Holding Out: Hawks MC Ballarat Charter #1

Chapter One

Holding Out Copyright © 2015 by Lila Rose

Chapter One

With a bloody nose and legs, a split lip and a wild tremor going through my body, I picked up the phone and called the one person I knew would help me.

"Hey, wench, you never call from the house phone... what's wrong?" My best friend's voice had started out happy, then suddenly taken on an edge of panic.

"I-I, Dee, I need your help," I whispered and looked over my shoulder to my passed-out husband on the bed.

On the bed where he had just beaten and raped me.

Yes, we were married; still, no meant no. Cries of pain meant something was wrong. Screaming meant that the one who caused it should stop.

But he didn't.

My husband invaded my body and mind, ruining me in so many ways. I wanted him to pay for what he did. I wanted him to hurt.

But I was scared and I only saw one way out of it all.

To run.

"I'm coming, Zara," Deanna uttered into the phone and then hung up.

Knowing my husband was so high and drunk that he wouldn't wake, even if the house exploded around him, I started to pack.

Deanna must have heard the urgency in my voice; the journey that would usually take half an hour only took her fifteen minutes. My husband knew nothing of Deanna and I was glad I'd kept it that way. He hated me having friends; he hated me doing a lot of things, and stupidly I had listened to him at the start. Because back then he was different, he showed me the world and told me that he and I were going to shine through it all.

It took him a year to change, to become his true self, a man I would never have married if I had known how cruel he was. He liked things his way or no way at all.

Deanna came running into the bedroom; I had given her a key months ago, worried something like this would happen. She looked from me to the bed.

"That motherfucker." Her hand went behind her and when she pulled it back around it held a gun.

"No," I cried, my hand going around her wrist as she pointed it at David.

Deanna turned her hard gaze to me. "Look at what he did to you, hun. He—"

"Please, Dee. Please understand I don't want his death on my conscience. He will be more hurt and pissed if we let him be and he wakes finding me gone. I need to get out of here, honey. I need to find a place where he can't find me."

"I want to hurt him, Zara. I want to gut the fucking pig." Tears filled her eyes as she noticed the blood running down my thighs from under my short nightie.

A sob tore through me. "I want to make him pay in the worst way...and me leaving, escaping him when he thought I couldn't and wouldn't, will be my revenge. Please, please, hun."

"Jesus," she snapped, shaking off my hold on her arm and reaching for my cases. "Are you okay to walk?"

"Y-yes." I sent her a pathetic smile and started for the door.

I wouldn't look back. David was now a part of my past and he deserved nothing from me from that day on. No thought, no tears... nothing.

Deanna was my guiding light, she had been since I met her at the library in our book group. From that night on she was more so. She took me from that house to hers; there she helped me clean up and after we started to make plans.