Page 37 of Keeping Her Under
Even though I’ve done nothing wrong, the world isn’t ready for what we share. It might pretend to embrace fairytale romances, like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, but in truth, it’s an envious bitch who can’t stand someone being happy. But once my girl is discharged, her prince will move her away from here. Then we’ll be free to be together.
Leaving my cell inside my house, I grab the burner phone, as well as Summer’s. Then I climb into my normal-use car and drive away from town and all the cameras that litter the city center. I turn onto one of the backroads leading to a dead end – a housing project that went nowhere.
Pulling over onto the side of the road, I turn on Summer’s phone. I look through her messages. She doesn’t have many. Outside of network updates, the only person she’s talked to is a man called Lance.
Assuming that’s her boyfriend, I click on their texts and scroll up. In a short time, I’ve gone back a few months.
My gut tightens as I start to read.
He sends her a picture of him fucking some skinny-ass bitch.
Anger is such an inadequate fucking word for how I feel. I’ve seen enough battered women come in for surgery to know how desperate they can be to please their abuser. It’s called fawning, and it’s a common survival instinct.
Don’t upset the monster, or you’ll get eaten.
Go out of your way to make them happy so they will never be mad at you.
Protect yourself by loving them.
By protecting them even.
Because the people who try to save you are never there when the monster gets ugly. When they find you after you’ve run.
My hand tightens on her phone in feral rage.
I don’t know if they got back together in the time in between, or if that was his way of saying he was coming home. I don’t know which one I’d prefer it to be.
Grabbing the burner phone, I call the number Asher uses with the Blood Fangs. He doesn’t pick up, but he calls me back immediately, and I give him Lance’s number to track down.
“You want me to pick him up tonight?” he asks.
My jaw clenches.
I’m torn between going after him or seeing my girl. Asher is more than capable of handling this himself, but I want to be there when that fucker realizes this is the end for him.
“No,” I say. “Come pick me up as soon as you find him.”
I tell him where I am, knowing it won’t take him long to trace Lance’s number. The Blood Fangs have a lot of dirty cops and judges in their ranks.
“On it, cuz.” He hangs up, and I go back to their texts, but I scroll all the way down to the day of her accident.
I can damn near feel the fear in those words, and they trigger a fury inside of me. She finally got the courage to leave his sorry ass, and he harassed her, threatened her, and insulted her. Did he run her off the road? Or did she try to commit suicide, thinking there was no way out?
Given she hadn’t blocked his number, she must have still been under his spell. Constant abuse fucks with our brains. Despite everything Mother did to me, I still loved her even after I ran away. I wanted her to find me and bring me home. I wanted us to be happy. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized I didn’t love her. I loved the idea of her. I loved the version of her I’d created in my head in order to survive – the one that was capable of loving me back. The one that gave me hope of an HEA if I just managed to survive the abuse.
It took me a long time to see that truth. That it was never love. It was only ever fear and fawning.
But Summer never got to that stage. Will she welcome him back into her life when she wakes? If he floods her with apologies and love bombs the shit out of her, convincing her he’s changed? That her near death experience caused him to finally wake the fuck up?
It might.
Fawning is as instinctive as flight or fight. To change something so woven into our DNA takes a lot of strength. She’s suffered a traumatic event. She won’t be in the right headspace when she wakes to stand her ground.
So I will fight for her, I vow.
Chills race down my back at that final message. I can’t imagine what Summer must’ve felt when she read it. All alone in an uncaring world. Cut off from any friends and family – abuse tactics 101.
With that thought, I open her contact list and search for her parents. The police would’ve tried to call them, but maybe they didn’t get through. Or maybe they’re hurting for her at home, wondering if her boyfriend will allow them to visit.
