Page 92 of Needing Your Love
“Sutton—”
“Don’t! Fuckingdon’t, Darla.” I shook my head, disgusted with myself and my choices over the last fifteen minutes. “I’ll leave some gas money on the table for you, but I want you gone. And don’t ever come back. There’s nothing left here for you. Call me again, and I’ll get a restraining order.”
She’d already stolen and ruined more than enough in my life, and I wasdone.
I spun and rushed to my room to grab my cell and Glock, praying like fuck I wouldn’t be too late to save the man I loved.
Chapter 34
Jimmy
“Calm down, Kurt.” Stefen’s voice trembled as he cowered before the gun trained on his chest.
“Calm down?” Kurt shrieked, his eyes bloodshot as all hell and full of fire. “You fucking hurt heragain! She sent me pictures of the bruises on the back of her neck from when you forced her to heel. Torn fingernails from her trying to rip your hands off her! Don’t tell me to fuckingcalm down!”
Stefen rubbed at his wrists that were covered by long sleeves. “Jimmy,” he murmured without looking at me, “call 911.”
I didn’t so much as twitch.
Couldn’t.
My eyes stayed glued to the scene playing out before me as I tried to collapse in on myself and disappear like I’d always done with Dad when he was rip-roaring drunk and screaming at me.
Globs of spit landing on my cheek.
A fist to my temple.
My fingers bleeding from trying to untangle Dad’s grip in my hair to keep me upright so he could hit me again. The stinging pain of strands tore from my scalp as he hurled me across the threshold into the living room.
A whimper escaped me as my fingernails dug at my coat, desperate to scratch down my forearm.
“She’s a goddamned angel, you psychotic cunt!” Kurt continued his ranting, curses spilling from his lips along with spittle. “She deserves to be worshiped! How dare you call her awhore!”
I flew across the room, elbow and chin throbbing from hitting the hardwood flooring. The impact tore the air from my lungs, and I realized I’d bitten my tongue when I choked on blood.
“No son of mine is going to suck another man’s dick!” Dad hollered, looming over me, leg drawing back.
I curled in on myself, eyes clenched shut and muscles tensed while coughing over the taste of metal.
“You goddamned piece of shit!”
A boot landed against my spine.
Another on my thigh.
My shoulder.
I cried out, begging him to stop, pleading…sobbing for someone to rescue me because I was powerless to stop the drunkard. “Please,” I pleaded for mercy, wishing I could believe a god existed?—
Sutton’s face appeared in my mind, and I felt his arms cradling me to his warm, strong chest. He held me while I got the shit beaten out of me, whispered words of edification and kindness, soothing what my dad attempted to tear apart.
“I have you. I won’t let anything happen to you,” my hero whispered against my ear.
I crumpled, sliding sideways onto the shop’s floor, reliving the afternoon I’d gotten suspended for sucking some kid’s dick under the bleachers at school. I could feel phantom pain, theemotional turmoil, saw every drawn out second in vivid color as the memory continued to assault me. While taking solace in thoughts of the chief had soothed me, the inescapable trauma had been ingrained in my head.
Dad had nearly broken me that day.
I’d peed blood for a week but had been too scared to tell the school nurse, Gram, or even Sutton, who probably would have tossed my dad in jail. Didn’t want the chief believing I was a coward, and ending up in the state’s hands would probably have landed me outside Pippen Creek and far from his protection.
