Page 3 of Break Me

I burst into the room, darting my eyes around the small, yellow-painted bathroom. The shower curtain looks moldy and it’s thrown back. And in the bathtub, her knees to her chest, hunched over into a ball, is my girl.

Except she is not at all how I left her this afternoon.

Her thick, black hair is pulled into a messy bun, strands of it hanging around her face. Her mascara is smeared, her eyeliner trailing down the corner of her dark eyes, which are lined with red. She’s shaking with silent sobs, but none of that is the real problem.

The real problem is the bruise forming around her eye, her split lip, and the fact that her nose, her beautiful, perfect nose, is pouring blood and swelling even as I look at her now.

I sink to my knees, at the side of the tub.

“Bianca...” I don’t know what to do. I don’t know even what to say. My brain isn’t working. I try not to panic, try to swallow past the bile in my throat as I take in her injuries, and the way she shrinks from me as I reach for her.

But then it occurs to me who probably did this. And that thought obliterates all the others in my brain.

I pull out my phone and dial 911, not bothering to say anything. I leave it on and put it on the counter, the dispatcher trying to get me to talk. But they’ll send someone. Which means I have to act fast.

“Baby,” I say, “hold your nose like this.” I move her trembling fingers where they need to go, just above her nostrils. “I’m going to take care of you, Bianca,” I tell her. I see bruises starting to bloom on her neck, red and angry marks that look like handprints on her brown skin.

She still looks scared of me and I have no idea why. It makes my skin crawl, how she recoils from me. But I’m going to fix it.

“Keep your fingers right there, okay baby?”

She nods her head, still trembling in the tub. There’s blood on her white shirt.

Slowly, I stand to my feet. I hear the 911 operator still talking through the phone. I leave it on.

“Everything is going to be okay,” I say to Bianca. “I promise, baby.”

And then I turn around and yank open the door, ready to find the motherfucker that lives in this house and put his hands on my girl.

“Benji,” Bianca calls softly after me.

I turn to look at her.

“He has your gun.”

I smile at her. “I hope he fucking knows how to use it.”