Breaking Her (Love is War #2) (31 page)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."
 

~Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't know if I fainted, dozed, or blacked out, but what brought me back was a consistent, warm drip, drip, drip of fluid onto my chest.
 

I was huddled outside of my old bedroom.
 
I'd shut myself out.

I didn't look down at my body.
 
I was numb in a way, but still coherent enough to know that I wasn't ready to see the damage.
 
Wasn't ready to face it.
 

My jaw was slack, and so my first assumption was that I'd been drooling on myself, but as the drip, drip, drip continued, I realized there was too much of it, whatever it was, for that.

Had I thrown up on myself? I wondered.
 
It seemed as likely as anything.
 
My mouth tasted foul enough for it, acid burning in my throat.

I kept my eyes trained straight ahead, at the stained yellow wall in front of me as I took a shaking hand and wiped my chin.
 
I held it up all the way to eye level, not lowering my gaze even an inch to see what it was.
 

Red.
 
So much red, but as I saw it I was not completely surprised.
 
I felt at my lips, and to this day I wonder, I honestly have no recollection, which one of us had ravaged them, bit them bloody, that monster in his depravity, or me, in my anguish?

What do I do now?
I thought.
 
Call the police?
 
Bitterness filled me at the thought.
 

Someone was pounding on the front door.
 
I went from numb to trembling again.
 

But then I heard a frantic Dante calling, "Scarlett!
 
Are you in there?
 
Scarlett!"

I broke.
 
Into a million pieces.
 
In relief.
 
In renewed horror.
 

I started sobbing and made my unsteady way to the door, fumbling with the lock in my rush to let him in.
   

Some part of me had shut off, slipped inward, gone dead, perhaps, for the duration of the nightmare.
 

It took seeing Dante's face to bring me back, to realize, and start to deal with the horror of what had happened to me.

A dozen expressions flitted across his face as he took me in.
 
First shock, then horror, then anguish as he started to connect the dots.
 

I looked down at myself.
 
I was naked, which I'd as good as forgotten, but that wasn't the worst of it.
 

Bruises were already mottling my torso, my wrists and ankles raw, open wounds from struggling against the ropes.
 

And there was blood, a lot of it, all over my thighs.
 

I crumpled with a sob.
               

With a low sob of his own, he caught me.
 

He didn't ask me anything at first, just held me, stroked me, carried me inside, sat down on the couch and tried, around his own helpless sobs, to calm me down.
 

And when I'd quieted, and was just lying against him, hoping that I never had to leave his arms ever again for my whole miserable life, he asked me only one thing.
 

"Where is he?" His quiet voice bled like murder into the air.
 

Of course he'd connected the dots as soon as he'd seen the state I was in.
 
Harris's car was right outside.
 

I started trembling anew.
 
I shut my eyes and leaned heavily into him.
 
I couldn't bring myself to answer him, and after a time he tried to stand, but I clung to him and cried.
 

It had sunk in.
 
What had happened to me.
 

But more than that.
 
What I'd done.
 

Who I was and what I'd done.
 

Eventually he had to pick me up and take me with him.
 
I didn't make it easy for him to search my grandma's house, but at least there wasn't much to search.
 

It took him extra time to get my door open while still holding me clutched to his chest, but he managed.
 

I didn't look, but his reaction was far calmer than I'd expected.
 

His breathing barely changed as he took in the cop I'd killed.
 

"I'm going to jail," I said wretchedly.
 

"Shh, angel, shh," he said into my temple.
 
"It was self-defense."
 

I shook my head.
 
"He was sleeping when I shot him.
 
He'd already finished with me.
 
I wasn't thinking.
 
I shot him in the
back
.
 
Don't you see what's going to happen?
 
With all the trouble I've been in?
 
All the fights?
 
All the reports from times when I've lost my temper?
 
The cops hated me when I was a
victim
.
 
What do you think they're going to do now that I've
killed
one of them?"
 

"He was a rapist," Dante said dully, but I could tell that what I was saying was starting to sink in.
 
"He
deserved
it."
 

"They won't think so.
 
What do you think they're going to do to me now when I've killed one of them, and then
I accuse him of being a rapist?"

"
He
was a rapist,"
Dante repeated, an absolute concentrate of hatred in the words.
 
"I'm so sorry, angel."
 
He was crying now.
 
"So sorry.
 
I didn't know.
 
I didn't know this was happening.
 
I had no idea.
 
I've been looking for you for hours, but I was looking in the
wrong
place."
 
He was breaking down now, sobbing, screaming, "I'd have killed him myself, I swear it."
 

It was funny how I only realized later that he never asked me if I was okay, and how that had comforted me.
 
Because he knew me too well to ask such a
stupid
question.
 

Of course I wasn't okay.
 
Of course I wasn't fine.
 

I'd been defiled, degraded, debased beyond all repair.
 
I was covered in that monster's filth.
 
