Stolen Breaths (20 page)

For a minute we both kind of stood there staring at… grass. He, with his hands in his front pockets, stealing glances at me, and me with my arms folded in front of my chest stealing glances at him. I think we were both trying to analyze the other, to figure out if we should stay or go. We’d taken only two steps from the car and were making no real progress toward the unknown. We stood. Frozen.

Finally I moved. Through my sunglasses I looked around. I sort of walked forward but in no real direction. I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was supposed to be looking for. I just knew that this field and my nightmares were inseparable, welded together and tied tightly.

“You were here…” His voice was so faint I almost didn’t hear him. He didn’t look at me and he didn’t say anything else. I think maybe it was his way of helping me find a starting place. He hadn’t dropped his hands from his pockets and he hadn’t looked up. He was just staring at the ground, willing it to change a wicked truth.

I slowly made my way to the spot he had yet to look away from. When I finally reached it he stepped back as if the space wasn’t big enough for both of us to occupy at the same time. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare even breathe too loud. I stood still, trying to contemplate the reality of what this spot represented. There wasn’t much visually to concentrate on, so I listened to the sounds around me.

Quiet.

And then – a crow made its presence known and I felt as though my body had been transported back through time and space.

March 17, 2008

6:14 pm

After this run I really need to study for my exams. I’ve got a 4.0 GPA and it wasn’t handed to me. I’ve had to work for it. Unlike some of my friends, I actually care about my grades. That’s why I’m running now – to clear my head and relieve some self-induced stress. I always put a lot of pressure on myself and today is no different. Running helps me. The only thing I think about is the next step, the next stride, the next breath. I keep my pace to a rhythm that pushes me but only to the point that it makes me forget about school and how I have sadly missed out on a personal life outside of academics. My friends are probably drinking green beer somewhere to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and instead of joining them, I run. My lungs are burning but it feels good. My calves ache but I like it. A little bit further and I’ll have run five miles. My own personal record. Man, this feels good. I feel alive and free.

Someone pulls at my arm and I’m whipped around so fast I don’t understand what’s happening. I pull the ear buds out of my ears and stare at the man who holds my arm.

“Didn’t you hear me talking to you little girl?” He looks angry.

“No. I didn’t. I was listening to music.” I show him my ear buds to prove it. I don’t know why. I owe no explanation, but I think I was hoping that he’ll stop looking angry if he thinks I wasn’t purposely ignoring him.

It didn’t work.

“All you girls are the same. You think you’re too good to give other people the time of day. You think you can run around looking like you do and rub it in people’s faces that we’re not good enough! You’re all just a bunch of whores! A bunch of fucking whores!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My heart is beating out of my chest and I’m scared. I look down at my arm where he still holds on tight, pinching me he’s squeezing so hard. “Ouch! You’re hurting me!”

He squeezes tighter.

“I was trying to talk to you, you snooty little bitch, but you kept running. You think you’re too good to talk to me? Is that it?”

“I told you I didn’t hear you.” Showing him my ear buds one more time. “I don’t think I’m too good to talk. I just didn’t hear you or see you.”

“You’re such a liar. I know girls like you. Stuck up bitches. I’m gonna teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget.”

The stench of his breath makes me want to vomit. I try to hold it in. I try not breathing in his rancid smell. I dry heave once. He leans in and licks my face.

I throw up on his shoes.

“Why you little bitch!” He raises his arm and slams his closed fist on my face. I feel pain immediately. My right eye throbs but before I can even think about it I feel another slam to my face. I’m being dragged by my hair and my feet are dragging the ground until I see grass underneath. I am thrown to the hard ground. I try to stand up to run and feel my side splinter. I gasp for air. He kicks me again, and then pulls me up by my shirt. I hear it ripping and tearing.

“Look at you! Just like I said you were – a fucking whore!”

“Pl…pl…please. Sto…stop.”

He pushes me back onto the ground and climbs on top of me. “I’m not done with you yet.” I can’t lift him off me. I find the skin underneath his arm and pinch and twist as hard as I can. In one swift move I’m lifted off the ground again. “AHHHHH, YOU FUCKING BITCH!”

“HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME. Please.”

Everything is dark. I can’t see. I don’t hear him anymore. I don’t hear anything anymore. I feel like I’m floating. I feel so light. The pain has stopped. I like this feeling. I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here. I like feeling so light. So light…

“She’s been… long time.”

BEEP!

“It’s been four…”

BEEP!

“Worry…she…not…days.”

