Page 36 of Dirty Fighter

In all my life, one word has never cut so deep.

Jesus. “Rowan, hey, wake up… It’s just the storm.”

She doesn’t hear me.

Blinding light fills the room in time with a deafening, ground-shaking crash.

She screams.

And, because I physically can’t stop myself, I do the unthinkable.

13

Rowan

I’m lost in the woods again. Running between the towering trees, freezing and terrified.

She won’t make me stay out here.

She’ll come get me.

I told her it was an accident. That I tried to clean it up before anyone saw that I got sick. But the bucket was too heavy and I tripped. I didn’t mean to spill dirty water on his white carpet.

I said I was sorry, but then he said it was too much.

He wasn’t into kids. He was sorry.

So we went to another motel, and she was so mad. So mad that I couldn’t have just thrown up in the toilet. So mad that now she had to find another solution.

I tried to be quiet, but she kept looking at me.

And then she was smiling, but it wasn’t her nice smile. It was the smile that gives me the quicksand-in-my-belly feeling. She brought me to the playground by the woods where one of her man friends took us hiking last year.

She told me she needed to find us another situation. But that she’d be back as soon as she could and not to let anyone see me except for her.

I asked her not to leave me, but she said it was the only way.

We didn’t have a home because of me, so now she had to find us a new one.

But then the sun went down, and it started to rain. And I waited. But an old beat-up car rolled down to the parking lot, and I hid in the woods.

She has to come back; she wouldn’t leave me. I call for help, but when I run toward the playground, I must run the wrong way. Because I’m lost and the trees are blowing and it’s raining, and the sky splits, blinding and deafening all at once.

“Shh, Rowan… You’re okay… I’ve got you.”

I gasp, clinging to the strong arms holding me tight against a wall of solid warmth.

“W-what?” I whisper in confusion as my night terror fades and reality comes into sharp focus.

Jason, grounding me in the now after I was lost in the past.

“Hey, you with me?” His voice is a low rumble against my ear, the heat from his body melting the remnants of icy fear in the pit of my stomach.

Oh God. I swallow and nod as I begin to extract myself from his arms.

Another deafening boom, and I jolt, mortification crashing through me with more force than the storm.

Instead of letting me go, he draws me incrementally closer like he knows I need it. “Just give it a second.”