Welcome to Sugartown (24 page)

My vision
goes dark. My skull feels like it’s been cleaved in half, like a
watermelon. I think I feel Scott hovering over me. I try to lift my
head but find I can’t. I can’t move without this roiling wave of
nausea threatening to choke me. I feel his weight settle on top of
me and hear him whisper, “I let you get away once, Ana. I’m not
letting you get away a second time.”

“
No.” I
protest, but the blackness swallows me up completely.

I don’t know
how long I’m out. It can’t be long because I wake to the tearing,
searing pain of Scott pushing himself inside me. It’s so severe
that for a heartbeat I’m stunned into stillness and then I begin to
thrash—though I learn quickly that it only makes it worse. One hand
is clamped tightly over my mouth and the other holds my arms down
at the wrists as he unmercifully drives himself deeper and deeper
inside me. I kick out with my legs, but there isn’t a whole lot I
can do without causing myself even greater injury, so I merely lie
there and wait for the right time to fight back as tears roll down
my face to mix with the earth.

Every thrust
inside me feels like a knife buried to the hilt. The burn and sting
of tender flesh tearing, the crushing weight of his body against
mine, I feel it all, until a short time later his rhythm lags. I
think he must be close to coming because his eyes roll back in his
head and I take that opportunity to use mine, like I should have in
the beginning, and I head-butt him. It’s not as hard as I would
have liked and it makes my own head throb horribly, but it’s enough
to cause a distraction.

Scott tears
his hand away from my mouth and cries out in a rage, “You fucking
bitch!”

I scream for
help. I buck and try to unseat him but all this works about as well
as my head-butting skills because Scott uses his hands to hold me
down and smiles, “You’re gonna regret that.”

He slams his
elbow into my cheek and once again everything fades to
black.

Chapter Twenty
One

Elijah

I’ve been
switching channels for well over an hour. The motel doesn’t have
AUSTAR and what I can see of the screen is mostly just static fuzz,
but I’m still watching it like it’s the most enthralling shit ever.
I reach for the bottle on my bedside and swig back a mouthful of
Johnnie Walker. Last week I spent so much God damn time drinking at
the Sugartown Hotel that, when I wandered in earlier today to get
some takeaways, the publican just handed me a bottle, took two
hundred dollars from my wallet and I rode home with my new best
friend Johnnie to make some bittersweet memories.

Somewhere
between the microwaved meal and some fucking stupid Kleenex
commercial with puppies, that weirdly has me thinking about Sammy,
I think about how much I’m missing Ana. I think about how much it
hurts to know that while I’m at work she’s right across the street
from me and I can’t bring myself to cross the road, fall to my
knees and beg her for fucking forgiveness. I think about the fact
that I’ve never met a more infuriating woman, and that I love her
so goddamn much it hurts. And then I think about how angry I am
that she won’t give this another chance and that, up until now, I’d
never met a woman that’d have me sitting around in my room on a
Friday night pining for her like a fuckin’ lost puppy.

This is
bullshit,
I think as I pull on my jeans
and yank my jacket from the chair. Ana has made it clear she
doesn’t want me. She made that perfectly fucking clear, and the
only thing that brings me even the slightest bit of relief is
burying myself inside someone else and pretending like Ana Belle
doesn’t exist and my every waking thought isn’t consumed by
her.

I run a hand
through my hair and thumb my keys, hoping I don’t look too
shitfaced to get laid. It’s 11.30 pm, but there’s still another
half hour before the pub calls last drinks—that’s a whole twenty
minutes to find someone to fuck.

I’m pretty
sure it’s safe to say Ana won’t go back to the pub for a while.
I’ve been there every night for the last three weeks and I’ve never
seen her so much as set foot in the place. Not that I blame her;
it’s not really where I want to be, either, with the memories of
that fucked up night etched into the walls of the place. It’s just
that Bob hasn’t been real friendly since I broke his daughter’s
heart and the pub is really the only other place I can go to hold a
conversation with another adult. Plus, anywhere with liquor is my
favourite place to be these days.

Just as I’m
reaching for the door I hear a soft knock from the other side. I
open it and look at the girl standing on my doorstep, but what I’m
seeing doesn’t make sense because Ana is standing on my doorstep
looking like she got attacked by a fucking zombie horde.

Her blonde
hair is dirty, one side of her face is swollen shut and her clothes
are bloody and tattered. My heart hurts just looking at her. My
head is spinning, trying to put together a puzzle without any of
the goddamn pieces.

“
What the
fuck happened?”

“
I didn’t
know where else to go,” she whispers looking up at me with big
round eyes full of hurt.

I can barely
breathe. I’m shaking with rage.
I’m gonna
kill someone. I’m gonna tear their fucking head clean off their
shoulders.

I pull her
into the room and she falls into my arms and then she falls apart.
She sobs into my chest and all I can do is hold her tighter than I
ever have and pray that I’m wrong about what I think happened. I’ve
seen her cry before, I’ve been the cause of her tears too many
times, but I’ve never seen her broken like this. She sounds like a
wounded animal, and it’s killing me that she’s not
talking.

“
Ana, who did
this to you?” I’m having trouble keeping a lid on my rage. I’m not
good with tamping down my anger, and right now I wanna rip out
someone’s fucking heart. Ana doesn’t answer, she just sobs
harder.

I’m going
fucking crazy wondering what happened to her, wondering who did
this and how far they took it, wondering whose skull I have to beat
in as payback.

