The Hurricane (27 page)

“What the fuck is this?” he screamed, as he threw it at me.

With shaking hands, I tried to focus on the paper. FUCK. It was an acceptance letter to the University of Edinburgh. So far, it was the furthest university away from here that I’d been accepted to. I meant to leave it with Mrs. Wallis, but I’d been so excited that I’d forgotten. Knowing Frank’s tendency to search my bag, I’d stuffed it under my pillow in a panic last night and had forgotten to take it with me this morning.

“I’m sorry, Frank. I wanted to surprise you if I got in.” I thought on my feet.

“Surprise me?” he screamed and punched me in the face this time. Now he didn’t care about humiliation, he just wanted to hurt me.

“You think that coming home to find that you’re fucking off to the other side of the country would be a nice surprise? You’re a liar and a slut and staying under my roof is the only thing that keeps you in line. You’re lucky that your mother found this and brought it to my attention, because if I had to come looking for you, I’d kill you. Do you understand?”

Knowing that Mum had shown him the letter made my chest hurt, but I nodded still looking down. If he thought that I was challenging him, this would be so much worse.

“Answer me!” he spat in my face, as he painfully grabbed my jaw to make me look at him. The pain of my mother’s betrayal was so much worse than enduring Frank, though.

“You never learn do you, little bitch? No matter how many times I teach you this lesson, no matter how much I’ve done to replace your father; you repay my kindness with shit like this.” He grabbed me by my shirt and slapped me around the face again. My eye felt like it was going to explode, and I was pretty sure that my cheek bone was fractured. There was blood running from the side of my head, and I knew this time it was going to be really bad, because he usually avoided my face. That he no longer cared whether my injuries could be covered up made me more afraid. He was staring at my chest and breathing hard through his nose, and I realised that in pulling me about he’d ripped my shirt open completely.

“You think I don’t know why you’re really trying to leave? For years, you’ve been throwing yourself at me, and because I wouldn’t give you what you want, you’re going to whore yourself out like all those other bitches, letting college boys crawl up inside you.”

I didn’t get a chance to disagree before the boot went into my stomach, and I coughed out blood. I was trying really hard to stay conscious, but I’d taken so many hits to the head that it was becoming difficult not to pass out. Maybe it was better to be out of it right now, and God knows I wished for it, but unconscious meant vulnerable, and I was vulnerable enough already. Yanking the sides of my shirt, he ripped it open completely and grabbed one of my breasts, squeezing painfully. I couldn’t help but cry out, and he smiled with satisfaction.

“If you’re so hell bent on getting fucked, then by all means I’ll give you what you want. Maybe you won’t be so quick to slut yourself out when you see how a real man and not a boy fucks.”

“NO, FRANK!” I screamed, shimmying backwards on my elbows away from him as quickly as I could. The pain was forgotten with the dawn of understanding of what would happen next.

“Please, no, Frank,” I begged. “I’m still a virgin. You’re my stepfather.”

“Like fuck you are, princess,” he roared with laughter. He’d unbuttoned his trousers and was pulling them down when I pushed myself up and tried to make a run for it. Another punch to my stomach landed me straight back on the carpet. I was so winded that I could barely breathe. He was holding down both my wrists with his full weight pressed on top of me when he bit down hard on my bra-covered nipple.

“Look at you, you little whore. I can tell you’re getting off on this.”

“No, no, no,” I begged, as the tears were running down my face uninhibited.

I was terrified, more afraid than I’ve ever been before. Bruises fade, cuts heal, but what he was about to do would stay with me forever. With one last burst of adrenaline, I screamed at the top of my voice then yelled, “Mum, help me!”

This made Frank laugh even harder, and he looked at my bedroom door waiting for her to answer. As she appeared in the doorframe, she had a complete view of my room, and it was clear that Frank was about to rape her only daughter. There was still nothing in those eyes, though. It was like she was a ghost.

“Mum, please help me,” I begged. “Please, please.” I kept begging, but I was pleading with an empty shell. Finally, she bowed her head and closed the door quietly with an audible click. I heard her shuffling footsteps as she walked away. That was the moment that changed everything. What mother would knowingly abandon her child to be raped by a monster? Maybe something in Mum really did break when Dad died, but I no longer cared. The second that she shut the door behind me, we were done. As far as I was concerned, I no longer had a mother.

“See, even your own mother agrees that you need to be taught a lesson,” he mocked as he punched me again. As soon as I was winded, he reached under my skirt and ripped off my panties. Then he pinned down my thighs as he moved between them. Coming around enough to fight him, I screamed as loudly as I could as I bucked and squirmed against him. If there was anything that I could do to get away, I did it. I slapped him, punched him, and even dug my nails into his face until they started to break off. It only enraged him further and earned me more of a beating. My face was a bloody mess, but I didn’t care about anything but what he was about to do.

“You little fucking bitch,” he screamed as he pinned down my arms.

“Please, Frank. Don’t do this. I won’t try to leave again, I promise. My dad wouldn’t do this,” I begged one last time.

“Well, he’s not fucking here, is he?”

