The Broken (19 page)

I reach for his
hand. “I have Blay. He means everything to me.” I take a deep
breath. “If someone committed a crime, and someone else helped them
cover it, would they both be in trouble?”

He studies my
face before he speaks. “It depends what role they played in the
cover up. Knowing of a crime and being too scared to tell anyone is
not a crime.”

“What if
someone helped get rid of the evidence of the crime?”

“Yes, that is a
crime, River.”

“What if the
crime was an accident, or self-defence?”

He reaches up
and tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Then that changes
things.”

I squeeze his
hand and hold onto him for hope. “If I asked you to help someone
for me, would you?”

He looks down
at my hand holding his. “River, you’re not making much sense, but
of course. If you tell me whatever happened was self-defence or an
accident I’ll help, but you need to start talking because you’ve
not actually told me anything.”

I release his
hand. “I know and I’m sorry. I just need to speak to my brother
first. Can I come back tomorrow and maybe bring him with me?”

He stands and
embraces me. “That’s fine, River.”

“Thank you,
Derek.”

He squeezes me,
then releases me and I begin to fidget. “Would you be able to take
me back to the garage? I left my car there. I got a ride here.”

He grins.
“That’s fine. Can I entice you to eat with me first?”

I bite down on
my lip. “I really need to get back. I’m sorry, another time,
though.”

“It’s fine,
River. Come, let me drive you to your car.”

He opens the
door for me when we reach his car. I slide into the passenger seat
and jump when he leans over me with the seat belt. I grab it from
his hand. “I can do it.”

He looks amused
and holds up his hands. “It’s just that seat belt is-” Before he
can finish I try to click the belt in place but it springs free and
pulls back at a rapid rate, burning along my neck. “Broken. Shit,
are you okay?” He pulls the collar of my shirt down slightly and
winces. “That’s going to bruise.”

I lean forward
and flip the mirror to look at the deep red mark on my neck and
shoulder.

“Don’t worry,
I’ll put some cream on it when I get home.”

Derek reaches
for the belt and pulls it over me, clicking it in place with a hard
tug.

“Thank
you.”

The drive to
the lot is a quiet one and I’m grateful he doesn’t ask me more
questions. Everyone has left when we pull up; I missed most of the
afternoon. I thank Derek and promise to stop by tomorrow. I head to
my car and close my eyes. I need to speak to Blaydon to see if
he’ll tell Derek everything, to see what our options are. The ride
home is a fuzzy memory as I sit outside our house, not remembering
driving here. I grab my purse and make my way indoors.

“Blay, you
home?” I call out, throwing my purse down on the couch. I walk to
his room, but I’m pulled backwards by my ponytail. My hands fly up
to grip the hand that has me in a vice-like grip. Danny’s cold,
deadly voice pierces my ear. “Did you fuck him?”

He drags me
down the hall to our room and shoves me forward. I turn to face
him, but I wish I hadn’t because what I see terrifies me. His face
is contorted in anger.

“I went to pick
you up at lunch, but guess what Stevie happily informed me? That
pretty boy took you to lunch! I waited all fucking day for you, but
you never came back so I drove home. Blaydon said you hadn’t been
here, so where were you?” he screams in my face, his hands gripping
my throat, pinning me against the wall.

They say you
have a limit, that when you reach it you just can’t take anymore. I
thought mine disintegrated, washed away years ago in the tide of
disappointment and misery abandoning me to keep on suffering for
eternity. But this was it. I just felt myself snap, I couldn’t bare
this lie one more second.

“I hate you,” I
breathe.

He flinches and
steps back. “What?”

I can’t take it
anymore. I can’t take living this lie, feeling this empty. “I hate
you!” I scream. “If it wasn’t for Blaydon I wouldn’t be with you!
He is the only reason I let myself live in this misery!”

“You love
me!”

“No, I
don’t!”

“River, are you
okay?” I hear Blaydon through the door and I cover my mouth with a
shaky hand. Did he hear all of that? Oh, God, I don’t want him to
know I’m only with Danny to protect him. He would rather hand
himself in than let me be unhappy.

“I’m fine,
Blay,” I manage to call out in a calm voice.