“
You gotta
talk to me, baby girl,” I plead. “I’m going outta my mind not
knowing what happened to you.”

And then she
does. She tells me everything and I begin to wish she hadn’t. Every
last detail, except for the name of the scumbag that did this, and
my heart hurts so much you’d think I was the one who’d been held
down and stripped of my virginity and my dignity.

“
No. No. No,”
I whisper, and slide down the end of the bed. I land hard on the
floor with my back pressed against the ratty ensemble and bury my
head in my hands as tears sting my eyes.

I know I
should be holding it together better than what I am. I should be
strong for her and take her in my arms and tell her that I’ll find
a way to fix this, too, but I can’t. I haven’t seen her in weeks,
at least not up close, but I quickly come to the realisation that
this is my fault. That if I hadn’t fucked up so badly she would
have been here with me instead of shitfaced at some party with the
fucker who did this.

She must be
in shock, because she’s trembling so badly I’m afraid she going to
fall down. She doesn’t sit, she just stands alone in my room
looking like a broken little girl.

“
Give me a
name,” I croak through a throat that scrapes like
sandpaper.

That snaps
her out of her daze. Her gaze slides down to me and her face
contorts with panic. “No! You have to promise me you won’t go after
him. Promise me. I can’t have anyone know about this, especially
not my dad. You can’t—”

“
We need to
tell the police. You need to go to hospital; you need a rape kit
and the morning-after pill.”

She pulls
away to look up at me. “No! No one would believe it. People saw me
leave with him, willingly. This whole town thinks I’m a slut,
Elijah, they’d never believe I didn’t want it.”

“
What about
the shiner on your face? You ask for that, too? They can get DNA
proof, Ana. But only if you do it soon.”

“
I’m not
going to the police. My dad can never find out about
this.”

“
This is
bullshit! Why are you protecting that little that piece of
shit?”

“
I’m
not!”

“
You let him
walk, he’s just gonna turn around and do it to another girl. He
needs to pay for what he did to you.”

“
I’m not
protecting him. I’m protecting me!” she screams and backs away from
me, heading for the door, but I make it there before her, slamming
myself between her and the exit. “Get out of the way,
Elijah.”

“
No.”

“
Move,” she
demands, tugging on the handle beside me.

“
Where you
gonna go? Huh? Can’t go home lookin’ like you do.”

“
I’ll go to
Holly’s.”

“
Holly lives
with her parents. You go walking in there like that and the first
thing they’ll do is call the cops. And the cops will call your
dad.”

She flinches
and lets go of the handle. I take her face in my hands, careful not
to apply any pressure to her cheekbone.

“
Stay here
tonight, please? I won’t force you to do anything. I won’t tell
anyone. I promise, just don’t leave.” I lean in and press my
forehead to hers. I can feel moisture on my cheeks. My throat is
all tight and itchy.
Fuck!
I haven’t cried like this since Mum and Lil
died.

I’m sure she
can feel me shaking with rage. Right now I wanna tear this room
apart. I know she won’t tell me who did this, but she doesn’t have
to. I know exactly who that little fucker is and I’m gonna take
great delight in castrating him. Ana wipes the moisture from my
cheeks. I catch her hand and press it to my lips, “I’m so sorry,
baby girl. I should have been there. I should have—”

“
Shh.” She
tilts her head up to face me and presses her lips to mine. There’s
something defiant in the way she kisses me, like she wants me to
lay claim to her mouth again. “Help me wash him away.”

I think this
is a fucking terrible idea but I can’t let her down again, not now,
maybe not ever, so I nod and sweep her into my arms and then carry
her into the bathroom. I run the shower and help her peel off her
clothes.

When she’s
stripped down to her underwear, she hesitates. I gently ease her
hands out of the way and unclasp her bra, the scrap of lace falls
to the floor. There’s a red mark over her left nipple; the flesh is
raised, but not broken. She flinches when I touch it, and I slowly
draw my hand away when I realise what’s caused it. The son of a
bitch bit her. I close my eyes before I can stomach seeing the rest
of the marks he left on her body.

“
You don’t
have to stay, I can take it from here,” she says and I can see from
her expression she’s ashamed of the way she looks.

“
Hey.” I tilt
her chin up so she can read the sincerity in my eyes. “There’s
never been a woman more beautiful than you, Ana.” I press my lips
to her forehead and smooth my thumb over her cheek to catch her
tears. “There never will be.”

I run my
hands over her hips, slip my fingers under the elastic of her
knickers and gently pull them down, past the bruises on her thighs
and over her dirty feet. They’re soaked with so much blood that it
turns my stomach; it’s all I can do not to bolt through the door
and tear this town apart to find that little shithead.

He doesn’t
deserve to breathe the same air as Ana, doesn’t deserve what he
took from her. No one will ever be deserving enough of Ana Belle,
least of all me, and yet here she is, trusting me with her heart,
her secret, her safety.

I lift her
into the shower and grab a washer from the towel rack. Stripping
off, I join her under the stream, letting the hot water needle out
the tension in my body as I hold her. I do as she asks and, with
gentler hands than I thought I possessed, I help her wash away the
stain he’s left upon the woman I love. I hold her in my arms and we
cry together until the hot water runs out, and then I dry her off
and carry her to bed. I hand her some sleeping pills and some
Panadol
for the pain and fold myself
around her body until she falls asleep. Then I quietly tiptoe back
into the bathroom, take the grate off the air vent and feel around
until my hand comes to rest on the cool metal inside. Then I use
Ana’s phone to make a call.