When We Collide (29 page)

I’d packed a bag while he was at work. It would have
been a whole lot easier to get out of the apartment unnoticed while
Troy was at work, but I never would have walked out of town without
being discovered.

On my knees, I tugged the bag from underneath the
bed. Tiptoeing out into the main room, I slipped on the shoes I’d
left by the couch.

I refused to listen to the fear that worked itself
through my mind, the fear spurring the anxiety that had my stomach
twisted in a solid knot. It screamed,
he will hurt your little
sister, he will find you, you will fail
.

I shoved the thoughts back.

There was only one thing that mattered now.

At the front window, I peered outside through a slat
in the mini-blinds, searching for any signs of life in the 10-unit
complex. Light drizzled down from the yellowed bulbs hanging on the
walls beside each door, and a lone streetlight near the office cast
flickering shadows across the pavement. The lot was dead, just
silenced cars and trash whipped up from a gust of wind.

I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on
making no sound as I slowly turned the dead bolt. In the silence,
it rang out like a gunshot. I froze, listening for any movement
from behind. When I heard none, I turned the knob and slipped out
the door. I quieted my feet on the steps, forcing myself to take
them one at a time and fighting against the urge to run. The second
I hit the pavement, I gave in. The beat of my heart was almost
deafening as I sprinted across the parking lot toward the hole in
the chain-link fence at the back.

Before I could comprehend the movement, I was being
dragged back by a strong arm across my chest. I struggled to break
free from his hold. A knife blade pressed into my cheek, and terror
widened my eyes.

Oh God, no
.

His breath was hot at the side of my face. “Where
are you going, baby?” The rancid words spilled out in a twisted
croon and shifted to a menacing tone. “You just don’t get it, do
you, Maggie? Did you really think I’d let you walk out that door?”
He pressed the blade deeper into the flesh of my cheek, eliciting a
prick of pain where the knife dented the skin.

Trembling in his hold, horror gripped me, so deep it
penetrated to the bone.

With my body limp, he dragged me back up the stairs,
my feet banging into the concrete steps as he went. He kicked the
door shut behind us and threw me on the bed.

I whimpered as he slid the knife up my shirt. The
tip nicked a trail up my torso as he cut it away. With a flick of
his wrist, he snipped the front of my bra. Cold, damp air rushed
against my skin. I inhaled, a harsh gasp burning down my
throat.

Troy laughed and dragged the tip of the knife from
my cheek and down my neck, where he dug the tip into the flesh at
my shoulder. I cried out as he slowly pulled it through my skin,
down along the inside of my arm, all the way to my wrist. The flesh
opened up with a searing heat that shocked my mind. Blood gushed, a
sticky wetness slipping down my skin and dripping to the bed, my
mind fuzzy with fear and pain and loss. Blackness swelled.

Troy smacked me across the face. “Don’t even think
about passing out on me, Maggie.”

He wielded the knife in front of my face, as if he
searched for coherency, watched as my eyes flicked back and forth
in sync with the movement. He grinned and slashed me from collar
bone to beneath the opposite breast. It scorched from the outside
in, a slow torment as I came to realize that this was it.

Troy ran the tip of the blade down. I gasped as he
grazed it across my stomach, teasing at the flesh. I wept, and, for
the first time, I found my voice. “Please…stop.”

He laughed in a sickening way and grabbed my chin to
force me to look at him. “What are you crying for, Maggie?” The
knife was pressed there, just below my belly button. “You scared I
might slip?” He pressed it a little deeper. “You think I don’t know
you’re trying to run away with my baby?”

Suddenly the knife was at my hip, burrowing deep in
the flesh. His hand flexed on my chin, and he mashed his mouth into
the skin next to my lips. “I’ll kill you, Maggie.” Troy crushed me
with his weight, chest to chest, a heavy grunt from his mouth as he
tore the knife down the outside of my leg. I cried out in pain and
relief when he stumbled back from the bed, still gripping the knife
in his hand. He tossed it nonchalantly to the dresser, as if it
were his wallet at the end of the day.

He glanced back at me. “We clear?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, tears seeped from the
corners and ran into my hair.

