Zelda

 

My life was a mess. Maybe it had always been that way, but recently it had gotten worse to the point where I was pretty positive that nothing I did would fix it. Still, I was trying.

 

After Nester’s visit only a couple of days ago—and the delicious and oh so wrong night before that—I was a flutter of nervous emotions and hormones. On the one hand, my body was begging for Nester. I couldn’t get him off my mind. Everything I’d wanted lay in Nester’s strong arms, but it was all so out of reach.

 

Well, maybe it wouldn’t be if you hadn’t slapped him and told him to get the hell out of here! I thought to myself angrily, but even as I did, I knew that wasn’t true.

 

Things were broken between Nester and me, despite the obvious passion and maybe love that still lingered between us. I wanted to believe that we could come back together. That we could patch things up and ride off into the sunset like some crazy western romance novel, but I wasn’t that naïve. Things had gotten complicated and even if I could fix things between myself and Nester, it wouldn’t matter.

 

Santos would never let me go. And if he did, he’d ruin Nester for it.

 

I showered three times after Nester left. In part because I found myself in desperate need of release. I had to lose myself in my own touch, imagining it was his, and it brought me to delicious orgasm as I remembered the good times between us.

 

The other part of showering had been a lingering sense of dread.

 

Santos had warned me about being with another man. He’d insinuated that maybe I wouldn’t live long enough to regret any transgressions I committed against him. He’d all but threatened my life and it terrified me.

 

He was not the sort of man I wanted to cross.

 

Which was why I scrubbed myself until I was raw and pink. I brushed my teeth over and over again, and washed my hair until it smelled like coconut and nothing else. Even after I stepped out, though, I felt the sense that Nester still lingered in the imprint of my skin. Maybe he always had, but I felt like now Santos could see that imprint.

 

It terrified me.

 

I was meeting Santos at his place that night, which was why there was a deep pool of dread lingering in my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was go over there and pretend like I was excited to marry him still. And how was I supposed to spend an evening with him, knowing that my mind would be full to the brim with memories of Nester?

 

It was awful, but there was no way around it. After Santos’s warning shot, there was no way he’d let me cancel on him. And if he did, he’d only send someone after me to look and see why I’d canceled.

 

What if Nester showed up again then? Sure, I’d slapped him and kicked him out, but Nester wasn’t the kind of guy who gave up when he wanted something. And while it still seemed impossible to me, I thought he still seemed to want me.

 

Trying to ignore the warm trickle that washed over my body at that thought, I got dressed.

 

Since I would be spending the evening just at the house with Santos, he would tolerate something casual instead of dressy. I could get away with skinny jeans and a button down-blouse—he hated it when women wore t-shirt. I grabbed a pair of ankle boots, too, because he didn’t like flip flops or tennis shoes, and then headed out the door. I’d dragged a brush through my hair and forced it into a tame ponytail, hoping that would be enough for him today.

 

The entire drive over there, I dreaded a night with Santos. He’d paw at me like some animal in heat and then get angry when I told him no. He’d pout and gripe about my stupid rules, and then he’d tell me to top being such a prude. When I insisted for the hundredth time that all I wanted to do was wait, he’d tell me that I had better be prepared for a proper fucking, because our wedding night was going to leave me sore and begging. For more.

 

The thought of being with him like that always made me shudder, and I let him assume it was in pleasure, but it wasn’t.

 

It was in dread.

 

Knowing what I was in for that night, I drove to his house anyway. The drive wasn’t too bad, the traffic only marginally bad given the time of night. Santos lived downtown in the most expensive house in a sort of bad neighborhood. It was so much nicer than everything else that it looked out of place, but that was Santos for you. He liked to be the most ostentatious thing around and while he probably had the money to live in a much nicer neighborhood, he didn’t have enough money to be the richest person in that nice neighborhood, and it was important to him to be the best.

 

I pulled up into the driveway, staring up at his two-story house. It was huge. Four bedrooms, three baths, a kitchen that was larger than my kitchen and living room combined, and both a living room and a family room. There was also a utility room and a “mud” room which I never asked what was for. I saw them cleaning up something in there once, dark and thick, and afterwards just made a point of staying as far away from that room as possible.

 

Attached to the side of the house was a two-car garage which extended to the point where it could have had three cars in it, but Santos used that additional space for his tools. It was a workroom, though I wasn’t sure exactly what sort of work he did there.

 

Beneath the house was a basement, too, but I never went down there. I had a feeling that was where he did some of his more illegal activities when they somehow made it to his home, and I was perfectly happy with plausible deniability. The less I knew, the safer I was.

 

Popping open the door to my car, I slid out of the vehicle just as I spotted Santos coming towards me. I forced a smile onto my face, though it felt almost painful, and opened my mouth to greet him. “Hi, Santos, I—”

 

Before I could get anything more than that out, his large hand was wrapped tightly, painfully, around my upper arm.

 

“Hey!” I cried, but he ignored me.

 

He jerked me harshly forward so that I stumbled and nearly fell to the concrete as I struggled to get my feet steady beneath me. I could see now that he was furious, anger flashing across his features like black electricity. His face was red and splotchy, mostly with fury, but a little with alcohol, too.

 

He dragged me inside; I struggled halfheartedly, but didn’t know if it would be better to escape or to just deal with whatever had set him off in the first place. “Santos, please let me go!”

