Page 45 of His Good Girl
“Let me speak to her. Please.” My plea affects her as she pauses.
“She’s sleeping. I’m not waking her.”
I can’t force her to do anything, so I clench my aching fist and say, “I’ll call back later. Please, Rue. I need to speak to her.”
“That’s up to her.”
She hangs up, and I have no choice but to chuck the phone back into the safe with the papers and slam it shut, followed by the painting, having memorized her number to dial from a fresh burner later. Needing to distract myself in the meantime, I hobble over to the bucket and pick it up, staggering to the downstairs toilet to dispose of the contents and swill it under the tap before dropping it onto the floor. It’s not the best, but right now, I don’t give a shit. Limping with my arm around my ribs, I take the stairs painfully, slowly, one at a time, in an activity that seems to go on and on.
“Fuck’s sake,” I murmur halfway up. “I didn’t know my bed was at the top of fucking Everest.”
My joke does nothing to spur me on, but several minutes later, I stumble into my bedroom, grabbing the wall as I make my way into the bathroom and turn on the shower before I pass out.
Having already been stripped of my shirt, I remove the strapping around my ribs and loosen my pants, letting them drop around my ankles. Sitting heavily on the toilet seat, I awkwardly toe off my shoes and endure an agony the likes of which I hope never to repeat any time soon, I remove one sock and contemplate showering with the other one on.
After a few seconds breather, the steam from the shower filling the bathroom already, I brace myself and get the other one off with a cry of pain that I’m glad no one else was here to witness.
“Fuck,” I pant, hauling myself to my feet using the toilet paper holder as leverage.
Stepping into the shower, I howl when the hot water hits my lacerated and sensitive skin like razor blades.
“Fucking pussy,” I tell myself, letting the hot water wash away whatever dried blood it can without any help from me.
Minutes, hours, who knows how much time later, I turn the shower off and unsteadily climb out, reaching for a towel to pat my skin dry. Shoving it on the counter, naked, I hobble to the safe in my bedroom, situated a trying overhead reach in my closet.
Clenching my jaw, I open it with the fingerprint scanner and pull out the secondary burner, closing the safe and walking the few paces to the bed before falling into it, panting like I’ve run a marathon. Grunting as I don’t have the capability to re-strap my ribs up again, I hold the phone up to my face.
Feeling that enough time has passed between then and now, I dial the phone, hoping I got the number correct through the haze of my beat-up eyes.
It rings and rings, so I hang up, gathering my strength to try again.
Chapter26
Serena
“Was that him?”
Rue shrugs and hands me the phone. “No caller ID. You don’t have to speak to him if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t know what I want.” Sighing, I sit up in bed, feeling much better than I did a few hours ago. Whatever hangover cure Rue made me seems to have worked. “Sorry that my clothes are too big.”
“Fuck off. I’d give anything for your tits.” She giggles.
“You don’t have to stay. You can go home if you want. Not that I’m trying to get rid of you, but you don’t have to stay.”
“I want to stay, and it’s not that I’m worried you’ll do this again. I believe you when you say you weren’t trying to end it. But like I said, I feel a real friendship here, almost like a sister thing, I guess.”
“Only child too?”
“Yeah, how did you guess? But this is as good for my soul as I think it is for yours.” She pauses. I know what’s coming, and I brace myself. “About what you told me…you need to speak to someone, a therapist or something. You’ve buried it deep, but these things don’t work themselves out.”
“I’m not ready.”
“Okay, but think about it? And please, next time you feel like the walls are closing in, speak to me. I will stop whatever it is I’m doing to listen and be there. I won’t let you get to the point where you need to hurt yourself again.”
“Thanks.”
It’s all I have to say. There is no need for anything else. She gets it and isn’t pushing me.