Sticky with it.
 

I was wretched.
 
Unhinged.
 
Suicidal.
   

"I don't know what to do," I sobbed.
 
"I don't want to go to jail."
 

"They can't put you in jail for this," he argued, but he sounded less and less convinced.
 

"I wasn't thinking right, Dante.
 
My mind was just . . . gone.
 
I shot him
in the back.
 
Emptied a full clip into him.
 
Do you really think this is going to go my way?"

He was silent as his mind worked, and eventually I could see he came to the same conclusion as I had, but his next words floored me.
 
"I'll say I did it.
 
I'll say I caught him raping you and shot him in the back."
 

I started to struggle in his hold.

"No, no, no," I spat.
 
"You think I'd let you go to jail for me?
 
After you already killed someone for me, you think I'd do that?
 
And with your record, do you think it could end
any other way?"
 

"Don't be like that.
 
I can take this hit.
 
Gram will get me the best lawyer out there.
 
It'll be fine."
 

I kept shaking my head.
 
"No.
 
Never
.
 
I'll confess myself before this ever goes on you.
 
I fucking
swear
it.
 
I won't let you take this on yourself."
     

He took a few deep breaths.
 
He was thinking, I could tell, his mind racing, trying to figure out what to do.
 

"Does anyone know he brought you here?" he asked finally.
 

"I don't think so.
 
People saw him take me out of school, but not to come here.
 
He lured me into his car by saying he needed to talk to me at the station."
 

"He planned this," Dante said slowly, the pain in his voice excruciating to me.
 
"He planned out a rape, and he's a cop.
 
What are the odds he didn't cover his own tracks?
 
What are the odds there is a
soul
on this earth that knows he was bringing you here?"
 

I studied him, feeling hope for the first time at what I saw.
 
"What should we do?" I asked him.
 

He looked down at me, bent, and gave me a very careful kiss.
 
"You don't have to do anything, angel.
 
I'll take care of it.
 
Do you think you can shower by yourself?"
 

It was pathetic, but I shook my head.
 
I didn't think I could walk across the room by myself.
 

"Okay.
 
That's just fine.
 
I'll help you.
 
We'll get this sorted out, I promise.
 
No one's going to hurt you again.
 
And no one is going to take your freedom.
 
I
swear
it."
 

I believed him, had absolute faith in everything he'd said.
 

He showered with me.
 
He was very tentative, after what I'd been through, to get naked in front of me, so he showered with his boxers still on.
 

I couldn't even wash myself.
 
I made him do it.
 
He was excruciatingly tender as he lathered me up, head to toe, rinsed me off, then did it again.
 

We both cried like babies, in great, heaving, helpless sobs, when he washed the blood off my thighs.
 

Only after he was done with his soft ministrations did I take the loofah from him and scrub myself
raw
.
 

I was abrading my skin with such gusto that he quietly begged me to stop, and somehow something in the tone of his voice was convincing enough to actually get me to.
 

Otherwise I swear I'd have just kept rubbing until my skin was gone.
 

It was cowardly and weak, but after he'd washed me, and dressed me, he took me out of the trailer and carried me up the hill.
 
And I let him.
   

"Aren't we going to . . . ?" I asked him.
 

"I'm going to get you settled in your room at Gram's.
 
You need to rest and not worry about any other thing than that, do you understand?"

I nodded weakly.
 
We were on his mother's property by then.
 
It was closer than Gram's, and we always cut across it when we made the walk.
 

"Will you stay with me tonight?" I asked him.
 
I didn't want to sleep alone.
 

"Of course.
 
I won't leave your side after I . . . take care of things."

I went a little numb, and somehow it was easy to just not think about it, the things he'd have to do, the things I'd already done.
 

We'd barely crossed the property line between his mother's and his grandma's when it all hit me again and I started sobbing into his chest.
 

He sat down on the ground and sobbed with me, chanting, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."
 

"It's not your fault," I finally managed to get out.
 

"I can't believe this happened to you.
 
I can't believe I didn't save you in time."
 
His voice broke on the words, and I'd never heard him sound more lost.
 

He brought me straight to my room, left me briefly, and came back with sleeping pills he'd gotten from Gram.
 

I stared at him.
 

"Please.
 
For me.
 
Take them.
 
I can't leave you until you're sleeping.
 
I
can't
."
 

I took them.
 

*****

When I came to, it was dark out, but my bedside lamp was on.
 

Dante had pulled a chair up and was sitting at my side.
 
He was staring straight ahead.
 

I shivered at the look in his eyes.
 

That caught his attention and his gaze cleared—black nightmares turning to concern as he studied my face.
 

"What can I do?" he asked me.
 

Again, he didn't ask me if I was okay.
 

"Hold me," I said, and started crying again, the worst kind of tears, because they were only for me, purest self-pity.
 

He crawled into bed with me fully clothed and wrapped himself around me.