Page 3 of The Final Say

It wasn’t authority, but mainly the cheering of the crowd gave me this unspoken adoration. The hidden truth was there in front of me, and I was afraid to recognize how badly I had behaved in high school. She might’ve been off the radar, but she was never too far away from my thoughts. I measured my relationships with Julie in mind and nobody was able to hold a candle to the hold she had on me.

She had done the impossible by reinventing herself, turning her life around and becoming something to be proud of. This was her chance to start over from scratch—losing probably more than two hundred pounds by getting away from ‘him’ who was now sprawled out on the kitchen floor in a bloody mess.

My feet slipped through the blood while he was vainly clutching my ankle trying to stop me from going after her. His defeat was nothing more than a temporary reprieve until he got his second wind. That man didn’t know how to quit even when he was on the losing end of the fight.

His left eye was swollen, slowly imbuing the color purple with a fringe of black and blue. His mouth was bleeding from a few missing teeth missing now scattered on the floor.

One was embedded in my knuckle.

It was deep, but I was able to get a hold of it with my finger and thumb. My breath was short while I was trying to extract one of his incisors from the back of my hand. It finally came out, but I was well aware of the pain shooting through my nervous system.

“I would tell you to stay down, but I know you’re not going to listen to me. It’s the reason why I’m leaving, and I’m taking Julie with me. She’s never going to be yours again as long as I’m still breathing. This is one part of your life you are not going to have a say in. You’re just going to have to understand there’s no place for you in her life anymore,” I said guided by my beating heart, watching with trepidation as the rain came down in sheets.

There was a squeaking sound, and I turned to see him crawling toward me with this insipid smile on his face sliding his fingers in our combined blood. “You don’t know anything about her. She needs a strong man to take her by the hand. She will never survive the real world without me. I will carry the weight of the world for her,” Bryan replied, shell shocked by the beating he had just taken from me.

“I must’ve rattled a few screws loose when I was punching you repeatedly. How can you possibly be this delusional? You probably took it as some kind of slight against you when she left you in the middle of the night for parts unknown without a forwarding address. That should’ve been a good sign for you to let her go, but you just couldn’t do that,” I stammered with my finger moving a loose tooth back and forth in my mouth.

“This isn’t over by a long shot. You can live in your fantasy world, but I wouldn’t get too comfortable,” Bryan stressed still on the floor in a pool of his own blood. “There’s no place that she can hide from me where I won’t find her again. She thought mistakenly I would let her go, but I will only do that over my cold dead body.”

He used the counter for leverage to stand with this look of stupid triumph on his face. He could barely stand and was leaning on his elbows.

I walked over to him, and gently, with mocking insistence, slapped his face with the palm of my hand. It wasn’t meant to hurt—more of a symbolic gesture of a man that had gotten the woman’s hand. Besting him in battle was a bitter pill to swallow.

“I will admit you talk a good game, but your follow-through is laughable. Just when you think you have the upper hand, you mysteriously let your guard down for no reason. That just shows me you are too damn arrogant for your own good. There must be a long list of complaints about police brutality against you. There’s no way you can possibly hide this part of yourself from the real world for long. I’m betting there are people in high places willing to look the other way when one of those reports fall on their desks,” I concluded with a wave of my hand, moving unsteadily toward the door with one leg dragging behind me, limp and useless.

A crash made me glance over my shoulder to see him sprawled out over two chairs staring straight at the ceiling. He was tougher than I gave him credit for. It did lift my spirits to see him on the receiving end of a beating physically but not emotionally.

“I would practice saying goodbye over and over again in front of the mirror. She needs to know it’s over. Do the right thing and give her that closure before you finally slink back to your boys in blue. You can commiserate over a few beers most likely embellishing this fight until you are the one having raised your hand. I really don’t care what you tell them as long as you never darken her doorstep again,” I called out from the living room before stepping into the storm with my collar raised.

“Don’t underestimate me. They always make the mistake of underestimating me. I’m not going to give you my blessing and watch you ride off into the metaphorical sunset with my girl. This will end when I say so and not before. You’re just going to have to get used to having one eye in the back of your head. You never know when I will show up to take her away from you,” he hollered to get that final word without receiving a reply in return.

I pounded my fist down onto the hood of my truck in frustration, leaving a noticeable dent. It would most likely buff out, but I had to be careful about letting my temper get the best of me. She was most likely taking the same route unconsciously which would make it easier to catch up with her.

I turned the key in the ignition three times before it caught. The rumble was intimidating as I tore away from the curb with the wheels spinning. The smell of burnt rubber was in my nostrils through the crack in the window.

I was going to feel it in the morning after a hot shower brought out every single injury inflicted during the fight for her honor. It was juvenile, although the results were unmistakable.

She didn’t need him hovering—waiting for the right time to pounce after everything he had put her through. It was a little hypocritical coming from me considering what I had done to her in high school, but I was a better man for knowing her than I was without her.

There was no way that I could sit silently and let him speak to her that way. This wasn’t a dress rehearsal. This was a real knockdown, drag-out kind of fight most men would shy away from.

My feverish dreams every night were of wild acts of perverse pleasure in the comfort of her embrace. The feeling of her hands trailing over my body and touching me to make me cringe would probably give her some kind of immense satisfaction.

It was pitch black and the rain was coming down so fast that it was hard to see where I was going. I barely swerved out of the way of somebody standing on the side of the road.

It was a very close call.

The bumper would have struck her if I didn’t act quickly to rectify my trajectory. My fingers were gnarled around the steering wheel as I stared into the rearview mirror. She was standing there shaking like a leaf, soaking wet to the skin.

I jumped out and rushed back with the rain slicker I had found in the back of the truck. It was important to let her know that it was an accident.

But what I didn’t expect was that it was Julie.

She didn’t try to fight me when I wrapped her up in the slicker and brought her back to the truck.

Her hands were trembling when she placed them up against the vent to get a modicum of heat. There wasn’t much coming out, but I turned the mechanism all the way to the highest setting. She didn’t look at me while I was driving away from where I had almost made her into an accidental roadkill.

“I apologize for everything. I’m not just talking about what happened with Bryan back at the house. I would say he was the one that started it but I don’t want to get into a pissing contest. I’m sure you are wondering what happened to him. He has a few missing teeth but was still breathing when I left to come find you. What do you want to do? It was wrong not to consult you when you had a vested interest in the outcome.” I touched her knee and she placed her hand on top of my hand signaling that she was listening without judgment.

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