True North (25 page)

I texted back.

I’m ok … just give me some time. Love you.

I set my cell on my nightstand.

Had my dad really just forbidden me to see Jake? I couldn’t wrap my head around that one. And why did I care? He’d just called me a whore and a slut! What the hell was happening?

“
OLIVIA!” my dad shouted.

“
LIVIE, JUST STAY UPSTAIRS!” Nate yelled right after.

A terrible crash followed, and my heart started pounding in my chest. Surging with a sudden burst of adrenaline, I scrambled out of my bedroom, a sense of panic overwhelming me. “NATE!”

I bolted downstairs and saw my dad holding a Louisville Slugger over Nate, who was down on the floor. The lamp was smashed beside him and the table had been overturned.

“
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I screamed at my dad.

“
Impudent pup wants a fight, I’ll give him one,” my dad threatened.

“
Dad, nobody wants to fight with you! That’s Nate! What the hell has gotten into you?” I stooped beside Nate, putting myself between him and the baseball bat.

“
You’re not leaving me, Olivia.” He steadied the bat as if he were thinking of hitting me too.

“
I liked it better when you were ignoring us,” I muttered.

“
WHAT?” He scowled. “If you have something to say, spit it out! Unless you’re a pussy like your fuck partner.”

The understanding of what Nate had been saying in the truck on the way back hit me like a cinder block. I had been the most well behaved little girl and teenager in history. I thought I was being myself. And I was, but I didn’t realize the puppet master that was my absent-couldn’t-have-cared-less father was really pulling the strings. At least the ones in his mind. I was home at curfew, never drank or smoked and never had boyfriends. Nate played sports, got good grades and had worked with Caleb since he was a teenager. Dad had us all under control, and he liked that. Now he’d lost all of it at once.

“
Nothing you think you feel gives you the right or the authority to treat Nate or Jake or me like you are right now!” I got into my dad’s face. I was too angry to even be afraid of the bat anymore. Nate was back on his feet, looking like he was ready to jump in between us at any moment. “You were a lousy dad. You were never home, and when you did come around you were usually nothing but nasty. I always dreamed of having your acceptance, of having you love me. I used to think maybe if I cooked good enough, you’d come home for dinner … or if I did all the laundry and folded your clothes you’d see how much I missed you!”

“
You better stand down little girl,” he crowed.

“
No! No way! This has been a long time coming. When we were younger you raised your belt against Nate. I’d pound my fists into the door, crying and pleading with you to stop, but you wouldn’t. I hated you for it. But then he got bigger than you so your tactics changed. You never gave us love. You were too busy manipulating and controlling us. And I know why you hated us—because we look just like Mom!”

“
Don’t you say another word.” My dad gripped my arm hard and gave me a strong shake.

“
WE WERE HAPPY WHEN YOU WERE GONE!” I shouted in his face, my adrenaline pumping hard.

Nate pulled my dad’s hand from me and shoved him into the wall. “Don’t you touch my sister!”

“
She’s my daughter!” he spat back.

“
If anyone raised her it was me, you son-of-a-bitch.” Nate planted himself between us.

I felt driven to say all the things I’d kept bottled up over the years. To force my dad to see what kind of person he’d become. “I used to crave your attention, Dad, your affection … and even more so, your acceptance. I’ve always loved you, even when you showed no hint of that love back. You gave us a house to live in and fed us, but other than that, there was no difference between you and Mom.” Hot, ugly, angry tears filled my eyes. “You never loved us. You may have never even loved her. But you sure cared about what the folks around town thought of you. That’s the only reason we weren’t completely homeless orphans. Maybe you roughed Mom up some too or showed her your true colors and that’s why she left you!”

Maybe I should have stopped before then; maybe I shouldn’t have had to prove we were right. Maybe I wanted him to know we were better than that. Maybe I wanted to finally say how I’d always felt.

I was wounded and sore in every way possible. I missed my mom, which inevitably always happened whenever she was brought up, no matter what the context; my dad had ripped Jake to shreds, and I wanted to rip him apart back; and he’d hurt my brother, and for that I hated him.

