Page 119 of Ruled Out

Forcing my exhausted body to move, I crawl toward him.

“I hate you. HATE YOU!” he screams, landing another blow to his dad’s nose, blood spraying everywhere. “Piece of fucking shit.”

Jessie isn’t a violent person, and these punches aren’t aggression. With every strike, he’s purging years of abuse, of silence. Every hit and wail he releases carries a different purpose than to simply inflict pain. His dad’s body might be traumatized, but Jessie is the one bleeding out.

“Jessie.” I try one final time, bringing a hand to his shoulder as he straddles his father.

It’s then I catch the first glimpse of something I hope never to see in his eyes again. Fear. True fear. Unadulterated fear that I’ve only read about in books and tried to describe in assignments I submitted.

“You’re going to kill him. You don’t want that on you,” I whisper.

“He watched my mother die and assaulted my girlfriend!” he spits.

I’m not even sure he recognizes that it’s me he’s talking to.

“You don’t want to do this, Jessie. He’s not worth it. You’re worth more than all of this.”

Sliding my hand down the arm that’s closest to me and currently wrapped around his dad’s throat, I trail my fingers over his as his other arm hangs in the air above Wayne’s bloodied face.

“It’s okay.” I soothe, hooking my little finger around his.

I barely use any force, pulling his hand away with ease.

His dad stirs but is barely conscious when Jessie climbs off his body and onto mine, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

“I need you, Mia.” He brings my legs around his waist and lifts me to straddle him. Rocking us back and forth, he buries his face into the hair over my shoulder, his tears soaking into my shirt. “I need you.”

As I stroke a palm down the back of his head, I don’t say a word, just rock with him.

When he releases a gut-wrenching wail that shakes the foundation of the house, I hear it echoing in every room, every wall. This roar of pain is on behalf of his brother, his mother, and every year of his own life where he’s seen and felt indescribable torture.

Looking down at the zip-up hoodie he wasn’t wearing when I last saw him, I notice the initialsJJstamped on his chest as I unzip it and pull one side open and then the other. “Wrap it around us, baby.”

He lifts his head from my shoulder, and the dark circles under his red eyes are still visible in the fading light outside as he takes me in.

“You’re safe under here,” I reassure him.

As he stretches the large hoodie around us, we don’t say anything for at least thirty seconds; the only noise is the traffic outside and the shallow breathing of his father lying next to us.

“We need to call the police and nine-one-one,” I finally say to him.

Nodding slowly, I know he understands why.

“We need to make statements,” I whisper as calmly as I can.

“The doctors said the internal bleeding my mom died of was advanced. They couldn’t be sure, but they suspected she’d been like that for a while before he used her phone and called the paramedics. He’d left her. I know he did. His body shudders with another sob as he delivers the earth-shattering reality.

“Tell me he didn’t hurt you,” he pleads. “Tell me you’re okay.”

I close my eyes and run my palm across the nape of his neck, and he collapses his face into my chest.

“I’m okay. You got to me in time.”

“It’s okay, Mia. I got you both.”

Two hands land on my shoulders from behind.

“Dad?”

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