Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (Cactus Creek #3)(32)
That made all the difference in the world.
“It was a pair of tweakers,” she said voice cracking a bit as it always did when she retold the story that never got easier to tell. “Two guys broke into our house high as a kite on meth, and paranoid to within an inch of their lives. We were in the kitchen making dinner when we heard them crashing into things in the living room.” She shook her head. “It was so weird. They weren’t even trying to be quiet. And before my dad could go investigate, they came rushing into the kitchen, bee-lining straight for my mom’s purse on the counter like they were taking money out of an ATM.”
She looked up. “You know, I’ve replayed the whole thing thousands of times in my head, but for some reason, while everything up until that point is clear and in real time, it’s like I have these glitches after that. Like scratches in a DVD where some parts are slow and faulty, while others are lightning fast. Not to mention the parts that my brain seems to skip over.”
Hudson nodded, understanding written all over his features. She imagined he knew better than most what she was talking about.
“No matter how much I try to rearrange the memory in my head, I always hear the gunshots after I see my parents on the ground.” She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, reeling a bit from having the memories assail her after years of remaining dormant. A part of her felt guilty over that dormancy, felt that the resulting blow to her gut was almost deserved.
“It’s all a bunch of jagged memories, fragments that don’t exactly fit like puzzle pieces. One second I saw the two guys, the next I saw my parents on the ground next to me, bleeding out.”
She had to work to keep her breathing controlled, calling forward the therapy techniques she hadn’t needed since high school. “When I looked up next, I saw the other guy—not the one that shot my parents—raise his gun and point it right at me. Meanwhile, his friend was peeling bills out of my dad’s wallet screaming at him to hurry up and finish it.”
She gave a bitter laugh.
“Can you believe that? The guy just shot both my parents and five seconds later, he was looking for a few fives and twenties.” She couldn’t stop that haunted sound in her voice, the one that sounded almost dead to her own ears.
Fitting. Seeing as how close she’d come to dying that night.
Seven inches to be exact.
“Cop sirens started blaring down the street. And then the first guy got hysterical. He ordered his friend to finish me off and go meet him in the car. And then it all happened so fast after that. I heard shouting outside. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t looking at the gun. I was looking at him. His panicked, glassy-eyed crazed expression.”
“And the very last thing I remember is hearing that shot. Glock 33—.357 Sig.”
Blood rushed into her ears in stereo with the memory. “It was like I went deaf after that. For hours. Until this young cop sat me down and started talking to me. Just talking. As if I could hear. And then the more he talked, I realized I could hear. The sounds rushing back in then at a deafening volume.”
Some nights, in her very worst nightmares, she could hear it all again. And she’d lie there imagining—no, not imagining—very nearly feeling that bullet hit her instead of hitting the cabinet beside her. And along with the impact to her brain, she felt the resulting, asinine feeling of…regret and more so anger. At herself. Because she’d shut her eyes when she’d seen his finger starting to pull that trigger. Because she hadn’t run. Or hid. Because she’d been frozen stiff, too scared to move, let alone fight back. To scream. To do something. Anything to save her own life.
In the end, it had been some tiny ounce of clarity amidst the meth-drugged haze that tweaker had been riding high on…some drop of humanity and far-too-belated sense of right and wrong that had made him veer his gun off to the side rather than kill her like his buddy had been shouting at him to do from the door. The buddy that had killed her parents in cold blood. All for a few more bucks to feed their addiction.
Afterward, folks told her over and over how lucky she was to still be alive. How the universe had intervened because she’d been destined to do greater things. And other similar nice-in-theory statements of grace, destiny, and the heroism in her paralysis at gunpoint. They all said a version of those statements. All except for Caine. Her oldest foster brother had been the cop who’d sat her down to talk that night.
He didn’t tell her she was lucky the tweaker hadn’t killed her. He didn’t tell her that her life was spared because she had angels watching out for her.
He told her she was a survivor. Not lucky. Not some bizarre winner of the universe’s twisted sense of Russian Roulette. Not some divine recipient of a death pardon. A survivor. But not because of what she’d been through, but because of what she was going to be overcoming from there on out.
The past was the past, he’d told her, staring at her not with pity, but with conviction. Whether or not she’d been able to fight back, and the fact that she’d been unable to save her parents…that was all in the past. And from that point on, it was her job to survive that past.
“Honestly,” she whispered against Hudson’s chest, “when he’d said that, I didn’t believe I could do it. And suddenly, not getting hit by the bullet had seemed like the easier feat.”
*
Violet Duke's Books
- Violet Duke
- Resisting the Bad Boy - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 1 (Can't Resist #1)
- NICE GIRL TO LOVE (THE COMPLETE THREE-BOOK COLLECTION)
- Love, Exes, and Ohs (Cactus Creek #4)
- Love, Diamonds, and Spades (Cactus Creek #2)
- Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)
- Falling for the Good Guy (Can't Resist #2)
- Choosing the Right Man - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 3 (Can't Resist #3)
- A Little Combustible Chemistry (Cactus Creek 0.5)