And it doesn’t stop. He stomps me and when he tires of that, he starts kicking me again. It’s all I can do to hold on and not black out.
The door opens and my best friend steps in, her gasp of horror the only thing that stops the pain.
“Joseph, what the hell are you doing?”
“Get out of here. This is none of your business.”
“I’m calling the police!”
She doesn’t waste time when he turns her way, she runs out and I hear her car door open and close. Thank God.
Joseph doesn’t follow her. He turns back to me.
“You’re mine, Daisy. Don’t you ever forget it.”
And then he leaves.
It’s not long before I hear sirens and the paramedics rush in, followed by the police and Lucy. She’s holding her phone,screaming into it, but I can’t make out the words. I can barely see through the blood dripping into my eyes.
“It’s okay, Daisy. We have you.” The female paramedic looks familiar, but I can’t place her. Her face and those words are the last memories I have as the world around me goes dark and the pain stops.
CHAPTER 23
Hutch
What doyou even say to that? I don’t know how to respond. I’m in utter shock and enraged at the same time, but I don’t want her to see my anger because she’s scared enough as it is. My beautiful little scrappy girl is sitting here shaking for all she’s worth and I’m not gonna add to that if I can help it. Without thinking about it, I pick her up and put her in my lap, locking my arms around her.
“Why the fuck isn’t he in jail?” Collin spits out.
Her flinch at his tone sets my temper flaring even more. Collin needs to chill. The glare I shoot his way lands and he looks down, realizing what he’s doing.
“He was, but charges weren’t pressed against him.”
“Why not?” I ask, keeping my voice soft and calm.
“Everyone told me not to. Even the cops. They didn’t want to ruin his future. He was going to a Division I school. They pressured me not to press charges.”
The police harassed her into not filing charges against the bastard? Small town hick cops.
“His uncle is the town sheriff.”
Fuckers.
“Joseph came to see me in the hospital. He said he’d go do the same thing to Nana again and again until I learned to keep my mouth shut. And he bragged he’d get away with it.”
Collin let loose with a string of curse words in both English and Spanish so fast I couldn’t keep up with him. Not only did asshat beat a woman, he threatened to do the same thing to her sick, elderly grandmother. Fucker.
“He was right, too. No one was willing to take my side over his except for Lucy. She wanted me to press charges, but he was threatening Nana and everyone else, including the police, were telling me it would be awful to ruin Joe’s life over one mistake. The only thing I could do was to agree not to press charges and drop the whole thing to keep Nana safe. He stayed away from me after that. I think his uncle told him if he didn’t, they’d have to press charges or something. I’m not sure though. Sheriff Ayers told me he took care of it and Joseph wouldn’t come near me again.”
I really hope I get to meet this sheriff one day just to tell him what an asshole and fuck up of a cop he actually is.
“I stayed with Nana until she died, sold the house to pay off the debts, and used everything I had left to come here. I just wanted to get away from that whole town after what happened.”
I’m not sure how to react without scaring her further. I want to go to that place she grew up and bitch slap every single person who pressured her to let a batterer go free. All because he was the town’s golden boy expected to do great things and make it to the NFL. Which it appears he is going to do since he declared for the draft.
“Where’s Lucy now?” Collin asks after a few minutes. He has a tick right by his left eyebrow. I’ve only ever seen it once before when his parents got deported. He’s as furious as I am.
“She’s at school in California. Basketball scholarship. I didn’t even know she’d come home that weekend. She came by to surprise me and force me out of the house. I might be dead right now if she hadn’t stopped by. I had a lot of internal bleeding.”
