Page 55 of Embracing My Nightmare
“You’re going to need a few stitches,” Skid explained and taped a bandage to the cut before glancing over at Elise.
“I need to check her out, but . . .” He cast his eyes down as his words trailed off.
My lips pursed, his words repeating in my head. If he’d raped her, I don’t know if she would ever come back from that. I squeezed my eyes shut at the thought of him violating her after everything she had already endured in her life.
“Take her and her father to the hospital. Get her checked out and then take them where they want to go,” I instructed as I turned and walked around the back of the house, finding my way through the woods and back to my car.
I left the Flats, Elise safe with her father as I drove away from Portstill and back to Pierce Bluff. Every mile between us had me growing colder inside and as I pulled into the garage, I felt the doors to my heart shutter close.
Making my way up to my apartment, I let myself in and found James waiting with a suture kit. I sat at the table and let him close the wound before he gave me a once over, diagnosing two bruised ribs and a mild concussion. He offered me a pain tablet and a glass of water, but I refused. The pain let me know I was still alive when I felt dead inside without her.
Looking down at my arms, I saw Cameron’s blood still covering me and I pulled my clothes off. James placed everything in large trash bags to be destroyed. I wasn’t worried about blowback from Cameron’s death. No one would miss him, and it would take weeks before they found his body in that dilapidated house.
Old habits from the years we spent together were comforting in a way that I wasn’t expecting. I turned to him and offered my hand. James was someone who I admired and respected and I felt this kind of gesture was losing its place in society. James was the closest thing I had to family and he would be the one left to deal with the aftermath if I lost Elise.
He gripped my hand and I said, “Thank you for helping find my . . . Elise.”
Turning out of the room in only my boxer briefs, I was walking to my bathroom to take a shower when he asked, “Where is she?”
“Gone.” The one word final, and it felt eternal as I shook my head and cast my eyes away.
He was shocked, his mouth hanging open as I closed the door to him. And the world. I had to exist for seven days without my lamb and if she didn’t return, the only good part of me would be dead. I looked into the mirror and stared at the reflection. The blood had dried on my face, making a monster appear.
I stepped back and threw a glass vase against the mirror, the cracked glass cutting myreflection into broken pieces. The jagged sections echoed the splintered parts of my soul that only Elise had made whole. She took the pain of a child forced to work for a madman and had managed to lock it away with the killer that lurked in the recesses of me. She had opened my eyes to compassion and love, allowing me to see the good parts of me that still existed.
Ihadto get her back and the wait would be unbearable. She should be in my arms, safe and happy instead of wounded and in pain from Cameron’s harsh actions and hateful words. Slipping into the shower, I let the hot water cascade over my tired body, washing the swirls of blood down the drain.
The water grew cold and I turned it off, stepping out and wrapping a towel around my waist. It hurt to move too much on my left side and the bruises from his kicks were starting to form. I would take a hundred bruises if it meant she didn’t have any. Changing into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, I walked into the kitchen to find James making lunch.
I had been up since yesterday morning when I woke up with Elise tucked safely in my arms. I would have kept her in bed all day if it would have stopped Cameron and his crazy infatuation with a whore. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t care if someone sold their body for money, but that whore traded her kid’s safety and well-being for another hit of drugs and another cock to suck. If I could kill her again, I would.
She was my first kill, and while pushing someone off a roof isn’t too difficult,it gave me satisfaction deep in my soul watching her fall onto the pavement. I killed for Elise, making sure that her mother would never try to get her back. I saw how little her disappearance had affected Cherry and was okay with letting her live, at the time.
When I went over to pick up a payment for Marco and heard her talking about how much money she could have gotten for her, something inside of me went dark. I planned it out, so she thought I was finally going to sample her goods. They liked to taunt me being a virgin and even though I wasn’t, I let her continue to think I was.
Taking her to the rooftop, acting like a fumbling kid was easy and just before I pushed, I whispered to her, “I took my little lamb from you. She’s mine now.” Her eyes went wide as I shoved her, and she screamed all the way to the ground. My heart beat fast and I felt blood flowing to my dick as I left the building, her broken body bent and contorted on the sidewalk as everyone took pictures with their phones and stared.
“What has you smiling?” James asked, sliding a thick steak and two soft fried eggs in front of me, a small plate of biscuits already on the table.
“I was thinking about when I shoved that bitch off the roof.” I chuckled and James laughed as he cut into his steak.
“If I remember, you came home with your chest puffed up and took that little redhead to your room. I heard you plowing her all night,” he remarked and I thought back to those days.
I was young, powerful in my ownmind, respected by the other kids on Marco’s crew, and had money in my pocket to spend. I was always big for my age, but by my fourteenth birthday, I was already pushing five-foot-nine and had to shave every day. Getting pussy became a daily occurrence and I lived my life knowing my lamb was being taken care of.
Elise was in foster care and was being treated okay, better than I could have taken care of her under Marco’s thumb. It took five years for me to be free of his hold, and I used the money I had saved to get her out of the system. I thought my uncle and his wife would take care of her. When I found out I was wrong, I killed them and helped get her to Chuck and Blaire.
If I had known Chuck’s stupid brother had fallen in love with Cherry, I would have taken him out years ago. He was fourteen and she was twenty-two when they ran away, and for them to have had sex was fucked up on too many levels to even think about.
Until the day I walked in and found Elise drugged on the bed, I had never had a sexual thought about her. That day, everything changed, and yet, I still waited almost ten years to touch her. Now that I’d had her, I couldn’t live without the taste of her on my lips and the feeling of her as she came apart on my cock.
My phone chimed and James grabbed it from the docking station. Opening the message, I saw it was from Chuck.
Chuck: She has a small laceration on her wrist, but no stitches needed, a bruised cheekbone, and she is dehydrated.
Me: Is that everything?
I closed my eyes and prayed she was untouchedthatway. The phone chimed and I exhaled the breath I had been holding.
