Totaled (20 page)

Liam sat in the back seat next to me while Mom drove us to the hospital, holding the coiled up beach towel underneath my broken wrist, which was quickly turning all kinds of purple.

“I’m sorry, Liam,” I whispered, finally able to get the words out without crying. “You told me not to do it. I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. I’m so sorry.”

“Bree,” I heard my mother say from the driver’s seat in front of us, “Liam is fine. It’s okay. Stop worrying about him all the time. You’re the one who broke your arm. Sweet girl, you have got to learn to worry about yourself sometimes. It’s okay to put yourself first.”

“Tá grá agam duit, Liam,” I said softly.

“Tá grá agam duit, Bree.”

I woke up, rubbing my wrist right at the spot where I had broken it falling from the swingset all those years ago. Lifting my head, I saw stains of wetness from my tears saturating my pillow case. I missed her. I missed her comforting touch and soothing words. I missed my mother. It had been a long time since I’d dreamt about her. I almost couldn’t recall the details of her face until I looked at pictures of her. And I couldn’t remember what her voice sounded like at all, except in my dreams. I’d needed to hear her tonight. I rested my head and closed my eyes, hoping to dream of her again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

DREW

As I sat there staring straight ahead through my windshield, I allowed the memories of that night to flood into my mind. They always held residence in my head, but now I unlocked the door for them to seep out like a wave of fog creeping slowly along the floor, finding their way to my feet and climbing up my body until they consumed me. It was time for me to share that night with someone and Mick was asking to help carry that burden. I wanted to say it. I needed to say the words.

“The night that my father died was almost the worst night of my life, until four days later when my mother died. I want to tell you about it all. I just hope it doesn’t change the way that you see me.”

“Nothing will change the way I see you, Drew. I’m here. Just get it all out. I won’t interrupt you. Just talk until you don’t want to talk anymore.”

I looked at Mick when he spoke, and I believed him. So I began.

I told him my story.

***

I will never
ever
forgive myself for that night. The morning that changed me forever, I kissed my mother’s cheek as soon as she walked in the door from her shift at the hospital. Soon after, I left to go on my run. I usually ran four to five miles around the trails, then went to the gym to train for a few hours. I was twenty-three years old and still lived at home, mainly because I felt like she needed me. And I needed her. Not in a mama’s boy, too-lazy-to-get-a-job-and-get-his-own-place, mooching-off-his-parents-for-as-long-as-possible kind of way. I was a devoted son, helping the family business whenever needed and training my heart out, hoping to one day achieve my dreams of professional fighting. I was a son trying to really make something of myself. And who would watch out for her if I was gone?

Nobody.

Most days, I tried to jog home from the gym to change, eat, and head to the bar. My mother was usually still asleep when I got there, but that day she wasn’t asleep. When I rounded the corner of my street and saw both cars in the driveway, an instant sense of dread consumed me. I held the nausea and anxiety back as I picked up my pace from a jog to a full out sprint. I could hear him yelling at her before I even opened the front door. He was calling her awful names, blaming her for the pub’s shortcomings, blaming her for all of their money troubles, blaming her for everything.

Her screams reached my ears and it felt like knives stabbing into my heart. When I twisted the front doorknob with shaky hands and walked in the house, I entered a war zone. The coffee table was shattered, broken glass everywhere. An entire casserole dish of whatever my mother had dutifully prepared for supper that evening had been thrown against the wall of the dining room; chunks of food still fell from the wallpaper onto the floor. The television was on, blaring some awful game show, but the screen was cracked. I vaguely recall seeing bloodstains on the shag carpet as I ran down the hallway to the master bedroom. With each and every smacking sound of his hands and blow of his fists, I winced, willing my legs to get me there faster.

I slammed open the door and saw him. The monster that was my father was straddling my mother, who was lying on her back, so bloody that I hardly recognized her. His right fist came at her head, followed by his left, and repeated over and over and over again. She wasn’t even fighting him anymore. I lunged at his back, catching his punching hand in mine before he could connect again. He turned his face to mine; the image of his enraged scowl will haunt me until the day I die.