“You sure?”

“She said she’s
fine, Blay! Go pop some pills or something!”

I slap Danny
hard across the face. The red hand print on his cheek sends terror
into my veins. Oh, God, he will kill me.

His hand shoots
out and grips my throat again. I hear Blay’s boots carry down the
hall. I close my eyes and wait for the darkness, but it doesn’t
come. I open my eyes and see Danny staring at my neck. He rips the
collar of my top from my neck and shoulder.

“What the
fuck?” He grabs me, yanking me forward. “You fucking cunt!”

I gasp. Danny
has never spoken to me with such animosity before.

“Like it rough,
River? Is that it? Have I been doing it wrong all these years?” He
throws me down hard, my head colliding with the dresser. A painful
burn explodes in my head and I feel the warm trickle of blood.
Danny’s frame comes over mine, immobilizing me, his hand covering
my mouth and nose.

“I can do
rough, River.”

He tears at my
clothes and I sob behind his hand, struggling for breath. My
stomach protests and I start retching. He removes his hand and his
weight from my body. I turn my head and expel the contents of my
stomach onto the carpet.

Danny grabs me
under the arm and lifts me into our en-suite where I vomit over the
toilet. “It’s from a seat belt.”

“What?”

I point to the
mark on my neck, feeling dizzy from the cut on my head. “The mark
is from a seat belt burn.”

He paces the
bathroom. “I will kill him, River. I will end any fucking man you
even think about, do you understand me? I will kill him!”

I sob as the
images of Sammy dead at Danny’s hand assault my mind. I need to end
this. I try to stand, but black out instead.

“River, you
scared the shit out of me!”

I lift my heavy
head. I’m in the car with Danny. “Where are we going?”

He looks at me
then back to the road. “Hospital. You need stiches. You fainted and
banged the back of your head in the fall.”

I don’t know
who he’s trying to convince, me or him.
Yeah, that’s what
happened, asshole
. He must have sensed my thoughts.

“That’s what
happened. Don’t fuck with me, River. I have no problem telling the
cops what happened to Maria and your father.”

I turn and
narrow my eyes. “You helped him. If he goes down, so do you.”

He shrugs.
“So?”

I deflate. He
doesn’t care about facing prison because he’s evil enough to
survive it. Blaydon’s not. He wouldn’t cope in prison.

We pull up at
the hospital and Danny helps me out of the car. He stays by my side
constantly. The nurse station is a flurry of activity; patients and
doctors coming and going. I’m handed a form to fill in, and told to
take a seat. Danny is seething mad that they’re not seeing to me
above everyone else. After a gruelling wait, a nurse calls my name
and guides me to a gurney with a curtain around it. A doctor, a
tall man with dark skin and warm brown eyes, slips through the
curtain.

“Hello, I’m
Doctor King. Can you tell me why you’re here?”

“She fainted
and banged her head in the fall,” Danny informs him. “I wrote it on
the form you make injured patients fill out, even with a head
injury.”

The doctor
doesn’t seem fazed by Danny’s hostility. “Were you with her at the
time, sir?”

Danny glares at
him. “I found her.”

“Do you know
how long you were unconscious?”

I fidget on the
bed. “An hour,” I murmur.

He looks down
at his chart before dropping it on the foot of the bed. He snaps
some gloves on and shines a light in my eyes. He holds up a finger
and makes me follow it with my eyes, then smiles and brushes the
hair away from the gash on my head. “Okay, you need some stiches,
and we want to take a urine sample and a blood sample to see what
made you faint in the first place. Is there a possibility you could
be pregnant?”

I pale, a sick
stirring rolling my stomach, the risk of pregnancy had never been
an issue. Danny answers for me. “She can’t be. I can’t have
children. I contracted measles when I was young and it left me
infertile.”

The doctor
looks to me. “Okay, well we will test anyway. It’s just routine.
I’ll send the nurse in to collect a sample and to deal with the
stitches.”

I nod, take the
small pot from his hand and go into the bathroom. I deposit the
required sample. The nurse is waiting for me when I come out.

“This one
doesn’t take long, but the blood samples will be a few days.”

She takes my
sample and leaves. A different nurse comes in, pulling a trolley
with medical equipment on it.