In that moment my world exploded around me.

Something happens when you experience something so dreadful that you shut off the volume in your mind. Everything seems unreal, and every motion you make is as if you’re moving underwater. Maybe it’s the same shock that mice and other animals go into when they’re attacked and about to be eaten alive.

Dad hit Nate so hard in the shoulder with the bat I heard his bone crack, and he crumpled to the floor. My dad lifted the bat over his head to hit him again, and I could imagine my dead brother bleeding out at my feet.

“
NO!” I sprang at the bat.

My dad and I fell into the couch. It flipped over backward from the impact. I felt my head hit the wood floor so hard I saw double.

He tossed the bat and leapt on top of me, trapping me with his legs and putting his fingers over my throat. “I’ll teach you not to say another word!”

His fingers pressed hard, and I felt my oxygen cut off. He just stared at me, like I was a television set. My lungs started to burn. I kicked out my legs, but I couldn’t connect with anything. I punched, pulled and scratched at him, trying to reach for point of pain, like his nose or eyes, but somehow he was eluding me. A black edge formed around my vision.

A huge noise erupted from somewhere in the room and, a second later, my dad’s form literally sailed off of me and to the other side of the room, where he slumped against the wall.

I felt a blast of cold night air, and Jake was there, lifting me into a sitting position. I gasped for air, pulling every bit of it I could into my lungs!

He didn’t speak, he just cradled me.

Josh and Caleb were helping Nate get on a stretcher while the police handcuffed my dad and read him his rights. Pulsing blue and red lights flashed over the dull living room walls.

I tried to talk. Tried to say I was going to be sick, but I still didn’t have enough breath to do it, so I pulled to the side and puked all over the rug.

I woke up surrounded by four white walls and that horrible over-sterilized smell. I was hooked up to an IV drip, a heartbeat monitor, and had an oxygen tube in my nose. My head hurt wicked.

“
Jake?” I was so hoarse I didn’t think I’d made a sound.

But he stirred and opened his eyes. He was sitting flush up against the bed in a big armchair. He touched my legs carefully, gently as if I might break. “Hey, baby, you’re awake.”

“
Are we in the hospital?” I groaned. I hated hospitals.

“
Yeah. You suffered a pretty bad concussion.” He petted my leg. “I have to let the doctor know you’re awake.”

“
Wait! How’s Nate?” The image of my dad bludgeoning him with the bat was fresh in my head.

“
He’s good … well, he has a broken shoulder. He was held in the hospital overnight for observations, but they released him. Julia is playing nursemaid at his place.”

“
What happened to my dad?”

“
Livie, I have to get the doctors,” he pleaded.

“
Jake, I need answers!”

He sighed heavily. “Nate’s pressing charges for aggravated assault for the both of you.” Jake watched me. “You’ve been out stone cold for two days. You had us all pretty worried.”

“
Where is my dad?”

“
He’s looking at second degree assault charges that could lead to a lot of years in jail.” He didn’t meet my eyes. “He’ll be pleading guilty. There were too many witnesses. I’m sorry, Liv.”

“
We missed leaving on time.” Funny what your mind decides to latch onto as normal.

“
Yeah, we got caught in the storm.” He smiled so lovingly, so unconditionally, I knew everything was going to be alright. “But it’ll pass.”

“
I think I might be dead now if you hadn’t gotten there.” I wasn’t angry or sad. It was like everything was matter-of-fact. “Was my dad really going to kill … us?”

Jake didn’t answer. Instead he stood up and kissed my head.

“
I don’t really know if I even still love him. I’d stopped missing him a long time ago. It was like he wasn’t even really my dad,” I thought out loud. “But why do I have an ache in my gut as if I did? Is it him? Or the idea of having a dad?”

“
I’m so sorry that it all happened this way. I
have
to get the doctor.”

“
Before you do, kiss me and tell me you love me.”

“
Always.” He leaned down to meet my lips and I closed my eyes so I could focus only on the feel of him.

