Picture Perfect

17.

~Sam~

I want to open my eyes, but I can't. Only one of them does me any justice. The other lags behind, stuck in a near shut place seems like.

It hurts to breathe, the feeling is sharp both inhaling in my nose, and exhaling, where I feel the pain near my lungs.

I feel like crying, it's too painful. I think he tried to kill me. Even if he didn't try. I feel like he may have wanted to.

There was punching, there was choking, I was thrown around and kicked. But nothing felt worse than the words that left Kyler's mouth just minutes before.

And now he stands in front of me with sorrow in his eyes.

"What are you doing here?" I ask weakly.

"I could ask you the same thing." He gets up.

"Wait where's Garrison?" I panic which can be heard on the monitor.

"Calm down ma, he left. He came out and told us that you needed to sleep and that there's no chance of you waking up anytime soon, so we played like we were leaving and came back in once he left." Jabari tells me with a worried expression dressing his face.

"What the fuck happened?" Elijah asks angrily.

I sigh and sit silent. I hadn't known she was just over in the corner.

"Sam."

"I don't know. I can't really remember, I was just walking out of CVS and into the garage and I was attacked. I managed to get home by the grace of god but I just remembered collapsing or wanting to, once I got up the drive way to the door."

"So there's video proof of this?" Kyler asks.

I just remain silent.

"Yeah, if it happened at CVS, like you said, then they should have the video. And then we can have charges brought against your attacker for this shit, he's done." Jabari starts planning the next move.

But if I tell the truth, and say that he's actually the one that did this to me, he's bringing me down right with him.

Garrison forces me awake. He puts a few pictures down on my lap. My neck brace barely allows me to look down at them.

He lifts them up for me and smacks me in the face with them.

"Yeah, a friend of mine in Miami had a buddy that told him he saw pictures of you in some files from an ongoing investigation for a RICO they are trying to put together down there. You were a fucking prostitute? And you didn't think to tell me this shit?" He growls.

I'm too stunned and too weak to speak.

"But now, this shit is coming out. This little mess you caused, is tying back to this dirty history of yours. Not me. I'm not going to let your lying ass ruin me. You want to leave me, go ahead. You know how long I've kept this shit quiet for you. Now you're on your own. Who's going to want a slut like you teaching their kids anything? Especially how to move their bodies to the devil's music. And who's going to want to fuck you? You've been ran through. You're done. And everyone is going to know we're done because of you. Not me. I'm still going to be Garrison motherfucking "Gare Bear" Reese."

He's trying to ruin me. Or he was trying to, but he told me if I stayed everything would be okay, that we could move past it. If I give him another chance, if I keep playing along. He said maybe if we still hate each other in a few years, then we could play the situation down as a simple growing apart. A cordial separation.

"I need to talk to her." Kyler speaks unapologetically without asking.

Jabari signals for Elijah to follow him out of the room without debating the issue.