Emma Chase (3 page)

Chapter Three

The night after I was released
, I am set on going to the apartment to get some things I need.  Braden and my best friend Holly insist that I wait until I regain my strength.  I tell them that I’m fine.  I just need a few things.  Shampoo, makeup, clothes—the necessities.

When we get to the apartment, there are remnants of yellow police tape on the corners of the doorframe.  My breathing becomes heavier as I
watch the door. 

Braden’s chest is at my back. His arms circle me and encase me in his own protective cocoon. 

“We should wait, Em.  We can do this another time.”

I tip my head back, close my eyes, and suck in a deep breath.

“I’m okay.”

His arms tighten around me.

I step out of his arms, pull my purse from my shoulder, unzip it, and sift through the contents, searching for my keys.

I hold them out, jiggling them, and drop them to Braden’s outstretched hand, which he uses to unlock the door. Since my hands are shaking, Braden, being as attentive as he is, returns his hand to mine.

He leads me the rest of the way into the apartment, tightening his grip when my body stiffens. He pushes the door closed before he guides me through and flips on the light.

The instant I see the inside, my body trembles. 

I see the overturned table that once held a lamp.  That lamp now lays scattered across the floor in pieces.  The mirror that was once displayed over that overturned table is also lying in a heap of its own tiny little shards.  The picture frame is barely hanging on.  I walk to it, straighten it, and feel the weight of Braden and Holly’s gaze, sizing me up.  Braden’s eyes move to the floor near the end of the foyer. The muscle in his jaw twitches, his eyes going hard and his face becoming stone.

My eyes follow his.  That’s when I see it.  Dried blood stains the carpet.  My dried blood, and oh my God is there a lot of it.

I wander over to it.

“Em, baby.  Let’s go get what you need,” he says quietly into my ear.

I nod and step over the blood stain.  I don’t want to touch it.  I move to my bedroom and flip on the light.

I walk into my room, drift to my bed, and fold into a ball on top of my comforter, knees to my chest, arms wrapped around them, face into hidden.  I can’t stop what happens next.

I am sobbing into my balled-up body, completely oblivious to Braden and Holly entering.

“Oh my God!” Holly cries.

“Fuck,” Braden mutters.

The bed sags
behind me right before Braden’s arms wrap around me.  I cry harder. 

“I’ll go find a bag and pack some of her things,” Holly whimpers.

Braden puts an arm under me does something strange that my mind doesn’t register. He pulls me around to face him, his arms tight around me, his hands gliding up and down my back.

I settle deeper into him, his chin on the top of my head, my face in his neck as I still sob. 

His hand continues to stroke my back. “It’s okay, baby.” 

Then he sings to me.  He sings “Lovesong” by The Cure.  He knows it is one of my favorite songs ever since I heard him sing it to a crowded bar doing his own version of it. Braden has an amazing voice.   

That has a calming effect on me.  My sobbing becomes silent, and it subsides, as do my tears.

“What do I do now?” I whimper into his neck.

“You’re going to pick yourself up and carry on with life, Em,” he returns as if it were just that easy.

I throw both of my arms around his neck, and hold tight.

“You’re going to pick up the pieces, let the wounds heal, and get your smile back.  Your gorgeous smile melts my heart, Em. Always has. And not seeing it on your face kills me, baby.  I will do anything to see that smile of yours come back.”

My heart kicks up a few beats and I whisper, “Braden, I can’t do this.“

“No, you
can
do this.  I know you can because I saw you take on so much in the couple of years I’ve known you.  Nothing ever knocked you down, Em.  Nothing.  I know this is different. I don’t pretend to know what you’re going through on the inside, but I can damn sure promise you that I will help you get that smile back.”

I
pull back, releasing his neck, his arms tightening around me.

“Don’t back away because I just told you that I’m in this with you.  For the long haul.  I already told you that I’m not going to let you push me away again.”  He lifts his hand to cup one side of my face, his thumb swiping the tears that are wetting my cheeks.  “That’s another promise I intend to keep, beautiful.”

I shake my head.  “Braden, I can’t—“

“Yes you can, baby.  You can because you have me, and I’m going to help you get through this.”

Fresh tears I so desperately tried to hold on to start to slide down my cheek
s—
again. 

He lifts his hand and swipes at them with his thumb
—again.

“Braden—“ I whisper on a ragged breath.

“Em, you’re a scrapper.  I know that you think you’re weak right now, but I’m also going to help you get your strength and courage back.  You have to fight, dammit.”

I suck in another breath.  Shit.  The tears just keep falling.

“Whenever you feel like you can’t fight, you come to me.  If not, go to Holly, go to Olivia or my dad or brothers.  You have a huge support system, and we are all in your corner, ready to help you fight.”

I shake my head again and the tears start to fall faster.  I try to pull away, but Braden holds my face with both of his hands.  There is an emotion in his eyes so strong that it can only be described as fierce.

“Em, you’re not allowed to give up.  Do you understand me?  I’m not going to
let
you give up.”

He stares down at me.  I glare back at him,
before I close my eyes.

“I know you don’t think so, and I know that over the past few months it hasn’t felt much like it, but, baby, you are loved by so many.”

My body goes rigid in his arms.  He releases my face and trails his hands down my body to wrap around my waist.

“You are so strong.  I know how strong you are and I know you won’t go down without a fight.”

His hand trails up and down my back in a soothing path. 

“I don’t know that I have any fight left in me,” I respond on another shaky breath.

“No, don’t do that.  You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.” 

