Page 24 of Take Me to Church
“I need to call you back.” Christian ends the call and drops his phone into his lap before reaching for me. His bloody hand hovers over the console a second before pulling back, fingers clenching into a fist. “You gotta keep breathing, Sweetheart.” He turns at the next light, taking us onto the highway and away from downtown. “Everything’s going to be okay, I promise, but you have to stay calm.”
I would argue I’m being remarkably calm, but it’s probably shock keeping me quiet, so arguing is also not going to happen. “He’s dead.”
I’m pointing out the obvious right now. Both of us know there’s a dead guy in the backseat, so it’s not really beneficial for anyone, but it still seems like it needs to be said. If for no other reason than for me to process the information.
Christian flexes his hand again, clenching it tight as he presses it against the console. “Rodney wasn’t going to leave you alone until he got what he wanted, Lydia.”
Even now, frozen in shock, I recognize how extreme he’s making the situation sound. “Are you saying the only option was to kill him?”
“I’m saying not everyone was leaving that parking lot alive and I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure you were the one who walked away.” Christian glances my way, expression uneasy. “You don’t understand how men like him can be.”
Don’t I? My sister is currently being held captive by a man because he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants from her. And what he wants from her is a sweet, quiet, unargumentative wife to do his laundry and his cooking and his cleaning while bearing children for him to fuck up. She has unwanted sex forced on her daily. If she doesn’t provide for her husband’s urges, she’s deemed responsible for any action he takes to sate his need. If those urges make him find his way into pornography or affairs, those sins don’t belong to him.
They belong to her.
What Rodney wanted to do to me seems different, but it’s really not. Even if he was probably only going to rape me once. And somehow I feel like Rodney is more than happy to claim his own sins. I glance into the back seat again, swallowing hard. Not so much anymore, it seems.
I try to face forward, to keep my eyes off the man who planned to do awful things to me, but I’m suddenly struggling in an unexpected way. I know I should be outraged Christian just murdered Rodney right in front of me. That he then shoved me into a car with a body and is now driving me and dead Rodney to God knows where.
But as I keep peeking back behind us there’s only one thing I can think of. “If my sister tells you she wants away from her husband and he won’t let her leave, would you kill him too?”
It was one of the reasons why I didn’t mind if the person I found to help me rescue Myra was a little ruthless. Sure, Rodney looked terrifying and obviously had the bad behavior to back it up, but if he hadn’t threatened to rape me...
I would’ve been a little hopeful he was capable of doing whatever it took to get my sister away from Matthias.
Maybe that makes me a bad person. Maybe it makes me a little ruthless too.
Or maybe it proves I’m just as selfish. Just as willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want.
At least what I want is to save someone else. It’s the same difference I see in Christian. He only did what he did to save me. He would have walked away from Rodney. Tried his best to make that happen. Even offered to pay off my debt to settle the score.
So the only reason Rodney got hurt was because he wouldn’t let it go. Wouldn’t back down even when he knew what was on the line.
I shift a little in my seat, much more uncomfortable with this particular similarity we share.
Christian’s jaw flexes as he stares out the windshield. “I don’t want you to think this is who I am anymore, Lydia.”
He’s dodging my question, but I decide to let it go since it shows a little too much of who I might actually be. “Anymore? What does that mean?”
Christian deftly moves the car with the flow of traffic, sliding into open gaps between lanes as we cruise down the highway. “It means none of this should have happened.”
Once again my eyes slide to the dead man in the backseat. “So you regret killing him?”
The muscles of Christian’s jaw twitch and the tension across his shoulders grows tighter. “I didn’t say that.”
A little part of me, probably the sinful part my father claimed to always know was there, gets a little fluttery. “So youdon’tregret killing him.”
Christian’s nostrils flare as he glances my way, eyes returning to the road for a second before he finally responds. “He wanted to hurt you.” His focus darts to me before once again jumping away. “And he wasn’t getting his fucking hands on you.”
It’s yet another thing I should find horrifying—a man being killed because of me—but instead makes me feel oddly safe and a little light in my belly.
But in all truth, it’s no more my fault Rodney is dead than it was my friend Rebecca’s fault when her husband was arrested for trying to meet up with an underage girl. Both made their own decisions and faced the consequences of their actions.
Of course, the men of the church placed the blame squarely on Rebecca’s shoulders, claiming her lack of willingness to meet her husband’s physical needs was to blame. But that’s not where the blame really lies.
And the fault here doesn’t lie with me.
I look into the back seat again, meeting Rodney’s dead eyes. “So what do we do now?”
