The Retaliation You Deliver by Tracy Lorraine
Macie
Everything hurts when I come to, but nothing beats the pain in my chest as the images of last night play out in my mind like a movie.
I didn’t manage to drag my sorry ass from the ground for hours after Leon blew through the house, taking his aggression out on everything in his path. Or, at least that was what it sounded like. I’ve yet to find the strength I need to go down and see the destruction left in his wake.
When I finally managed to get to my feet, the only place my shaky legs took me was up to my room and to my bed.
But my room here didn’t provide the comfort I craved.
I needed safety, security, and this house has never provided me with either of those things.
I always thought of it as the house of horrors, and the events of last night only go to prove just how right I was.
Sucking in a deep breath, I force my eyes open and sit up.
They burn, the skin around them sore from all the tears I shed last night, and I’m sure if I were to look in a mirror, I’d find them red and bloodshot from my lack of sleep.
Every single time I closed my eyes, I saw him. That poor little boy at the hands of my uncle. The monster.
How did I not realize it was him?
Now that I know, it’s so freaking obvious.
The image of him on that desk is clearer than ever, his green terrified eyes as they locked onto mine. His full parted lips as they silently pleaded with me to help him.
The tears start all over again despite thinking I must’ve already run out after all the crying last night.
Silently they run down my cheeks, dropping to the sheets beneath me with quiet dull thuds.
My head spins with everything as I try to get a grasp on how I really feel.
Anger surges through my veins keeping my muscles pulled tight. Betrayal tastes bitter on my tongue.
But that’s not it, because despite everything. I understand.
I get why he felt the need to do what he did, and a part of me hates myself for it because I know that I should be hating him.
He’s the one who played me, who hurt me, who used me. All the things I feared he was doing right from the start.
But the broken little girl inside of me recognizes the broken little boy in him and all she wants to do is pull him into her arms and make everything better.
Damn her, naïve little child.
My muscles pull as I climb from the bed and pad toward my bathroom.
With every move, his scent hits my nose and that along with the slight ache between my legs, ensures that I never forget that last night really happened.
I brush my teeth without looking at myself, too scared to discover what kind of devastating state I’m in after he left me behind.
The second I spit the toothpaste out, I turn to the shower, strip off the shirt I slept in last night and step under the burning hot spray.
I usually can’t stand it scalding, or at least I haven’t for a lot of years but today, I need it.
I need the pain, I need the burn, I need to remember that out of all of this, something good has to happen.
Lifting my hand to my chest, I recall Leon throwing the welcome pack from Acorn Lodge down on me.
I knew it was what he wanted. The second I pieced it all together in my head, it was obvious that my uncle was his intended target. I guess I was just the added bonus and collateral damage to his endgame.
He must hate you,a little voice says in my head.
I fall back against the tiled wall, not even registering the cold.
How good of an actor is he to have made me believe he really wanted me? The things he said to me, the way he touched me. How could he do that when I’m sure all he wanted to do was hurt me?
For the ultimate pain.
Make me fall and then pull the rug from beneath me.
I slide down the wall and curl myself into a ball, wrapping my arms around my legs and resting my head on my knees.
I want to chastise myself for being so stupid that I fell for it. But I knew it was coming. I told myself time and time again that it—that he—was too good to be true yet I continued to see him, continued to fall, and allowed him to shatter my rules and my well constructed walls.
I made it so easy for him.
Was he laughing at me the whole time?
He told me that I was different. But really, I’m no different than all of them.
It only took him days to get into my panties. And this weekend, whether it went the way it did or not, we’d have taken that final step together, of that I have no doubt.
I’m no different to all the jersey chasers I hate, falling for the player almost without a second thought.
I have no idea how long I sit there under the stream of water, but eventually my skin is pruney and my tears have once again dried up and I know it’s time to move.
I haven’t fought my entire life to crumble to pieces because of a guy.
He’s not just any guy though, is he?
Climbing to my feet, I go through the motions of washing up but I’m completely moving on autopilot.
It’s not until I walk back into my room and the sound of my cell vibrating in my purse fills my ears that everything comes crashing down around me once more.
Sitting at my vanity table, I rummage around in my purse until I find it.
