His elbows pressed into his thighs, his hands obscuring his face like blinders. I stared at the dark hair grazing his shoulders, the flexed muscles of his arm and the ink circling his bicep and flowing down his forearm, his beautiful, lean torso and the words etched into his side like a brand.
“Do you want me to leave?” I surprised myself, uttering the words with a steady voice.
I don’t know why I thought he would say no, or say nothing. I was wrong, either way.
“Yes.”
The tears started flowing then, but he couldn’t see them. He didn’t move from his position on the bed. I couldn’t even be angry, because I’d crossed a line and I knew it, and meaning well wasn’t good enough. I grabbed my purse and keys from the kitchen table and my coat from the sofa, ears pricked for the sound of him coming after me, telling me to stay. There was nothing but silence from his room.
When I opened the door, Francis shot inside, along with a burst of cold air. I pulled the door shut behind me before a sob broke free. Gulping the frigid air and wondering how I’d managed to screw this up so thoroughly, I was determined not to cry until I was in my truck. I slid my hand along the railing as I rushed clumsily down the steps, because I couldn’t see through the combination of a moonless night and my tears. A splinter pierced my hand two steps from the bottom.
“Ow! Dammit.” The physical pain provided the ideal excuse for the sobbing to start. I sprinted down the long, curved driveway, unsuccessful in my attempt to curb my tears long enough to get into the truck. “Damn. Damn. Damn. Fuck.” I jammed my key into the lock by feel.
Déjà vu. That was the first thing I thought when I felt myself propelled across the bench seat. That was where the resemblance ended, though.
Buck shut the door behind him and slapped the automatic lock. His weight immobilized my lower legs and he had my left wrist in his hand before I could make out who he was, though I knew. “Good enough to spread your legs for anybody but me, huh Jackie?”
Chapter 26
On my back, with my head at an awkward angle against the passenger door, I jerked at my arm and struggled without success to move my legs. “Get off!” I yelled the words, knowing they would be meaningless to him. I was parked in the street—too far for anyone else to hear me. “Get out of my truck!” I’d dropped my keys onto the truck floor when he’d shoved me into the truck, and I searched the floor with my right hand, intending to use them as a weapon.
“I don’t think so.” He grabbed my right wrist and shook his head like he could read my mind. “You’re not going anywhere until we’re done talking. You and your lying cunt friend have ruined my fucking life.”
And then, I heard Ralph’s voice in my head. Your body is already a weapon. You just need to know how to use it. Abruptly, I stopped struggling and took stock: I couldn’t kick. I could possibly get my wrists free by rotating and jerking them straight down, but then what? He would just grab me again, immobilize me further.
I needed him closer—the last thing I would naturally seek. I turned my eyes away.
“Listen to me when I’m talking to you, goddammit!” He grabbed my chin roughly, his fingers digging in as he leaned over me and forced me to face him.
Right hand free.
While shoving my hand between us, grabbing and twisting his balls and yanking up as hard as I could, I slammed my forehead into his nose with as much force as I could manage in a straight upward trajectory.
The night in the frat parking lot, everything had happened so quickly that getting my bearings was impossible until it was over. This time, everything was in slow motion—so for an impossibly stretched space of time, I was positive that nothing I’d just done had worked.
And then he screamed, and his nose started gushing. I had never seen so much blood so close-up. It poured out of him as though I’d opened a faucet full-blast.
Left hand free.
He was listing to the side. Still yanking up on his balls, I raised my left knee and turned into him, shoving his shoulder with my left hand. He fell sideways into the cramped crevice in front of my truck’s bench seat. The feeling rushed back into my legs, tremors wracking through me, and I went for the door, shoving it open so violently that it almost bounced all the way back.
Just before I cleared the door, his right hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, like the never-quite-dead psycho in a horror movie. I spun and smashed my fist down on the sensitive spot on his upper forearm, inches down from his the crook of his arm, and he released me, bellowing angrily and attempting to flail himself into an upright position.
I didn’t wait to see if he succeeded. I vaulted from my truck and ran.