He smirked, recognizing that it was me, and even laughed a little in my face. He looked as if he was possessed. I screamed for him to stop and let her go. He turned his fists to me and I saw red, only red. I heard nothing but muffled, blurry noise, like I was underwater. The image of the bedroom rapidly morphed into me staring down a tunnel, and at the end of it stood my father. I gathered every memory of every pain this man inflicted from the deep archives of my brain and turned it into fuel.

I hit him.

Wailed on him.

With every connection of my fist to his skin, every crunch of my bones against his, I felt empowered. I felt like an animal that had been caged up for years and was just set free. I released all of my angst and hurt and turned it around on him. Every insult, every snide remark, every smack upside the head, every rude comment spewed to me for years was bouncing back to him in full fury. I could taste the metallic flavor of my own blood in my mouth from the few hits he was able to land and I just couldn’t get enough of it.

I have no idea how long I fought him. I have no idea how many punches I threw or how many times my elbow landed.

I. Just. Couldn’t. Stop.

I snapped.

I started hitting him with every ounce of strength I could muster and didn’t stop hitting him until I physically couldn’t lift my arms anymore.

I was told afterward, during my interrogation with the police, that I had broken his nose, fractured his right orbital bone, shattered his right ocular globe, fractured his skull in three places, broken his jaw, dislocated his left arm at his shoulder, and broken five ribs, one of which punctured his left lung. I don’t know when he died exactly, but I know that I killed him. I killed my own father because he was killing my mother.

I called 911, but I couldn’t even talk through the sobs. All I remember is watching my beaten, close-to-death mother being rushed away in the ambulance as I was placed in handcuffs and loaded into the back of the police cruiser. It was almost twelve hours later, when I was finally released, that I was able to check on her in the hospital. Walking into that critical care unit and entering the room to see my bruised and swollen mother with tubes down her throat to help her breathe rocked me to the core. I was overwhelmed with guilt and sorrow for this woman who did nothing but love and was given nothing but grief and abuse for it. I would’ve given my life for hers in a heartbeat.

But that wasn’t the plan.

I sat at her bedside for two days. At first, the nurses and doctors tried to get me to leave during shift changes, but I firmly and adamantly told them all to go fuck themselves. I was never leaving her again. I didn’t eat. I didn’t shower or even change clothes. I don’t even think I slept. I just sat and held her hand and prayed. I prayed a lot, like I had never prayed before.

The doctors came in twice a day to see her and rant their medical mumbo jumbo to me, none of which I understood. Intracranial bleeding, brain swelling, and fractured ribs were a few things that stood out. The nurses were sweet and tried to engage me in conversation when they cleaned her wounds and changed her dressings, but I couldn’t have been less interested. I just wanted her back, smiling, full of life and love.

It was sometime after 4:00 am on the third day of my bedside vigil when I was startled by alarms and beeping, quickly followed by multiple medical personnel rushing into her room, yelling things and ripping open equipment. I was pushed out of the way at first but strong-armed my way back to her, close enough to hold her hand. They pumped and pounded on her chest and inflated a balloon of air into her lungs all while pushing medicine after medicine into her IV line. I was losing her and I could do nothing but watch. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so helpless. They tried for exactly twenty-nine minutes to save her life. I was holding her hand when she slipped away.

She was gone.

She was gone, and he had taken her from me.

That evil, insecure bastard killed my mother in front of my eyes, and then I killed him. At twenty-three years old, I was an orphan.

And a murderer.

Fortunately, my mother had taken photographs of every injury he ever inflicted upon her and entrusted them to a lawyer friend of hers as evidence. I supposed she’d been trying to build up a case for a little while, gathering the courage to finally leave him. She was always so scared of him bringing true the promises to kill her or me if she ever said anything to anyone. Between that way-too-thick file, at least two separate documented visits from policemen to our house for “domestic disturbances” over the years, and multiple neighbors’ statements to the police, including the one eyewitness who saw me running into the house well after the noisy fight started, law enforcement never brought any charges against me.

