Are you alright?” he says. I nod as he reaches behind me
and quickly unties my wrists. “Come on,” he says, as I
step out of the tub and he pushes me through the bathroom door in
front of him, my tattered shirt falling off my arms in the rush.

And
then: Ryder yells, a string of expletives. I turn around to see him
collapsed over the sink, Sebastian behind him, crouched on the floor,
conscious now and grinning, his hand still on the scissors lodged
deep in Ryder’s lower calf, blood slowly seeping across the
white floor.

“Run,
Cassie,” Ryder says. “Get out of here. Go. I’ll
deal with this.”

But all I can see is Ryder’s bleeding leg and Sebastian’s
wild eyes and it’s like I barely hear him as adrenaline rushes
through every vein. I feel like I’m flying through the air as I
leap toward Sebastian with my fist curled, my thumb on the outside,
thinking about breaking a nose and not my hand, just like Ryder
taught me.

My
knuckles explode Sebastian’s face, the sound of the impact loud
and thick and unnatural. He yelps, holding his hands over his nose,
blood oozing between his fingers. “Did that hurt?” I say,
pulling back my arm and hitting him again. “Good.”

Sebastian
lunges toward me on his stomach, grabbing me by the ankles, and I
fall, catching myself on the edge of the tub, my feet slipping out
from under me on Ryder’s blood. Gripping my ankle with one
hand, Sebastian yanks the scissors from Ryder’s leg, and crawls
toward me, his white shirt now red.

Twisting
in a sitting position, I grunt and try to push myself up, but
Sebastian’s pull on my leg is too strong and I flail against
the tub. I kick at him but he stabs the scissors through my bare
foot, and as I scream he pulls himself on top of me, straddling me as
I writhe underneath him. He brandishes the scissors. “If you’re
not going to let me kill him,” he says, “then it’s
going to be you. Either way, love, you’re always going to be
mine.”

“Over
my dead body,” I say.

“Precisely,”
he says.

And
then, like a breeze had blown him away, Sebastian is off me, his
throat in Ryder’s hand, his arm twisted behind him against the
wall, the scissors falling from his fingers, clinking on the tile at
his feet.

“She meant over your dead body,” Ryder says.

“Leave us alone,” Sebastian says airlessly. He kicks at
Ryder’s knee, the one on the injured leg, as he thrashes and
tears at Ryder’s shirt. “She’s my wife.”