Page 56 of Bear Strength

I swallow heavily, enduring his gaze. I feel like I could melt into a puddle and just disappear, but I hold on. I don’t look away.

“Are you scared of me?” he suddenly asks me something that he hasn’t asked once, in all this time.

At first, I’m not sure what to answer. Should I tell him the truth? I’m fucking petrified. I’m shaking. I might piss my pants any moment, but my bladder is still under control. So far. I’m wondering how come he doesn’t see that?

He walks over to me and places his hand on my cheek. He feels cold. My cheek is burning. It’s like throwing a hot coal into an icy lake. I don’t flinch. He was usually kind only while he was apologetic for what he’d done, or when he was about to explode. I guess this is a combination of both.

“I am,” I finally say, opting for the truth.

“I know I haven’t treated you well some of the time…”

Some of the time!? I want to scream in his face that I can’t believe how deluded someone can be, but I keep my mouth shut. I keep reminding myself. I need to buy time. Not antagonize him. Just keep him talking. Conversing.

“But, you have to admit, you were being a bitch to me,” he continues. I have to bite my lip again. I look down. He probably takes it as remorse. So, he goes on. “I think it’s safe to say we both made mistakes. You acted badly, so I reacted badly. But, that can all be changed.”

Suddenly, he kneels down in front of me. He’s not drunk anymore, but there’s still that whiff of alcohol on his breath. I smell it now more than before, with him so close to me, his lips almost touching mine.

“All you have to do is tell me you’re still my baby girl,” he whispers.

He says it in a way he used to say it before. When we made love, it could never be referred to that. He liked it rough. Rougher than I ever imagined sex could be. And, it was always baby girl when something hurt more than it should have.

I feel my lip numb from all the times I bit on it, in an effort to prevent myself from saying something stupid, which might make him explode. I don’t say anything. I keep looking at my feet, bound to the chair legs. I wonder if the legs would break if I jump backwards and land on the chair? But, not with him so close.

“I know it’s hard to forgive me,” he tells me. “But, I’ve already forgiven you. You should try it.”

The more he talks, the more I want to scream at him. It’s getting harder to resist the urge to blow up in his face. Then, face the wrath of the consequences.

“There is nothing to forgive,” I hear myself say. He smiles at my words. His hands rest on my knees, squeezing them softly. “Because, what you’ve done is unforgivable.”

I watch as the smile drains from his face. He pulls away. His face scrunches up, his eyebrows furrow. He takes a walk around the room, like a caged tiger. If I’m going to die here, so be it. But, I won’t die telling this poor excuse of a human being that I forgive him.

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” he warns me, still calm.

“What? You want me to tell you I love you, that I love every bruise you left me with, every broken bone, every scar that will never heal? Is that what you want me to tell you?”

“Those were nothing, just minor scrapes. You had to go all drama queen and claim I abused you. You sent me to fucking prison, Danica!” He is slowly raising his voice now. He approaches me, kneels down before me again, but I know there won’t be any petting. His hands are already clenching. I’ve learned to recognize the signs. “Do you know what they do to guys like me there? Do you!?”

His voice echoes all around us. Here he is. The real Russel. The one I’ve been fearing. The one I’ve been waiting for.

“But, I forgave you. I fucking forgave you, Danica, because we are a family, we can still rebuild our life together. You just have to stop being such a stuck up bitch!”

He suddenly turns to the wall and punches a hole in it. I hear him breathing heavily, wheezing. Memories flood me, and adrenaline surges through my blood. A forgotten sensation that the mind tried to bury, but it can never be done. His fist is bleeding. But, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t feel it. He is too enraged. Adrenaline is hitting him hard, too. Only it affects us both differently.

“And, you took my boy away from me. You took him away from his father. And, I still fucking forgave you!”

“I took a boy away from a father who would get drunk and try to hurt him,” I explain something that I’ve explained so many times, that it lost any real meaning. It’s like talking to a brick wall.

“That’s all… that’s all going to change,” he falls down to his knees again, his palms in the air, reaching for me, cupping my face. “You just have to say so.”

I look at him and I wonder, how could someone be so stupid? This man has betrayed my affections more than a million times. He is the one responsible for the shattered disarray of my heart. He has stolen so many parts of me that I doubted I would ever be a whole person again. However, slowly, I’ve regained the pieces that were taken from me. Little by little, and no thanks to him. Now, he’s back for more. As he always would be, coming back for more. And no matter how much you give, how much he steals from you, it’ll never be enough. Some people are just like that. Some people just have an icy heart. They are incapable of loving anyone but themselves. Unworthy of someone’s love, they can never return what someone shares with them. They are simply unable to. He has left ashes in my heart. He enjoyed the fire, the flames. And now, he wants tostomp and dance in the ashes, too. Blow them away in the wind, until there is nothing left of me, but a broken shell of a woman that could have been happy, if she had never met him.

But, I have. I lit that match that destroyed me. Now, I’m the one responsible for keeping the ashes safe, and rising out of them like a Phoenix, reborn. I owe that to myself. I owe that to Dominick. I owe that to the three men who have accepted me as I am, broken and imperfect.

“You know I’ll never say that,” I tell him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t keep me bound here, in the middle of nowhere. You know you’re a piece of shit, and people like you never change. I’ll make sure Dominick forgets all about you, and once I get out of here, I’ll make sure you rot in prison for as many years as I can pin on you!” I blurt out all those things in one go, spewing out all the poison he has planted inside of me during the previous years, finally ridding myself of it.

“It’s not smart to talk like that,” he hisses.

“So, what? You’re going to beat the crap out of me? Can’t you be a little more original than that?”

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