SAVAGE LOVE

Chapter 4

He squeezed my hand tightly in his and played with my fingers as he spoke.

“I’m so sorry. I missed you, and I was struggling with s**t. Nothing was going right for me so… I started… taking stuff to… you know… to dull the pain of life, make things more bearable.”

I gave him no choice this time. I yanked my hand out of his and stood up, towering over his pitiful frame. As much as I loved him, I couldn’t condone this.

“What the hell, Timothy. What are you taking? How long? What the f**k is going on with you?”

I couldn’t take it in. Was he some kind of junkie now? Well, he had the sallow skin, the dead look in his eyes. He was sweating like a pig and shaking like a leaf, so I guess I already had my answer.

When he spoke next, it was with a quiet, weak voice.

“I do coke, smack, pills. Anything I can get my hands on, really. I don’t know what else to tell you other than the truth, babe. Vin, the guy who rang, he’s my dealer. The man he works for is chasing me for money… a lot of money. I’m so sorry. We don’t keep secrets from each other, and I can’t keep this from you anymore.”

I felt like I’d been shot in the heart with a bullet the size of a boulder.

“I thought we didn’t do secrets, but obviously, you do. I don’t know a lot about drugs, Timothy, but I know enough to realize this isn’t a new occurrence for you. How long has this been going on?”

I stepped away from where he sat and went to the sofa opposite to get some distance between us. This was a hell of a lot to take in.

“Six, maybe eight… months.”

I gasped. I’d had no idea. How could I have not known? How had I not seen this before?

“How bad is it?”

He looked up at me now, and the lost boy sat across the room from me tugged so heavily on my heartstrings. I couldn’t stop myself from going over to him, to kneel in front of him.

“How bad, Timothy? I need to know what we’ve got ahead of us.”

He huffed out slowly, then gave me a sad smile, stroking softly down my cheek with his hand.

“So there’s still an ‘us’?” he asked, with tears glistening in his eyes, ready to fall.

“There’ll always be an ‘us’, Timothy. That’s non-negotiable.”

I leaned into his hand. The familiar warmth helped to ease some of the pain that was drowning my heart.

He sighed, then spilled the extent of his, or rather our, predicament. Timothy was skint, broke. Worse than broke, he was in some serious debt to some very scary and dangerous people through his drug habit. A habit that’d cost him his car, his trust fund, and every friend he had. His family had disowned him, and he was living each day one hit at a time, apparently. The only reason he still had the apartment was because it was in his father’s name. He couldn’t cash in on it, which was a blessing in disguise. At least he had a roof over his head.

These people he owed money to were breathing heavily down his neck and demanding their next payment. I asked what’d happen if he didn’t pay, but Timothy assured me that was a road I didn’t want to go down. I suggested asking my parents for help, seeing as Timothy had exhausted every option he’d had to find the money to keep these people happy, but Timothy refused. I was secretly relieved, because I knew my father would say no anyway.

“Could you get access to any of your money?” Timothy asked, referring to my parents’ trust fund, and the money my grandma had left me. He knew as well as I did that my father had locked it all down. I wasn’t seeing that cash for a few years yet.

“Not until I’m twenty-five.”

Timothy’s eyes started to dart about erratically, as if he was thinking of a new plan.

“How much could you get now?”

“Maybe a couple of hundred at a push, why?”

“Could I borrow it? I swear I’d pay you back.” Some of the sparkles was coming back into his eyes as he spoke. It wasn’t lost on me, and I’d have done anything to keep it there.

“You don’t have to pay me back, Timothy. It’s yours.”

The relief, albeit temporarily, ebbed out of him as I said this. I don’t know why he’d ever doubted me. I’d have given him my last penny if it made him happy. He was my whole life.

We walked to the bank to withdraw the cash, and instantly, without a second thought, I handed it over to him.

“Where to next?” I asked, but he shook his head.

He was adamant that I should leave him to sort out his business and meet him back at the apartment. Why would I argue? He was off to see drug-dealing loan shark types who were violent for fun. Not my idea of an afternoon escapade.

How wrong was I? Hours later, he fell through the door stoned, high, totally out of it. He’d spent the last bit of cash we’d had on drugs, and to hell with the men chasing him for their money back. I was fuming. Beyond fuming, in fact. I was ready to kill him myself.

“What the actual f**k, Timothy!”

He wasn’t up for an argument though. No, he passed out in the bedroom, where I was more than happy to leave him. I couldn’t even look at him I was so mad.

