Tough Enough(93)

The jagged wooden end holds my attention, almost as though it’s beckoning me. Calvin’s angry voice is nothing more than a distant backdrop to the peculiar trance I’ve stumbled into. In this peaceful world, I don’t distinguish between Kat, Kathryn or Katie. I don’t live a life as splintered as the chair leg I’m gazing at. I’m simply a girl who’s tired of hiding, who’s tired of being hurt. Who’s tired of only surviving. I am a woman who needs to stand up. To fight back. To get the missing part of myself back. To be whole again.

In the fuzzy recesses of my mind, I realize that if I don’t stand up now, if I don’t start to live now, I never will. Just like Rogan said, I’ll die a little more each day.

Fight to survive. Fight to live.

I’ve fought to survive. For years now, I’ve survived. But I need more. It’s time to fight to live.

It’s time to live.

My movements have a slow, surreal quality to them at first, almost dreamlike. I reach for the makeshift stake. I curl my trembling fingers around it. I use my free hand for balance. I come carefully to my feet. And I face Calvin.

Although fear is still with me, it’s muted by this strange calm and, somehow, I’m bolstered by the feel of the cool wood of the chair leg against my palm. I flex my fingers around it, rubbing the sharp tip against my thigh as I study Calvin.

“If you leave me again, it’ll only be worse, Kat. I didn’t think I could hate you as much as I loved you, but I was wrong. You made me see that. God, you were such a bitch! What you did to me . . .”

I tilt my head as I watch him. His face is bloodred as he rants, a single vein standing out like a thick rope right in the center of his forehead. I wonder briefly that it doesn’t burst and send him face-first onto my floor to drown in his own blood. I actually smile at the vision.

Calvin stops talking. I notice only because his lips cease to move. All I hear is the beat of my own heart, pounding in my ears.

I see spit on his chin. I focus on it for a few seconds, oddly fascinated by the foamy little drop. I notice only in the most absent of ways that it begins to get closer. It’s that minute detail that shakes me from my thrall.

Taking a step back, I hold out one hand and raise the other, wielding the stakelike piece of wood like a weapon. A weapon that I will use if I have to.

“I want you to leave, Calvin. Right now. And never come near me again. You and your father can go to hell. Stay away from me. Stay away from Rogan. Let this drop or I swear on all that is holy, you’ll regret the day you ever met me. Get out, Calvin. I won’t ask you again.”

At first he looks confused. Then stunned. Then, when his eyes bounce from me to the stake and back again, almost insulted.

I raise my chin defiantly. My cards are on the table. I’m taking my stand. And it feels good. I feel good.

But then he starts to laugh.

“Oh, Kat! You can’t be serious.”

Surely the girl who took his abuse for months wouldn’t fight back. Surely the girl who he set on fire wouldn’t dare to stand up to him. Surely the girl who he murdered in all the ways that count couldn’t have found a reason to live.

Surely not.

The hell you say!

Righteous fury explodes from my chest like a bomb, raining adrenaline into my blood. It’s like rocket fuel. It propels me into motion. Offensive motion.

I lunge forward, slicing in a downward angle at Calvin’s chest. I feel the tip of the pointed stick tear through something. Not flesh, but something.

When I step back, I see Calvin staring down at his torn shirt, at the bloody scratch that mars the smooth skin of his chest. The eyes he raises to mine are homicidal.

A needle of fear pricks my bubble of bravado, piercing it. For a moment, what was and what is collide, leaving me confused and frantic. I inhale sharply, my body mobilizing its fight-or-flight response as Calvin comes at me with an ear-splitting roar.

His aggression drowns out the loud clap of the front door flying open and ripping the hinges out of the frame. It doesn’t, however, drown out the image of Rogan racing toward Calvin like an avenging angel, come to save me.

At the last second, Rogan’s feet leave the floor. He’s airborne for only a few seconds before he comes down on Calvin like a two-hundred-twenty-pound hammer, driving his elbow into the top of his head. Calvin weaves and wobbles, dazed, before he stumbles back into me. I move to my right, barely escaping his falling weight, as Rogan comes after him again.

Kneeling, one knee on Calvin’s chest, the other on the floor, Rogan smashes his fist into my monstrous ex’s face in four punches of blurring speed. When he pauses, Calvin is oozing blood from his nose, mouth and the corner of one eye, and mumbling something about his daddy.