Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (40 page)

The lights blinked out, leaving Ron to scream in
the dark.

19

W
hen
I checked my cell phone for missed calls the next morning, I found that Wade
had tried three times to reach me. Each call had come while I was in the
basement with Ron.

It made me feel good to know that he’d thought of
me and had wanted to talk to me, but I felt horrible about missing his calls. I
felt even more horrible that I wasn’t there with him, that our communication
had been reduced to nothing more than short, painful phone calls.

I took a
Xanax
to calm
my nerves, and half an hour later, after the effect of the pill had taken hold,
I called him back.

It was good to hear his voice, the sound of him
talking in my ear. My nerves calmed and my anxiety eased. It wasn’t all the
work of the medicine either. Wade had always had that effect on me. It was one
of the many things I loved about him.

It turned out that Wade wasn’t calling for any
particular reason. He had just called to hear my voice and see how I was doing.
I told him I was doing fine, that my therapy was going great and I felt I was
making some real progress. And it wasn’t exactly a lie. Of course Wade thought
the therapy I was referring to involved psychiatrists and psychologists,
skilled professionals trained to help people like me overcome their problems,
but I didn’t think it mattered which type of therapy I was undergoing. All that
mattered was that I was on the road to getting better.

The best part of the conversation was when Wade
put Mason on the phone. He talked and talked about his toys. Most of the words
were unintelligible, but that didn’t matter. I was talking to my son and loving
every second of it.

Before Wade took the phone back, I heard him say
to Mason, “Tell Mommy you love her.”

“I
lub
you, Mommy,” Mason
said.

Tears sprang instantly to my eyes, his tiny words
tugging on my heartstrings.

Wade said something else, something I couldn’t
quite make out, and then Mason said, “Bye, Mommy.”

There was no holding back the tears after that.
Before I completely lost my composure, I somehow managed to tell him I loved
him with no more than a crack in my voice and a lump in my throat.

Wade’s voice came back on the line. When he spoke,
I could tell he was smiling. “You just made his day.”

I tried to hide it, tried to move the phone’s
microphone away from my mouth before it happened, but it wasn’t soon enough to
keep Wade from hearing the sob that erupted from me.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Don’t cry. Oh, man.
Hey, Nicole.
I’m sorry.”

I pulled myself together enough to respond with,
“Don’t be sorry. It’s nothing you did.”

“Then what is it?”

Wiping my eyes, I said, “It’s everything. Hearing
your voice, Mason’s voice, not being there…”

“But you will be here.
Soon.
Please don’t cry.”

It was those five words,
you will be here soon
, that made me stop crying. He was right. I
would be there soon. I’d be there, at home with my husband and son where I
belonged. I’d finally have my life back. I’d be able to tuck Mason in at night
and make him breakfast in the morning. I could fall asleep and wake up in the
warmth and safety of Wade’s arms. I’d have everything back to the way it
should’ve been all along.

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry
I lost it there for a minute.”

“Don’t be. Don’t ever be sorry for having
feelings.”

He was right about that too. I shouldn’t be sorry
for having feelings. There were too many people in the world that had none at
all and they certainly never apologized for it. I should be proud of myself for
having feelings and emotions, for having the ability to empathize with others.
After all, that was what separated us from them, the normal people from the
maniacs.
The victims from the abusers.
The
Nicoles
from the
Rons
.

By the time we hung up, I was smiling. Talking to
Mason and Wade put me in a good mood, good enough to want to cook and eat a big
breakfast.

While I fried eggs and bacon, I made a promise to
myself. It was a promise I planned to keep, even if meant I had to die trying.

The goal had always been to deal with Ron and then
move back home, back to Wade and Mason, but I didn’t want to return to them the
haggard and broken woman that I had been when they’d last seen me. I wanted to
return to them beautiful and healthy, the way I’d been before I was abducted. I
didn’t want them to see any dark circles around my eyes from lack of sleep, or
any protruding bones from not having eaten. I wanted to return to them very
much
alive
.

And that’s exactly what I was going to do.