I woke up to furious banging on the front door. The clock on the T.V. told me that it was 3.28 a.m. Great, who calls round at this time of the morning? I should’ve thought about that in a little more detail, instead of going onto automatic pilot and answering the damn thing. Who does call around at 3.28 a.m? Vile loan sharks and thugs, that’s who.

As the door opened, I was flung back against the wall with brute force. Five burly men from the other side bustled their way into our apartment, and started pacing around looking for Timothy, or money, or whatever the hell it was they thought they could take from us. I felt violated as they rifled through our stuff as if they belonged there.

“Fucker’s passed out on the bed, high as a f*****g kite,” one of them sneered.

“Excuse me.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stood at the door, keeping it open for my safety. Well, what little safety I could grasp. “Get out!” I tried to make my voice sound more confident than I felt. My body was trembling like a flag ready to surrender and I prayed they wouldn’t notice, or turn their aggression onto me.

I would’ve called for help, but Timothy was out for the count and totally useless, and I’d be damned if I dragged any of our neighbors into this debacle that was our lives at the moment. No, I had to deal with this on my own.

“Well, what do we have here?” One of the guys sloped over to where I stood and ran a coarse, calloused finger down my cheek. An involuntary shiver ran through me, and I pulled back in disgust. Please God make them leave.

“Don’t touch her, Mark. The boss won’t like it,” was all the other guy from the bedroom said in response. No, ‘don’t scare the girl’. No apology to me. Just a barked reminder that the boss was in charge of their sadistic errand.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Mark growled back, curling his arm around my waist and yanking me roughly into him.

He stank of stale tobacco and sweat. I wriggled away from him and tried to stifle a gag at the stench swirling around me like a deadly spirit. As if it was his right to do so, he leaned down to the crook of my neck and inhaled, then ran his rancid tongue along my skin.

“We could take it in turns to f**k her right here on the floor. It’d certainly make our night worthwhile.” His piercing, evil stare ran up and down my body, and he licked his lips as he gawped at my chest a little longer than the rest of me.

A tsunami of utter fear drenched my very soul. My mouth was dry, and my body was slowly breaking down into fight or flight mode. Who was I kidding? I stood no chance against these men. They’d overpower me without even breaking into a sweat. I was just about to bolt for the door, when the bedroom guy piped up again.

“As tempting as that sounds, mate, we aren’t being paid for that. Well, not yet anyway. Like I said, hands off the goods until we get orders otherwise, understand?”

The relief I felt when Mark nodded his agreement and let me go was overwhelming, paralyzing even. All I could manage to do was utter quietly, “Get out. Now.”

As terrified as I was, I couldn’t… wouldn’t show them any weakness. I needed them out of our space, and the door securely locked to keep it that way. Keeping hold of my dignity was also a huge plus. I was no damsel in distress.

The bedroom guy strode over to me with cocky confidence and flared his nostrils as he spoke.

“When he wakes up, tell the gutter rat that Vin and his friends called round. And tell him he’s got four more days to pay up, or the boss will take payment another way. Trust me, angel, you won’t like that option.”

He grinned a vile, threatening grin that was obviously meant to throw me off my game; unsettle me and spark terror in my soul.

“I don’t care,” I snarled back angrily. Probably not my best move, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t taking their bait. “Tell your boss he’s an asshole, and we’ll pay when we can. He can’t take what we don’t have.” Why was I goading these thugs? This wasn’t going to end well for me or Timothy. Not if I acted like the stubborn b***h.

“I’m sure the boss will find a way to make you pay.”

He looked me up and down, sneering as he did, and showing off his gold teeth. Then he marched out of the apartment without another word, gesturing for the others to follow him.

I slammed the door shut, then let out a frustrated cry and fell to the floor, shaking. Thoughts of how that whole scenario could’ve gone differently, or what could’ve happened to me, started filtering through my mind. It sent me into a panic. Never again would I open a door without checking who was on the other side first. I was a grade-A fool, but Timothy was worse. Not only had he brought Vin and these other people into our lives, but he was too off his face on drugs to help me. Passed out cold on the bed, oblivious to what he was putting me through. What the hell had I come back from University and walked into?

“Never again, Timothy.”

He was reluctantly taking my ear-bashing, as I forced him to listen to the lurid details of what’d happened in the early hours of the morning. I told him what an utter loser he was too, for using our last savings to buy drugs.

“I’m not having men like that at our door, Timothy. Never again. We deal with this now and we deal with it today. This bullshit ends today. Do you hear me?”