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“What happened next?”
Co
I close my eyes, letting Co
He lies back, pulling me with him. My back is against his front, my body curved and fitted perfectly to his. He rocks into me, and I find myself pushing back, meeting his body. His hand finds my breast, rubbing it as he nuzzles my neck with his nose.
“I love you, Co
Gently, he pulls me to my back and climbs on top of me, slipping inside of me. He doesn’t speak, not with words anyway, but every touch tells me exactly what he wants me to hear.
He loves me too.
When I wake the next morning, Co
When he turns his head to look at me, his dark stare is riddled with worry. “What happened?”
I turn on my back and stare at the ceiling as well. Taking a deep breath, I do my best to tell him everything I can remember.
After I had left Mary-A
“What was McKenzie yelling at him?” he asks as he takes my hand and squeezes it.
“She was calling him a sicko.”
Co
He went ballistic and was swinging the poker around trying to hit her. I tried to grab him and pull him off, but he shoved me. He turned and swung at me, and I fell trying to dodge it. He raised the poker above me, and I was scrambling to get away, but he fell . . . right on top of me. McKenzie had hit him over the head with a wrench, and his head was gushing blood everywhere. I shoved him off of me and got to my feet; I was a wreck. He was lying there, bleeding out, gasping like a fish out of water.
McKenzie and I stood on either side of him, facing one another, the wrench still in her hand, hanging limply at her side. “I was eleven when he raped me,” she said, calmly. “Told me never to tell anyone or he’d kill you and my parents.”
My gaze shot to hers, my heart in my stomach. “Mary-A
I collapsed to the ground right beside him. This man had violated both of these young girls on my watch. I trusted him. I thought he was a good man. I even scolded McKenzie for being so rude to him.
“I swear, Demi,” she cried, a sob breaking loose from her chest. “I’m not lying.”
Tears trickle down my face as I speak, my voice raspy with emotion. “He hurt them, and it’s all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t,” Co
“I should have known, though.”
Demi,” he whispers. “This wasn’t your fault. Tell me what happened next.”
“Wipe that wrench off,” I instructed her, my calmness surprising even me.
“I’m going to go to jail, aren’t I?” she cried as she wiped at her nose.
“That’s not going to happen,” I told her. “Wipe that down good and go.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, panicked.
“Go, McKenzie,” I ordered.
She finished wiping down the wrench and put it back on the table. She looked down at him one last time, then to me. “Should I—”
“Go.”
When she left, I was still kneeling beside him, his mouth still moving as if he was trying to call for help. If I had just left him, he probably would have died from his head injury, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
My gaze meets Co
I remember feeling something snap inside of me as I suffocated Mr. Jenson; the realization that I was taking a life, killing a man. It changed me, rightfully so. Before I was me, Demi Stevens, regular everyday person. At that moment, I was a soon-to-be murderer. But right now, reliving it, sharing the play by play with Co
“And that’s when I came in,” Co
Mr. Jenson, even with his head injury in his subdued state, began to struggle as he fought for oxygen. I laid half of my body over him in an attempt to hold him down but holding his mouth and nose were difficult in my position. After a few minutes, he stopped struggling and stilled. Collapsing against him, my head thunked against his chest, exhausted by the task. When I managed to look up, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
He was dead.
I had killed him.
“Over there,” I heard McKenzie yell just before Co
“Go back to the house with Mary-A
“You fell hard,” Co
“I hit my head on something,” I state it more than ask it as I touch the sore spot on the back of my crown.
“Tool bench,” he states.
“The next thing I remember is waking up on the gurney.”
“We have to see Wendy and Jeff. Obviously the girls haven’t come forward with what that old fuck did to them, or we would have been questioned about it by now.”
McKenzie was frantic after she hit Mr. Jenson over the head. I have no doubt she’s lied about everything, terrified she’ll go to prison for murder. No matter what happens, I’ll take the heat for all of this—after all, I did kill him. But the most important thing is that the girls get help, counseling to help them cope and understand the feelings something so horrendous might make them feel. My heart aches as I think of McKenzie; the years of carrying the pain around must have been unbearable.