“I don’t think I am.”  I bite my split lip and whisper, “It’s all I think about.  I try to compartmentalize it, tuck it away, and put it out of mind, but it’s not working.  I can’t shake it loose.  I can still see his black, soulless eyes glaring at me while he violated me.  I can smell him on my skin.  How do I get rid of his smell?”

Braden’s body stiffens, and I can sense the angry, violent waves he was emitting at my words.

“He will pay for what he did to you.  Don’t you worry about that.  You worry about getting better and stronger.”

“I can’t do this,” I moan into his shoulder.  “I. Can. Still. Smell. Him,” I grit.  “His smell, his touch, the weight of him on top of me—all committed to memory.  When I’m not awake thinking about it, I’m asleep dreaming about it.”

“You can’t carry this on your shoulders by yourself,” Braden says to the top of my head.

“I don’t know what else to do, Braden.  I don’t know.”

“You have me, you have Holly, and you have my family too.  We’ll find you some professional help to get you through this if we have to.  You need to lean on us so that we can help you get stronger.”

I lift my head and we look into each other’s eyes for a long moment while I hold my breath.  I watch Braden’s eyes as they study mine.  I know he is doing this to make sure that I understand and believe what message he is relaying to me.

I release the breath I was holding.
I ask, “Do you think we should help Holly pack?”

Braden closes his eyes, huffs out a breath, and opens them back to me.  His eyes scan my face before settling on my mouth then flickering back to mine.

“With me, you have nothing to be scared of.  You know that, right?” he asks.

“I know,” I whisper.

“I will always protect you. 

“I know.”

He continues searching my eyes. “I will keep you safe.” 

“I know,” I repeat.

His eyes do one more sweep of my face. Nodding, he rolls to a sitting position, bringing me with him.  Now I am in his arms as he pulls me onto his lap.  I melt into him, pressing my wet face into his neck, wrapping my arms around him.  His hand goes around the back of my head, bringing me closer to his face and pushing down slightly before he kisses my forehead.  Then his arms come around me to wrap me tight.

“Braden,” I breathe. 

His eyes hold mine as he states firmly, “Always, baby.”

He is scaring the hell out of me.  I know that he would never hurt me.  I know that he would do anything to keep me safe, to protect me from everything in the world meant to do me harm.  I know this after all the times he would pay off my father, who only came around when he
—we thought—had gambled or drunk or snorted all of his money away. 

I found out later that he’d needed that money for other reasons.

I learned this when, last year at Thanksgiving, my father crashed his car on the Holt family lawn because he was wasted at two o’clock in the afternoon and made a scene by screaming my name throughout the street, his screams turned into obscenities and the obscenities turned into his defecating in a bush of the neighbor’s lawn.  And Braden was the one to approach Joe, calming him down before driving him home so that he could sleep it off. 

He didn’t sleep it off.  He was later picked up by a police officer who had been called to the scene of a disturbance at the local ABC when he was trying to buy beer and a cashier told him he didn’t have enough money.

Braden picked him up from jail the next morning and dropped him off at home after buying him a breakfast sandwich and coffee from The Ugly Mug.

Braden would do anything to see me smile, to protect me, even if it put him out.  I know this and I can’t let him do it again. He spent a good part of a year and a half cleaning up my messes.  Well, my father’s messes that had spilled over and contaminated my life like a sickness.  My
father
is a goddamn disease.  He is the reason for my life being shit. 

I grew up in Saluda, NC, just two towns over from Tryon, with a father who, for the most part, was a functioning alcoholic.  He worked a steady job to maintain his steady supply of liquor and smokes.  He partied as often as he could.  If he couldn’t get someone to
babysit me, he brought the party to the house.

My first memory I have as a child was
walking in on an orgy going down in our living room.  There were naked people scattered all over the room.  They were on our couch, on the recliner, on the dining room table, on the floor, and even on the kitchen counter.  I can still remember being so terrified seeing all of these strange naked people doing things to each other that I wasn’t even able to understand at that age. 

When Joe saw me, he didn’t even stop.  There was a naked woman giving him a blowjob while he knelt over her and
repaid the favor with his hand between her legs.  I ran back to my bedroom, whirling around to see that a few of them were watching me.  They carried on with their orgy like they were putting on a show for me, others paying me no mind at all.  I must’ve been four or five at the time. 

That memory will forever be considered the first scar. 

My mother wasn’t around because she died when I was only two years old.  Brain aneurism—no warning.  She’d been folding laundry one morning at the dining room table and collapsed.  The neighbors had called the police when they heard a screaming toddler coming from the apartment. 

I have no memories or her at all.  I don’t have a single picture of her either. 

My father had been in love with my mother.  She’d been his rock, the love of his life, his soul mate, and apparently the only thing that kept him a human being.

At least this is what he told me every night when he was caught up in one of his drunken stupors and crying into his shot glass.

I don’t think he ever loved me.  Okay, that may be a bit extreme.  I think he loved me when my mother was still alive.  I also think that when she died, a piece of him had died, and along with that, she’d taken his will to live as a productive member of society.

He hadn’t raised me.  I’d raised myself the best I could.  There had been times when I would go hungry because Joe would forget to buy food.  He would come home with a bottle of Jack and nothing else.  I would find out later that he’d also been a small-time coke and heroin
dealer on the side. 
I was home alone a lot.  Growing up, I don’t ever remember a time feeling safe.  He didn’t protect me from anything. 

When I became a teenager, no longer a girl, boys started to take notice.  One of our neighbors tried to act on it one night when I was coming home from a shift at
the Bi-Lo, one of the local supermarkets.