Come to Me Quietly

Her voice didn’t penetrate his wrath. He was screaming his insults, maligning my name – as if there’d been anything left to malign. Every word he spoke was the truth. “You really think you’d ever be good enough for her? For my little sister?” I saw it all written there, the disgust lining his face. The hatred that I’d already known he would feel.

I destroyed everything I touched.

And I welcomed it, willed his assault because I deserved whatever beating he could give.

What I wasn’t prepared for was Christopher yanking Aly off me and shoving her aside. He threw her back so fucking hard, his attack unwarranted and fierce as he directed some of the hatred I’d earned at her. Like he somehow didn’t know how perfect she was, this girl that was the only good thing I knew.

Aly flew off her bed. The crack of her skull against the bookshelf reverberated through the room. She cried out, clutching the back of her head in her hands.

“Are you fucking stupid, Aly?” He spat the words at her like she was garbage while she lay curled on her side, crying. “You’re really sleeping with this piece of shit?”

Aly whimpered, “Please, Christopher, you don’t understand.” Her voice was rough, tortured. Her hand fluttered out toward Christopher, a silent entreaty.

The tips of her fingers were covered with blood.

Fury rose in me like a tempest. Red colored my vision. I was blinded by it. The only thing I could see was what he had done.

He hurt her.

Jerking up, I dove for him, ramming him in the stomach with my shoulder. He grunted and stumbled back. Aly’s cries rose from where she lay, an unwilling participant in all this shit, her cries taunting my ears.

He hurt her.

Christopher sneered. “Come on, you piece of shit.”

My fist collided with soft flesh. The blow resonated around the room as pain exploded in my hand. Blood spurted from his nose and streaked in webbed lines down over his mouth.

The walls closed in and the red glowed.

So much blood… so much fucking blood. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it. The girl cried.

My fists landed again and again, ragged breaths ripped from my lungs, skin tearing under the rage leaking from my hands.

He fucking hurt her.

He hurt her.

I hurt her.

“Jared, oh my God, please stop.” She’d jumped on my back, begging, trying to haul me away from her brother, who lay crumpled on the floor, his arms shielding his face while the blows continued to land with incoherent violence against his stomach and arms and sides, any fucking flesh I could find.

“Stop!” she was screaming, and screaming, and finally her pleas broke through. “You’re hurting him… stop.” The last she begged in my ear in a muted whisper. Her breath rushed across my face, invaded my senses, took me over.

In horror, I staggered back with my hands fisted in my hair.

And everything hurt. My hands. My heart. This blackened soul.

Aly slowly slid down my back, never let go as she found footing on the floor and wrapped herself around my waist. She buried her face in the small of my back. Pleading hands locked to my stomach, clinging to me as if I were something other than the piece of shit her brother knew I was. As if I were something more than ruin.

But this was the only thing I knew.

I stared down at my oldest friend as he climbed to his hands and knees, his head hanging. Blood dripped steadily from his face onto the floor. He pulled up his shirt and wiped his face, his back heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He cocked his head up.

He no longer appeared angry. He just looked like he felt sorry for me. “Just go, Jared. Get out and don’t come back.”

I began to back away, raising my hands in surrender. Because I was already gone.

From behind, Aly’s arms tightened. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into the disordered air spinning through the room. I didn’t even fucking know who I was apologizing to. I guessed both of them. No doubt, I’d done both of them wrong.

“Nnnnn… no. Jared, no. Please stay.” Aly fought to hold on to me, but I wrestled away from the desperate hands clinging to my hips. I turned around to face the girl who’d become my refuge. A moment’s respite in the life that had become my death sentence. Everything I’d never wanted to see shone up at me… love and heartbreak and belief in what could never be.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. Because I really fucking was. I bunched her hands together and pressed them tightly between mine because I didn’t want to let go. Then I gently nudged her back. “I’m so sorry, Aly, but you know I can’t stay here.”

Leaving her standing there, I ran out into main room and pulled on a pair of jeans, a tee, and my boots. It both crushed and relieved me that she didn’t follow.

It took me all of five seconds to pack my things.

The only things that mattered I was leaving behind.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and hit the door. My feet pounded on the concrete stairs.