I nodded in surrender.

Maggie ~ Present Day

Fear was powerful—crippling. Troy knew just how to
manipulate me with what mattered most. He’d forced on me the one
thing I’d feared most in my life, then used my sister and son as
pawns.

For my son, I had forged on and had lived for him,
making the best life for us that I could. In the end, it was a life
that was destroying us both.

Lying there in the aftermath Troy had left behind, I
thought of William, the secret of my heart. Maybe it was his sudden
reappearance that made me brave. He’d always made me feel that way,
like a different person—a stronger person.

Or maybe he just made me see who I really was.

William ~ Present Day

My lids fluttered with the slurred voices shouting
next to my head. A white hot spark of light struck at the center of
my brain, and sickness pushed up my throat. Spasms twitched my
muscles.

Maggie.

“William!”

I sensed the frantic presence beside me. Blake was
on his knees, his voice murky. A hollow twang echoed through my
ears, swathed across the back of my head like a too-hot blanket I
couldn’t shake. Feet clamored around my body. The sound of sirens
approached in the distance, my senses detached.

“Oh shit…Will.”

Blake’s panic was palpable, furrowing beneath my
skin, cutting and slicing me to the core. Somewhere in the fog I
recognized the panic was my own.

Troy knew.

I moaned deep, a gravelly cry that escaped from my
spirit.

He knew.

Wrenching forward, I attempted to climb to my hands
and knees. I collapsed back down into the blood that had pooled
around my head, metallic stinging a path up my nose.

A hand was on my back, an attempt at comfort.

“Don’t move, Will.” The voice was strained. “Please,
man, just hold still.”

I lay limp, forcing the air from my too-tight lungs.
Dread shackled my limbs and pinned me to the hard ground.

He knew.

A ripple broke apart the crowd when the ambulance
pulled into the parking lot. Paramedics prodded, fired questions I
could barely discern, and placed me on a backboard as the residual
of Troy’s hatred seeped into my pores, pricked along my
skin—something palpable—wicked and debased.

He knew.

My eyes rolled back, a shuddered groan from my
chest. Blake was at my side as they wheeled me to the back of the
ambulance. “You’re fine, Will. You’re going to be fine.”

“Blake,” a mumbled word from my mouth.

“I know, Will. I know.”

~

Dense forest suffocated, pressed in, held him back.
William panted. A streak of blond raced from behind one tree to the
next. Faint laughter drifted through the stifling air, taunted and
tickled his ears.

Panic welled.

“Wait,” William begged, stretching out a hand.
Please.

William pounded through the forest, branches lashing
his face.

The child ran, giggling with the game he played.

A surge of protectiveness built and overflowed.
William chased him, only feet behind. The boy laughed, a tinkling
laugh as he darted up the hill, ducked under trees. “Come and get
me.” Playful brown eyes looked back at him. William tasted his joy.
Wanted more.

The boy mounted the short incline, emerged in a
clearing at the summit.

Frantic, William rushed, desperate to hold his
son.

Please.

“Please,” I whispered as I lay on my side on the ER
bed. Fear crawled along my flesh, whispered in my ear.

I no longer knew if it was mine or the child’s.

I blinked away the stupor from the painkiller they’d
administered when I first arrived. Twelve stitches behind my left
ear, and my head was throbbing like it was being drilled by a
jackhammer.

The dim room lightened when the door swung open,
dimmed again. Blake pushed aside the drape enclosure. “Got your
discharge papers.”

I sat up. Dizziness hit me and I gripped my head.
“Damn it.”

“You okay?” Blake’s boots filled up my view. “I can
call the nurse.”

“No, I’m fine. Just give me a second.”

When I gathered myself, Blake helped me up by my
upper arm. Our footsteps echoed over the linoleum floor, the ER
quiet as we exited out the door. Morning teased at the sky, a dull,
cloudless gray.

I climbed into the cab of Blake’s truck, closed my
eyes, and rested my head back.

When Blake headed down his street, he slowed just as
soon as he had accelerated. I looked up to see Maggie’s van parked
in front of her sister’s house as we passed by. Blood rushed from
my head and weighted my arms. I sat up, whispered, “Maggie,” as I
strained to see through the rear window.