In order to reach this goal, I needed to start
taking better care of myself. The first step was to eat more. Whether or not I
had an appetite, I needed to eat regularly. I was too thin, and being too thin
not only didn’t look good, but it was also unhealthy.

The next step would be to get more sleep. And not
just sleep, but rest. Two hours of sleep a night was simply not enough.

As I ate breakfast and thought about the things I
needed to do before returning to my family, I realized that during my short
time in Ron’s house, I’d slept better than I had in all the months before. Not
since I’d escaped from his kitchen had I slept through the night, and yet in
the time I’d been in this house, I had. And it was a deep and restful sleep,
which I also hadn’t had in a long time.

Before, I would’ve thought Ron’s house to be the
very last place on Earth I would ever be able to have a restful sleep, but here
I was, sleeping soundly every night. It was probably because he was tied up in
the basement, totally incapacitated. I knew exactly where he was and what he
was doing. I knew he wasn’t coming after me, and I knew he wasn’t killing other
innocent women. Knowing all of those things allowed me to rest easy.

Dr. Loyd would be proud.

After breakfast, I went out to my car. From the
trunk, I lifted the four pound bag of dog food and carried it inside.

On my way through the kitchen, I grabbed a spoon
and stuffed it in my pocket. I then went directly to the basement, where Ron
lay with his eyes closed.

The bag of dog food hit the work table with a
thud, mostly because I slammed it down pretty hard. My intent was to wake him
up, but it didn’t work.

I stared at him, waiting to see his eyes flutter,
but they didn’t. My mouth went dry. What if he was dead? I mean, I’d be okay
with it—after all, that was the plan, but it just seemed too good for him to
die so soon. I wasn’t done with him yet.

“Ron,” I said sternly. “Wake up.”

Nothing.

I stepped over to him and stood at the side of the
table, looking down at his face. He didn’t look dead.

Reluctantly, I reached my hand out and pressed the
tips of my fingers to his neck, just under his jaw line. He had a pulse, a
steady
thump
thump
thump
beneath his skin.

“Ron. Wake up. It’s time to eat.”

He still didn’t respond.

By this time, I was starting to wonder what he was
doing. If he was merely sleeping, surely he would’ve woken up when I plopped
down the dog food, or when I touched his neck or said his name. But what if he
was unconscious, either passed out or in a coma? I could easily imagine him
passing out from the pain maybe, but that shouldn’t have put him in a coma.

I walked around to the foot of the table and
looked at the bottoms of his feet, which had stopped bleeding. A large scab had
formed from heel to toe. It looked thick and painful.

The amount of blood caked in the trough around the
edge of the table wasn’t enough to suggest severe blood loss. I lost more blood
than that on my period.

I finally decided that the only logical conclusion
was that Ron had simply passed out. To wake him up, I thought a little cold
water might do the trick.

With the hose in my hands, I sprayed his face
first, which woke him immediately. But I didn’t stop spraying. I covered every
inch of his body, paying special attention to his private area. He’d pissed
himself more than once and was starting to smell like a urinal.

When I was finished, I returned the hose to its
rightful place and turned to face Ron with my hands on my hips.

“Good morning, sunshine.” I gave him a broad
smile.

“Fuck you,” he spat.

“Now, Ron. Is that any way to talk to the woman
you love? I mean seriously. Vulgar language is so unbecoming of you.”

“Go to hell.”

“You’ll save me a seat, I suppose?”

“I’ll drag you with me.”

“
Well
look at that.
You’re finally trying to take me somewhere with you. That’s nice. I prefer
dinner and a movie though.”

“You fucking bitch.”

“Don’t call me your mom’s pet names, Ron.”

I knew by the look on his face and the way he
pulled at the restraints that if he could have, he would’ve killed me for
saying that. It didn’t matter much what type of relationship a man had with his
mother; if you insulted her, he became enraged. Ron was no exception.

I almost laughed.

“Talk about my mother again, and I’ll slit your
throat.”

