Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick 0.5)(22)

“It’s Louie!” I heard yelled from my living room and I jumped, crying out quietly, tucking my knees tight to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “All clear!” he shouted. “All good! Mr. Sloan is on his way.”

I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t think anything either.

I didn’t think how I’d been a bitch to Marcus after he’d been nothing but kind and patient with me. Sending me daisies. Bringing me Dom. Being gentle and sweet.

It had been a week since that night and I’d heard nothing from him. Saw nothing of him.

But the daisies kept coming.

As they did, I thought it was that he forgot he was sending them, and the minute the bill showed, he’d cancel them.

I didn’t allow myself to think further on that.

For a number of reasons, I’d wanted to call. To apologize.

It was what a good Southern woman should do, for one.

But it was what I wanted to do. Me. Daisy. For him. Marcus. To make it better. To take it back. To let him know that I wanted to be like Shelby from Steel Magnolias. Strong like her. Strong enough to know that it was better to have a little bit of something wonderful than a lifetime of just plain nothing.

Then explain to him that he had to go because I couldn’t allow myself to have a little bit of something wonderful knowing it’d be taken away.

I was just not that strong.

It wasn’t just about a man like Stretch knowing he shouldn’t leave me with my mother, and doing it anyway. Maybe because he had no claim to me. But mostly, I reckoned, because he wasn’t strong enough either.

And it wasn’t just about Miss Annamae giving me all I needed to live my life right, but not being around long enough for me to show her I’d listened to every word.

It was about being the kind of girl that the only good thing a man had given her was a really fantastic boob job and no matter how much she fought and scratched and worked for a little hint of peace in her life, she still got herself raped on the blacktop of a parking lot.

So I didn’t call Marcus. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t explain. I thought it best to leave him be.

I didn’t care what he did for a living. He deserved better.

Much, much better than me.

The bruising was gone, most of the scrapes had healed, and I was going to go back to the stage next Saturday.

I’d wanted to do it that night but Smithie was not big on that idea. He wanted me to take more time. He wanted me to talk to some woman LaTeesha had found, a woman named Bex, who worked at some rape crisis center. And then he wanted me to give it a month or two, still paid leave, and he also wanted me to move in with him and LaTeesha for a spell.

I’d put my foot down. We’d had words.

After sharing I was a pain in his ass, he’d given in but only if I’d give it another week.

I could do that so I’d agreed.

But I didn’t think of any of that. Not right then, cowering on my ass in the corner of my darkened bedroom, some man I didn’t know in my living room who another man I’d insulted had watching my apartment to keep me safe.

I just stared through the dark at the door, doing it like the fool I was, the coward, quaking on my ass in the dark.

I heard the knob on the door jostle and then Marcus calling, “Stay where you are, honey.”

That wasn’t hard since I couldn’t move.

There was some muted scraping before light poured in from the living room as the door opened and I winced at the bright.

Almost before it illuminated the room, it was gone, and I stared as Marcus’s tall shadow moved toward me.

I thought he’d stop, and with him there, his man outside, I tried to pull myself together. The humiliation of cringing in a corner beginning to dawn, the feel of it spreading over me.

He didn’t stop.

He made it to me, bent low, gathered me up and then he went right back down. Situating himself exactly as I had been in the corner but without the trembling and with me in his lap, held close to his chest, one arm tight around me, the other one slanted up my back, fingers in my hair, pressing my face to his throat.

I felt his strength. His warmth. Smelled hints of his cologne.

“What happened?” he whispered. “Nightmare?”

At that word, it came rushing in, and I wasn’t strong enough to beat it back.

And because I wasn’t, I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t even feel myself do it.

But I did it.

I burrowed into him, grasping his sweater in my fists, shoving into him like I wanted his flesh to soak me in and take away the fear, the shame, a life that was mostly misery.

“Okay, okay,” he soothed, his hold on me tightening. “Shh. I’m right here. Right here, honey.”

“I got…I gotta build my castle,” I told him mindlessly.

“I’m sorry?”

“But I can’t. I can’t build no more castles. I don’t got it in me.”

I was unconsciously rocking.

“Castles?”

I shoved my face in his throat and kept rocking.

“A moat. Big studded door no one can break through. Stone three feet thick. Keepin’ me safe. Keepin’ me safe.” I sounded like I was chanting but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t even aware of what I was saying. “I build my castles so they can keep me safe.” I swallowed, hard. It hurt and it felt like Marcus felt it too because his arms got even tighter and he took over rocking me. “Just in my mind. They were always just in my mind. So they couldn’t keep me safe.”