I knew then that the violence Troy had inflicted on
me had spilled over to Maggie. And she had left.

I was out the door before Blake came to a full stop
in the driveway, running up the street. I slowed to a walk when I
reached their drive. Amber’s husband sat on a chair on the porch.
Fatigue was evidenced in the weariness of his eyes and untamed
bedhead. He jerked upright when he heard my footsteps.

I’d seen him a few times in passing, and his face
lit in subtle recognition, though he stood and took on a protective
stance. He leaned with one hand on the porch column as if blocking
the way, his eyes fixed in warning. “I think you’d better stop
right where you are, because I don’t see that you have any business
coming up this way.”

Stopping midstride, my attention went behind him to
the door he guarded, and I swallowed, shook. My family was in
there. “I need to see Maggie.”

Confusion tripped his expression before his face
hardened again. “They’ve had enough trouble without you coming over
here trying to stir up more. I don’t know what your game is, but
I’m telling you right now”—he pointed a finger at me—“as long as
they’re staying with me, no one is getting through that door.”

“I—”

“You need to leave. I don’t wanna see you coming
around here again.”

I wanted to yell at him to look my face, to see what
business I had here. Instead I retreated a step. “Just…tell Maggie
William was here.”

~

It was unbearable, the waiting, the not knowing.
Nearly a week had passed. Each second slipped by in a blur, hours
and minutes and days no longer ticking at a steady pace, time
suspended, prolonged, stretched out so far I had snapped. When I
called Tom yesterday for the fifth time this week, he’d again asked
me to give him more time. So far, he’d come up with nothing. He
said the statement I’d made to the police after what happened in
the parking lot of the bar last week had little bearing as it was
purely suspicion and no charges had been pressed. He promised he
would continue to dig.

Half-deranged, I’d become an almost permanent
fixture in Blake’s front yard, watching, waiting. There’d not been
one glimpse of Maggie or Jonathan the entire week, although twice
I’d seen Troy drive down the street.

The nights, like now, were the worst. I glanced to
the small clock that said it was just after midnight.

The wooden floors were cool beneath my feet, a
distinct contradiction to my heated skin. Outside the windows, the
night felt almost alive. The moon peered down, casting shadows
across the floor, branches brushing along the walls. Insects
droned. It all added to the anxiety that had every nerve coiled so
tight I thought I would implode.

Slowly, I’d fallen, given in. I’d begun to welcome
the dreams when Jonathan would barrel into my life and steal my
breath. In them, I grasped at my sanity, the boy my reality.

Here, walking the floors, I was sure I’d gone
mad.

I succumbed to the exhaustion and collapsed on the
unmade bed.

Roused by the quiet knocks at the door, I raised my
head and squinted into the shadows of the room. The moon had sunk
lower, bled as an alabaster haze across the floorboards. Another
tap, an echo that jarred my memory and took me back to the place
where she was mine.

Scrambling to tug on a pair of jeans from the floor,
I crossed the room in two steps. My pulse was erratic as I was hit
with an awareness of what was waiting for me on the other side of
the door.

I turned the lock and pulled it wide open.

She was there, standing in the dark, hugging
herself. A breeze rustled through the strands of her hair. They
fluttered up around the silhouette of her face.

As she slowly came into focus, my gaze traced the
lines of her face, the angle of her jaw, the fullness of her lips,
finally resting on the softness in her eyes. There were no
pretenses there, just distinct vulnerability and a wealth of
emotion. No walls, completely exposed.

For the longest moment, we just stared, giving time
a minute to catch up to us.

Maggie’s eyes fell closed when she spoke. “Make me
remember what it feels like to be loved.” It raked from her throat
as a petition, as if there were any possibility that I could ever
turn her away.

I took one step forward and wrapped my arm around
her waist, my hand splayed across the small of her back. One touch
and I was gone. Fire clipped through my veins, fervent need, this
buried too deep for too long. I wound my fingers through her silky
hair and palmed the back of her neck as I quickly pulled her inside
and covered her mouth with mine.