The physical evidence throughout the house and my alibi of being at the gym when I was helped the investigators see that entire night as self-defense gone bad. I will never forget the look on Officer Abraham’s face that night as he placed the handcuffs on my wrists. As a regular at the pub for years, he knew my father well. He knew everything. He shook his head back and forth with pity for me, knowing good and well that I shouldn’t have ever been cuffed. But he had a job to do and I understood, despite wanting to follow my mother to the hospital.

My mother passed away due to injuries inflicted by my father. My father died due to injuries inflicted by me. Regardless, as their sole heir, I got everything. I received the full benefit of my mother’s life insurance policy, which she had through her nursing job and was four times her yearly salary, roughly $250,000 total. I also was able to sell the pub for about $450,000, which was really good considering the amount of outstanding debt my father had the business entwined in. Luckily, we owned the building outright and the pub was nestled in a prime real estate location in the heart of downtown Phoenix. I settled all of my father’s debts and had started the process of closing on our house. I could never go back there anyway.

The majority of my mother’s medical expenses were covered since she had excellent insurance coverage through her job and selling her car was easy enough. I gave my father’s car to a guy that I trained at the gym with who needed it more than me.

The most shocking revelation was when I discovered the secret bank account that my mother had secured in my name. The family lawyer that I hired assisted me with tying up all of the financial loose ends. Apparently my mother had been putting away money since early in my childhood, unbeknownst to my father. I had a substantial college fund and over $150,000 in CD accounts that had just been rolling over term after term, earning interest. In comparison to other guys my age, I was a rich man. Though I wouldn’t hesitate to forfeit every last cent if it meant not feeling this pain anymore.

It’s been three months, one week, and two days since my mother passed away and my life changed forever. I had no choice but to leave Phoenix. There was nothing but pain and heartache there.

***

I stopped talking and found myself in a sort of trance, brought back into the present by Mick shifting in his seat and clearing his throat to break the awkward silence.

“So there you have it. All of it. You can see why I needed a fresh start. I just thought, with a new place and a new life, maybe I could start over. I thank God every day that I broke down on the side of that highway. I thank him that he brought you into my life, Mick.”

“I’m thankful for that too, son. And I will always be here, no matter what,” he assured me. “No matter what.”

I started the car and pulled back out onto the road, heading towards the beach house. Once we got there, Mick turned in almost right away and I was relieved. I was happy he was here and relieved that if someone knew my secrets, it was him. The day had left me both physically and emotional exhausted and I needed to unwind and rest. I made my way into my master bathroom and took my t-shirt off. The peas, no longer frozen, needed to go back into the freezer. I carefully unwrapped the bandage and rolled it back up. My ribs and abs looked pulverized and I felt stupid for subjecting myself to that needless abuse. I looked at my chest in the mirror, recalling her face when she noticed the wording over my heart. I wanted to hurt whoever broke her heart. I wanted to hold her in my arms and tell her that I would never break her heart, but that would be a lie. I couldn’t guarantee that. And that’s why I had to stay away.

I lay down in my bed, hoping that my night wouldn’t be restless and plagued with nightmares.

Chapter Twenty-Three

BREE

I felt as if I’d only actually slept for twenty minutes. This day, shrimp festival day, which was historically my favorite day of every year, was destined to suck. I couldn’t believe what had happened the evening before with Drew. Seeing his bruises made my own heart physically constrict with pain. I wanted to take all of his hurt away. When he finally let me help, I felt so bonded and connected with him. Just the simple act of wrapping a bandage around him had me nearly panting with desire. His skin was warm and smooth under my touch, his sinuous muscles taunt and contracting slightly under my fingertips. His scent was strong and masculine, sharp and clean, and so enticing. Wrapping my arms around him felt so intimate and right. And the way he held my hands, firmly but gently at the same time—I didn’t want him to ever let go. I could feel that my every move was affecting him the way it was affecting me and it was a huge turn on. Even more of a turn on was that he was standing still, so vulnerable, and I was one hundred percent in control.