Page 4 of Great White
“Not to be gross.” He wets a paper napkin with his mouth, then gingerly wipes away the dried blood from my lip. I can’t remember a man ever being so attentive to me. It’s hard to comprehend.
“What’s your name?” I ask with equal parts caution and curiosity.
He smiles as he cleans my face. “March. What’s yours?”
“Dove,” I disclose. For some insane reason, I trust him.
“Dove? That’s pretty.” He looks over my face. “So are you.”
The compliment isn’t dirty or poisoned with perversion like I’m used to. It’s simply genuine.
“Fantastic. Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, Dove, where am I going?” Fallon asks from the front seat as she drives through some of the most desolate back roads of Cleveland. I don’t immediately answer. I’m not sure I should. I’m not sure I can. “Dove?”
I stare into March’s eyes. I’m terrified. I’m terrified of everything. Of everyone. Fallon climbing to the top of my list.
“If you don’t take a stand for yourself now. You never will. We can drop you off, and you can go back to your life. Or we can walk through the threshold with you and help you change your future.” His voice is as smooth as velvet, but I don’t miss the menacing, subliminal message. He may be nice, but he’s no saint. “You have a chance. It’s your sole decision to take it.”
My heart pounds with fear and adrenaline. My lips make the decision for my mind. I spew out the address before my consciousness fully commits.
Fallon steps on the gas, and we head toward my uncertain future.
We pull up to the small, shack-looking, single-family house. My current residence. My current personal hell. The light blue siding is chipped and faded, and one of the front shutters is missing. The long walkway has splintering cracks, and inside the most charismatic devil lives.
When I first met Brock, I should have seen it right away, but I was blinded by his good looks and witty charm. He made me laugh, he complimented me, he made me feel special. Things moved quickly. Too quickly in hindsight. I just got out of an emotionally abusive relationship. I was already fragile. Already broken. I was easy prey, and he knew it.
But I wasn’t prepared for his kind of evil. I had been with men who hit me before, who talked trash to me, who made me feel like I was nothing. I have a type apparently, but Brock was a whole new kind of abusive. He didn’t just smack me around. He didn’t just call me a useless whore. He beat me down. Literally and figuratively. His beatings would come less often but be so much more destructive. I never feared for my life until I got entangled with him. Entangled is exactly what it feels like. I’m trapped in a web, and the harder I spin, the tighter it imprisons me. Suffocates me. In the past, I always felt like I could get out. Like I could walk away. When I had enough, I’d leave. I’d done it before; what would make this time any different? I was so naïve. So wrong. Brock was a true monster, and he showed me every time I tried to walk out the door. Every time I tried to leave him or disobey him. Be some kind of independent. He was in total control. What am I saying? Heisin total control. Of me, of my life. Of everything.
“Dove?” I hear March’s voice in the far distance of my thoughts. “You ready?”
“No,” I mutter.
“You will be.” Fallon opens her door. “When you see what he can be reduced to, you’ll be more than ready. You’ll be free.” She gazes back at me from the front seat before she slips out of the car.
At one point in my life, I was a rebel. I defied everything and everyone. I did drugs, dropped out of school, slept with all the bad boys. What else does a juvenile delinquent who grew up on the rough side of Cleveland do? They become a product of their environment. But somehow, through the rocky years and even rockier relationships, that tough bitch got beat down. I’m not the same person I was. I don’t even remember being that girl. That young, idealistic girl who thought she was untouchable. Man, the world sure proved me wrong.
“You’re just going to barge in there?” I ask March.
“The element of surprise does work well,” he muses.
“Do you have a better idea?” Fallon opens the back door and asks.
I look at the house again. “No. But Brock is a big guy, and he’s especially scary when he drinks.”
“Has he been drinking?” Fallon inquires.
“Yes.” I drop my head, hiding my battered face.
“Hey.” She grabs my chin and forces me to look up at her. “After tonight, no more hiding. No more vulnerability. No more doubt. Tonight, you’re reborn. Or you’re dead.”
“At whose hand?”
“Only time can tell us that.” Her response is chilling because I’m sure one potential answer is her. But March said they wouldn’t hurt me. I just keep reminding myself that even if I don’t believe it.
“Are there any guns in the house? Any he can grab right away?” Fallon sizes up the small, depressed structure.
“Yes, he keeps one under the sofa and one in the bedroom.” I fight to suppress my shiver, recalling earlier tonight when he was pressing the barrel of the handgun to my head. My eyes water from the resurgence of panic. I inhale a shaky breath, trying to keep my shit together. Jesus, I’m so pathetic. So. Damn. Pathetic.
“Don’t worry, Allstate, you’re in good hands.” March places an arm around me and winks.