“I really don’t see how you’re going to do that. I
mean, I’m over here, and you’re, well, you’re over there. And you seem to be
tied up at the moment. So…” I shrugged.

He pulled harder on the restraints, but it was no
use. He wasn’t getting off that table.

“Besides, you should be nice to me. I brought you
breakfast.”

I grabbed the bag of dog food from the work table
and held it up so he could see it.

He glanced at the bag and then glared at me.

“I’m not eating that.”

“This is the way I see it. You’ve got two choices.
You can either eat this or you can starve. There’s no third option here.”

“I’ll starve then.”

I tilted my head to the side, pretended to think,
and then said, “No. I think you’ll eat the dog food.”

After opening the bag, I used the spoon from the
kitchen to scoop up a wad of kibble and carry it over to Ron, who clamped his
mouth shut.

“Open up,” I said as though I was talking to a
child.

He shook his head no.

“There are two ways to go about this, Ron. One,
you can open your mouth and eat this delicious and tasty dog food willingly. Or
two, I can open your mouth for you and shove a fistful of it down your goddamn
throat. Now which of those two do you prefer? Frankly, I’m happy with either
one. But I’ll tell you this. No matter what, you will eat this dog food.”

He shook his head again.

I brought the spoon filled with round, brown
pieces of smelly dog food to his mouth slowly, allowing him time to register
the whole experience—both the god-awful aroma and the wave of nausea that came
with it.

I saw his eyes grow wider as he watched the spoon
come closer to his mouth. When it touched his lips, he turned his head.

The spoon followed.

Realizing that I wasn’t going to give up anytime
soon, he hit the spoon with the side of his face, knocking the dog food onto
the table beside him.

He stared up at me with determined eyes, ready for
a fight.

“Oh, Ron.
Do you really
think that’s going to stop me?”

I turned around and searched the work table for
something useful, anything that might help persuade him to eat his food. A
knife with an eight-inch blade caught my eye, so I put down the spoon and
grabbed it.

I slid the blade of the knife in between Ron’s
cold skin and his underwear. Then I ran it up his outer thighs, cutting through
the white cotton fabric. When I was finished, I used the tip of the blade to
lift the elastic waistband and pull the front flap down, exposing him.

Looking at him now, lying there as if he was in
the midst of having his diaper changed, I wanted to laugh. I wanted to, but I
didn’t.

Keeping a straight face, I returned the knife to
the work table and picked up a hammer. With the spoon filled once again with
dog food, I hooked the claw end of the hammer under his testicles. As I touched
the spoon to his mouth, I issued my warning.

“If you don’t eat this food, I’ll rip your balls
off your body. Now it may take me a couple of yanks because I’ve never done
this before, but believe me, they’ll come off. Now open up.”

Ron’s nostrils flared and his eyes appeared to
darken. He was furious with me, and even though he was restrained, I was
scared. What if the restraints didn’t hold and he got free? Even if he only
freed one hand, he could grab my throat and choke me. That’s all it would take
to end every hope I had of putting my life back together. Hell, it would
probably end my life altogether.

I quickly reminded myself that I wasn’t
defenseless. I was holding the hammer. The feel of the handle in the palm of my
hand was reassuring and gave me the confidence I needed to go on.

“Come on, Ron. Eat up. It’s good for you.”

To let him know just how serious I was, I gave the
hammer a little jerk. His eyes widened and his muscles tensed.

Finally, just when I thought I was going to have
to jerk on the hammer again, he opened his mouth.

“There you go,” I said. “See? Was that so
difficult?”

I dumped the dog food in his mouth and expected
him to spit it in my face. To make sure he didn’t, I pulled on the hammer
slightly, reminding him of the pain I could cause.

He chewed reluctantly, his face scrunching up in
disgust. His eyes never left mine.

Ron was a control freak, and I knew that he was
long before I began reading his latest novel. I knew that keeping his eyes
locked on mine while he ate the dog food was his way of controlling the
situation.
Or at least trying to.
The claw end of the
hammer currently hooked underneath his balls was a testament to the fact that I
was the one in control here.