The Prologue (13 page)

I’m not getting enough air, and the spacey feeling is coming into my head, and I reflect that soon I’ll pass out unless I have something to ground me back in the present. I’m almost relieved when Tony tells me that we can leave, and I see the dark look in his eyes. The pain will keep me in my own head, from floating away until I don’t know where I am or what will happen. Even being with Tony feels safer than the nothingness that I’ve floated away into. It’s only happened twice, but I have no desire to repeat the experience.

I find my dad amid the crush of guests and tell him goodbye. He eyes me for a moment and leans in to ask if everything is all right. I tell him its fine, I’m just tired and he gives me an extra kiss and hug before I go back to Tony.

My heart sinks when I see that Zeke is back at the coat check, taking the numbers and helping guests into their coats. We shuffle forward in the small line, and finally Tony is handing Zeke the tag for our coats. Zeke retrieves them and hands Tony his coat, and then holds mine out for me to get into. For just a moment I hesitate, and then I tell myself that every other woman in here has done it, and so there should be no reason that I shouldn’t either.

I close my eyes for courage, then turn and slip my arms into the coat. I want to die, know my fate is sealed, when Zeke goes the extra mile by not immediately taking his hands off me. He makes sure my collar is lying flat, and then, very carefully, pulls my hair out of the coat and lets it fall down my back. I give a shiver, not just from my hair tickling my bare back, but from seeing Zeke’s long, dark fingers in my mind’s eye, actually touching some part of my body, even a part of me that can’t actually feel it. There are no nerve endings on my hair, but somehow it’s as though I can still feel him there, those artist’s fingers carefully arranging my long curls down my back.

I finally open my eyes and take a shaky step away from Zeke and look up at him. He and Tony are staring daggers at each other, and I feel something, disappointment, maybe, at the realization that Zeke only did it to taunt Tony. If only he knew how dangerous that was, what the reason for the last beating I’d received was. Zeke has to turn to attend to another guest and the tense moment is over, the air suddenly light once more and my chest doesn’t feel so heavy.

We turn, and as we walk down the hallway, Tony’s hand comes to rest heavily on my neck, and I know without a doubt what is coming.

Evangeline

17

As we walk down the hallway, for the first time ever, I have thoughts of running away. Zeke is so close by, just a few steps away. So is my dad, just inside another room. They could protect me, keep Tony away. Somehow, Tony’s aura, his whole air and presence tonight, seems different and more malevolent; the calmness before the storm. I know this one will be bad, a hurricane or tornado compared to the thunder and rain of the previous storms. I’m already trembling all over, and my flight or fight reflex is going berserk, screaming at me to
run, run, run
!

But I don’t. I think of Tony’s words, of his threats, that awful phone call, and I stay. My head begins to float right up to the clouds, and I tell myself that soon it will come back down, with the first strike of Tony’s fist. At least I’ll know I’m still alive.

Even as I’m telling myself this, though, I can feel myself shaking uncontrollably, and suddenly I’m filled with a fear that I’ve never felt before. Tony has made me nervous, sad, and angry before. He’s frightened me many times. But I’ve never felt such a bone-chilling fear in his presence before. I’ve always worried that someday he might go too far, lose control and hurt me too much. That he might kill me.

Tonight, I can feel his control slipping that much, can feel his loose grip on sanity. For the first time ever, I know the horrible, heart-attack inducing terror of fearing for your own life. Tonight, I realize what it feels like to be close to death.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I say, before I even realize what I’m doing. “I need a second.”

Without waiting for his permission, I tear away from Tony. He only releases me out of surprise, I’m sure. I turn down the dim hallway directly to our left, walking as quickly as I can in my heels. I chance a look behind me, and see that Tony is following with slow, even strides. A lion stalking his prey.

Some sound escapes me, a sort of strangled sob, and I have to fight the urge to run. I only dart into the bathroom and turn instantly around, trying to slam the door closed, but Tony is already there and he’s much stronger than I am. He forces the door open and closes it slowly behind him. I slowly back away, terrified by the emptiness in his eyes.

“T-Tony,” I force out, choking on my own words. “Please, I just need a s-second to-”

He lunges forward before I can finish, grabbing me by my hair and yanking me toward him. I teeter in my heels and fall against his chest, and suddenly his arms are around me, capturing me, and I know I am lost.

“You’re nothing,” Tony finally says, and if we hadn’t been alone, I wouldn’t have realized it was his voice. It’s an octave higher, pitchy and uneven with stark rage. “
Nothing
but a dirty whore, Evie. I gave you everything I had, I loved you with everything in me, treated you as best I could, and you do
this
to me!”

“I-I-I don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” I sputter. His forearm is back in the horrible position against my throat and I can hardly breathe and I scrabble at it, trying to loosen his hold. Fear is rising up inside my throat like bile and I worry that if he doesn’t ease the pressure I’m going to throw up. Tears are leaking out of my eyes, tears of fear and rage that I am so helpless against him.

“Don’t lie to me!” he shouts, and in an instant I find myself pushed up against the door, Tony twisting my left arm behind my back.

One of his hands is pushing me against the door, right between my shoulder blades. My cheek rests against the door, and I can just see him out of the corner of my eye, his face red with anger, his eyes now bright with a craziness that scares me even more. My eyes are stinging with tears from the pain in my arm now, and I almost sigh with relief as something
pops
and the fiery pain spreads from my shoulder socket to all over my left torso, becoming easier to handle in a large, even dose.

Tony doesn’t even seem to notice what he’s done. He uses my hair to pull my head back, so my face is right up against his. His cheek is hot against my forehead, and spittle sprays from his mouth as he speaks through clenched teeth, his voice pitchy with rage.

