AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I smell like roses, I’d joke. Come see. I’d stuff my pit in his face. He’d shove me and tell me to go stink up Oscar. All of those easy-going things just wither in my head. Asphyxiated beneath this dark fuel.
“I’m alright,” I mumble.
Farrow kicks open the trash bin, spits out his gum, then eyes me once again.
“Stop,” I sneer, acid burning the word. Burning me.
He frowns. “Man, this isn’t like you. What’s going on?”
“I’m fine!” I shout. “Just get the fuck away from me.”
Farrow shifts his weight uneasily, glancing at my death-grip on the counter—at my hardly healed knuckles—and his hand outstretches calmly, coolly. “Donnelly—”
I push him. Farrow is taken aback. It pisses me off, and I can’t say why. So I push him again, harder. His jaw muscles twitch, and we’re breathing heavier. Then I snap, and coming at Farrow means meeting the floor. I’ve known that since I was a teenager—when he brought me to his MMA classes. Signed me up. Paid for me.
Don’t worry about it, man, he’d say.
I did get him back, with tattoos.
I always tried to get him back, even when he never asked for an IOU.
“Donnelly,” he grits out, putting me in a submission lock on the kitchen floor. “Just stop.”
I can’t. I struggle against him, and we’re not teenagers anymore. He’s thirty. I’m twenty-nine. He shifts again, until he’s sitting up against the cabinets, his leg like an anchor fastening mine to the floor. My back is against his chest, and his arm goes around my windpipe—but he never chokes me too tight.
“Breathe,” he urges.
I can’t.
“Talk to me.”
I can’t.
I wanna scream, but the violent noise is like my nightmare, just soundless inside me. “I…need it to stop.”
“What to stop?”
“This…feeling, man.” I grind my teeth, eyes burning. I cover my face, and Farrow adjusts, knelt on one knee in front of me, gripping the back of my head. Before he says anything, I choke out, “Just go. You’re gonna have another baby.” I’ve said it before, but he doesn’t need to deal with me and my shit. I’ve never wanted to drag him down with me, and I’m doing it now.
“Look at me,” Farrow urges, his clutch strong on my skull.
I let my hand fall off my hot face.
And with everything inside him, he tells me, “You are my family.” Tears gather in both our eyes, tears I don’t think we’ve ever shared like this. “That’s never changing.”
It splits me open, and I bawl into my hand, into his chest. Glimpses of that night try to tear through me, and I just cry. It gushes out of me, and I can’t stop it any better than I could cut the anger. This time, though, the weight is releasing bit by bit.
Easing off me slowly.
I breathe.
After some time, my tear ducts run dry and throat feels hoarse. Then Farrow snags waters out of the fridge, and we’re leaning on the cabinets side-by-side.
I swig, the rush of water cooling my throat, and I spin the cap back and forth on the plastic bottle. “I woke up thrashing.”
“You haven’t slept,” Farrow says, hushed in the quiet of the kitchen. “Being overtired can cause night terrors.”
My nose flares, emotion funneling back into me. “It’s Ulic Qel-Droma.”
