AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There’s another door. A big one. I squint, doing my best to focus amongst the shrieking sounds around me, and turn my head until I figure out where the hell I am.
It’s a house. Like a normal house with photos I can’t focus on hung on the walls and a living room with couches and a table and shit on it.
I don’t have time to be surprised. All I can do is keep moving forward. My hand grips the door handle, and it mercifully opens.
“She’s at the front door,” a man yells from behind me.
Mother fuck fuck.
The door is thrown open, and I hobble my sorry ass through the threshold. I’m in a residential area, and it’s dark. Too dark. None of the houses have lights on, and I won’t get someone to open the door before one of these psychos drags my ass back to what I now assume is a basement.
Knowing my time is short, I reach back and close the door behind me to hide my next move and hope it’s not too simple that I’m about to get caught, but just simple enough that nobody will realize what I’ve done.
Next to the front porch are massive hydrangea bushes. It’s the only spot I can get to quickly enough in my condition and that’s exactly what I do. I throw myself into the plant and curl into the smallest ball I can form as I work to slow my breathing and remain silent.
The door opens and feet stomp on the wood slats very close to my head. “She’s half-dead,” Titan’s voice snarls. “She can’t have gotten that far. Go fucking finish her.”
I blink back tears that I want to say are only because of the pain that swirls through me as I force myself to stay as small as possible. It shouldn’t hurt that my father wants me dead. Not after what I’ve seen and learned. But no matter what I’ve said…that monster was once my dad.
There had been a brief moment when I saw him in that SUV that I thought I might get one of my parents back. I’d let the happy memories of my childhood resurface until this man showed me who he really is.
A psychopath. A pathetic excuse of a human being.
Still, he was my father until I was nine years old, before he disappeared, running away from a gambling debt—at least that was the story I’d been told. The man who taught me how to ride a bike, who let me stand on his shiny black shoes at our first daddy-daughter dance because I was too nervous to move on my own, and who tucked me into the tightest burrito every night before bed until I got “too cool” for that.
My chest feels as if it’s being ripped open as I grieve a parent I lost long ago. Not only that, but for my mother, who waited on him to return to her, who believed in the man he somehow convinced her he was.
The front door slams, but I can’t tell if I’m alone. Tears fall down my cheeks, my face in the cool dirt with leaves and branches from the bush covering my body. Minutes tick by, but still, I don’t dare move. Not even when something crawls over my bare foot or when my skin there begins to sting.
The lack of movement is rewarded when someone walks down the front porch stairs and stands on the last one. The shadow cast from the light behind them nearly touches me, and I wait with bated breath to see what they’ll do.
Is it Titan? Does he suspect I’ve stayed behind, hiding? Or is it the man who gave me the chance to escape?
I don’t know, and I refuse to move just to sate my curiosity.
Instead, the ground and the bug-infested bush become my haven for minute after minute until I can no longer track the time. People come and go, but nobody speaks, and I don’t dare budge from my hiding spot.
At least, not until the door slams closed one last time and the light over the porch goes off. Another significant amount of time passes—what feels like hours to me—and there aren’t any other sounds outside. It’s still the middle of the night. Not even a hint of the morning sun is on the horizon. I don’t know where I am or how I’m going to find help, but I know this is my chance.
I crawl out from under the bush and move my hands over my body, brushing away whatever unwanted friends have accumulated since my escape. I consider standing, but that seems like a bad idea when I’m still this close to the house. I continue to move on my hands and knees, making my way toward the neighbor’s house.
Everything remains dark when I get to their fence, but still, I don’t get back to my feet. I reach the next house over, this one without any kind of barrier around their yard. I check for movement around me before I fully rise from the ground, and once I feel as certain as I can, I start to limp through their backyard.
My entire body shakes with effort, and even though I’m ready to collapse into a bloody, soiled heap of nothingness, I focus on my steps. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right.
Each one takes me further away from Titan and closer to safety. I just need to find a phone and call…
Fuck me. The only person whose number I have memorized and might answer right now is Tori, and I can’t call her like this. I can’t allow her to be wrapped up in any of this, risking her life. Not when I know she’ll want to take me right to the police, and something tells me that’s not the right choice.
Even with my hope a little less buoyant, I manage to keep walking, and once I exit the backyard, I realize it leads right onto a golf course. The chance that I’m anywhere close enough to Luca’s downtown compound lessens the moment I see the greens, but still, I don’t give up.
I’m halfway across the eighth hole when my legs buckle. I can’t hold myself up any longer. I can’t take another step, not knowing what’s coming next and if I’ll make it to safety or if Titan still has men out looking for me and one of them could have eyes on me right now.
I just can’t.
With my body spread over the grass, I close my eyes and just breathe. I’ve fought for so long already. I’ve given everything that I have to give. At least I’m not going to die in that basement. Out here, under the stars… It’s not the worst way to go.
There’s no doubt I have some sort of internal damage after the plethora of boots that found my body oh-so desirable, the hands that tossed me into walls, and the fists that marred my skin.
