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Waited for me to tell her everything I’d hidden away for so long.
“I was around thirteen before I moved to Zachary, my mom dated some real losers. Ones that beat me, drugged her up, and beat on her. However, none of them compared to Derek. Derek was nice, kind, he took us out for ice cream, played with Frankie, and bought my mother new clothes.”
Josie frowned, a worry line etched on her forehead that I wanted to wipe off, but I felt too gone to move. Too pulled down by the weight of this memory.
“Where is my mom?” I asked.
Derek, was in his mid-twenties at the time, dressed to impress in slacks and a button-down shirt. He sat at our dining table, with takeout for us to eat. Frankie crawled onto the seat and started eating his without a second thought.
I didn’t. I stood in the doorway to the kitchen in ratted shoes with unwashed hair, staring at the man who wouldn’t fool me anymore. He shifted in his seat, dark eyes zeroed in on me. “Come and eat your food, Maverick. It’s going to get cold.”
I ground my teeth and wiped the sweat from my forehead from our lack of AC in the house. “No. Where is my mom? I haven’t seen her in a week. My teachers need her signature for school, and want to talk to her about signing me up for football. I need my mom. Where is she? Why are you here?”
Derek cleared his throat. “Bring me your backpack and I’ll sign—,”
“No!” I shouted.
Derek jumped from his chair, grabbed my arm, and dragged me toward my room. He studied my determined look as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me and locked me inside. I heard Frankie go to bed around ten, thanking God he didn’t touch him.
I just wished he’d done the same for me.
In the middle of the night, I felt Derek grab my arm and wrap duct tape around my mouth. I struggled, kicking and screaming to no avail before he shoved me into a trunk.
Tears coated my cheeks, and my breath struggled to make it to my lungs. I knew he’d kill me. He would kill me because he’d killed my mother. Sadly, I wasn't upset to escape life.
We drove for several minutes from the slums and stopped. I closed my eyes tightly, praying that God would just kill me. Kill me because I couldn’t take living anymore. Derek pulled me from the trunk seconds later, and I didn’t fight, I let him toss me into a pile of boxes behind a bar whose music rattled the glass windows through the alleyway.
The midnight air felt humid against my skin, leaving a layer of sweat on my body and hindering my breathing. Derek slid on a pair of black gloves, knelt over me, and cocked his head. “It’s too bad you had so many questions, kid, you could have followed in my footsteps.”
Stars danced along my vision as he hit me. Over and over. Until all I could focus on was the hole in the awning above my head, and how the stars were so bright that night. The night I’d die. Like a silent welcome from God above.
I didn’t know what stopped him because a hum took over my sense of sound, and my vision swayed from the intense feeling of his fist. I felt the blood trickle down my face, and my ribs hurt when I tried to breathe from his boot connecting with my side.
I waited to die. I welcomed the bright like that started on the edge of my vision and began to grow. Just a few more seconds …
Then you showed up.
You knelt over me like an angel, a shadow of black hair around your beautiful face as you caressed my bloody cheek.
I glanced at her. Josie’s eyes widened and a sob broke from her mouth. “I’m sure you remember,” I whispered, tracing her lips with my thumb. “You couldn’t make out my features even if you had known me then. He’d beat me so bad my mother didn’t recognize me when they finally pulled her from the streets to come to the hospital.”
“Maverick,” she sobbed, holding her face.
“I wanted to die, Josie Lee. Then you saved me, and I resented you. When you walked into class freshman year, everything barreled back down on me. I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Josie
Of course, I remembered that night. The only time I’d gathered up the balls to sneak out of my house, I found him. I’d been mad at my mom for telling me I couldn’t take an art class downtown, so I decided to sneak out and bicycle to an abandoned alley where I could spray paint on a vandalized wall.
It was stupid and impulsive, but it saved a kid’s life.
The night felt heavier than usual, humid and muggy, but I didn’t care. I peddled so fast, that tears raced down my cheeks as I dumped my bike and hopped off. The alley was behind a bar that I knew better than to near, but my mood made me angry and careless.
I shook the paint I’d found in our garage with my hand, mumbling obscenities I’d never have the nerve to say to my mother in real life before I heard a trash can lid fall and I dropped my paint.
Feeling brave I said, “Hello?”
