K. Bromberg - Crashed

And I realize it doesn’t really fucking matter. The whys, the what fors. Any of it.

Because I have Ry now.

Holy shit. I’m so wrapped up in my head and what I just did, that I forgot the whole reason I did it.

Rylee.

I get in the car as I fumble with the phone in my hand, and it takes me a second to bring her up from my recent calls list. The phone rings but I’m fucking impatient. “C’mon, Ry!” I pound the steering wheel with my fist as the ringing filters through the speakers of the car.

“Hey!” She laughs.

The sound. My fucking God, that carefree sound in her voice grabs a hold of my fucking heart and just squeezes it so tight I feel like I can’t breathe. It’s like all of a sudden all of the bullshit is gone with Tawny and the crash, and even though I can’t take a breath, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a long ass time. Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Fucking clarity and shit?

I start to speak and I can’t. What the fuck? It’s like I want to say everything to her at once and yet I can’t think of how to start. I start laughing, like batshit crazy laughing, because I’m the middle of some shitty strip mall and it hits me now?

“You okay?” she asks in that sexy tone of hers.

“Yeah,” I choke out through my laughter. “I just—”

The giggle comes through the speaker loud and clear and I just stop talking. It’s Zander’s and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it. The sound cuts me fucking open like a filet knife. I swear to God I couldn’t be any more of a chick right now with my emotions all over the fucking place.

“Go get your glove in the backyard and we’ll get going, okay?” I hear him agree through the line. “Sorry, you were going to tell me what was so funny.”

And I start to talk, begin to tell her about the test results when I hear a sound that is so horrifying it reaches into my chest and tears into my hardened heart. “What the fuck is that?” I can’t say it quickly enough because despite the high-pitched scream that sounds like a wounded animal fighting for his life, I can still hear Rylee moving through the phone line.

My stomach churns at the fucking sound and her goddamn silence. “Ry? Tell me what’s going on. Ry?”

“No, no, no, no!” she says and there’s something in her voice—fear, disbelief, and shock mixed with defiance—that has shivers dancing up my spine and has me immediately starting the car and throwing it into gear.

“Goddammit, Ry! Talk to me. What the fuck is wrong?” I yell into the phone, panic overtaking me, but all I hear is her heavy breathing. And then whimpering. “Rylee!”

“You can’t have him!” she says in an eerily calm voice, which sounds far away and has me cutting off some poor fucker in the lane next to me.

“Who’s there, Ry? Tell me, baby, please,” I plead, fear like I’ve only ever known in my youth tasting like bile in my mouth. Fear in my every fucking nerve. I struggle with deciding whether to hang up and call 9-1-1, but that would mean I’d have to hang up on her—not hear her, not know she’s okay.

“You fucking bitch!” is all I hear before she cries out in pain and the phone goes dead.

“No!” I scream and smash my hand into the steering wheel. My eyes blur as I try to push the numbers on my phone, but my fingers are shaking so fucking bad that I can’t even manage 9-1-1 until after the third try.

“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The disembodied voice answers.

“Please help them. They’re screaming and … they’re screaming!” I plead with her.

“Who’s screaming, sir?”

“Rylee and Zand…” I can’t fucking think straight; ice floods my veins and my only thought is I need to get to them so I don’t even realize I’m not making any fucking sense. “Please, someone is there and—”

“Sir, what’s your name? What’s the address?”

“Co-Colton,” I stutter out when I realize I don’t even know the fucking address. Just the street. “Switzerland Avenue.”

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Hang on, baby. Hang on. I’m coming. It’s all I repeat in my head—over and over—as my body shakes.

“What’s the address sir?”

“I don’t fucking know!” I shout at the 9-1-1 operator. “The one with all the goddamn paparazzi out front. There’s no one else in the house but her and a little boy. Please! Quickly.”

And when I look up from ending the call, I have to slam on the brakes as I hit fucking road construction.

“Fuck!” I yell, laying in on my horn like it’s my fucking lifeline.

Rylee.

She’s my only thought.

Rylee.

Please God, no.

“Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman. Spiderman. Batman …” Zander repeats it over and over as he sits balled up in a corner behind me in the backyard. It’s the only thing I can hear over the buzzing in my head right now from the force of the punch. Zander’s hands are over his ears and he rocks back and forth as he chants, withdrawing into himself. Into the world he wants to exist, where there are no bad men wielding guns or fathers holding knives cutting their wives apart.

The problem is that in Zander’s world, they are one in the same.

I notice all of this in the split second after I’m punched in the face, my body flinging and twisting from the impact to see my sweet boy shrinking into himself. Time stands still then begins to move in slow motion. The pain in my cheek and eye does nothing to abate the fear in my heart as I look up to meet the eyes of the man that’s been a constant presence in my life over the past few weeks. His hat and dark glasses have been knocked off and it hits me.

I know this man.

I’ve seen him before.

He’s the man who gave me the creeps in the Target parking lot. He’s the man from the dark blue sedan parked outside of The House and my house, following me. Without his hat and sunglasses I can see Zander in him. I know why he seemed so familiar in the parking lot that day. He has the same color eyes, the same features; his hair is longer and a bit darker, but the resemblance is unmistakable.

My eyes skim over the matte black metal of the pistol he has pointed at me and then to his eyes—dark pools of unemotional blackness—that are flickering back and forth from me to Zander and his incessant chanting of superheroes in the background.

“What did you do to him?” he shouts at me angling the gun over to Zander and then back to me. “Why’s he doing that? Answer me!”

Stay calm, Rylee. Stay calm, Rylee.

“He—he’s scared.” You did this to him, I want to scream at him. You did this, you useless piece of murdering sack of shit, but all I do is repeat myself, trying to hide my fear and keep myself from stuttering. I try to focus on the pounding of my heart, counting the beats thumping in my ears to keep me calm. I can feel the rivulets of sweat trickle between my shoulder blades and breasts. I can smell the fear and my stomach revolts, knowing it’s mine that I smell—mixed with his.

And I hold onto that thought.

That he’s scared too.

Think, Ry. Think. I need to keep him calm but protect Zander, and I have no clue how to do that. The unfettered fear I feel is scattering my thoughts, robbing me of coherency. Of what in the hell I should do, because I know he’s murdered before. Murdered the mother of his child, his wife no less.

What’s going to stop him from murdering me?

He has nothing to lose.

And that more than anything scares the shit out of me.

I force a swallow, my eyes flicking all over the backyard. I see his camera and fake press pass on the ground by the gate. I see my cell phone in the edge of the grass, where it scattered when he hit me, and I immediately think of Colton.

I instantly grab on to the hope that he heard me, knows we’re in trouble, will call for help—because if he didn’t, I have no chance at protecting Zander against this madman. Of protecting myself.

My tears sting, and the swelling in my eye from where he ambushed me, hurts like a bitch. My hands are shaking and my breath hitches in fear, while the increased volume of Zander’s chant is adding a heightened level of stress to the whole situation.

It’s the only sound I can hear in the early morning silence—the chants of a little boy knowing he has no hope left. And with each passing moment, the whispered words get louder and louder as if he’s trying to drown out the sound of his dad’s voice.

“Wh—what do you want?” I finally ask over Zander’s voice, sensing his grasp on reality is long gone. And I don’t know how to rationalize with a crazy person.

He steps toward me, his eyes running down the length of my body, and even though my nerves are already on high alert, the look in his dead eyes when he scrapes them back up causes new ones to hum. Warning bells go off and my stomach squeezes violently—so much so that I have to fight the nausea that threatens.

He reaches the gun out, and I freeze as he runs the tip of it up and down the side of my cheek. The cold of the steel, the hard reality of the metal on my flesh and what it represents, causes the blood in my veins to turn to ice.

“You’re a pretty little thing aren’t you, Rylee.” The way he says my name, as if he’s fucking it with his tongue, has me gagging. In an instant he has my cheeks squeezed tightly in his hands, his face inches from mine. Tears start streaming down my face. I want to be tough. I want to tell him to fuck off and die. I want to scream for Zander to run and get help. I want to plead with God, with anyone, for help. I want to tell Colton I love him. But I can’t because none of that is possible right now. My knees are shaking, my teeth are trying to chatter inside of his grip. Everything I am—my future, my possibilities, my next breath—is at this man’s whim.