Everything is Everything Book 2 (10 page)

By the time she had herself righted, Donald had the door shut and locked behind them.

Phonso knew too many people to get jumped—at least for long. It was after midnight, his friends had danced, eaten and smoked their share of dope, now they were looking for a fight.

Several men jumped into the foray, easily overpowering the crackheads. Phonso swiped blood from beneath his nose with his thumb and then angrily kicked the guy that had jumped him who was now rolling on the ground holding his ribs.

With a frown Phonso stormed back into the apartment wondering what was up with that. It was one thing to get jumped while out on the block because people knew that he was probably holding, but never at a party that was hosted by his own crew.

He barely felt his split lip, bleeding nose or aching kidneys as he pushed his way through the crowd of people. Phonso looked around for Vanessa but didn’t see her. The party was going full force with many not realizing that there had been a fight out front. Dancing bodies crowded the room and Phonso pushed through the gyrating bodies searching for one thin girl wearing pink and white. He hurried into the kitchen, his head swiveling back and forth.

“You seen Vanessa, the girl with long hair, white pants?” He yelled.

Of the people that paid him any attention none knew who he was talking about.

Phonso cursed. Scotty had left his woman under his protection and now she had disappeared. But it wasn’t Scotty he was worried about—Vanessa was fucked up and that was a dangerous way to be at a party like this.

Phonso darted up the stairs yelling Vanessa’s name. He knocked on the bathroom door and a guy yelled that he was handling his business. With a curse Phonso rushed into the crack room.

Scotty and G were sitting on the futon with their heads together, deep in conversation. Window fans were blowing at top speed but the room still smelled of burning tires and pickled cabbage.

Scotty looked up and then jumped to his feet with a deep frown etched across his face. He saw the blood on his brother’s face and that his cheek was swollen.

“Where is Vanessa?!” He demanded.

Phonso was shaking his head. “I got jumped and while it was happening she disappeared!”

G cursed. He wasn’t as worried about her as he was surprised that Phonso had gotten jumped at their own party.

Scotty pushed past the bodies in the room and crowding the corridor. “VANESSA!” He yelled her name. He saw someone that he recognized. “You seen my girl?!”

The guy shrugged. “The girl with the white pants?”

“Where is she?!”

The man pointed to the third bedroom. “She went in there with some dude.”

Scotty, Phonso and G looked at where the man had gestured and then the faint, muffled sounds of screams could be heard.

Scotty rushed the door, trying the knob and finding it frozen in place. G quickly fumbled for the key in his pocket. But before he could retrieve it, Scotty had backed up a few steps and then rushed forward using his shoulder to crash through the cheap wooden door.

Donald Miller’s pants were half down and he was struggling with Vanessa’s tight jeans. The two were on the floor and despite being half drugged out, Vanessa had managed to knee Donald in the balls. Her shirt was ripped open and so was her bra. There was a bruise forming under her eye and it was clear that she’d been punched in the face more than once.

Donald had managed to rip through her shirt and had gotten a taste of her sweet titties but her pants were a problem. They were skintight and in order to get them down he would need to unbutton and unzip them—something he couldn’t do because the bitch had started screaming and kneed him.

For that stunt he’d smacked her and then punched her in the stomach. He might have punched her in the face a few times—this he couldn’t remember. His cock was so hard—growing harder the more she struggled. He liked the idea of forcing her but he wanted to fuck her fast and hard and then split. It had only been about five minutes and he needed to stop playing with the bitch.

He’d finally managed to rip her pants down over her hips—enough so that he could see that the hair on her pussy was as sleek and dark as the hair on top of her head. Her cunt must be like white pussy.

His mouth watered. He would take a taste. He would never admit to his friends that he liked the taste of pussy. And he’d kill any bitch that spread it around that he ate it. But Vanessa’s pussy was perfect and although he needed to fuck her fast and hard, he would indulge in a taste of her delicate pussy-

That’s when the door crashed open, hitting the adjacent wall and splintering the doorjamb.

Donald looked over his shoulder in anger and surprise at the crashing sound of the door.

