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“You stupid slut! After I’m done with you, you’re gunna know who owns you, Candy.”
His hands wrap around my neck, and the words that I’m not my mother die in my throat.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe!
I claw at his hands, trying in vain to get him to loosen his grip.
My father has long been sexually abusive, but he’s never been like Jimmy’s dad. He’s never hit me.
My nails dig into his skin, trying once again to gain leverage, but his eyes have an evil glint. He’s hyper-focused on where his hands are squeezing the life out of me.
My lungs burn, and blackness forms around the edges of my vision. My muscles lose their strength as the fight slowly leaves my body. One hand drops to the mattress, the other one following. I succumb to the fact that I’m dying. He’s going to kill me.
Then his head falls forward, and he slumps down on the other side of the mattress, half straddling me.
I suck in huge gasps of air. Coughing uncontrollably, I think that whoever saved me was too late. I’m too far gone. Jimmy pushes my dad the rest of the way off of me.
His hands are on my cheeks, his beautiful eyes silently encouraging me to fight. “Oh my God, Lilah! Are you okay?”
My entire body shakes as he picks me up off the bed. “Ji… Jim… Jimmy.”
“Shhh. You’re in shock.” He wraps me in his arms, arms that feel like a shelter in the midst of a hurricane.
He carries me out of the room and into our small living room, forcing me to sit on the couch. He grabs the old brown-and-orange afghan my mother knitted before she died off the back of the couch and wraps it around me.
“Oh my God, your face. Look what he did to you,” he whispers. His hand rises to touch my face, but it stills in the air. Instead, he wraps an arm around me and rubs my arms.
“You saved my life.” My voice is hoarse and my throat is sore, but I manage to get out the words.
“I told you that I’d always protect you.”
I nod numbly and touch my face. My hand comes away with blood.
I remember now. When Jimmy hit him with whatever he did, blood sprayed down on me. I glance at myself. My ripped shirt hangs open, displaying my white bra and stomach. All covered in blood.
I should feel remorse, but I only feel free.
“Lilah.It’s okay. You’re here. You’re safe. Everything’s okay.” Jimmy’s hand rubbing my back catapults me back to the present.
I’d love for him to hold me close like he did that night, but I can’t get used to him. He’s not mine anymore.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers, his face so close.
I straighten up, and his hand drops. Wiping my face with my hands, I look at him. He always did wear his emotions for all to see, and right now he’s worried about me—even though he probably feels nothing more than disdain for me. That’s what makes him such a great man.
“You have nothing to apologize for. You saved my life that day. It’s just a lot…”
He shakes his head. “No, things changed after that night. You were different and I closed up. You wanted to talk about it and I shut you down every time. If I’d sat with you and listened, maybe things would be different. If we’d gone to the cops. You had the marks on your neck. You never would have been forced into that position with Bernie.”
“Stop.” I take his hand, squeezing. “I made my own decisions that night. I was messed up long before it. I’ll be forever grateful for you saving my life. It took a huge toll on you too. And you know with your past and the way that town went by their own rules, things would have been different.”
His chin drops and he looks at his hand in mine on his lap. I slide mine from his.
After I cleaned up and got myself together that night, we wrapped my dad’s body in a blanket and took it up to his aunt’s place in the middle of the night, where we dumped it into the hog pen. By morning when we went back to check, there was no sign left of my father.
When people started asking, I said that he’d gone to check on his moonshine one day and never returned. That wasn’t completely uncommon, and after a lackluster search effort, our small community figured he’d probably had a heart attack or fell off drunk somewhere in the woods and breathed his final breath alone.
