“Wait,” I say, as I attempt to sit up once more by shoving at his chest, but he pushes me down with a heavy palm splayed between my breasts. I’m feeling lightheaded and the pressure of him on top of me makes my tummy do weird flippy things, and not of the good variety. “Scott, stop. You’re hurting me.”

“Relax,” he whispers, nibbling on my ear.

Bile rises in my belly. I shove at him, more forcibly this time, and when he doesn’t move I lash out with my hands, gouging my nails down one side of his face. “I said stop, you arsehole!”

He sits back on his knees and presses his hand to his cheek. He’s bleeding. His eyes blaze with desire and hate, but I don’t give a crap. I waste no time getting to my feet and climbing up the embankment.

“Ana, get back here!”

“Fuck you!” I scream back. No sooner have the words left my mouth than I feel his arm slip around my waist and drag me backwards, down the embankment. His other hand covers my mouth and, even though I bite down on it as hard as I can, he gasps but doesn’t let go. I thrash and kick against him, all the while screaming into his palm as he lugs me further down the hill.

We’re not in the same spot as we were before. There’s no grass here, only a rocky patch of hard-packed earth. If we were in the same spot I’d consider using our abandoned tequila bottle as a weapon, but I can’t even see it—I can’t see anything on account of the dizziness and moonlight. Scott releases me—I don’t know why, I don’t question it—I simply run as fast as my uncoordinated body will take me. It’s not far enough though because before I can even reach the embankment he grabs my arm and pushes me to the ground. I hit the hard ground with a thud. Breath whooshes out of my lungs and my head lands hard enough that I feel both stunned and like I want to throw up my guts, all at once.

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.”