And then it all made sense.
Why Nikki didn’t tell me who she was, who I really was. Why we went to King’s party that night. Why she insisted that the solution to all of our problems would be the protection of a biker.
The entire time we’d spent together she hadn’t been lying to me.
She was trying to protect me.
The least I could do was fight to protect myself.
I lifted my knee and with all my might I landed a blow right between Tanner’s legs. When he reached down to cup his balls I held his head between my hands, and then there was a deafening crack as my head connected with his. Blood, warm and thick, dripped into the corner of my eye. I stood on shaky legs. “You fucking bitch!” Tanner wailed. Holding onto Sammy’s crib in order to keep myself upright, I attempted to put one foot in front of the other and I just about made it to the door, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Tanner grabbed my ankle and, on the next step, I landed chin first on the carpet. My teeth cutting into my tongue, filling my mouth with the taste of copper.
“I’d rather have you love me, but I’ll settle for you being afraid of me.” Tanner flipped me over onto my back. My head hit the baseboard and the side of my cheek smacked into the side of Sammy’s dresser. I rolled from side to side trying to clear the ringing from my head.
“You are nothing but a fucking cock tease, Ray. The only time I succeeded in fucking you was when I was a dying fifteen-year-old. I thought that us having a kid would tie us together, bring us closer. I thought at least then you would let me into your fucking * on a regular basis. That’s why I made sure I put holes in the condom we used that day. Shocked the hell out of me when it actually worked too. And I guess that makes you the lucky one. You were the only one special enough to carry my baby…because I’d made Nikki get ours cut out of her.” Tanner had the audacity to wink. “But even then, with my kid in your belly, you wouldn’t wear my ring. Wouldn’t wear it after either. Said you had plans. Plans you…” Tanner used his fingers to make quotation marks in the air. “Didn’t know if they would include me as more than your best friend and the father of your kid,” he said, using a high-pitched voice, mockingly swaying his head back and forth, from side to side. “Well, golly-gee Ray, sign me up, that sounds fucking swell.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. “Get off of me! You’re a fucking monster!”
“Now you get it! It’s about fucking time, too! Do you even know how exhausting it is pretending to be something I’m not? The fucking all-American kid next door? Your father even liked me, and that asshole doesn’t like anyone! He wasn’t even fucking pissed when I knocked you up! Do you know how hard that was to fucking pull off?”
“Do your parents know what a fucking freak you are?” I asked, struggling underneath him. I looked around on the ground but there wasn’t anything I could use as a weapon.
“You know better than that. They’re more oblivious to me than the senator is to you.”
Tanner pulled the hem of my tank top up over my breasts and I kicked my feet out to push him off of me but he pushed my knees together and straddled me, paralyzing the use of my legs. “But that’s why I had Nikki. She let me fill every fucking hole of hers since we were twelve. And when she started experimenting with drugs it was like winning the lottery, because in exchange for a taste, the bitch would let me do anything. Cut her, burn her, choke her, tie her up until her wrists fucking bled.”
Nikki.
I remembered. All the times she’d shown up to my house with marks all over her body. She’d always made excuses. She cut herself on a nail on the houseboat. She walked into a door. She got bucked off of her cousin’s horse. Nikki had always been clumsy. She didn’t ever have a boyfriend to be suspicious of. And her parents were the modern day Cleavers.
There was nothing to make me question that her excuses were lies, but every single sign that something was very wrong was there.
I’d failed her.