That silly little girl inside me hopes for it to be him. For him to apologize and tell me that he never really hated me, that he understands that I had to do what I did back then.
But I already know it’s not.
There’s no way he’s going to forgive me that easily, or ever.
I left him to—
I swallow down the lump in my throat, unable to even think the words let alone acknowledge what happened to him inside that room that day.
And how many times after?
Lowering my cell, I heave at the thought of what he’s been through. The abuse I helped subject him to with my inaction.
I’m out of the chair before I even register I’ve moved and in seconds, I’m on my knees in front of the toilet, emptying my stomach into the bowl.
Tears once again cascade down my face as I fall back on my ass and breathe in and out, counting each breath.
It’s a move I haven’t had to use for years in order to get control of myself and I hate that I’ve got to revert back to it.
Once I’m stronger, I brush my teeth once more and go back to find where I abandoned my cell.
I find it face down on the floor between the vanity and the bathroom.
Turning it over and waking it up, I find what I was expecting.
The call wasn’t from Leon but an unknown number.
And there’s not just one call but eight.
Curious, I open the one voicemail and put it on speaker as I press play.
“M-Macie? It’s Peyton, Luca Dunn’s girlfriend.” My heart pounds against my ribcage as her words flow through me. “We… um… we just wanted to check that you’re okay. If you could call me that would be great. T-thanks, bye.”
All the air rushes from my lungs.
Do they know?
Something tells me they don’t. I have a sinking suspicion that there are only three of us who do know the truth.
Needing to at least attempt to find some strength before I return her call, I drag on a clean set of clothes and blow-dry my hair.
I tell myself that I’m not putting it off any longer. I have no idea what Peyton knows about last night, that we’re even in Miami. But the fact she’s even calling means she must know something.
My stomach drops into my feet as a thought hits me.
What if something happened to him? He was so angry when he left last night. He could have—
As I dial her number, the ringing is loud in the room. My pulse is thundering through my entire body as I wait for the call to connect.
If something has happened to him, I’ll never be able to forgive myself for allowing him to storm out the way he did.
“Hey, can I call you back in ten?” she asks the second the call connects.
“Uh… s-sure.”
She cuts me off before I get to ask if he’s okay or not.
The next ten minutes are some of the longest of my life, and I’ve endured many painful waits in my time so it really is saying something.
The second the screen flashes with her name now that I’ve saved her contact, I can’t answer it quick enough.
“Is he okay? I blurt out the second the call connects, needing to know that nothing serious has happened.
“Y-yeah, he is.”
“Oh my God,” I sigh, falling back on my bed and allowing just a little bit of relief to flow through me. “Where is he?”
“We’re currently halfway between Miami and MKU. You were in Miami with him, right?” Her question confirms what I already knew. She really has no idea what’s going on or what happened.
“Y-yes.”
“He won’t tell us anything but we got a call from their mom first thing this morning because he was sitting in jail and needed bailing out.”
“What?” I screech, once again sitting up.
“He was picked up on the beach for being drunk and disorderly.”
Oh Christ.
“Has he been charged?”
“No, just a slap on the wrist for acting like an idiot. Are you okay?”
“Y-yeah, I’m fine.” Probably one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told in my life because really, I’m far from fine, I’m falling apart but no one needs to know that apart from me.
“You’re lying, I can hear it in your voice.”
“You don’t even know me,” I whisper, instantly regretting it in case she takes it the wrong way.
“We’re taking him home. Someone will collect his car unless you want to…” she trails off and it’s the first time I realize that I’m stuck here.
“I don’t have a key.”
“Give me your address, we’ll make sure you have it by the end of the day.”
“N-no you don’t—”
“Macie,” she breathes. “We might not have the slightest clue with what’s going on here but we want to help. Me and you might not have met yet, but Letty has told me wonderful things and I trust her, so I trust you. Do what you need to do, drive back with his car, and let me know once you’re home safe. Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye on Lee.”
Too choked up to say anything else, I stutter a thank you and hang up. I quickly send her a message with my current address so she can send the key before falling back onto the pillow.
Thoughts race around my head about what he did after leaving here last night that ended with him in a jail cell. I can only imagine how he must have been feeling.