 

Instead of listening, he just continued to drag me forward. He pulled me up the stairs, my balance still not quite right, my legs tripping over the steps. He didn’t slow down, instead just dragging me up the stairs. I struggled until I managed to get my feet properly beneath me so that at the very least my knees stopped banging against the edges of the steps.

 

He hauled me down the hall and threw me into one of the bedrooms. His bedroom. I felt a shiver of fear snake its way down my spine as I eyed the huge four-poster bed. He released me only when he filled up the doorway, tossing me like a ragdoll into the room with enough force that I stumbled and fell heavily to the floor.

 

“Santos, what—?”

 

But he wasn’t interested in my questions. He was so angry that I could see a vein popping in his forehead, trailing down right between his brows which were tugged down into a thin, low line. “You fucking whore,” he spat, his tone laced with anger and malice.

 

I flinched. He took a step into the room.

 

“What?”

 

He made a sound that was almost like a growling in his chest, then said, “You heard me. You’re a cheating whore, Zelda Rivers.”

 

I shook my head as sudden dread filled me. Nester, was all I thought, but I wouldn’t let myself linger on him. If I did, I knew it would be bad. It would be written across my features who I was talking about and it would be awful.

 

“No, Santos, I didn’t—” I tried, but he wasn’t interested in my excuses. I had scrambled to my feet so that I could back away from him and put some much needed distance between us, but that only seemed to make him madder.

 

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, striding farther into the room, angrier now that I’d backed away from him. “Whores don’t get to speak to me.”

 

I shook my head, trying to think of what I could say that might save me from this moment, but of course nothing would. I still tried. “Please, Santos, listen to me.”

 

Smack.

 

It was almost as if the sound hit my ears first. Santos’s hand, wide open, soared through the air like a whip. The back of his hand impacted with my cheek, the knuckles grinding against flesh and bone, scrapping across my skin. A second later, a burning pain raced along my face and jaw. I felt tears prick at my eyes, and I worked hard to hold them back.

 

Shock must have registered on my face as I turned back to look at him, but he didn’t care. He was still livid, and dangerous, I realized far too late.

 

I stumbled away from him, but he wasn’t going to let me go so easily. He grabbed my arm again and with his free hand slapped me again, this time across the other cheek. He must have caught my lip, because I tasted coppery blood on my tongue.

 

“You bitch.” The words were emphasized with another slap. “You fucking whore!”

 

He hit me again and by now my face was burning, tears streaming down my sore cheeks. I wanted to slump down to the floor, to crawl under the bed just to get away from him, but he held tightly, not done with me yet.

 

Jerking me to him so that our bodies pressed together sickly, he said in a dangerously low tone, “You’ll spread your legs for some asshole, but not for me? You’ll let any dick into your pussy, you filthy bitch, but you won’t let me fuck you? I ought to do it anyway.”

 

The threat was clear and I felt myself pale. I felt my whole body begin to tremble at the thought of him forcing himself on me. It was terrifying in ways that nothing else had ever been. Panic began to well inside me, my whole being suddenly searching for a way out, away from Santos, but I couldn’t get free.

 

“You’d probably fucking like that, wouldn’t you, you slut?”

 

Before anything else could happen, he hit me a final time, releasing my arm simultaneously so that I fell back and spiraled down onto the floor. I banged my head against the floor—thank god it was carpet—and caught my shoulder against the bedpost as I went.

 

Certain that Santos was going to follow through on his threat and come after me, I tried to scramble back on the floor, but I needn’t have bothered. Disgusted and still full of rage, Santos turned from me and left the room. He slammed the door after him. I heard his stomping footsteps trail down the stairs and held my breath as he continued on his way.

 

When the sound finally disappeared, I slumped against the side of the bed and breathed again. My sobs wracked my body, but I reminded myself that it could be worse. So much worse.

 

Shaking, terrified and sore, I tried to come up with an escape plan, but Santos was downstairs and I knew without him telling me that he wasn’t going to let me leave. Pulling my legs up against my chest, I clutched them and rocked myself to the sounds of the TV playing downstairs. All the while, I tried to muster up the courage to try and get away.

 

It was an hour later, maybe two, when I finally got up the nerve to open the door and creep down the hallway. The TV was still playing downstairs, and I hoped that it would muffle the sounds of my footsteps. My face ached and my eyes were swollen from crying, but I was determined to try and get away.

 

It would probably be my only chance.

 

Slowly, I moved down the stairs, wincing when a step creaked or groaned beneath my weight. Each time, I was sure that Santos would hear me and roar with rage. That he would make good on his promise and force himself on me.

 

But I made it to the bottom of the stairs with no one coming for me. I creeped forward, finally spotting Santos. He was slouched on a chair in the living room with the TV on in front of him. But he wasn’t watching. His eyes were closed and empty beer bottles were littering the ground all around him. He was passed out drunk, I realized with a trickle of relief. To emphasize the truth of this, he let out a gross, belching snore.

 

Not waiting to see if he was going to wake up any time soon, I raced to the door. I paused there only long enough to open it carefully and quietly, then raced outside. I got to my car and stuck the keys into the ignition with shaking, sweaty hands. There were tears on my face again, I knew, from the fear of getting caught by an even angrier Santos. But I got the car started and I tore out of there, not willing to give Santos the chance to realize that I was gone.

 

I drove quickly, speeding down the highway. I didn’t know where I was going at first, but then I realized that there was only one place I could go, one person I could ask for help.

 

Nester.