Page 3 of Filled

He doesn’t answer right away. He stands in the doorway, and I can smell him from across the room. The cocktail of Budweiser and whiskey that I remember from when I was fourteen. It’s still nauseating.

My stomach turns to ice.

“The house feels different,” he says, slurring his words slightly. “Since she’s gone.”

“Get out,” I snap.

“I’m just saying.” He steps inside. One step. “I’m lonely. You must be lonely too.”

The fighter in me is already awake, already working out the distance between us. Furniture as obstacles. The space to my left that leads to the door versus the window to my right.

But there’s something else awake too. The fourteen-year-old girl learned to go still and quiet when he came through that door. The girl who thought she wanted it because he told her she did.

I’m not that girl anymore.

“Gerald.” I sit up, putting my feet on the floor. “You need to leave. Right now.”

“Don’t be like that.” He takes another step. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. “I took care of you all these years. Kept a roof over your head. Least you could do is?—”

“Don’t.” My voice cuts like a blade. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

His expression shifts. He sees something in my face, maybe the fighter I’ve become, maybe the girl he used to control, recognizing that she has power now.

“You used to be sweet,” he says. “Before you started all that fighting shit. Used to be grateful?—”

“Get out,” I spit.

“You wanted it back then.”

“I was fourteen.” I stand with every muscle in my body coiled. “I was a child. And you’re a rapist.”

He flinches at the word. Then his face twists into something ugly. “Your mother never cared. You think she didn’t know? She knew. She just didn’t give a shit about you.”

The words are designed to hurt. They do. But not the way he thinks.

“You’re right,” I say quietly. “She didn’t care. But that doesn’t make what you did any less evil.”

He crosses the room faster than I expect, reaching for me—whether to grab me or hit me or something worse, I don’t wait to find out.

His hand closes around my wrist.

What happens next lasts approximately forty-five seconds.

His grip is strong for a drunk man. He yanks, trying to throw me off balance, trying to shove me back toward the bed the way he used to. I let him pull me forward, using his momentum, stepping into him, and driving the heel of my palm up hard under his chin.

His teeth crack together. His head snaps back.

He’s bigger than me. Six-one, probably weighs two-twenty pounds.

It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

He swings and it’s wild, sloppy, telegraphed. I roll under it, get behind him, hook my foot behind his ankle and shove hard between his shoulder blades. He goes down, shoulder catching the corner of the dresser on the way, and hits the floor with a sound that shakes the window.

He makes a noise I’ve never heard out of a person before. Somewhere between a grunt and a howl.

He tries to get up.

I step on the back of his knee. Not enough to break it. Enough to make the threat very clear. “Stay down.”