PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (39 page)

Chapter 30

Angel

I’m not sure how long
my stepfather had been abusing me. The time prior to the accident was a
complete blur, and probably always would be. When I first saw Roger in my
hospital room afterwards, I didn’t know who he was…

…But I knew that I
was very afraid.

I was high on
morphine the first night he came to my bedside, my mind firmly half in and half
out of this world. It would be weeks before I could talk, and months before I’d
take my first walk across the hospital room. Maybe he thought I was damaged
forever… Maybe he thought I wouldn’t remember, or that I didn’t realize what
was happening to me. The sick fuck thought he could get away with it.

The bastard did what
evil men always do.

He took advantage.

Thank god that I was
in a moderately monitored hospital room. Nurses were in and out, keeping a lazy
eye on me but never around enough to rattle his confidence. Still, I knew that
if I’d gone into outpatient care at home, he probably would have been far more
dangerous.

But that still didn’t
stop him from doing what he could get away with. He
saw
me. He sometimes took
pictures
of me. He
touched
me, splintering my
fragile, drugged mind into shattered, dirty pieces.

My memories didn’t
ever really come back, and I know it’s because of
him.
My bastard stepfather descended upon me while my brain was
trying to put everything back together. If I hadn’t been so focused on
forgetting what he was doing to me, maybe I would have pulled my former life
back... but while the memories were gone, so too were most of the nights that
he came to visit me, his mind sick with desire.

He didn’t leave
marks. No tell-tale hickies pocked my skin, and no scratches or obvious signs
of abuse were left for the right nurse to discover.

I kept quiet. I was
too weak. When I started to show signs of life, he made one thing very clear.
If I told anyone about our
relationship
,
he’d kill me.

The safety of the
hospital couldn’t last forever. Roger made it crystal clear how much my medical
bills cost this family, and how I was going to repay the debt…

However, I got a
lucky break.

At the time, Roger
worked as a roundabout on a freighter. The life was rough, paid very well, and
took him away for small stretches: three weeks on, one week off. It just so
happened that my first night back coincided with an off-season shift too
lucrative for him to pass up, and so he couldn’t bring his sexual tension with
me to its inevitable conclusion.

Mom kept me on my
anxiety medication. She told me that I babbled “nonsense” about abuse while I
was under, but I couldn’t blame her for not taking me seriously. After all,
people say crazy stuff under medication… even if sometimes it’s dangerously
true.

From the beginning, I
started fighting the effects the drugs had on me. In brief moments of clarity,
I knew that the clock was ticking, and I’d have no strength to fight him when
he finally came back for me. By the time his last week was almost over, my
strength was enough that I could concentrate… and I knew what I had to do.

While Mom was gone,
driving hours away to the docks to pick him back up, I sprang into action. I’d
packed my breakaway bag, snuck into her room and stole away my identification
and my prescription refill – just in case.

I abandoned that place
in the dead of night. With my anxiety temporarily out of the picture, thanks to
the drugs, I could pull back some of my former memories. There was a place, in
the back of my head, somewhere safe and secure… a place called Riverton.
Somehow, I knew that there was refuge there, and from that I could figure the
rest out along the way.

I hitchhiked towards
it, eventually coming across Old Greg. He seemed startled to see such a young
girl on the road in the night, but something in the old man endeared him to me.
While he treated me to late dinner at a diner, I broke down in tears, leaving
out most of the details.

I didn’t tell him I
had been sexually abused.

But I told him that I
had been in an accident, that I couldn’t remember much of who I was, and that my
family was dangerous. That I would
die
before
I let myself go back there.

He took pity on me, putting me up in his bar…

Old Greg would be so
angry if he knew I came back here, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of
looking him in the eye after the way I’d left. He was so kind to me… Kinder
than I ever deserved. Maybe I’d head out there in a few weeks once I’d settled
in. He deserved an apology.

“You going to eat, or
just sit there thinking?”

Mom had brought me a
bowl of chips and some ranch dressing. I hadn’t so much as touched it since I’d
come to the table.

“Go ahead and eat up,” Mom smiled. “After you’re done,
go pretty yourself up, company’s coming.”

That pit came back into my stomach.
I’d been worried about that all afternoon… it had been a festering
feeling, eating away inside me.

But I knew better
than to cross Mom.

She had taken me back
in.

She had given me a
roof, and food.

Well
… I looked down at the plate.
Some food.

“Hurry up in there,”
mom shouted.

“Okay, Mom,” I
answered, forcing a cheerful smile across my face.

“Thanks a ton, Hon,”
she answered.

After that, I was
left in the quiet.

The crunching of the
chips shattered the silence with every crispy bite. Agonizing, piercing chomps
controlled my attention, ringing out in the quiet like a rhythmic, mounting
growl of danger.

When I was done, I
set the dish in the sink and found Mom. She was sitting in a recliner, watching
some old silent film on the living room TV.

“Over there,” she
motioned with a wrist.

I followed her
gesture and lifted a package off of an end table. It wasn’t particularly large
or heavy, but it seemed ominous to me.

“Bring that over
here.”

I did as I was told.

Mom raised her saggy
arm, muted the television, and turned to face me.

“Open it up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s not to
understand? I got you a present.”

I wasn’t sure how to
respond.