BEEP! BEEP!

Where am I? I try to lift up my head. Pain. And nausea. I feel sick. I hear people talking. They sound so far away. Machines. I hear machines.

“Watch…only…orders.”

BEEP!

BEEP!

BEEP!

“She’s starting to wake up.”

“Lily? Look at me.”

“Lily? Look at me baby.”

I blinked and looked around. I was sitting in Cooper’s car. I shook my head and pulled my knees up to my chest.

“Where did you go?” I look at him in confusion. “Just now, where did you go? It was like you checked out. You weren’t responding to me. God, baby, you scared me.”

“I was remembering,” I whispered. “How did I get in your car?”

“I carried you. You fell to the ground and you were just looking out into the field. You kept saying
, ‘I didn’t hear you.’
You looked so scared. I scooped you up and sat you down right here and kept talking to you until you snapped out of it.” He pulled back, inspecting every square inch of me. “Are you okay?”

Am I?
“I will be.”

“What do you remember?”

I looked down at my hands and rubbed them together nervously. “Enough. I remember… enough.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…” I said softly, still rubbing my hands together, “…it means I saw his face.”

“I’m confronting him, Lily. Don’t try to talk me out of it.” Cooper grabbed his keys and headed for the door. He had taken me back to his house when we left the field and listened intently to everything I remembered.

“Cooper, wait!”

He stopped at the door but didn’t turn around. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do, baby. Everything. But this… you gotta give me this.”

“Please. Don’t go. I’m begging you.”

He slowly turned around to look at me, eyes still tormented. “I have to, Lil. I let him get away once. I have to fix this.”

“You have nothing to fix, Cooper.
You
didn’t hurt me.
You’re
not the one who beat me. This is not your problem to fix. You were the one who…”

Cooper winced and held his hand up to me. “Stop.” A look of pain flickered across his face. “This is not my problem to fix? What the hell, Lily? I am in love with you. Everything that involves you involves me. Not my problem? It damn well
is
my problem!”

My heart felt like it took a running leap into my throat. “Cooper, I didn’t mean it like that.” The threat of tears stings my eyes. “I’m just scared. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me to watch you go through hell? Having no idea how to help you? Knowing that I can’t undo what’s been done? Waiting for you to wake up screaming every night so I can hold you and hope you feel safe? This helplessness is killing me. It’s eating me up inside and ripping me to shreds. And now that I can actually
do
something about your nightmares you want me not to? You can’t ask that of me, Lily. That’s probably the one thing I can’t give you. Hell, I could probably find a way to tie a rope around every star in the sky and give them to you one by one if you asked me to….But I can’t do what you’re asking.”

He walked back to me and held my face in his hands. My tears were falling like raindrops now and I couldn’t stop them.

“You don’t need to worry about me, baby,” Cooper said. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to get the information I need and give it to the police. Joe has already informed me that he’s at the bar and Hayden won’t let him leave before I get there.” He kissed me on my forehead and swallowed me up in his embrace. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

I knew I had to let Cooper do this. This was as much for him as it was for me. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.” My tone was pleading.

“I won’t, I promise.”

Waiting for Cooper to get back was going to be my undoing. What information was he going to come home with? And what would that mean for me? For us? There was still so much unknown but I knew with every ounce of life I had in me that when we had a name to go with the face, we would make sure he never did anything like this to anyone else. That man at the bar who had inevitably flipped the switch to my memory was probably wishing he’d never stepped foot in Joe’s bar tonight. A small part of me actually smiled thinking about Cooper, Joe, and Hayden bending someone’s will to the point of breaking it. I hoped they didn’t have to break anything else to get the information. Or maybe I hoped they did.

I shook out my hands in an attempt to calm my rattled nerves. I’d paced the floor between the living room and front door so much I’d worn a path. I checked my watch again and realized it had only been three minutes since the last time I checked, and only two minutes since the time before that. I was making myself crazy. I couldn’t just sit there.

I grabbed my keys and climbed inside my car. On auto pilot, I pulled into the parking lot at Joe’s and looked around suspiciously. I was on edge and now that I was there, I realized that I shouldn’t be. I walked inside and my senses were hit with a rush of loud music. I did my best to sort out all the different random voices, straining to hear the only voice I needed to hear – Cooper’s. My eyes were busy scanning every surface, every face, every corner, but I didn’t see him, nor did I see Joe or Hayden. I made my way toward the center of the room where Joe would normally be bartending and spotted Brice, one of Joe’s employees.