Donald was too angry with need to understand that he’d ruined his future with not only G but any of G and Scotty’s substantial ally’s, that he had destroyed any possibility that he had of ever walking away from this.

Donald tried to come up to his feet but with a growl Scotty grabbed him by the back of his neck and jerked him off Vanessa.

She screamed, now that his hand was no longer over her mouth. She still hadn’t seen Scotty and the others and quickly she pulled her torn shirt and bra closed over her breast and tried to scramble away.

Scotty’s eyes appeared nearly black when he allowed his fist to crash into Donald’s face.

Donald Miller had fought all of his life. He had fought his father’s drunken punches, he had then turned around and spread that same violence on almost everyone he had ever met. Donald had learned to take a punch and then how to punch harder.

But he had never been hit so hard as when Scotty’s fist smashed into his face.

Scotty’s fist was like an iron mallet that struck and then fractured several bones in the young man’s face. Scotty felt his own knuckles fracture but felt no pain.

He released Donald, but only long enough to use his other fist to uppercut the dazed young man, catching him in the chin and sending his head springing back.

Never would Donald had imagined in his wildest dreams that Scotty would layer blow after blow on him, not even giving him a chance to raise a hand in defense.

Scotty’s next blow hit the man in the ear like a sledgehammer as Donald staggered from the previous punch. By then Donald was on the floor and Scotty roughly gripped him, turning him onto his back.

Scotty straddled him and rained blow after blow on the man whose face now resembled something that had come out of a sausage grinder.

G and Phonso fell on Scotty, pulling him off the unconscious man. “Stop it Scotty!” Phonso yelled. It took both men to pull his raging body from the foul man that had—

Suddenly Scotty craned his head to locate Vanessa. He shook of the men holding him and now that they saw that he was no longer pounding on Donald they let him go.

Vanessa was curled up in a ball, cowering against a rickety side table. Her arms were holding her legs tightly against her body.

“Vanessa!” He scrambled to her. She looked at him but still trembled. “Baby…?” he gently touched the bruise on her face and she moaned in pain.

A terrible anger fell across his face and he turned to beat Donald some more but the half dead man was surrounded by several people who were exclaiming that if he didn’t get to a hospital he was going to die.

G put a hand on Scotty’s chest to stop him from approaching Donald. And Scotty spit on his unconscious form.

“Let that fucker die,” he growled.

He turned back to Vanessa and without a word he scooped her up in his arms and carried her out the room.

Vanessa’s head was pounding and she felt as if she was getting her period. Her stomach cramped and her body felt sore. Her mouth was dry and she wanted to get a drink of water but she couldn’t get up, couldn’t open her eyes long enough to do it.

Suddenly she sat up and puked all over herself. She felt someone’s arms around her, helping her puke without falling, allowing her to get it all out. At first she wanted to push the hands away in fear but she wasn’t sure what she should be afraid of. But soon she recognized Scotty’s voice telling her that she was okay and she wasn’t afraid anymore. Only she knew that she wasn’t in the bathroom. She was puking all over the bed.

Vanessa tried to tell Scotty to let her get up but she was too tired and she fell into a restless sleep before even knowing it was happening.

Some time later, Vanessa woke up. She felt terrible. But she was in Scotty’s bed safe and sound. The sheets had been freshly changed and her hair was damp and smelled freshly shampooed. He’d bathed her. She looked around but Scotty wasn’t there.

Vanessa sat up and groaned softly in pain. She remembered going to the party. She remembered dancing. She remembered the fighting … and then she remembered everything.

“Scotty!” She screamed.

Vanessa heard running footsteps and suddenly Scotty was in the room. His hair was unruly and hanging in his face in stringy strands and his face was strained with something that looked like fear.

Scotty hesitated at the door before rushing forward. Vanessa held her hands out to him and for a moment she was ten years old and there was no one else in the world that could save her but Scotty. 

Only once did Scotty ask Vanessa to tell him everything that had happened from beginning to end.

It was the next evening and he told her that tomorrow they would need to go to the police station to make a statement, but before they did he needed to know the details.

