“Here, you put your hand in mine, all right? I’m with you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
But what about you, she wanted to say. What about if he hurts you?
It was a possibility, after all. One that seemed to get dimmer as he squeezed her hand in his fist and led her out of the bedroom.
He took the stairs carefully, slowly, quietly. Urged her to wait when she got a little too eager to run right out the door, listened for sounds from the kitchen in a way that almost slowed her pounding heart.
He just went so still. As though he wasn’t nervous in the slightest, and didn’t need to tremble uncontrollably. Of course there was caution in his movements—in the way he touched two fingertips to the wall, like a dancer balancing himself—but there was surety too.
He squeezed her hand again, and she almost believed it. Almost. They could just slink right down the stairs, turn the corner, go down the hall and find the front door. No problems.
And then she saw her father.
Her father, who wasn’t dressed.
Her father who’d actually decided to stand in front of the open refrigerator in his undershirt and shorts.
Van actually said aloud, “Holy shit.”
And in truth, she didn’t want him to do anything else. No one could be expected to do anything else, in the face of this. The thing in front of them didn’t even look like her father—it looked like a hobo had taken possession of her father’s body, and forced him to never brush his hair.
She couldn’t move, for a moment. Couldn’t go for any of the doors, the way she’d planned. She simply stood with her hand still attached to Van’s, staring at the man who’d been her father, twenty-four hours prior.
And then he coughed, and straightened, and tried to say her name in an authoritative sort of voice, and somehow all of those things were worse. They were so much worse. What had happened here?
“Eve,” he said, again. This time with more force, but somehow still pathetic, all the same. Twenty-four hours without her mother, and this was what he’d been reduced to.
“Come on, Evie,” Van said, and that grounded her a little. It made it easier to form words, without dying of fear.
“What happened to you?” she went with, because that was the thing she wanted to know the most.
“I’m ill,” he said. “You’ve made me ill, whore.”
Of course she expected the latter, and it hardly hit at all. Not even when he spat it again, hands shaking, half-risen in anger—that redness creeping all over his face. But God, she didn’t expect the first word.
Ill. As though she really had that much power. As though all along she could have pulled a string, and turned him into this.
“I think you’d be wise not to call her that again, Mr. Bennett,” Van said, in a voice she’d never heard before. Apparently, both men were turning into different creatures right before eyes, and the one Van had chosen was scary as fuck.
His tone sounded like that molten metal, hardened into steel. His hand gripped hers tightly, but only to maneuver her until she was almost behind him.
“Don’t you talk to me, boy,” her father said. Then fiercer, stronger, “If you think you can walk into my house, and take my daughter—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Mainly because he tried to do something very bad, on the word daughter. He took a lumbering step forward, hand suddenly raised, and even though she could hardly process any of this she knew where that hand was going.
It just didn’t quite get there.
Van smacked it away, as though her father’s fist was no more than a fly.
“Seriously?” he asked, in that same spitting-bullets tone. “You’re going to try to hit her, in front of me? And you think that what—I’m going to let you get away with that?”
Her heart had gone past some pounding point, and all the way back around into deadly silence. If she’d keeled over, she wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. All she could see was Van’s back, and he was right up in her father’s face, and oh God, what if her father stabbed him?
What if, what if?
“Van,” she said, as she tried to grab his hand back. Pull him away, before it was too late.
But he wasn’t listening.
“I tell you what. You want to hit someone? Try hitting me.” He shoved forward again and this time she could see, clearly. He’d butted up against her father, like some sort of mad bull. “Go on. I dare you to do it. I dare you to try. Because I’d love nothing better than to take your fucking head off.”
She held her breath, waiting. Any second now, and her father would do it—she even had a plan for it. She was going to rush forward the moment he laid a hand on Van, and claw his goddamned eyes out.