I awake with a shock as the house alarm blares through the silent space around me.
Scrambling around the bed, I find my cell and open the security app, shutting the thing off.
“What the hell?” I scream as my cell pings with the automated message from the security company that I’m more than bored of seeing.
My stomach groans as I sit there, and I know my time hiding out in this cold and unfamiliar room is coming to an end. I’m going to have to go out there and see the damage he’s caused and finally figure out what’s setting this damn alarm off before I try to drum up the courage to get into Leon’s car to head back to MKU.
The second I agreed I knew it was a mistake. Being in there is just going to remind me of him, of the short time we’ve spent together. It’s going to smell like him for Christ’s sake and I hate to admit it, but it’s going to make me miss him.
I have no right to miss him.
I deserve every bit of this pain for what I did to him. But equally, he doesn’t deserve to get it from me either.
Jesus. We’re both as screwed up as each other.
I felt stupid when I admitted to him that I felt like we’d been brought together for a reason. Turns out I was right, but I never would have guessed the reason, or the fact that the reason we seemed to click so well probably has something to do with our mutual pain and hatred for the same man.
* * *
I expect the house to be trashed but I never could have prepared myself for the amount of devastation Leon left in his wake last night.
Everything on the shelving unit, from ornaments to picture frames are broken, shattered and destroyed as I make my way down two flights of stairs and toward the kitchen.
My uncle's liquor cabinet is missing its glass doors, bottles of vintage whisky are smashed all over the floor, the scent filling the entire main floor of the house.
Mary, his housekeeper, is going to love me for this.
Part of me wants to start tidying it all up, but a bigger part of me has wanted to see this place burned to the ground for years.
This house, the entire estate holds nothing but bad memories for me.
Turning my back on the mess, I make myself a coffee then head toward the other rooms we didn’t check last night.
I’m half expecting to find something disturbing behind each door, but with each one I open, all I find is boxes and random crap. Thankfully, there is no twisted sex den or evidence—at least visible evidence—of the kind of stuff that twisted prick was into.
A shudder rips through me once more at the image now burned right at the forefront of my mind from his office ten years ago.
I’d banished it from my head, that and everything else that man subjected me to over the years. But it’s like Leon opened Pandora’s box because all the memories are just spilling out around me.
The second I push open the final door, I discover the culprit of the alarm because a panicked bird flaps around by the widow.
“How the hell did you get in here?” I mutter, walking over and pushing the windows as wide as they’ll go to give him it’s freedom.
“You’ve got it easy,” I tell him. “You can fly away and forget this place ever held you hostage. I’ve never been that lucky.”
I stand there for a few minutes, looking out over the rolling countryside toward the outbuildings where his boys used to stay every summer.
Richard Fletcher’s summer camp was notorious, and only the very best or very wealthy got a spot.
But all that money and power, all it was hiding was dirty secrets and potentially years of abuse.
Parents willingly handed their boys over to my uncle believing they’d be safe here. That he’d been vetted, not only that, but he was a celebrity. A player most parents had grown up watching, a man many of the father’s looked up to.
What a joke.
The man is nothing but a child abuser.
I have many regrets. Not helping that little boy—Leon—will always be my biggest, but coming up a close second is that I never got any evidence of what was happening here.
I was only eight at the time. I didn’t really understand what was happening, what I saw that day, until a few years later, but by then, it was too late.
My uncle and I had no relationship left.
He might have been paying my tuition at school, for my holidays that ensured he never had to see me, but that was the extent of our relationship by that point. And that was more than fine by me. I’d come to terms with the fact I had no family long before he cut me off.
I always figured that I was better off alone, and that at some point, I’d get a chance to be able to make my own family.
Surely at some point I was going to find some friends who would accept me for who I was.
Turns out that was wishful thinking, because here I am, eighteen and a college freshman still without a family.
Sure, I’ve got my roommates but my friendship with them isn’t exactly ride or die. Nathan is close, I guess. But it’s still not what I imagined when I thought about finding that perfect group of friends years ago.
Now, I figure it was just a pipe dream.
Maybe I’m destined to be alone forever. Maybe God, or whoever, has a different plan for me.
