I sigh. "You don't. Why don't you ask Erin?"
He looks at me and shrugs. "Whatever," he sighs. "I've got a party to get to. She's at Wet-n-Wild, this strip club on Fifth Street."
"Strip club?" I don't even recognize my own voice.
"It's not that far away," he says, as if my actual concern was the distance.
I catch a cab and lean my head back in dismay. This is my fault. It's my fault I gave Jessica so much ammunition, that I never let Olivia know how I felt. She should have realized she meant more to me than losing than this job, but she had no idea. It's my fault that she's in a strange city, broke and desperate.
A strip club. "Oh God, Olivia," I say quietly to myself. "What have you done?"
74
Olivia
Well done, Olivia. Only you could manage to lose a job on your first day of work.
So now it's barely 10 p.m. and I've got $40 in my pocket instead of the $2500 I'd planned on after a full day's work. And if I call a cab, I'll be down another $20.
It sucks, but I can't bring myself to regret it. I can't believe that asshole thought he could put his hand there and get away with it. Maybe some of my rage was just at how fucking arbitrary it all is. What kind of world do we live in where Will can't do that but a complete stranger can?
I start walking. It's just a few miles. I'd prefer to run but I'm not that great in heels and this skirt is so damn short it'd show my whole ass with every step I take.
It's 11 in Colorado right now. I wonder what Will and Dorothy are doing. I wonder if they're still angry or maybe they've just moved on to being relieved. Eventually, they will. How could they not? Poor Will's barely had a decent night's sleep since I joined the team.
But I miss them. My eyes burn and blur as I think of Will sitting there on Dorothy's couch alone, probably feeling guilty since that's how he is. I miss him. I miss everything I had and everything I never got with him and I'm pretty sure that I always will.
By the time I get back to Sean's, I'm beat. Not from the walking or the long day, but from my own misery. I find the keys he left me under the mat and walk in, dropping my heels off to the side of the kitty litter box and flipping on the light.
I step forward, and I hear a voice, one I have heard a thousand times in nightmares.
"Hello, Olivia," says my father.
If he were anyone else, I'd lash out. I'd attack, or run. Instead, I stand here, still as a statue aside from my hands which shake so hard I can hear Sean's keys rattling against each other.
If this were a movie, I'd ask him why he's here, but in real life, my voice has stopped working. There is a just a creaking sound coming from my throat instead of words. And I don't need to ask anyway. I know exactly why he's here.
My entire life the nightmare was faceless, blank, something purely evil and inhuman. And now, in a single second, it's standing before me - and I remember everything. Where I've seen him so many times, the part of my dream I could never recall in the morning.
My mother told me to hide in the closet. She told me not to watch, but I did. I saw him grab her arm and twist, heard the bones snapping. He had his knife, the one he used to gut fish. It dove into her, sinking into her soft flesh, and when I ran from the closet to stop him, throwing myself onto her as if I could do anything at all, the knife went into my back and I slid to the floor. My mother began screaming at me to get up, to run. She had something hidden under her leg-scissors-and the last thing I saw was her pulling them out.
I scrambled off the floor and ran, expecting that he would chase. I ran hard, I ran so hard that the world seemed to close in on the edges and even the moonlight was squeezed out of my vision.
I woke up in the dirt. My mother wasn't there. She didn't come to get me. That's when I knew I should never have left her.
I've been living with this in my head for nearly 15 years, with him, this monster I was scared to look in the eye. And I will now be what Will lives with. He'll think about my death a million times, the way I have my brother's. The image will never leave his head, and though it has nothing to do with him, he will blame himself for it. Erin's going to tell him why I left when it all comes out, and he'll see blood on his hands for the rest of his life.
My father bridges the distance between us and wraps his hands around my throat. They are gentle, though, almost a caress. "You went to the police, didn't you?"
///
"No," I whisper. I'm not following the rules. Don't apologize, don't show fear. I can't help it. Desperate people apologize and show fear, people without another option, and right now I'm one of those people.
His hands tighten, ever so slightly. "But you told someone something, didn't you?"
I grab my father's wrists and attempt to pry them off, but my grip strength is no match for his. "Let go," I hiss. Instead, they tighten further.
I think of him breaking Daisy's neck …
And Matthew's neck …
I pull harder at his hands, just enough to drag air through my throat, to push it back out. And to scream as loud as I possibly can.
75
Will
I arrive at the strip club, scared that I will find her on stage, or worse, and I leave trying not to smile over the fact that she punched a customer. That's my girl.
The cab driver has left, and I'm too anxious about her to wait for another. I start running, still carrying the backpack I brought on the plane.
I hear her screaming just as the apartment complex comes into view. I thought, at that moment, that I couldn't be more scared, but I was wrong.
The scariest moment was when she stopped screaming.
I run harder than I've ever run in my life. I fling the door open and find her there-silent, limp, her hands swinging by her sides and her father's hands around her neck. He starts to turn just as my fist makes impact, crushing the side of his face.
The two of them fall together. They lie crumpled on the floor. Lifeless.
I drop, pulling her to my chest, but she is boneless and still in my arms. Terror invades my chest, so acute that I struggle to breathe. I want her back - not this shell, but Olivia, with her smart mouth, her bad attitude, her wary smile. I want everything back, everything I had and took for granted, all of the bad, all of the good, and I'm shouting at her, pleading, knowing it's too fucking late and that the moment I stop shouting I will have to accept it.
And then she gasps.
There has never been a sweeter sound than her gasping inhale.
I lower her just enough to see her face. She's confused for a moment, as if she's just coming out of a deep sleep, and her small smile, the pleasure on her face when she sees me, breaks my heart a little. The fact that I'm capable of putting that look on her face amazes me, and I'm even more amazed that I ever thought I could ask her to wait. That I thought I could wait. I know only now that nothing matters more than keeping that look on her face, and nothing ever will.
And then she looks at her father, still unconscious, and seems to remember everything, all the things that wouldn't have happened if I'd just pulled my head out of my ass a few hours sooner.
The smile fades.
I pull her to my chest and cling to her. I'm not even trying to comfort her. This time, she's comforting me. "Fuck, Olivia. I thought … fuck." I can't even say it. I just know that I don't ever, for the rest of my life, want to feel that kind of terror again.
"I'm fine," she whispers.
"You could have died," I reply, choking on the words, realizing how close we were to that being true. "I'm sorry," I murmur into her hair. "I'm so fucking sorry."
Her voice is raspy, barely intelligible. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"I did everything wrong," I reply. "And I swear I'm going to fix all of it."
Once she's sitting up, I reluctantly let go of her to call 911 and bind her father's wrists, though I doubt he's going to be conscious anytime soon. That punch I threw was aimed right at the corner of his jaw and would have killed him, as I intended, if he hadn't turned his head. And when I'm done I go to Olivia again, cradling her in my lap. We are silent, shocked by what's occurred. I can't believe she's really okay, and how close she came to not being okay. I can't believe I ever let her go in the first place.
The police arrive, shouting and with guns drawn though I told the dispatcher her father was unconscious. They point their guns at me instead, and it's not until Olivia screams at them that they realize I'm not the culprit.
She is taken by ambulance to the hospital despite her protests. She's on a stretcher, then moved to a hospital bed, and not for a single moment of that time do I let go of her hand. She seems fine, but I don't think I'll ever get over seeing her the way she looked when I ran into Sean's apartment.