So I nodded, pulling
the tape off the box and opening it up. Turning it over, a small orange bottle
fell into my hand.

“See there? Momma’s
gonna take care of you doll. I got you your medicine.”

I turned the bottle
over, eyeing the little pink pills inside. I hadn’t seen these things in years.

“I know how anxious
you get… The depression. All those panic attacks? You’ve been so high strung
since you came back, dear.”

“I don’t like the way
these things make me feel, mom. They make me a zombie.”

“I don’t want any
back talk. We have company tonight and you’re going to be on your best
behavior. You take two of those or you can get out,” she said, pointing toward
the door.

Chapter 31

Trent

The address wasn’t in
Riverton – it was hours and hours away, another quiet spot called Point’s
Hallow.

My cell signal was
shit
out here. When I finally arrived at
the village, I accidentally crossed a small bridge and passed the entire place
up, expecting to find it just beyond the next bend. It was only after fifteen
minutes of nothingness, driving through trees and wilderness, that I realized
I’d probably missed the place altogether.

Turning around in the
fading light of day, I backtracked to the bridge. Standing guard at this side,
apparently marking the edge of Point’s Hallow, was a seafood restaurant. With
nothing else in sight, it commanded the eye from its perch, raised on stilts
over the river. Painted along the side was the name:
Jack’s.

Some landmark
, I thought to myself.

Back across the
bridge, I investigated. None of the roads were marked, making my job tougher
than it needed to be. The population couldn’t have been any more than maybe
eighty or a hundred people, judging by the sparse houses. Almost nobody was
around, and I didn’t want to start banging on doorknobs…

The single person I
saw wandering about, a woman in smeared overalls with ratty hair, looked at me
suspiciously as I pulled up and flicked up my helmet visor.

“Is this
Point’s Hallow?
”

“Who’s askin’?”

“I’m looking for a
girl. Name of Angel.”

“Angel?” She laughed,
exposing a few missing teeth. This place was
seriously
in the sticks. “You must be a friend of hers!” She was
suddenly suspicious again, eying me strangely. “
Are
you a friend of hers?”

“I am,” I confirmed
confidently.

The woman peered at
me a moment longer, and then nodded. “Good. Yeah, she’s here. Got back into
town a few days ago. You know where to find her?”

“Willow Grove Drive,”
I told her.

“Yep! That’s it, her
and her parents…you know how to find it?, don’t’cha?”

“I’m from out of
town,” I bluntly explained.

“Right,” she cackled,
sizing me up on the motorcycle. “Might’ve noticed by now, they ain’t no street
signs… No fancy
gee pee usss
for us
folks in Point’s Hallow, we don’t need ‘em… anyway, here’s what you do…”

She rattled off
directions, involving a handful of turns that apparently centered on particular
trees and piles of scrap. “You got that?”

“I do. You’re really
helping me out here.”

“Great. Tell ‘er that
‘Tricia said ‘hi!’”

“You’ve got it,
ma’am,” I nodded.

She positively
swooned as I kicked back into gear and drove towards the house.

Her parents.

Old Greg had said she
was in danger. He’d spent a few minutes telling me what a piece of shit Angel’s
stepfather Roger was before hurrying me down the road.

But maybe he wasn’t
the only piece of shit in this town.

I paused, letting the
engine rumble as it idled between my thighs.

My thoughts reflected
back to what Old Greg had said. Sure, I’d known a lot of that myself, but it
was easy for me to justify how I treated people. When someone
else
explained it, someone who barely
knew me…it sent a shiver up my spine.

You take what you think belongs to you.

You don’t accept ‘no.’

You CAN’T accept ‘no.’

I shook my head.

This wasn’t my
decision. It was hers.

I shuddered.

No. Extenuating circumstances.

My asshole of a
manager sent her away. He filled her head with complete bullshit. She never
would have left it I was there. I needed to let her know how I felt.

And if she didn’t
want to come with me, I’d leave her… Once I knew she was safe and sound back at
Old Greg’s bar, away from the danger.

With a heavy heart, I
continued on my way. Tricia’s directions had been a little on the bizarre side,
but she led me the right way. After a couple of turns, I spotted the silent
tire swing, dangling from a tree in the front yard.

I remembered Old
Greg’s words from before, when he’d given me the address:
If you pass the tree with the old tire swing, you’ve gone too far.

A dirt road was to my
side, heading into the trees. I turned onto it, driving as quietly as possible
through the shadows until I saw it.

It was just as Old
Greg had said.

The green house was
in even worse shape than the Riverton bar.
 
A window was busted out; the roof was caving in from a fallen branch.
With the sun set and the shadows growing, the place looked like it had come straight
out of a horror film.

Angel’s HERE?

My shaken confidence
exploded into a blaze of conviction.

No
, I thought to myself.

This isn’t good enough for her.

No matter what happens…

I killed the engine
and kicked down the stand, parking next to an old truck on the edge of the
street.

She deserves better than this.

And I’m gonna give it to her.

Every step I took
towards the front door, my fresh insecurities burned away. With each heavy
stride forward, my doubts, my fears, everything inside that told me that I
might
not
be good enough for her
faded away.

It all burned to ash
in my throat, and the ash blew away in the wind.
Here I am, filthy and contorted king that I am, ready to make a change.

I raised my fist to
knock at the door.

That’s when I heard
my Angel scream.