The idea of making a statement—both at a police station as well as to Scotty unnerved her. What had been done to her took her to a place that she hadn’t glimpsed since the death of her mother.

One day her mother had gone to work and had never returned. Vanessa had learned a short time before that her mother had been prostituting to help move them out of the ghetto and to help pay for her college fund. She had been so angry with her mother, had even stopped talking to her for a time. She had barely had time to make it up to her before she was gone; raped and murdered while working on the streets.

Vanessa had always been haunted by the idea of her mother’s fear. Now that she had nearly experienced the same thing, the mystery surrounding her mother’s death had been un-shrouded—but now it was oh so much worse.

Vanessa had never thought that something like that could happen to her. She thought that she would fight harder, scream louder but when it came to being over-powered it happened so completely and very quickly. If Scotty hadn’t gotten there when he had, than Vanessa had no doubt that she would have ended up like her mother.

Bitterly she thought about her mother’s ‘Scotty’. Juan Carlos couldn’t protect her because he was in jail. So her mother had been brutalized and then died alone.

There was fear that would probably never completely leave Vanessa, but there was also a deep sense of shame that she had actually followed the man to her own brutalization. After all, she’d known that he was dangerous. When she first set eyes on him that evening, she had known that he wasn’t right—that something about him was wrong. She’d always known that.

Even though they knew that Donald had slipped her some drug—most likely when he had made such a show of cleaning off her beer can, Vanessa still blamed herself for being so easily tricked into following Donald. And now Scotty wanted her to detail it for him, and then what? He would never have faith in her again. He would always think that she needed to be protected … or worse; he would think her as stupid as she felt.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t just going to disappear. Donald was still unconscious in the hospital and she and Scotty were expected to leave a statement at the police station or risk having the cops return to take him in.

With a deep breath she began telling him what had happened the night before. When she explained that Donald had brought her and Phonso beers and must have slipped something in hers, Scotty’s eyelids drooped. She couldn’t read his expression but he said nothing until she began to quickly explain that neither she nor Alphonso had known.

“Babe, you didn’t do anything wrong. What else happened?”

She admitted to being stupid enough to follow Donald because she thought he was taking her to him. Scotty’s face only became more unreadable. She was sitting up in bed and he was next to her. It was hard to know how he was reacting because his expression remained blank, and that made it difficult for her to go forward with the story. She just didn’t know what his silence meant.

Vanessa remembered the way he had beaten Donald. He’d just kept punching him even when his fists were covered in blood. His anger had been explosive, his face unrecognizable and his strength when he lashed out at the man was unbelievable. She’d never seen anything like it and she never wanted to see Scotty look anything near that again.

“Well …” she hesitated.

Scotty reached out and took her hands gently in his bruised and battered ones.

“It’s alright, honey. I don’t blame you, okay? But I need to know exactly what happened. Don’t leave anything out, because that’s the only thing that will make me mad. Do you understand?”

Vanessa nodded. “I went into the room and saw that there was no one there. He locked the door and was all over me before I could do anything else. He put one hand over my mouth.” Vanessa paused, not because she was afraid to tell Scotty but because the memory was more difficult than she had thought it would be.

Her stomach flipped again but she refused to run to the bathroom to throw up. Vanessa looked at Scotty then, meeting his eyes because she had finally figured out what his expression meant. It was the realization that he had very nearly lost her.

She swallowed down past the dry lump in her throat. “He put his hands over my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream. He used his other hand to grab … to grab and rub my breasts.”

Scotty’s lids closed in a prolonged blink before he met her eyes again.

“I tried to fight back but my arms felt like I was underwater. I couldn’t move. I could barely think but I tried. Scotty I tried to hurt him.”

He squeezed her hands gently and then brought them to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

“He threw me to the ground,” she continued. She was bruised all along her elbows and back because of it. “Then he was on top of me. I was trying to scream but couldn’t make much noise because his hand was smashed over my mouth and nose. I felt him ripping my shirt and he tore my bra. And then …” Her voice faded.

