other than Dad, but I understand Carter's mindset. He's not offering forgiveness, but he's saying he can see how it happened since my father isn't in his right mind. One look at the man crying on the floor proves that. Words are complicated, so I nod.
Resolve tightens the edges of his eyes. "You're coming home with me. Let's gather you some things," he says, steering me to sit on the edge of my bed and flipping on my bedroom light. Grabbing my old cheer duffle hanging on a hook on the wall, he unzips the bag and holds it up. "Where do I go?"
In the hallway, my father speaks my name like a plea. Carter slams a dresser drawer after pulling out underthings and work-out clothes. "Shut up." He snaps before walking to my closet, yanking shirts, jeans, and two dresses from their hangers. "Shoes?"
I point to my slides by the door, and he scoops up my running shoes from the closet floor. Handing over my shoes, he looks around the room. "What else? Where's the bag you bring to my house?"
My toiletries? I keep them hanging on the bathroom door. With one shared bathroom in my College Station apartment and three girls, I'm used to it. Carter warns me to stay where I am and crosses the hall and returns with the bag zipped closed.
He doesn't pay an inch of attention to Dad as he steers me from my bedroom with his hands on my biceps.
"Where is she, Jessica? Where is your mother? Where is my money?" Dad calls his words garbled.
I stop at the mouth of the hallway. Carter's chest supports me, his arm snaking around my stomach and pressing my belly.
His lips touch my hair, his whispered, "You don't owe him anything, babe,” sending aches through my body.
He's right, I don't, but I reply anyway. "I don't know." Speaking the words tear at my tender lip and fractured heart.
Dad’s callous puff of disbelieving laughter severs my love further. "Why did you betray me? Why are you lying?"
Carter's solid frame enveloping me from behind provides the strength I require to turn and meet my father's bloodshot eyes. "I'm not, Daddy, but you've betrayed me. I can't … I can't be here for you anymore.”
Carter
Committing a crime of passion isn't something I considered before pushing through Jess's bedroom door and seeing the damage done to her face. Damage caused by her father. The man she paused her life for. I visualize my rage as a slip of paper, folding it into a little square and shoving it into a metaphorical drawer in the corner of my mind while I settle Jess in the vehicle and drive around a curve and park.
I compartmentalize my helplessness at being forced to listen through a cell phone as Jess broke into chest wracking sobs at three am while I was miles away, and fold that away too while jogging back to her house, her car keys in hand. Starting her car, I drive it around the curve and come to a stop behind the Chevelle.
Last, I harness the raging fury-induced fire seething through my veins, and I let it build while I drive Jess to my house and put her to bed. She doesn't want to talk, and she refuses to be checked by a doctor, so I force her still long enough to verify she doesn't need stitches or have noticeable eye damage. Once I dab her cuts with peroxide, she strips off her sleep shorts and shirt. My fingers curl into fists when I spot the red marks and bruising marring her skin from hip to ribcage. Like she senses my stare, she angles her back and snatches one of my tees from the clean pile of clothes stacked in my laundry basket, covering her body before moving to my bathroom. I wait silently, following her every step as she uses the restroom, washes her hands, then rinses her mouth. She never looks up. When she climbs into my bed and crawls to the opposite edge, she leaves the sheets turned back—an invitation I don't need. I cradle her back against my chest, bury my nose in her hair, and breathe her in while she cries herself to sleep in a ball with my arm pulled to her chest.
That is when I extract myself, walk out to the shed, and pull those little folded pieces of rage, helplessness, and fear from the drawer in my mind. Unfolding them with precision, I