Page 25 of Lush Curves

“Oh,shit.” Sam was stunned that he hadn’t fully clued in to that horrifying little fact right from the jump. “Oh, shit…of courseit was. Please don’t tell me that he turned on you.Please.”

“Oh, it was nothingnewfor him to smack me around,” Annie said. “Mom wasn’t always home when he decided he felt like beating on someone, but more and more, I’d started to step between them, instead of letting Mom always be the one to take the beatings. A few times, we kind of ganged up on him to defend ourselves, but even leglessly-drunk, he was still stronger than both of us put together, and really, I think we were afraid that we’d get carried away and kill him by accident, if we sort of let ourselves go and really went for it with a bat or something.”

“And then you two would be in jail,” Sam said, despising the legal system with a sudden and fervent passion. “Manslaughter, most probably, but still…”

“Yep.” Annie sighed, shook her head. “So when Mom died, I fully expected him to just let loose on me. I mean, he said that he’d do it, and I thought if he got me alone at home, got into my bedroom, only one of us would walk out of that room… and it wasn’t going to be me, no matter how hard I fought.”

“So this is when you escaped,” Sam said; it wasn’t a question. “When you ran for your life.”

“Yes.”

“How? How the hell did you get away from that fucking human nightmare, honey?”

Annie paused in shock at the fact that Sam actuallyknewthe word ‘fuck’, let aloneusedit in the correct context, then carried on:

“Mom and I had a secret joint account, just in our names. There wasn’t much in there, just over two hundred dollars, but I cleaned it out the day before the funeral, packed a small bag and hid it under the front porch, and then after the funeral, I waited at the neighbour across the street until Dick got drunk and passed out. When I was sure he was out, I snuck into the house and stole his car keys. Then I grabbed my bag, got into Dick’s car, went back to say goodbye to Mom one last time. And then I drove out of town, and kept driving until I hit Colorado.”

“You stole his car?”

“Yeah.”

“Good girl.” Sam wanted to high-five her, settled for clutching her hand a bit tighter. “I’m fuckingthrilled.”

“Thanks,” she said,stillunable to believe that she’d done that, even now, almost thirty years later. She’d never stolen anything in her life before that, hadn’t stolen anything since, but she figured that if she was only going to stealonedamn thing in the whole of her life, at least she’d made itcount. “I have to admit that it feltwaybetter than it should have.”

“Nah,” Sam said. “I think it feltexactlyas good as it should have.”

“Well… maybe.” Annie permitted herself a tiny smile. “Actually… most definitely.”

They shared a grin, then Annie sighed, carried on.

“Anyway. So. I drove through most of the evening, crossed the state line, and at about two a.m., I decided to look for a cheap motel with a bar. I figured that I deserved a drink and a decent sleep before taking Denver by storm. That’s when I met Billy.”

“Billy?”

“Billy Matthews.” Annie shrugged, resigned to what was going to happen next in the story. “Sarah and Noah’s Dad.”

“Ah, right.” Sam didn’t know much about the guy, but what hedidknow, he didn’t like, so remaining even neutral was proving a challenge. “What was he like? I mean that night that you met for the first time?”

“Oh, well.” Annie’s eyes softened, just a bit, and just for a few seconds. “He was gorgeous, and I was totally swept off my feet. You know? I was seventeen, and had never really had a boyfriend before because Dick scared any guy away from me, and Billy was – well. He was older by a good ten years, he was working full-time, he had money and a truck, and a tiny house all his own. He just seemed so amazing to me, so worldly, I suppose. Like he had it all figured out, in ways that I hadn’t even begun to look at or eventhinkabout.”

“Not many seventeen year olds have it all figured out, honey. Heck, most forty-seven year olds are still struggling to get some things together.”

“Yeah, well, Iamforty-seven, and so I sure as hell know that to be truenow, but back then, I was really looking for someone to… I don’t know. Take me under their wing? Guide me? Maybe even save me, just swoop in and take me off to a whole new life. I wanted to be then princess in the fairy tale, then who was waiting and waiting for the guy to show up and carry me off into the sunet, for my happily ever after life.”

“The knight in shining armor syndrome, huh?”

“Yep. A knight on a horse, with a big castle and sexy smile and great abs.”

Sam laughed. “And Billy had great abs?”

“Awesomeabs. At least until he developed the beer gut.”

“So how did it all begin? Your fairy tale relationship?”

“Oh, I sashayed on in to this terrifying dive bar, all sass and attitude like you can only have when you’re seventeen and stupid, and went up to the bar and asked for a shot of whiskey. The bartender clocked me as underage, but it wasn’t the kind of place that cared much, so he served it up. Billy was standing there alone, and he just walked on over, bought me another shot even as I was coughing up a lung from the first one. And that was it, really. We talked and laughed and drank and danced, he took me to my motel across the highway, he stayed the night. Took my virginity with such gentleness, I think I fell in love with him there and then, just for doing that for me. The next day I was nursing a horrific hangover, and he brought me coffee and a sausage muffin thing – which washands-downthe most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me, in the whole my life – and asked me to see him again in Denver.”

Annie shrugged once more, absently ran her nail over Sam’s hand, just lightly, but he felt it with the force of an electrical current.God, he was putty in this woman’s hands.

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