Scotty held his breath. It took every bit of his will to be still. He knew what the man had done to her breasts. He’d carried her to the shower in order to clean her up after she’d gotten sick.

There were bite marks on her breast and her nipples were bruised. He’d cried then. He’d cried and washed her and had nearly screamed in anguish that someone had put their filthy hands on her. He’d wanted to drive to the hospital with his glock in order to shoot the bastard dead in his face.

Instead he had gently washed her body, locating every single bruise, scratch and bite. Wherever the skin had broken he applied antiseptic and then dressed her in a pair of his sweats and a t-shirt where she normally slept mostly nude. He knew she would want to be dressed after what had happened to her.

Yes, Scotty was very aware of what had been done to her breasts.

Vanessa cleared her throat. “He bit me… my breasts and then he tried to get my pants off but he couldn’t. That’s when I kneed him.”

Scotty’s eyes lit up and became piercing.

“I thought I was going to get away from him but I could only move like some kind of turtle. I kept trying but I couldn’t get away. It only made him mad at me. He slapped me and started punching me.”

She touched her eye and this time Scotty blinked and looked away. It took him a moment to look at her again but when he did he had carefully shielded his rage.

“I guess I was screaming but I didn’t think I was. I didn’t think anyone could hear me. He got my pants down a little but not enough to—to do anything. And that’s when you came in.”

Scotty rubbed his thumb over one knuckle. “Vanessa. Did he—did he--?” He couldn’t say the words. Why couldn’t he say the words? God knows he’d used the word before. He’d had to face this very thing before. But he never thought he’d have to face this with his Vanessa.

Scotty very nearly broke then. He very nearly lost his will to keep his emotions in check.

“No baby!” she exclaimed quickly. “He didn’t.” She was shaking her head.

He drew in a shaky breath and kissed her knuckles again before he released her hands and stood. He turned his back and cleared his throat.

“I guess I know the rest,” he said. After a moment he was able to turn to face her.

“Get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I’m just going to be out in the living room. Call me if you need me.”

She nodded, feeling suddenly alone. She wanted him to hold her but she could tell that he didn’t want to touch her. Maybe he would never want to touch her again.

She got out of bed careful not to move to quickly, unless she got lightheaded again. She took another shower, hoping to scrub away the feel of Donald’s hands on her, but she couldn’t.

She had no idea what drug she’d been given because she had refused to allow herself to be taken to the hospital last night. Now that she was sober she wasn’t sure why. Now that her head was clear she worried that Donald might have slipped her something that could cause lingering damage—although, she no longer felt the effects of the drug other than slight nausea and fatigue.

Scotty was more concerned with her bruising than he was over the drug. Drugs were something he knew and anything Donald could have slipped her would eventually leave her system. What wouldn’t leave so quickly was Donald’s violation.

They got to the police station the next day well before noon. When the police separated them for questioning Vanessa had felt almost like she was being carted away to lock-up. But the policewoman that was assigned to her was very nice. She encouraged her with kindness and understanding to tell her story and Vanessa opened up, this time giving in to tears of fear and embarrassment.

The officer had comforted her and then had taken her to get pictures of her injuries. The look on her face convinced Vanessa more than anything that her injuries were worse than she wanted to admit. And the officer convinced her that it was important to go to the hospital if for no other reason than to go to the lab for blood work so that it could be determined what drug had been given to her. Vanessa agreed and when they finished questioning Scotty she was relieved when he drove her away from the police station even if he was driving her to the hospital.

The nurse told them that the results of the lab work would take a day or two but they would be called. With relief the couple went home. Vanessa went straight to the bedroom and climbed in under the sheets. Scotty followed her, kicking off his shoes and cuddling her.

She felt a sense of relief that he touched her without disgust. He pulled her into his arms and held her so tightly that it felt like he was trying to share his strength with her or perhaps he was trying to pull some of hers into him. They slept like that, dreaming about the security found in their mutual love for each other.

And then at 4 a.m. the police came and arrested Scotty for the beating death of Donald Miller.