He looked at me with such pure, evil malice that I was sure he was going to kill me when he was done. He pushed himself roughly inside me, and I screamed as I ripped beyond repair. He buried his nose in the crook of my neck, and grunted with every thrust. I felt the pain and burn of each one, and it was excruciating. This sick fuck was taking away something that I’d never get back, and he was getting off on it. A few groans later, and he collapsed on top of me done.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you,” he told me licking my neck. “Maybe this is a lesson you need to learn more than once.”

The doorbell rang and I heard my mum’s voice as she answered whoever was at the door. He pulled out of me sharply, and it hurt just as much as it did going in. He used my skirt to wipe the blood off his cock, before zipping himself up.

“Just remember to keep your fucking mouth shut,” he reminded me and punched me again. Five minutes too late, I got my wish, and everything went black.

I OPENED MY EYES and tried to scream when I felt a hard body next to me. Nothing came out because I couldn’t breathe. When I realised that it was O’Connell, I stopped trying to scream, but it didn’t help with my breathing. I was hyperventilating, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Searching around for my candles, I panicked when I remembered that they were all gone. My lungs were sucking in oxygen too quickly. I knew that I was going to pass out soon, when O’Connell lifted me onto his lap and wrapped himself around me. His Irish lilt soothed as he held me close and gently whispered, “breathe, baby. Just listen to me breathing in and out and do the same. I’m the scariest motherfucker you’ve ever met, and nothing is going to get to you without getting to me first.”

He did this for five minutes. Just reassuring me how brutal and bad he was and how he’d destroy anything and anyone who tried to hurt me again, and I believed him. As soon as my breathing was under control, I collapsed in his embrace with a sob.

“I’m so sorry,” I cried into his chest.

He wiped away my tears with his big hands and a sad smile.

“It was making love that triggered it, wasn’t it?” he asked, sadly.

“That, the fight, your mum. They’re all triggers, and I guess it just caught up with me.” He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t stop kissing or rocking me, either. His touch worked so much better than anything else had because everything that he said was right. He was the scariest person that I’d ever met, and there was no way that Frank would stand a chance against him. O’Connell loved me, but I knew that for him to really love me then he had to know all of me. That included my last deep, dark and dirty secret. If he still stayed after knowing the ugly truth, then I could finally believe that this was forever.

WITH A DEEP BREATH, I told my horrible ugly story, dreading the look of revulsion on his face I feared I’d see when I was done.

“What happened afterwards? How did you escape?” he asked quietly.

He was still stroking my hair, so I took comfort in that.

“It was the police at the door. A neighbour heard me screaming and called them. They told me they were suspicious when they saw the gouges on Frank’s cheek. They arrested him, and took me to the hospital. My face was banged up. He’d fractured my cheekbone, cracked two of my ribs, and tore me up so badly between my legs that I needed stitches. The hospital gave me STD tests and the morning after pill, but there was nothing else they could do except give me pain relief while I healed. I turned eighteen while I was still in hospital, so I was able to discharge myself without being turned over to social services. I already had an escape plan set up with one of my teachers, so I took it and never went back. I stayed with Mrs. Wallis recovering for a couple of months, then when my student loan came through I used enough to buy some cheap clothes and left for university.”

“Why didn’t you press charges?” he asked, but I couldn’t detect any rebuke in his voice.

“I gave the police my statement and told them truthfully what had happened, and they had the results of the rape kit with Frank’s DNA. I guess I didn’t trust the system anymore, though. If I stuck around, I knew he’d find a way out of the charges. Either that or he’d kill me first. I never told the police where I was going because I couldn’t risk him finding me. Frank was in the police force years ago, and he must still have connections. They took the university acceptance letter with her address on as evidence and apart from Mrs. Wallis, that’s the only thing tying me to this place. For the first couple of weeks, I was terrified that he’d memorised the address on the letter, but he never showed up at her house. Mrs. Wallis found out a little later that he’d been remanded in custody for a while, but she doesn’t know any more than that.”

“Do you still speak to her?” he asked.

“Not often, but she likes it that way. She thinks the less contact we have with each other, the less chance there is of Frank finding me.”

“Do you think he’s still looking for you?”

“If he’s free then I’m sure of it. Frank was obsessed with controlling me. If he can’t be free then there’s no way that he’d want me to be, either.”

“You can’t live the rest of your life waiting for that day to come, baby. Either you let me find him and take care of this, or we put it behind us, because if he ever does come here, I’m not the only one who’ll make him pay. I can’t live with you going through life afraid. I’d rather take care of him once and for all than have you scared.”

“I won’t let him hurt you, O’Connell. I’ll run first.”

“You promised me that you wouldn’t run again. Besides, there’s no place that you could go that I wouldn’t find you. You want to take care of me? Then don’t ever fucking leave me, even if you think it’s for my own good, because that will hurt me more than anything that happens in the ring.”

I nodded in agreement and rested my head back against his chest, exhausted.

“I hate these dreams. Everything in my life is going great but then I have these dreams and it’s like he’s reminding me that it’s all temporary and it will be all over when he finds me.”

“I don’t think that at all,” O’Connell told me. “Do you know what I think, sunshine? A person only has room inside them for so much. Last night was the best night of my life. Good stuff likes that takes up a fair bit of space in your head and your heart. So, this is just your body’s way of getting rid of all that poison to make room for the good stuff.”