“I’ll be
outside while you do that,” Danny says when he sees her pick up a
needle.

She laughs. “Is
he queasy?”

I tell her yes,
even though he isn’t. I have no idea why he suddenly left me alone.
The nurse holds my arm out and taps at the crease in the middle of
my arm. “You’ll feel a pinch.”

She inserts the
needle and my blood fills the vial attached to it. Once she’s done,
she labels the vial then picks up a sterile wipe to wipe down the
wound on my head before injecting some liquid to numb the area. She
doesn’t take long to stitch up the gash.

“I’ll just get
this cleared and see if the urine sample showed up anything.”

I raise an
eyebrow. “That quick?”

She laughs. “We
have a stick for lots of different things. We just dip them in for
a minute and get answers.”

I nod my head
and smile as she leaves.

Danny flies
into the room. “Get up we're leaving.”

I stand from
the bed. “What? Why?”

He grabs my
forearm. “Because I fucking said so, River. We’ve been here for
hours waiting. You’re stitched up, they can phone the results from
the tests.”

Danny’s scary
when he’s on edge so I let him drag me out of the hospital.

We pull up to
our house but he doesn’t turn the ignition off. “Go inside and pack
a bag.”

My stomach
plummets. “Why?”

He doesn’t
answer, he just growls at me so I leap from the car and run up the
path to our house. I fumble for the door, turning to watch
completely baffled as to why Danny drives away. I close the door,
resting my head on the frame.

“Blay, we need
to talk!” I call out, feeling de ja vu from earlier. I check behind
me out of instinct but no one’s there.

“Blay?” I push
his door open.

I must have
died. I’m the living dead. My body is breathing but I’m no longer
alive.

Blay is pale as
a ghost, his head tipped back onto his mattress, his lifeless body
propped up against the bed on the floor, both wrists sliced open.
Pools of blood stain the carpet. I run to him, but I know it’s too
late. No one can bleed that much and still be alive. I lift my
shaking fingers to his neck. No pulse.

“Oh, God, no,”
I sob. “Why did you leave me, Blaydon?”

I scream, pain
like a million shards of glass cutting into my heart tears through
me. My life is bleeding out in my tears, my reason for living, the
reason I condemned myself to Danny’s torture is gone, and he left
me just like everyone else. Anger consumes me manifesting itself
with in me. Why did he do this? How could he leave me just like she
did? My father’s voice echoes in my memory:

“
Your mother
hated her fuck up of a son, so she sliced and diced herself until
there was no blood left inside her. It’s just us now.”

I was twelve
years old, and that’s how he told me my mother was gone. Sammy was
my lifeline back then, but he’s left me again. I have no one and
Danny would kill Sammy if he knew I loved him. My whole life is one
disaster after another, I just want out. I look up at the grey face
of my once loving brother and notice a note next to his head with
my name on it. I reach for it with shaky hands.

River,

I’m so sorry.
I know you would never want this for me, and how much pain me
following Mum will cause you but I’m doing it for the opposite
reasons. I’m doing this to protect you, to give you freedom. I
heard you and Danny arguing. I know you’re only with him to protect
me. I can’t tell you how much I wish you had a better childhood. It
was dark and painful and it lives inside me, Riv. I can’t find any
peace, it follows me everywhere. I can’t suppress it; it chokes me,
even in my dreams. Sometimes I feel him hitting me. I see him in
the shadows, taunting me. I dream he crawls inside me, poisoning my
blood. I know I’m fucked up, Riv. I know it’s all in my mind, and I
try to cut him out, I try to block him out but he lives in me. I’m
bound by his torture, by our past, by the deaths, the ghosts all
around us. I just want to find quiet. I’m tired of being here. I’m
tired of breathing but not living. These wounds will never heal, no
amount of time can erase the memories I live every day. Please
leave Danny and be with Sammy. He loves you, Riv, he has always
loved you and you deserve to be loved, to feel and give love. You
were the only person who loved me and I want to thank you for that.
Thank you for loving me and giving me something to love, because I
have someone to watch over now, and I will I’ll watch over you,
Riv, always. I love you sister of mine,