I wretched.
It was loud.
He put the light right on me and blinded me with its strobe of light.
“Take your clothes off, bitch. There’s only one thing you’re good for.”
I thought I might pass out from the fear ripping through me, adrenaline shot through my veins like a potent drug.
I cowered in the corner and he came closer and closer. Vulture pocketed my phone and I could hear him start to unzip his pants. Tears blurred my vision and I suddenly lost control of my bladder, something that hadn’t happened to me in years. I reached up and grabbed the locket Dex had given me and in my mind’s eye, I saw him the day he gave it to me. I remembered him looking at me so intently and later recreating me on paper from that single gaze. I remembered him lying on the bed just hours ago and signing the word “faith” to me.
I was pretty sure Vulture had his dick out and I closed my eyes and prayed.
“Skylar! Skylar? Where are you? Scream if you can hear me!” a voice I didn’t know was calling my name.
Through the closed lids of my eyes, I saw a flash and heard the surge and then the sweet hum of the power being restored. When I opened my eyes, a short burly man I didn’t know body slammed Vulture into the wall. He held him there smashing his face into the hard tile as he put him in cuffs. Then he crouched and put a giant zip tie around his ankles. I watched in silence and let the tears fall down my face.
“Skylar, you okay? I’m Bear. He must have cut the power lines and I went outside to investigate. Patriot is on his way.”
I nodded through my tears and Bear helped me to standing.
“Did he hurt you? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No, I’m okay.”
We then heard a rumble and loud crash, then pounding footsteps seconds before Dex came into view. He ran to me and crushed me in his arms, stroking my hair and kissing my forehead.
“Did he touch you?” he asked me.
I shook my head, no, but my whole body still trembled with fear.
“I got you,” Dex signed to me with two short lateral taps on his chest and his hand extended back, the pointer finger cocked in his direction. “I got you.”
In one swift maneuver, Dex extracted a switchblade from his waist. He stepped to Vulture and struck him twice in quick succession, from ear to lip, and then across his throat with the blade. Red immediately began to seep from the precise slashes he’d delivered. Vulture looked like a sick joker as the blood dripped onto his jacket.
“Leave him here just like this for me, Bear. I’ll finish later,” Dex said.
He took his jacket off and wrapped it around me and guided us outside to his bike.
A thousand stars competed brightly in the sky like some sort of spectacular light show. The sky looked so vibrant in contrast to the dulled emotions I was feeling. I didn’t want to shut down, but my body and mind had other plans. Life was moving in slow motion as my trauma mind took hold and refused to process the emotions. Dex helped me on the back of his bike and set his helmet on my head.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering; for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23,” Dex said.
I wrapped my arms around him and molded myself to his back, I laid my head between his shoulders and he revved the bike. Wherever Dex was, that was my safe place, he was where I needed to be and where I wanted to stay—forever.
He took me home, bathed me and fed me soup, called Rough every fifteen minutes to get an update on my little brother and sister who were born seven minutes apart right after midnight. He poured me chamomile tea and covered me with a blanket on the couch. Claire was recovering well and Malcolm said the babies were perfect. He sent us photos and Dex and I tried to guess which one was Alex and which was Ava.
That night I fell asleep with Dex beside me, fully clothed with his jacket still on. He spoke to me in sign language and I did my best to follow along.
He told me about his childhood, his abusive father who’d knocked him around so many times that the blows to his head had caused his deafness by the time he was nine years old. He told me about how his mother finally left him, but then stumbled herself, picking up men who were even worse than his abusive father and eventually marrying one of them. He told me about moving ten times between middle school and high school and how his new step father had a daughter of his own—Joanna. She only lived with them for a while, but she liked to draw, and was the first person to ever give Dex a sketchpad and art pencils. Then one day, just like she’d arrived, his sister was gone. He didn’t find out until years later that his step father had sold her to a trafficker, but it was too late as the news came on the same day he was asked to go to the coroner’s office and identify her body. They gave him a little sealed plastic bag with her possessions. It wasn’t much, a lighter, a cracked cell phone, an empty wallet without any ID. A golden locket engraved with two songbirds, which, when he popped it open, was full of mustard seeds. At the time, he didn’t even know what they were.