Promise (19 page)

I can smell whatever made the greasy spots on his tie. He leans down and kisses my cheek. His lips are there two seconds longer—and a bit wetter—than would be considered a platonic peck.

“Bye. I’ll see you at the club.” With that, he’s out the door, and throw myself face down on the sofa. The pressure behind my eyes has me trying to remember where I put the bottle of Advil.

He made all this fuss to come over here for five minutes and tell me I shouldn’t live with Bruce? That shit could have been sent in a dang text. I groan and let out a scream into the sofa cushion.

After a few minutes of self-pity, I get up and trudge to the bathroom.

I run a bath and try to get lost in the sound of the rushing water. I stare into the bubbles until my vision is blurry and I think of Beckett’s smile and the same tingling that settled solidly between my legs when he kissed me takes over.

I realize pursuing a new relationship with Beckett right now would definitely not put me in the column of “more stable.” The court paperwork I need to complete to petition for adoption asks about current relationships and having someone new in my life right now would not strengthen my case. Especially someone I know so little about.

I knew I should have kept a professional distance with Beckett.
I knew
.
Tomorrow, I’ll have to straighten it out.
No matter what, nothing can come before Jordan. Nothing. Not even those Monet-blue eyes or those hands that make me think that maybe there is a safe place in this world for me.

He didn’t answer my text about my scarf, so maybe that’s a good sign.

I mean, he has been out of the country with a bunch of other men for the last eighteen months. Even he said so. I’m sure he’s just crazy horny, and I was the first and most convenient target for him.

I’m sure that’s it. Tomorrow, it will be all business.

As I let the scalding water cover me, my near-white skin turns sunburn red. I’m up to my neck as I lay my forearm over my eyes, trying desperately to push out the vision of Beckett’s chipped front tooth.

STOP.

After Jeremy’s visit, I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom until three in the morning. But, I’m up and out the door with purple circles under my eyes and lead in my feet. I slog through the day and regret that I’ve obligated myself to the reading gig again. By 3:15 I’ve thought of every excuse I can to call and cancel, but I don’t seem to be able to make the call.

I stretch, and I step off bus number 23 that brought me from Windfield to the closest stop near Beckett’s loft. It’s only four o’clock, and it’s getting dark already. March is a strange month.

One day the sun is shining, and you think the daffodils are about to poke their heads through the dirt, then the next day, clouds have blocked out the sun, and you feel like it’s the start of the apocalypse. You just never know where you stand with March.

There is a thin layer of ice that crunches under every step as I make my way down the sidewalk. The heat in the bus wasn’t working. I would question whether or not I have toes if it weren’t for the stabbing pain in each step.

I didn’t think when I left the apartment for Windfield at 6 AM that what was a sunny morning could turn to an ice storm by two o’clock. The flat bottoms of my worn, leather ankle boots are worse than wearing ice skates.

I steady myself with one hand along the rough bricks of the empty buildings as I walk, or I’ll be on my butt in two seconds. I’m using the majority of my brain power concentrating on each tentative step. I’m trying to remember if I put rocks in my backpack as I lean forward a few inches to compensate for the ballast.

I let out a deep breath of relief as Beckett’s building comes into view. I set my eyes back down on the sidewalk. I’m rounding the corner and run smack into a wall of man with a filthy, blue blanket draped over his shoulders.

“Oh, damn it!” My feet slip around in figure eights under me, and my heart jumps into my throat.

It’s all flailing arms and adrenaline as I lose the battle with gravity, and my head is the last thing to hit the sidewalk with a “thud.”

Everything goes
blinkity-blinkity
starry white for a minute and the pain from the back of my head bolts down my neck as I lay flat out, staring up at the haze of mist and ice coming out of a nearly black sky.

“
Owwww
,” I whine and bring my arm over my face, accepting my prone position for the moment.

“Wow, you okay?” It must be the blue-blanket guy talking, but I have my eyes squeezed shut, trying to process the pain without crying.

“Yup.” I snip.

I’m lying. I’m not okay. I now understand what they mean when they say blinding pain.

I am also not sure if I’m happy someone else is here with me or not because I can’t see him right now. But, I can smell him.

It’s not a good smell. Sour, sweet and sweaty. Whoever this is has not seen a shower in a while.

“She okay?” A different voice. A man, he sounds like Carl Maulden with marbles in his mouth. I hear crunchy, heavy footsteps near my ear, and I squint open my good eye to see both men leaning over me, inspecting me like I’m mana from heaven.

“She’s pretty,” Stinky, the blue-blanket guy, says.

I open both eyes because I don’t like the way that sounds. When I can focus, I see the bloated face of guy number two swivel around, looking down the sidewalk one way, then the other and back again.

“Grab her hands.” His voice is garbled, I barely make out the words, but when hands grip my wrists, it comes together.

“Hey. I’m okay. Don’t—” I pull back on my hands that are now in his grasp.

“
Legs,
you get her legs.” Stinky blue blanket says to the mountain of man at my feet.

My eyes are wide open now.
This isn’t happening.

I can see the second guy is
enormous.
Like 5X enormous and professional basketball player tall. He’s grimacing, and there are only two teeth in the top of his palate, and both look like swamp water.

He’s wearing a worn, filthy parka and the pockets are bulging. His hair is hanging down around his face beyond his neck in greasy, brown tendrils. As he sucks in a breath, I see him draw in a length of his hair between his lips, and he does nothing to try to spit it back out.

“
Stop it! Let go
—” I’m screaming. The kind of scream that scrapes like barbed wire on your vocal cords.

Blue-blanket has my wrists in a grip tighter than I would expect. He looks sick—yellow eyes and brown teeth and gray skin.

