Page 77 of Bliss: Part 1
I didn’t stop until I was upstairs.
I went to Odin’s bedroom first, but when I saw that he wasn’t inside, I turned to head to mine. Sure enough, Odin was sitting on my bed. The second he saw me, his face changed. He stood up quickly.
“Owen,” he said, rushing toward me. “What the hell did he do to you?”
His hands went up to touch my face, his fingers gentle and trembling.
“I’m okay,” I muttered, stepping back a little, but not enough to push him away completely. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“You’re bleeding,” he said, voice cracking.
I could see the fear in his face.
“I’ll be fine,” I repeated. “What happened before I came home?”
Odin blinked. “I just…I came home, and he was already drunk. I tried to heat up something from the fridge, and he started talking shit. I didn’t even say anything at first. Then I told him to stop, and he went off.”
I nodded slowly, checking him over more carefully now. His nose wasn’t crooked, so it probably wasn’t broken.
“Does it hurt?”
He touched his face lightly, then shook his head. “Not much anymore. But you…” He looked at my temple again. “You need stitches.”
I grabbed a clean shirt from the drawer and pressed it to the side of my head, already feeling the blood soak into the fabric. “Yeah. I know. We’ll go. But first, I want you to pack a bag.”
He blinked at me. “Why?”
“Because we’re not staying here tonight.”
His lips parted like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. He nodded.
“We’ll get a motel,” I said, already pulling out my duffel bag and throwing clothes into it. “I’ve got enough saved up to get us through a few days. Maybe a week.”
“Is that gonna be enough?”
“I’ll make it be.”
Once I was done packing my bag, I followed Odin into his room and made him do the same.
I slung both of our bags over my shoulder and nudged Odin to follow me downstairs. Dad was still at it, yelling at no one, stumbling around, knocking things over like he didn’t even realize we were moving around him. He was too far gone to notice us.
While he tore through the cabinet looking for another bottle to drain, I grabbed the car keys off the counter. I wasn’t about to let him get behind the wheel in this state and end up hurting someone. I spotted his wallet on the table and pocketed that too. If we were going to make it through the next few days, we’d need whatever was in there. He’d already taken enough from us. I didn’t feel bad taking something back.
“He’ll kill you,” Odin whispered beside me.
“No, he’ll kill himself. I’m just taking what he won’t be using anymore.”
***
The motel room wasn’t much. It smelled faintly of bleach and the air conditioner was doing its job. But none of that mattered. It was clean, warm, and quiet. And most importantly, we were in a safe place. No yelling, no fists, no walking on eggshells.
I’d gotten us some fast food on the way back from the hospital. Just burgers, fries, and a few bottles of water. Odin hadn’t eaten much. I knew he wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t really either. But I made him eat half a sandwich before he pushed the rest away. He was tired. You could see it in every part of him. The way his shoulders curled inward. The way he kept rubbing at his eyes even though he wasn’t crying anymore. He’d used himself up just trying to keep it together.
The trip to the hospital hadn’t taken long. They’d cleaned the wound on my head, stitched it up without too much fuss. It didn’t hurt much during, but now that the adrenaline was gone and my body had cooled down, the skin pulled tight around the stitches and throbbed a little. The cream they gave me helped some. They’d also handed me a bottle of pills and a small paper bag with instructions, but I hadn’t really looked at them yet.
What mattered most was that the staff took me seriously. When I looked one of them dead in the eye and asked them to send a police officer to our house, they didn’t waste time. I told them to pass along where we’d be staying, but that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Not with them. The damage was done, and now it was the cops’ job to handle it. I’d said enough.
Now, sitting in the motel room, it was the first time in years that I felt like I could exhale. My mind was still racing, but my body had let go. The fight was over. At least for tonight.
