Page 130 of Run
“Yeah, I’m like ten minutes away.” I speed up even more.
“OK, well, I’ll try to get her to talk, but, either way, we’re here.”
“OK … OK.” I grip the back of my neck. “I’m coming as fast as I can.”
Autopilot gets me the rest of the way home. I barely put the Jeep in park before I’m bounding across the front lawn. “Ari!” I yell as I throw open the front door. “Ari?”
Fonz comes down the hallway as I ask frantically, “Where is she?”
“She’s in the bathroom,” he answers softly, moving over so I can pass him.
“Ari!” I swing the door open and step inside. I find her on the floor in the corner, back against the wall, hugging her knees. I take two steps toward her before falling to my hands and knees and crawling the rest of the way. “What’s going on? Please, baby, talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
I get to her and place a hand on the back of her head, which is damp and dirty.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles into her lap as her head remains buried against her knees.
“Hey. It’s OK. Whatever it is, it’s OK now. You’re here. Just … just tell me what’s going on so I can make it better. Please, Red, talk to me.”
I place my other hand on top of one of hers that’s curled around a knee, and notice bloody scrapes on her fingers. “Look at me.” She shudders out another breath into her lap. “Ari. Look up at me. I need to see you.”
Slowly, she raises her head and looks at me.
My gut twists, my stomach sours, and my heart constricts.
The first thing I see is her swollen, reddened left eye with the skin cracked open along her cheekbone. Then my eyes sweep down to the fat, bloody lower lip. Her shirt is torn at the neckline, and as she brings a hand up to brush away a strand of hair from her face, I see bruising along her wrist that looks like fingerprints.
I swallow down the bile rising up my throat. “Who did this to you?”
Ari looks down, then back up at me, and her lips tremble as she speaks. “You already know the answer to that question.”
“Wha— Axel?” I can barely stand his name on my lips. “Did you run into him somewhere? Did he come here? How did he find you?”
She shakes her head. “I went to him.”
I pull back slightly. “What do you mean you went to him? Where?”
Ari wipes the back of her hand across her bottom lip, then looks at the crusty blood left behind. “I go see him sometimes.”
“You … WHAT?” I roar, pushing away from her and jumping to my feet. “What the hell do you mean you go see himsometimes? How often? When? Why?” I claw my hands through my buzzed hair, spin and walk toward the door, but turn again and face Ari. “Why? Why the fuck would you go see him?”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she says softly, and for the first time ever, she looks pathetic. She looks like a pitiful little girl curled up in the corner nursing her wounds after big, bad Axel took another swing at her. And I hate that he can make me look at her like that. I hate that she’s hurt. I hate that he put his hands on her. I hate that she has been lying to me.
“How long?” I place my hands on my hips. “How long have you been going to see him?”
“I started going there several months after the accident.”
I let that sink in. “How? You couldn’t even drive.”
She swallows and has the decency to look embarrassed. “I talked Sophie into taking me.”
“Sophie knew?”
“Well, she did know, but she thinks I stopped going, when …”
“When what?”
Ari takes a deep breath and winces.Damnit. I take steps toward her and kneel down. I gingerly help her stand and lead her over to sit on the edge of the bathtub, next to me. “When what?” I ask again.