“You’re fucking cheating on me, cheating on me with that
rat
. Someone from the gutter, Evie! How could you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I scream, suddenly furious because I don’t understand why he’s so mad, what he thinks is going on.

There’s a loud
thonk
as he pushes my head back into the door, so hard it bounces right back off and I see a dark sky full of stars for just a moment. Then my vision is back and something is trickling down the side of my face from my right eyebrow. It goes past the curve of my mouth and I touch it with my tongue. Blood. My whole right temple area is aching now, and my vision feels foggy, not a hundred percent even after the darkness fades away.

“You and that Quain kid,” Tony leans down to hiss in my ear, and I close my eyes, unable to look at him. “I saw you two together. You just let him touch you, touch your hair like a slut. You’re cheating on me with him.”

Fury unlike anything else I have ever felt builds up inside me, until I’m trembling not with fear, but with rage. Everything Tony has ever told me he has managed to spin, to make me feel as though it’s my fault. He’s spun his web and trapped me in it, but he cannot make me believe this.

My own voice is uneven as I finally am able to coax words out of my throat, speaking through gritted teeth, hatred I’ve never experienced toward Tony before eking from every syllable. “I have let you
beat
me, hit me, slap me, push me around,
fuck
with my mind, and
rape
me, but I have never, not ever in my life, betrayed you. If you think I’m
stupid
enough to cheat on my abusive boyfriend, then you’re even crazier than I am, Tony.” I don’t know where the words come from, but they feel good, liberating.

I’m not sure what happens next, Tony moves so fast. All I know is that there is a harsh, stinging pain in my scalp and suddenly I am on the floor and now the left side of my face is burning in pain. My nose is the first thing to make contact with the hard tiles of the bathroom floor and I feel cartilage shift. I open my eyes and all I can see is a pool of red, stark against the white floor.

I lift a hand and touch my nose, and my fingers come away bloody. Even the light touch hurts, but I’m not thinking about the pain as I look up and see Tony standing over me, his fists clenched and dangling loosely at his sides. I realize I’m in the worst possible position to be able to defend myself and scramble to get up, but before I can gain any traction on the slick floor, Tony plants a foot in the small of my back and pins me back down.

He grabs my hair again, using it to reel my head up off the floor, until my neck is at a contorted angle and my throat is stretched to its limit. I feel hairs part from my scalp and blink away tears at the stinging pain, my breath coming in harsh pants.

“Don’t you
ever
,” he says, and he is panting too, his voice strangled, “
ever
talk to me like that again, do you understand? You’re nothing but a goddamned liar. I saw you and Quain together, with Jenny at the dance studio. So don’t tell me nothing is going on when you’re selling yourself to trash like that!”

He slaps my face, harder than he ever has before. I know right away that he’s not worried about leaving marks that other people will see, that he has completely lost all control. I know with cold, hard certainty that he’s going to kill me tonight, or at least come close. And I know something else; I’ll be damned if I am going to let him without saying my piece.

All his weight is on me, crushing my lungs, but I manage to gasp out, “At least… Zeke knows how… to please a woman. You… never could… satisfy me.”

I know the blow to his pride is more than Tony can take, and I have a flash of uncertainty at my own words when he pushes my face down onto the bathroom floor, pressing my mouth and nose into the puddle of blood that comes from my still-bleeding nose.

I cry out as the cartilage shifts again, the hard floor unforgiving as my face is pressed into it. I try to pull in a breath, but only fluid, my own blood, comes back in. I snort and my vision turns red-hot at the sudden pain in my nose. I try to open my mouth to breathe, but Tony is still grinding it against the floor. I begin to struggle, the idea of dying by lack of air much more terrifying than the one of Tony beating me to death.

Animalistic sounds escape me as I move my head back and forth, and I try to press up from the floor with my arms and knees. A whole new kind of pain envelopes me as I move my left arm, and for a moment I cease struggling, the pain taking away what little breath I still have in my body.

I scream from deep inside my throat, without opening my mouth, and then again and again, beating the floor with my good arm. Just as my throat feels raw and I don’t think I can struggle for much longer, Tony steps away. All the pressure is gone from my body and I am able to push up just a little bit and take in deep lungful’s of air.

He times it perfectly, waiting until I’ve just caught my breath before I see a leg swing toward me in my peripheral vision and my newly-healed ribs explode in pain again. This time, there is an audible
crack
and there can be no doubt about the extent of the damage. I scream at the pain and curl into a fetal position, trying to protect myself from any further harm.

It takes me a full minute to catch my breath, for the first flash of pain to fade slightly, and when I open my eyes, Tony is standing there staring at me. He’s trembling, and there is blood on his hands, splashed over the front of his light blue dress shirt.

“Look what you made me do,” he whispers, staring at me, wide-eyed. “Look what you made me do, Evie!”

Exhaustion fills me, and a kind of cynical sarcasm that he persists on blaming me, especially when I have done nothing at all. I open one eye to look at him, repulsion fills me, and the words escape before I can stop them. “Still not as good… as what Zeke did to me. That’s for sure.”

My eyes are closed because I don’t want to see what comes next, but I hear Tony’s loud roar before his foot makes contact with my gut.

Sick. I’ve never felt so sick before in my life, and I cough and gag before I can force it back down. Something fills my mouth, metallic and coppery and I know its blood without even looking. The bile rises back up and I bite my lip, wanting to keep it down, but then my bottom lips gives a twinge of pain and the metallic taste is even stronger. I realize I must have cut my lip at some point, maybe while Tony was pushing my face into the floor.

I cough again, and then I’m screaming again as Tony grabs my dislocated arm and pulls me up off the floor. I know my time has come, and I decide to embrace it.