Page 118 of Savage

“I’ll still go to jail, Ma,” I say. “And it won’t be juvie.”

“Oh, Jonah,” she says, and for the first time, she seems to gather herself together. She stands and takes my blood-soaked hands in hers. I pull them away because he doesn’t deserve to touch her anymore. Even the sight of the stains on her hands makes me sick.

“They’re so steady,” she says, and then she looks up at my face and her tears spill over. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jonah.”

“It’s okay,” I say. My voice is a monotone. It doesn’t even sound like me.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I shake my head and draw away from her. “I gotta get rid of the body.”

“Where?” She glances down at the monster’s prone figure. I guess I’m the monster now. I’m the one with blood on my hands. I’m the boy who finally grew big enough to fight back.

“The quarry doesn’t get used anymore—hasn’t been touched for years. I’ll weight it and drop it. No one will ever find him,” I say as if I’ve only just thought of it. I haven’t. Since I was nine years old, I’ve known the abandoned quarry would be where I’d dispose of my father’s body. I’ve dreamed about killing him a thousand different ways, but I hadn’t prepared myself for the fight, or the sickening crunch of my knife sliding between his ribs. I hadn’t realised just how many jabs it would take with the bloody blade to take the fucker out. If I had, I might have used a bigger knife, though I hadn’t been thinking much beyondstab,maim,killwhen I’d seen him bailing my mother up in the kitchen, probably over something as insignificant as whether she made him a fucking sandwich the right way.

“He can never hurt you again, Ma,” I say, and I’m surprised to hear the tremor in my voice.

“Oh, my boy.” She hugs me, despite the blood painting my white shirt red. I hug her back, but my hands don’t touch her. I can’t touch her with his blood on my hands.

I wish I’d done it sooner. I wish I’d planned it better so she wouldn’t have to see. So the memory of her son murdering his father with a kitchen knife wouldn’t be burned into her brain for the remainder of her life. I wish I’d done a lot of things differently, but at least I wasn’t too small this time. I’d never be helpless again. My mother would never be helpless. I made sure of it.

When I hit sixteen, I got a job on the milk run. The hours sucked, but the exercise was good for me. I lost all my puppy fat, and I used the money to buy my first car and help out Ma. Then I started lifting weights. I couldn’t afford a gym membership, so I taped bricks to an old broom handle and added more and more each week. People started to look at me differently; the monster looked at me differently and hadn’t laid a hand on either one of us since. Until tonight.

There won’t be a funeral for my father; we won’t report him missing, and it’s likely no one will ever ask. He has no family, save for Ma and me, and he played his friends for money a long time ago. No one gave a fuck about him. Besides, husbands leave all the time. They leave their families for other women; they walk out in the middle of the night for a pack of cigarettes and are never heard from again.

My father would never do anything again. He’d never come home from the pub reeking of piss, he’d never raise another hand to my mother or to me, and Ma would never have to live in fear again because I’d gut any man who tried to harm a hair on her head. You protect the people you love; you don’t beat them down until they quake with fear. You take care of them, you cherish them, and you treat them right, and you bring down any motherfucker who tries to hurt them.

I made a promise to myself in that moment that I’d never let anyone make me feel small again, including love. If you don’t love, you don’t get hurt.

At least, that’s the way it was supposed to go.

CHAPTER TWENTY

IVY

Ilie down on the back deck in the sunshine and scratch behind Butch’s ears. He gives a lazy little whine before flopping his big head on his paws and stretching out with a doggy huff. It’s too cold for dresses, but I’m wearing the smallest one I own, and it’s tucked inside my panties, which I’m wearing for once because sometimes being a woman who’s been showered with expensive lingerie requires that you enjoy it.

I blink up at the cloudless blue sky and smile as the sun warms my face, and when I drift off to sleep, my dreams are plagued withhimand his needles, and those hands that punish.

“It’s okay, Daddy’s girl. I’m here,” he says, and drives the needle in my vein.

I jolt awake, blinking up at the blackened sky several times. It’s dark, and at first, I think I’ve slept too long, and Tank has finally come home, but then the familiar rush of heroin pumps through my veins like a lead weight, and I slowly turn my head and glance at my arm. My whole body shakes, my breath comes too fast, too sharp, and I clamp my mouth shut so I won’t make a sound. The rubber cord tied around my arm is removed, and another wave of wonderful, maddening smack sluices through me.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Ivy.”

I shake my head, unable to move much more than that. I want to run, but I’m frozen with fear. I knew I’d seen him. I knew I hadn’t been hallucinating.

“Yes, you have,” my father says, stroking the side of my face. “It’s okay, though, Daddy’s girl. I’m gonna take you home.”

If the junk in my veins was a lead weight, his words are a prison made from it. And I cannot go back there. It feels as though I’m moving through water as I kick at his knees, and by some miracle, he winds up sprawled on the ground beside me.

“Fuckin’ bitch!” he shouts.

I scramble to my feet and attempt to run, but I slip on the deck and fall hard on my knees, my hands delving into a thick pool of blood. Butch’s body lies headless before me, and a small shriek escapes my mouth. I stare at my hands and forearms painted red with his blood in the moonlight. It’s still warm, and the axe lies beside his prone body right where my father left it. “You’ve spent enough time running from me, Ivy.”

“What did you do?” I sob, unable to take my eyes off Butch’s severed head.Stupid fucking dog.Why didn’t he run?

I push myself up, an attempt to stand, but there’s so much blood that I slip several times. The drugs are making me hazy. All my body wants to do is lie down and sleep, despite my racing pulse and the terror pricking my skin with beads of sweat that cool too quickly in the cold night air.

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