Chapter 22

“
Between the Raindrops”

Lifehouse (Featuring Natasha Bedingfield)

“
Come on, perfect! It’s time to wake up. We’ve got to go.” Jake didn’t nudge, he didn’t lay soft kisses across my cheek. No, he jumped up and down, kneeling on the bed. The entire rig shook.

“
You’re so twelve years old,” I mumbled. But I was smiling and his enthusiasm was heady.

He grabbed my arm and tried yanking me off the bed.

“
JAKE!”

“
Get up then!” He ran to the front of our Earth Roamer and blasted Michael Franti and Spearhead’s “Say Hey.”

He came back into the bedroom, singing to me at the top of his lungs and shaking his hips. It would have been really funny, except Jake had a pretty kick ass voice without even trying and the way he was rolling his hips made him sexy as hell and good enough to eat.

“
I don’t know, Mr. North, but it seems to me you’re trying to keep me in bed as opposed to getting me out.”

He pulled me up by my arms and danced with me in our tight space. “We don’t even have time for a quickie, but be sure we will later.” He brought me into his arms, kissed my neck and then twirled me. “Now get dressed.”

I did.

All our bags were already packed, waiting for our grand excursion—a twelve day Columbia River rafting trip through the Grand Canyon.

I stretched in the cool, Arizona, May morning air and watched Jake lug our stuff into the rental car. The sun was just coming up. I had grabbed our two to-go coffee mugs and got into the passenger side. Jake bounced into the car he was so excited.

“
Baby, we are looking at twelve days of pure heaven, two hundred forty miles and one hundred sixty rapids through one of the most scenic masterpieces in the world!” Jake’s voice was filled with enthusiasm.

Perfect Adventure River Expeditions would outfit us with everything we needed and provide us with two guides.

We pulled into the parking lot and brought our stuff. Skye and Reed met us at the car.

“
You two ready?” Skye had blond hair and blue eyes and looked very Dutch. His wrist boasted several colorful, beaded, woven wristbands, and around his neck he wore the coolest moonstone on a black leather strand.

“
You bet, man.” Jake firmly grabbed Skye’s forearm as they greeted one another.

“
Awesome, let’s get your stuff in the van,” Reed said. “Then you guys can go in and suit up.” Reed had long, light brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, and brown eyes. They both wore orange Pare baseball style caps.

“
Suiting up” consisted of wetsuits on top of Nike Dri Fit synthetic long underwear. Over that, easy dry t-shirts and pants with Gore-Tex jackets. Arizona weather in May could be tricky—hot afternoons and cold nights were the norm, so we were ready for everything.

The four of us piled into the van and drove to Lees Ferry, which gave us access to the Colorado River. Jake chose the fifteen foot paddle rafts so we’d have a more “hands on experience” which meant we rowed too—or he did. As for me, I held on to the ropes for dear life. We launched into the still, calm waters and let loose from the shore.

Soon enough we were slipping between the canyon walls with the Kaibab Plateau rising over 9,000 feet above us.

“
Well, kids,” Skye, who wasn’t much older than Jake, said, “welcome to Marble Canyon. This is the corridor that makes up the first 65 miles of the Grand Canyon and these rock layers are over 1.7 billion years old.”

Every now and again they threw out random facts they thought we might like to know. What words were there to describe our thoughts, to process the immense beauty and sheer awesomeness of the Grand Canyon? The orange, cream and red hues of the canyon walls cradled us as we passed through them. They were so old and had withstood Mother Nature and everything man had thrown at them so far, and there the canyon stood, as powerful as ever.

Reed manned the back of the raft while Skye was up front. Jake was right behind me in the middle. We lifted out our oars to just hold on and take a breath. I leaned back against Jake. Somehow I felt like everything we’d been through had made us even stronger.

An edging of green plants and colorful wildflowers twisted along the banks on both sides. Slow-paced muddy waters drifted into white water spray and rough rapids. As we entered them we all came alive. Every nerve sang with the thrill of the surging water as our raft dipped and spiked and the cold waters cascaded over us. Each muscle pumped as we tested and proved our own strength and fortitude. When we got to the sweet spot we all screamed and shouted from the extreme pleasure. There was nothing like it!