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“Well, I’m picking up a dog, so I’ll probably need more evenings at home. Which means, if you want the overtime, it’s yours.”
“Sounds good to me.” Cort and I walked inside the warehouse and carefully lowered the tube onto a rack. He patted my shoulder and started walking back to the truck. “One down, seventeen more to go.”
I inhaled deeply and followed. “Yeah, you better remember this the next time I have a heavy load to move.”
He turned to look over his shoulder and winked. “Yes, Daddy.”
It was a running joke between us that whenever one of us got a little bossy, we’d throw that out there. No one at work thought of it as more than a joke, but we knew the truth behind it. And that was what made it funny sometimes and annoying the rest of the time.
I scoffed. “If you were my boy, your ass would be bright red right now.”
He chuckled. “Promises, promises…”
2
JESSE
Is this it?
Have I finally found the sweet release of death?
I turned my head and a shooting pain pierced through me from head to toe. Then I realized it wasn’t. There was no way death could hurt that badly. The total darkness surrounding me was deceptive at first, but as soon as my eyes began to adjust, I remembered where I was. Crouched in the closet with my feet wedged against the accordion door to keep Bruce from opening it.
Not that he couldn’t get in if he really wanted to.
But he was usually so far gone by the time he was done with me, he was probably passed out for at least a few hours. Unless, it had already been a few hours. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out as I reached into my back pocket to fish out my phone.
It was just after eight, and he had come home at 6:30. He was already drunk before he started in on a new bottle, so I’d probably only been hiding for twenty or thirty minutes.
But this beating was one of the worst.
They were never good or easy, but sometimes, he would just throw something at me and be done with it. Tonight, he was in a mood and wasn’t ready to back down until he physically passed out or killed me. Luckily, he winded himself and closed his eyes just long enough for the alcohol to lull him to sleep.
Which meant this was probably my last chance.
I could try to get away right now, and I’d have a 50/50 chance of survival. But if I were to stay through the night, I might not make it another 24 hours. The way he was waving around his 12 gauge was new. He liked to pull it out now and then just to remind me he was in charge. But he usually didn’t press it right to my face and pretend he was gonna pull the trigger. That was also new.
Which meant it was officially time for me to leave.
I couldn’t take another night of that torture. I was fairly certain I would die from the cold or whatever internal injuries I had, but that would be better than living with him in constant fear.
It took a while, but I slowly pushed myself up against the wall until I was upright and able to stand. Blood was crusted along the side of my head and dripped down my neck, and when my shirt pulled away from the scab, the cut on my elbow from when he threw me to the ground began to bleed again.
But none of that really mattered. That kind of pain could be ignored. It was the fear that I hated most. Never knowing how he was going to react from one second to the next was not worth any sense of security he claimed to offer me. At first, I had appreciated that he took me in when I was on the streets, but the price of that shelter quickly became way too high.
I would have been better off braving the elements and sickos on my own than agreeing to go with him. But I was desperate and gullible, and when he said he would take care of me, I believed him.
Unfortunately, his idea of taking care of me was much more violent than I had ever anticipated. I pulled open the closet door just far enough for me to peek out and listen. I could hear Bruce’s loud snoring from the other side of the trailer, so I knew I’d be okay for a while.
When he was in a deep sleep, nothing could wake him.
As quietly as I could, I grabbed my backpack and shoved some clothes inside. Bruce’s wallet was next to the dresser, and I briefly debated whether or not to take his cash, but I didn’t want to give him any more reason to hunt me down. Best-case scenario was that he would be glad to be rid of me and forget I ever existed.
But that wasn’t realistic.
He would try to find me. And taking even a single dollar from him would just be taunting him to come for me even sooner. With my boots in my hand so I wouldn’t make any noise, I slipped past him and got to the door.
The door to his old trailer was creaky, but he had the TV on, so I turned up the volume two notches and waited for some loud talking before I yanked open the door and slipped outside. The few seconds it took for me to step into my boots and start running felt like hours. But I made it all the way to the road without any sound coming from the trailer.
