Tough Enough

In the fuzzy recesses of my mind, I realize that if I don’t stand up now, if I don’t start to live now, I never will. Just like Rogan said, I’ll die a little more each day.

Fight to survive. Fight to live.

I’ve fought to survive. For years now, I’ve survived. But I need more. It’s time to fight to live.

It’s time to live.

My movements have a slow, surreal quality to them at first, almost dreamlike. I reach for the makeshift stake. I curl my trembling fingers around it. I use my free hand for balance. I come carefully to my feet. And I face Calvin.

Although fear is still with me, it’s muted by this strange calm and, somehow, I’m bolstered by the feel of the cool wood of the chair leg against my palm. I flex my fingers around it, rubbing the sharp tip against my thigh as I study Calvin.

“If you leave me again, it’ll only be worse, Kat. I didn’t think I could hate you as much as I loved you, but I was wrong. You made me see that. God, you were such a bitch! What you did to me . . .”

I tilt my head as I watch him. His face is bloodred as he rants, a single vein standing out like a thick rope right in the center of his forehead. I wonder briefly that it doesn’t burst and send him face-first onto my floor to drown in his own blood. I actually smile at the vision.

Calvin stops talking. I notice only because his lips cease to move. All I hear is the beat of my own heart, pounding in my ears.

I see spit on his chin. I focus on it for a few seconds, oddly fascinated by the foamy little drop. I notice only in the most absent of ways that it begins to get closer. It’s that minute detail that shakes me from my thrall.

Taking a step back, I hold out one hand and raise the other, wielding the stakelike piece of wood like a weapon. A weapon that I will use if I have to.

“I want you to leave, Calvin. Right now. And never come near me again. You and your father can go to hell. Stay away from me. Stay away from Rogan. Let this drop or I swear on all that is holy, you’ll regret the day you ever met me. Get out, Calvin. I won’t ask you again.”

At first he looks confused. Then stu

I raise my chin defiantly. My cards are on the table. I’m taking my stand. And it feels good. I feel good.

But then he starts to laugh.

“Oh, Kat! You can’t be serious.”

Surely the girl who took his abuse for months wouldn’t fight back. Surely the girl who he set on fire wouldn’t dare to stand up to him. Surely the girl who he murdered in all the ways that count couldn’t have found a reason to live.

Surely not.

The hell you say!

Righteous fury explodes from my chest like a bomb, raining adrenaline into my blood. It’s like rocket fuel. It propels me into motion. Offensive motion.

I lunge forward, slicing in a downward angle at Calvin’s chest. I feel the tip of the pointed stick tear through something. Not flesh, but something.

When I step back, I see Calvin staring down at his torn shirt, at the bloody scratch that mars the smooth skin of his chest. The eyes he raises to mine are homicidal.

A needle of fear pricks my bubble of bravado, piercing it. For a moment, what was and what is collide, leaving me confused and frantic. I inhale sharply, my body mobilizing its fight-or-flight response as Calvin comes at me with an ear-splitting roar.

His aggression drowns out the loud clap of the front door flying open and ripping the hinges out of the frame. It doesn’t, however, drown out the image of Rogan racing toward Calvin like an avenging angel, come to save me.

At the last second, Rogan’s feet leave the floor. He’s airborne for only a few seconds before he comes down on Calvin like a two-hundred-twenty-pound hammer, driving his elbow into the top of his head. Calvin weaves and wobbles, dazed, before he stumbles back into me. I move to my right, barely escaping his falling weight, as Rogan comes after him again.

Kneeling, one knee on Calvin’s chest, the other on the floor, Rogan smashes his fist into my monstrous ex’s face in four punches of blurring speed. When he pauses, Calvin is oozing blood from his nose, mouth and the corner of one eye, and mumbling something about his daddy.

“I’m not thinking about your daddy. And neither should you. You should be listening to what I’m telling you right now, because I won’t say it again. If you ever, ever come near her again, I’ll kill you. I. Will. End you. I’ll break your neck, throw your body into a river and disappear before anyone can find me. And if you think I’m kidding, just ask your shithole of a father about me.”

Calvin rests on my floor, his head rocking back and forth as he drools blood onto his cheeks. Rogan stands to his feet, spitting on Calvin before turning to me. His expression is fiercer than anything I’ve ever seen. It softens the instant his eyes meet mine, though.

He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t come near me. I’m not sure I even want him to. I just want to stand here, in his presence, and take him in. Bask in his being, in the knowledge that he came for me. That he saved me. Again.

“You’re safe now,” he declares quietly.

I don’t know what to say. My tongue seems to be frozen to the roof of my mouth.

Behind him, I see Calvin stumbling to his feet. I gasp and Rogan jerks around, grabbing a handful of hair from the top of Calvin’s head and pulling down until my ex’s face meets the upswing of Rogan’s knee. With a nauseating crunch, Calvin drops lifelessly onto the floor again.

Barely breathing hard, Rogan straightens, turning his head just enough that I can see his profile. “I’ll be back after I take care of the trash,” he says quietly.

He bends, tossing Calvin over his shoulder and walking slowly toward the door. He pauses in the opening, like he might turn to face me, maybe to say something, but then he changes his mind. I just stand here, numb and stu

“Rogan, wait!”

He stops and turns toward me, his eyes eating me up as I close the distance between us. He looks relieved.

“The Senator . . . he was blackmailing me. He said if I didn’t publicly date Calvin so that you would fight, he’d tell your secret. Kurt’s secret.”

He says nothing at first. Just watches me. “You know.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Katie, I’m so sorry. I would never choose those snakes over you. If he hadn’t held that over my head . . . over my brother’s head . . . I swear to God, I’d have walked away and never looked back. For you. For you, I’d walk away from the world if it’s what you wanted me to do.”

My pounding heart soars.

As though Calvin is nothing more than the trash Rogan referred to, he drops him unceremoniously onto the floor and steps closer to me. His emerald eyes stare unflinchingly down into my face. “I’d rather die than watch you date Calvin Sims. I’m tough as hell and I’ve survived a lot in my life, but I wouldn’t be tough enough to survive that. I couldn’t stand it. I just . . . I couldn’t.”

His voice is raw with emotion and I feel belated tears well in my eyes.

“Then, Rogan, please tell me there’s another way. Tell me that he won’t win. I can’t bear to see him hurt you. They’ve taken so much already. From me, from you. I can’t give them anything else.”

His lips spread into a thin, sad smile. “They won’t take anything else from you. You have my word.”

The statement sounds final. Definite.

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Something that could make you hate me. Something that you can’t be a part of. But something that has to be finished. The Senator has done things. To you. To me. To the brothers I served with in the Army. We did a lot of covert ops. Things I can’t talk about. Things the Senator shouldn’t have ordered. Now he’s trying to cover his tracks. He’s having people targeted. Assassinated. My people.”