“Like I fucking care.” He lets go and hits my face, open palmed against my injured cheek and I wince, tears forcing their way into my eyes. “This is over. If we’re over, then you’re over.” His voice echoes, distant in my sky.
I attempt to pull back from the stars. Dan’s threat is real. The ferocity of his attack uncontrolled. We’re not hidden at his house. This is in public but he’s launching a harder punishment than he ever has before. Anybody could see but he doesn’t care.
Dan grabs my t-shirt and drags me into a sitting position. Squatting down so his face is against mine, he speaks. I don’t hear or respond and my teeth jar as he shakes me, the pain in my head intense. Another smack in the face and my lip stings as the skin splits.
He lets go and I slump back to the ground. “You hit my head too much,” I mumble. “I won’t be conscious. You want to do this to hurt me.”
Dan pauses, and my heart thumps in my ears as I struggle for energy to get away from him. My heavy head won’t coordinate my body and all I want to do is lie here and wait for this to be over. Will I ever escape him? Or does this end now?
When I was a little girl, monsters in the dark never scared me. When I grew up, I learned the worst are the ones who live in the bright part of my life. They trick. They lie. They hurt.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” A voice yells in the distant dark and the face of the monster who’s eaten away at my life disappears, as Dan reels sideways. A third person is with us and the two figures land on the ground beside me.
I roll onto my side and attempt to focus through the dim world. A man kneels on Dan’s chest and lifts his arm, thumping Dan so hard I hear the crack of bone. The fear trembles through my body and I vomit, the familiar metallic taste of blood on my lips. The second man remains on top of Dan, pinning him down with a knee on Dan’s throat. He turns to me, but I already know who.
“Ruby, are you okay?”
Jem. Words won’t come as I struggle to stay in the reality I was trying to push away.
“Ruby!” he repeats more urgently.
Dan shifts, struggling against Jem. “You piece of fucking shit!” Jem snarls. “What the hell have you done to her?” Jem grabs Dan by the shirt and drags his face toward him. “I should fucking kill you.”
The world is sideways, everything at the wrong angle and I’m unsure it’ll ever be upright again. Throwing Dan back again, Jem rains blows with a ferocity to match that of Dan to me a few minutes ago. Dan covers his face against Jem’s fists and I want to yell stop, but I don’t—a vengeful part wants Dan to feel some of the hurt he caused me. I watch as Dan weakens, not fighting back. Not once. He lies and takes the attack the way I did for so many months.
Closing my eyes, I smile at the stars and my brother who’s by the second star to the right. My Peter Pan who’ll never grow up now and never be in my life again.
Now I have Jem, the man who doesn’t want to take care of or protect me as my rescuer. And I bet he hates it.