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At the sight of his Mustang, instant panic ran icy through my veins. An awful sense of dread took over my body confirming I should have trusted my own instincts and stayed at the hospital.
My thoughts were consumed with the thoughts that the love of my life was unconscious, on a hospital bed, totally unable to come to my rescue. I knew that Elliott would never be able to forgive himself if something happened to me and he hadn’t been there to stop it.
That meant I was going to fight tooth and nail to make sure it didn’t happen, so I could tell him myself, give my eyeteeth to stop it if I had to. Hurting me would hurt Elliott and there was no way in hell I was going to let that come to pass. I was a Jacobs after all and everyone knows that the Jacobs possess warrior hearts. I just prayed to God mine would beat furiously enough to weather the foulness that more than likely laid in my immediate future.
I suffered a building, wretched hysteria while Jesse sauntered from his vehicle at a confident, lazy pace, his face hardly visible through the blizzard swarming around us. I threw Carmen into reverse, resting my right hand on the back of the passenger seat to brace myself as I looked out my foggy rear window, crystallized ice preventing me from seeing anything. I slammed the gas and blindly attempted to steer the car a decent enough distance to throw it back into drive and get out of there, but there was a sheet of ice beneath me at least two inches thick and my tires lost any traction from the all too eager spinning. I’d driven in ice my entire life and knew the last thing I was supposed to do was press the gas like I did but I panicked, desperation oozing from every pore and effectively ending any chance of thinking soundly.
Growing up, I remembered watching television shows or reading articles about people involved in some form of tragedy or another. I would shake my head back and forth as I read their stories, chiding them for their stupid mistakes with a click of my tongue for their seemingly nonexistent desire for self-preservation.
‘I just froze’, they’d always say and I would chock up their lack of action or mere escape from death as someone who barely fit into the ‘survivors of the fittest’ category.
Premature judgment, I humbly admit. Obviously, I no longer judge those people so unfairly. I swallowed that misconception that day followed by the bitter pill of regret mixed with a bit of my own blood.
I repeatedly tried to gain control of Carmen but she failed me, for the first time ever, and before I knew it, I heard and felt shattered glass spill down the side of the car and onto my lap. Glass scraped the side of my face and I brought my hands up to protect my eyes. I struggled to scream but I’m just not a screamer. The few occasions I’ve needed to, I open my mouth but nothing ever comes out. I think it’s because my voice is too deep. I just can’t get to the high octaves without it coming out in scratches.
Elliott forced me to keep a crowbar underneath my passenger seat. I remember throwing a fit, I can’t stand being coddled which Elliott had understandably done a lot of lately, but I’d never been so grateful for his overprotective meddling than in that moment.
I leaned over, thrusting my arm underneath the passenger seat sweeping my hand back and forth for the steel bar. I felt around the floor board for it and caught the cold steel by the tip just as Jesse stretched through the newly shattered window, grabbed my hair to yank me back and I lost any grip I had.
I winced in pain before pulling myself forward and frantically felt around for the bar once more. I could see Jesse reach for me again as my fingers wrapped around the base. I brought it out and swung as hard as I could toward Jesse. He raised his left arm and the bar met the bone of his forearm with a sickening thud.
It wasn’t hard enough to break it but it was hard enough to stun him. He stumbled back from the car, bringing his hurt arm protectively toward his chest. He bent over in pain and I used the time as a distraction to unbuckle myself and throw open the door, ‘Mustard Gas’ spilled into the air and I sprinted in the direction of my home.
My face instantly numbed from the shocking chill, the air whipped across my hair and jarred me awake from what I had hoped was just a nightmare. I begged my body not to react to the cold, begged it to power through the cutting blast, not to shut down as it wanted so badly to do. I was a mere two blocks from my front door. I yelled for someone to help me but the blizzard drowned out all sound. I was all alone.
“Get back here you bitch!”
I still held the bar in my hand and turned around to face him.
“Stay away from me Jesse!”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he chuckled, his shoulders shaking from the effort. “This is not how things work. I tell you what to do Julia, not the other way around.”
He walked slowly toward me like he had all the time in the world. I turned to run toward my home again but he picked up his pace and overpowered me. He’s a conditioned athlete and I basically had no chance. He snatched the bar from my hand and threw it in Sawyer Tuttle’s yard.
“Sawyer!” I yelled, out of realization that his house was so close. “Sawyer, help me! Saw....” I yelled again, before Jesse covered my mouth with his hand.
I bit his fingers and swung my elbow back toward his face but missed. He pulled me tighter into his chest and squeezed the air from my lungs, repositioning his hand tight across my mouth. He whispered in my ear as I desperately tried to pull oxygen into my lungs.
His arm acted as a boa constrictor, every time I let out a little air to gain a breath he would choke his arm further into my chest, cutting off the possibility of breath.
He leaned his mouth into my ear, “Yell again and I shove that crowbar down your throat.” He squeezed me tighter, “Understood?”
I nodded and he slightly released some pressure around my torso. I gulped freezing air into my lungs and coughed from the pain of it.
“Come on Julia,” he said, kissing my neck, “You’re coming with me.”
I shuddered at his touch, ordering myself not to cry. I refused to show him any sort of weakness, not just for me, but for my Elliott and the cruel, horrible things he did to him. Crying would only give him satisfaction and refusing him that, I realized, was the only power I would have over him.
He pulled me onto the ground and the melted ice and snow from the road soaked into my clothing. He grabbed a handful of my hair again and started dragging me to his Mustang.
I clawed at his forearm, pleading with him to release me, but his thick jacket protected him from my short nails furiously trying to scrape through, the red from my fingernails streaking the leather.
Trying to get a better grip on him, I turned over onto my stomach and started walking on my knees but several times I faltered and my face ended up flat against the icy pavement. The four times it happened he pulled harder and I would moan in pain.
It felt likes weeks before we arrived at his car and he dragged me toward the trunk.
“No!” I yelled.
