Chapter 4

MIA

“JESUS CHRIST, quit staring”

How could I not stare. We were in the confines of a private plane. We were going to some unknown place that the asshole of a man failed to inform me about.

I went to him for help but this was not the kind of help I wanted. I wanted a fake id, new documents, something that wouldn’t easily make Bryant find me.

“I will if you tell me where we are going”, I said with equal disdain.

He hated me. I hated him. I could tell by the instantaneous taps of his big as fuck boots, he would rather have been anywhere but here. Trapped with me.

“You’ll know when we get there”

He replied so distantly checking his gun for the hundredth time. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was planning on how he’d get me to shut up with one bullet.

“How long is there?”

He snorted placing his gun down on the coffee table and taking another shot of whiskey.

“I’m not the one flying the plane, am I?”

His replies were as instant as they were lethal. He made no attempt to hide the fact that me being in his life exhausted and angered him.

“Andro-“

My silly attempt of trying to calm the ceasefire between us evaporated the minute his dark eyes gazed at me as if peeling all my skin with a sharp scalpel.

“Flames. Andro doesn’t exist anymore”

Of course. How could he exist when the boy I knew had added almost fifty pounds of sheer muscle and brawn. Add in the grumpiness, the danger to him, the tattoos peaking through his shirt and he was like a hot Hades.

Sexy, devilishly handsome and a major asshole in all the world of assholes and trust me I had met my fair share of assholes.

Calming myself and trying to find my voice underneath his sharp stare, I tried to reason with the tank of a man,

“Okay...Andro... Flames. I’m sorry about everything. The bombing at your place of work, you having to accompany me-“

“Sorry won’t bring Elise back”, he threw a jab. Jabs that hurt more than any of Bryant’s beatings.

He blamed me for my sister’s death? Well, I sure as hell wished it was me that died that night because my life had never been easier since.

I should have gotten used to his indifference by now but every insult he threw my way was like a sharp blow to my gut.

I still wondered to this day what Elise saw in him. Sure he was handsome, most especially now but even back then he looked like the type mothers warned their daughters to stay away from. He’d always been a magnet for danger.

The same danger he brought to my family when he decided to elope with my sister all in the name of love.

“You always an asshole?” I dared.

“Women like me this way”, he mumbled and I rolled my eyes.

What sort of women liked him that way. The desperate kind?

“Women that beg me to fuck them for eternity”

Bold and provoking, his voice returned the question that lingered in my head. No hint of mischief in his voice, I met his gaze and the idea of a woman begging him to fuck her for all eternity sounded disgustingly pitiful to me.

I mean sure with a body as big and ripped like his, the sex would definitely be good. I could imagine how easy it would be to fit in those big, possessive-

“My eyes are up here, sweetheart”

God. Was I actually imagining…

“I have that effect on women’, he said cockily.

“Keep dreaming, I’d never ever fall for a man who has an ego bigger than the country’s zip code, uses crude words to compensate for the fact that he has a small dick and absolu-“

My words got cut off when his phone rang sharply saving me from the intense stare contest that went on for five seconds.

“Snakes. Yes, she is”,Andro stood up walking to me with that intense stare that scared and challenged me at the same time.

“Looks fine to me. Why do you think she’ll say yes if it’s me? For fuck’s sake, Jason’s a fucking pussy who doesn’t know shit. Alright but if she dies, I tried. Come the fuck on you think I specialize in that shit like you do? Gimme a grenade any day rather than that shit. Copy. Anything turns up on the asshole you call me stat. Jason there? Put him on”

A two seconds pause and Andro’s vibrational voice sounded.

“I’ll castrate you when I get back, you fucking asshole”

He hung up, eyes gazing at me.

“What?”

He’d threatened to castrate a man and here I was trying to act defiant in front of him. Trying to hide behind a cover until I found the nearest tub and sobbed all my woes in it.

“Take off your shirt”

My throat dried and fear crept up my throat.

He wasn’t Bryant and yet…my heart thumped so loudly he could have heard it. Memories of everything that happened to me for the last pathetic years of my life flogged my gut.

I couldn’t…

“Mia”

He knelt before me but the sight became even blurrier.

“Can’t…can’t can’t breathe”

“H-Hey look at me. Breathe. One. Two. Three. In”, his palm landed on my cheek and it was a cooling ointment saving me from my own flames of hell.

I held his palm against my cheek and I breathed in.

“Hold it”, he commanded.

My lungs up taking in as much air as they could, I waited for his voice because that’s the only thing I could cling on.

“Out. Feel better?”

I nodded peering into those spirals of dark that seemed genuine. He looked genuine kneeling there, his palm on my cheek, his cologne so strong and so relaxing it calmed my frayed nerves.

“I’m sorry I don’t know what-“

“No one sees panic attacks coming. You are lucky I was here”

I didn’t know whether he was being genuine or straight forwardly sarcastic but I took it as a sign that we were establishing some common ground.

“I don’t have them regularly. Sometimes it’s once in a year, other times once a day”

Try three times a day after Bryant burnt my skin for his own pleasure.

“You don’t have to apologize, Tonelli. We all have our bad moments”

“Do you?”

He didn’t look like he had bad moments. He was all I’m Donald Trump unfazed by anything or anyone. I wished I had his spirit. That spirit of rebellion and courage, maybe then I would have stopped Bryant all those times he raped me.

“I have PTSD. My time in the Marines, Elise’s death…it all acted as a fucking catalyst for my condition”

“ooh”

What else could I have said? That I thought he deserved it for my sister’s death, for my situation? I wanted so much to hate him and not pity him and yet here I was my heart weeping for his situation.

“It’s not a fucking big deal, people have PTSD”

“I never said it’s a big deal”

Well I thought it was anyway.

“Yeah? Then why are you looking at me like I have cancer or something. Take off the shirt, Mia”

“ANDRO I-“

“I’m not going to fuck you in a plane for Christ’s sake. Snakes said something about you refusing him to treat you? Says some shit about your wounds getting infected if they are not checked up on”

His crudeness was back but beneath that was a little sincerity that he cared but like every one who tried to help me, I declined his help.

“I’m fine just like I told your friend last night”

The guy who’d been mildly insistent on taking a closer look at all my injuries. Bryant had ruined my life so much that I couldn’t stand any man’s touch. I was afraid and scared that every man that laid a hand on me would choke me or worse…

His touch dissipated from my cheek and it was then that I realized I had allowed him to touch me in the first place. Moving back, his powerful legs hoisting him up, he towered before me.

“It wasn’t a request, Mia. You take that shirt off or I rip it off you with my bare teeth”

Chills ran down my spine and suddenly I was consciously unbuttoning the pink blouse Berkely had gotten me last night.

Andro would hate me even more after he saw me. After he saw all of me.

I pushed the soft fabric off my left shoulder then my right and I was shirtless in front of him. The bra was useful enough to cover my breasts but it wouldn’t cover all my scars. I wished it did. I wish it hid my ugliness.

Andro didn’t speak a word when he saw me.

He took off his jacket covered my shoulders before he said,

“You are seeing a doctor once we land”

He didn’t as much as look at me or talk to me after that and for some reason it stung like hell.