I try to jerk free but the weight of my body is straining my shoulder sockets, and I get no leverage. I kick at the wall of man clutching my ankles. The two have me dangling like a hammock between them, and I now see where they’re headed. They are taking me up a stairway into an abandoned building kitty corner from Beckett’s place.

I’m jerking my head and my body as hard as I can until I see white stars in my eyes from the strain. I haven’t stopped the ragged screams. My voice is raw. I’m not screaming words anymore, just sounds.

I scan the street, desperate for another sign of life.

Desperate for Beckett.

“
Stop! Please! Please . . .”

I catch a glimpse of Beckett’s building, and I don’t see lights in Mr. Fitzgerald’s apartment. Even in my terror, I notice the glass is broken in the bottom of the windows.

I’m screaming words again. No, not words, one word.

“Beckett!! Beckett!!”
My voice cracks as tears stream out of the corners of my eyes, into my hair.

“Shut her up!” The linebacker at my feet growls.

“How can I shut her up
and
carry her?”

There is a sledgehammer pounding in my head, and I’m beginning to spin, about to vomit. The smell from the first guy gagging me and the second one isn’t much better.

“Drop her hands and shut her up! I’ll drag her.”

“
Help
!” The jabs of pain in my throat scream with me as I know this is the last scream I may get out before I’m inside that building. The scream is barely out of me before my head clunks like a brick on the cement steps. More stars dance in my eyes and pain bolts down my spine. Two more steps and I will be inside that door, and beyond that, I see a stairway going somewhere I do not want to go.

Pain shoots behind my eyes and bounces around inside my head. I know if they get me in there, I might not come out. Or, I won’t want to come out.

Blue-blanket is trying to cover my mouth with a hand so dirty, I can’t imagine where it’s been. His fingernails are grown out and encrusted with filth.

I grab at everything. I smack my frozen knuckles into the jagged, rusty door frame, and another wave of intense pain covers me, but I grab on with all my strength.

My fingers are slippery, and my grip is gone. Tears sting my cheeks, and I take one more look at the two men smiling down at me.

My eyeballs bulge with my effort. I wrap both hands just above the ankle of the disgusting man holding his hand over my mouth. I dig my fingernails in with all my might, twisting them and pulling at his leg, hoping he is still on the icy steps. I’m kicking and jerking my body furiously.

“
Owww.
Bitch!” I make one more desperate effort pulling with all my might and digging my fingernails into his leg, but it’s no use. Blue-blanket is inside the doorway, kicking at my hands, breaking my grip.

“This is going to be good.” The huge man tugs my ankles one more time, and I’m through the door, my head sliding across the floor. My hair picks up food wrappers, crumbling cement and broken glass along the way.

“I like when they fight.” The one at my ankles says to the one at my head. Then he looks down at me. “
I like
when you fight.” He smiles, and his hair is still stuck in his mouth. His face is covered in a matted, uneven beard, and all I can think of is please God, don’t let him kiss me.

My muffled sobs are quiet under the hand over my mouth, and my backpack is sliding up under my neck as I use what power I have left to kick, but the hands are like shackles. The massive monster at my feet outweighs me four times over. I can’t believe this is happening.

“I want to be first. I found her.” The skinnier guy’s voice goes up, and I can hear his excitement. Like I’m a ride at the amusement park.

“You get the first on the pussy. I get the first on her ass.”

God, please. Oh, my god.

They both drop me at once. Then it’s all hands. They are on my pants, tugging. I hear laughter and excitement. Fingers drag at the collar of my shirt and then it’s open.

Please, I want to die. Not this, please God. Just let me die.

I close my eyes and stop crying. I think of the night Steven pulled my pants down the same way. I remember he laughed, too.

Everything is muffled. I am no longer here. I’ve given myself away to darkness. Nothing matters anymore.

I wonder quickly what it would have been like with Beckett. How he would have made love to me. I know now that will never happen. Ever.

My pants are open; fingers are pinching at the outside of my bra. I choke on the vomit coming up in my mouth as a rough hand starts down inside my panties.

There is a loud bang, a crunch of metal on metal, and footsteps, loud and fast, and then the hand is off my mouth, and I hear the boom of something hitting the rusted, open, metal door and then lots of yelling. The voices layer on top of one another, I can’t decipher how many there are. I’m terrified in a way that feels it can never be completely undone.

“
Fuck
!” It is blue-blanket screaming. Then, more screaming.

I dare open my eyes to see that blue-blanket is no longer near me, and I quickly shut my eyes again when I hear the thump, thump of something heavy hitting the steps somewhere behind my head.

I twist and pull and kick and scream as mountain man picks up my feet again. I don’t bother looking at the guy at my ankles. All I can think of is fight and fight and even as my voice completely fails me, I get one foot free, then the other.

The muscles in my legs are burning, my head feels like someone is banging at my temples with a hammer, and both my boots are off. I connect my heel with something and hear a man yell. I’m hoping it’s that asshole’s balls.

I’m silently screaming, and my nose is running. I flip myself over onto my stomach. I press my hands down onto the floor, and something jagged pierces my palm. I push up, trying to get onto my knees when someone jumps over me. I quickly lace my fingers behind my head and pull myself into a ball.

I can hear a struggle going on, the sound of someone hitting someone, men yelling, swearing, but I’m too scared to look.

More profanity and grunts.

I curl and uncurl my body, trying to propel myself like an inchworm out the door without having to stand.

“
Fucker.
” It’s the first word I can make out between the grunts and smacking sounds. There is a
thud
and a
bang
and then the sound of something very large falling down close to me.

Space inside the door is tight, and I can feel the pressure from what has to be the hulk of disgusting humanity that had earlier gripped my ankles, now laying near my feet.