“Then let's play.” In a split second, he slammed Faith into the wall. Wrenching her around, he shoved her skirt up around her waist and ripped off her panties. “I think she gets her mouthiness from you, and I think she needs to learn what happens to pretty little girls who can’t keep quiet.”
“Derrick!" Her voice was alarmed, but she made no effort to get away. “Don’t! Not right now.”
Not right now. What the fuck? Grace pushed to her hands and started to get up but Derrick was quick to notice.
“Do not fucking move or you’ll be telling your Grandma to come down to the hospital! You both need to be taught a lesson,” he hissed. His hand stayed pressed between Faith’s shoulder blades.
“No!"
She wasn’t sure which one of them screamed out but it didn’t matter. Grace was on her feet now.
“I told you not to fucking move!” He threw Faith to the ground but before she could reach her, he had Grace by the throat. “You want to pay for your own sins?”
Tears smarted her eyes. She couldn’t nod or say yes with his fingers cutting off her oxygen but she stopped struggling and that was enough. He loosened his grip on her but didn’t let go.
Faith didn’t move from the spot on the floor. She laid there in a heap of bones and that’s when Grace realized she was already high. The tears fell down her cheeks as her sister’s vacant gaze locked on hers. Grace felt the twist and snap of elastic around her hip bone but it was as distant as Faith’s eyes. Derrick hocked a wad of spit into his hand and smeared it down below.
She looked up and opened the flood inside her.
“Please no,” Grace whimpered, and it wasn’t her speaking but it was her voice. It was her tears and her cheeks. “Not like this.”
“Keep quiet,” he hissed, “or I’ll fuck her, too.”
“No.” Faith had no idea what was going on. Maybe she’d been sleeping with him, but Grace couldn’t just let him rape her. Instead she shook her head. “Fuck me, Derrick.”
Then he thrust violently. Grace floated up, away from herself, and watched as her own body arched back, her own hands clawing at the wall. She gasped for air as he smashed her cheek against the dry wall and pinned her there. Pain twisted across her face, recalling her to the moment. She was the one he was fucking. It was her body splitting at the core as he tore her apart. She looked to the ground and Faith’s eyes held her attention. They were so like her eyes, but they were watching as Grace jerked and trembled. Faith gazed past her, her eyes as vacant as Grace felt. This was what her sister meant by being his play thing. In his hands she was nothing more than a doll, Grace realized as she collapsed like a discarded rag when he’d finished.
After he left, Grace crawled to Faith and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. They stayed like that—not speaking, not moving—until he reappeared and tossed a small baggie at their feet.
“Don’t bring her back here,” he ordered as he disappeared into the kitchen.
Faith hadn’t moved until that bag fell at her feet. That night she gave Grace a line of coke to help her forget something Faith couldn’t remember—and Grace could never forgive.
Chapter 7
Monday night at the bistro is more successful than Amie’s date. We’re still plating our final orders when she appears in a dress meant for a night out. She’s already slipped out of her heels.
“Calling it early?” I ask, passing off a dish to one of the servers.
“This”—she gesticulates wildly to her own body—“is wasted on him. Wasted.”
“I think you look hot,” I tell her, then I call into the kitchen, “Doesn’t chef look smoking?”
A choir of catcalls responds but she scrunches up her nose. “Want me to take over?”
“Not in that.” I shoo her away with a towel. “Go home, change, relieve the babysitter, and eat some cheesecake.”
I don’t feel bad sending her back to our place because Max has been passed out for at least an hour.
“You’ve had a long day.”
“Then save me some cheesecake,” I tease her.
She holds up a finger. “I am not a saint, but for you, I’ll try.”
An hour later I’ve packed up a few more pieces of leftover cheesecake. I can’t count on her not to have eaten it all by the time I reach home. One of the perks of the restaurant business is a steady dessert stream. Once I’m home I’m slipping into pajamas and vegging on the couch. I’m fantasizing about this night in when I spot him on the sidewalk: Jude walking straight toward The Crow’s Nest, one of Port Townsend’s seamier bars. I guess I’m right about him after all. I should continue on my way, but I can’t.
Even as I jerk the wheel and skid into an empty parking space, I don’t understand how I feel. Dull anger aches in my chest. It’s foreign, but not unfamiliar.
Betrayal.
Have I really forgotten how it feels to be betrayed? Or had I pushed the emotion so deeply inside me that it couldn’t reach me?