Tears streamed down my cheeks, mixing with the iron taste of blood spilling over my lips as I looked him in his dark eyes. The same eyes that looked at me, a child, and deemed me unworthy of human decency. The eyes that made me feel that I was not worth fighting for. That I was no more than a rug to tread on, an object to hit down over and over again.
I hadn’t planned to survive this.
When I entered this vehicle, I accepted that I wouldn’t get to tell Trey I was sorry for leaving our life together so early. That I wouldn’t get the opportunity to thank him for loving me. For standing beside me through every phase of my life, even when he’d only been a book of empty pages.
Without realizing it, I chose to run. To escape. To take the empty path on the beach leaning right. But if Ilearned anything from these last months, absent of the scars on my memory. From my book, from Trey, it’s that I too was worth fighting for.
I was not alone. And I wanted to live.
I screamed. I screamed with the volume and force of a thousand locked up cries for help that were finally let loose as I made my body move. I shoved Richard off of me. I lurched for the car door and threw it open.
I didn’t make it far, though. His hands were quick as they laced themselves around my throat from behind and dragged me back.
“It’s all your fault! You never could do anything right! Pathetic! You were always in the goddamned way. Worthless piece of—good for nothing—!”
He continued to seethe. More insults and vicious words pouring from him as his hands grew tighter. With my foot off the brakes, the car rolled forward into the empty intersection. My foot skidded along the asphalt as my body hung halfway out the open car door.
My vision and breaths were failing me, but I kicked, I thrashed, I scratched, and I bucked. I didn’t stop. I continued to swing. I continued to fight. While my body shook from the loss of strength for the fight it finally won against itself, I thought of Liam.
“I’m broken too,” I had admitted to him on that beach all those long months ago. “Maybe, from now on, we can try to talk more. Fix the broken pieces together?”
In my mind’s eye, Liam wasn’t drunk as he swayed back and forth, nodding his agreement. He was standing tall with a brilliant smile on his vibrant face. Eyes bright and awake, he reached his hand out to me.
“I’d like that.”
I didn’t see the semi-truck or its bright headlights. But I heard its blaring horn and its screeching brakes as it barreled into the passenger side of the vehicle.
I didn’t see what happened to Richard as the whole world capsized. I didn’t think as his hands fell from myneck, but I did what I’d been told.
I leapt.
I hadn’t gotten much time to mourn my family’s memory after remembering, but as my world turned white and I put my hand in Liam’s… I didn’t think I would be needing the time.
We had all the time in the world.
41 Come Home
Trey
Life.
For the most part, life and I were friends. At one point, I positively considered life a kind, worthwhile experience. Then my best friend died and the girl I loved fell asleep.
I felt betrayed by life. I thought we had a solid understanding of feasible hardships and meaningful rewards. But it took something irreplaceable to me.
Two people I loved and considered family.
Then when my trust was broken, and I was at my weakest, life tricked me into a false security. It gave me back the girl I remained patient for. I could handle the ups and the downs, the rejection and the back and forth because Maybelle was awake. That was the most important thing, that she was awake. She was alive.
Life was good in re-gifting me the presence of the girl I fell for through the words of a precious book. It was gentle in letting me hold her again, letting me keep her. But it was ripping my trust apart all over again by trying to take her back.
“Hang in there. We’re close,” Williams said from the back seat. Nodding, I held to the door handle of the truck, ready to dive out as soon as we arrived.
“What else did Penny say?” Larson demanded fromnext to Williams. “Did the guy have a gun? Is that why she went with him?”
“No,” Bear answered for me as he wove his truck through traffic. “She said that Maybelle willingly went with him.”
Twenty minutes ago, I disembarked the plane home with my brothers after a couple of won away games. The moral was high. I was feeling really good, thinking I was headed home to be with the girl I loved.
