Chapter 7

We rounded the corner into my neighborhood and was greeted with the sight of Rudy's jacked-up pickup truck sitting at an angle on the sidewalk in front of Shiloh's house. By the time I'd screeched to a halt in my driveway and gotten out, Juan had run over.

"How long has he been back," I asked him.

"A good thirty minutes maybe more, Gary," he replied. "He's drunk and been yelling at Mattie and Shiloh ever since he pulled up. It's bad enough we heard it in our house, man."

"Dammit!" I growled as I pulled out my cell phone and tossed it to Kaitlyn. "Call 911 and your uncle. Let them know what's going on and that I'm going over."

"I'm going with you, Gary," Juan stated.

"No," I told him, "I don't know what the Hell I'll be walking into over there. You have a wife and kid to think about, Juan."

"But..."

I cut him off. "No buts, Juan. If you want to do something, check his truck for the keys. They're probably in there. Take them out and don't let him leave if he comes out!"

I opened the garage and ran inside. I rummaged around until I found what I was looking for—the gun box holding my .50 Desert Eagle pistol. The night was split by a blood-curdling scream. Shiloh!

I tore out of the garage to the sound of the door to Shiloh's house crashing open. Shiloh was crying hysterically.

"Git back here, you stupi' bish!" Rudy drunkenly growled.

I rounded the truck and slid on the pavement of my driveway. Juan was standing there in shock, frozen in place. I scrambled back to my feet to see Rudy with his meaty hands around her neck strangling her.

She must've slipped on the steps and fell. She'd scrambled to her feet, but by then Rudy had caught her. He had her in the air by her throat. She flailed around trying to break his grasp. She seemed to have a moment of clarity because she planted a kick to his balls an NFL punter would be proud of. He didn't drop her, but he did fall to his knees.

"Bish!" he screamed and squeezed harder.

He had her on her back and was looming over her with a vile sneer on his flabby face as I cleared the short hedge separating my driveway from their yard. I wanted to shoot him, but was afraid I might hit Shiloh instead.

In his drunken rage, Rudy never saw me coming. I tried my damnedest to take his head off when I planted a running kick to the side of his head. The kick sent him tumbling and left him unconscious. I slid to a stop and scrambled over to Shiloh.

It was only as I reached her that I noticed the butcher knife imbedded in the right side of her chest, just above her breast. I forced myself to not panic. Recalling my first-aid training from the military, I knew the worst move to make was to pull the knife out. It was pouring blood around the blade now, but if I pulled it out, it'd gush instead of pour.

I pulled off my shirt and bunched it around the blade to staunch the bleeding. She wasn't moving or making a sound, so I checked for a pulse. I couldn't find one!

"C'mon baby, hold in there!" God I couldn't lose her! Not now! "If you don't hang in there, you won't ever find..." I realized at this instant that I did, in fact, love this girl. " ... you won't find out that I love you. Dammit, Shiloh, I love you!"

The panic was trying to burst forth but I forced myself to push it aside as best I could. I gave her two quick breaths and started CPR.

After a few rounds of the CPR I got her heart beating and her breathing going. A sound of thunder echoed behind me as I felt what seemed to be a bee sting on my thigh.

I spun around as I grabbed the Desert Eagle I'd dropped beside me and raised it. I came face-to-face with Rudy aiming a snub-nosed .38 revolver at me. He hadn't regained his feet and was instead aiming while propped up on his side.

He got off another two shots as I squeezed off three quick shots at his center-of-mass. There was a mountain of said mass and I couldn't miss. I didn't. The shots flipped him over on his back. My heart was beating like I'd drank six pots of coffee.

My world suddenly swam around me as an intense wave of pain radiated from my chest. I looked down and saw that the bastard had shot me in the chest. I put an arm out to steady myself but I collapsed to the ground. My vision narrowed to a small tunnel for a long moment before winking out. The last thing I saw was Juan's face, fear written all over it, saying something I couldn't comprehend.

I awoke in a hospital room. Kaitlyn was curled up in a chair asleep. It was dark outside. I had an I.V. in each arm and my head felt fuzzy. Must've been the pain medication they were administering me via the I.V.'s.

The door to the room opened and a nurse came in, presumably to check vitals and whatnot. She came over and quietly asked how I was feeling. I told her I felt like I'd been kicked in the chest by a pissed off rhino and had my head filled with cotton candy. She just quietly laughed at me and told me, when I asked, that I'd been in the hospital for three days. The drugs kicked in before I could ask about Shiloh and I slipped back into slumber.

I awoke later in the morning and the sun was up, as was Kaitlyn. She cried as little girls do. She dried her tears and told me that I was stuck with her until just before school started; she'd told her mother in no uncertain terms that she was needed here because of what'd happened. Surprisingly, the ex didn't put up too much of a fight.

I asked if Shiloh was alright. Kaitlyn sadly smiled and told me that she was. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she'd leave it to Shiloh to explain when she stopped in to see me later in the day. This worried me, but Kaitlyn steadfastly refused to tell me what was wrong.

I ate breakfast and fell asleep. When I awoke again, Shiloh was there waiting, her right arm in a sling. She came over to me and gave me a soft kiss. Tears leaked from her eyes as she caressed my face. I asked how she was feeling and she told me that the knife had caused mostly just muscle damage and that it'd heal in a month or two.

She smiled, but her smile didn't quite touch her eyes. I took her hand and asked her what was wrong. She pulled a chair over, sat down and laid her head on my leg. I waited patiently while laid there.

In a barely audible whisper she started speaking, "When you and Kaitlyn left for y'alls dinner date, I stopped by your house and swam some laps. After I got done, I laid out on one of the lounge chairs and must've fallen asleep. When I woke up, it was already dark. I headed back to my house intending on grabbing just to grab a few changes of clothes for spending the night again. When I got out front of your house, I saw his truck.

"I ran back to my house, afraid for my momma. When I entered the house, the place was a mess. Stuff was turned over or knocked over. I tiptoed through the house, not sure what I'd find." She stopped, her hands shaking.

"What happened, Shi?" I gently prodded. "What'd you find?"

"Momma. I found my momma. He'd beat her half to death. He saw me and threatened to kill her if I didn't come into the kitchen where she was laying. When I got in there, he slapped me and knocked me to the floor.

"He called me a bitch and blamed me for him getting arrested and then disowned by his parents. He then turned back to my momma; she was barely recognizable. Then he sneered at me, picked up the butcher knife and stabbed my momma! More than one time. He had to've stabbed her a dozen times or more." She was crying now, her shoulders shaking. "I screamed in horror and that stopped him. Then he turned his eyes on me, Gary. They were empty. Dead. She coughed once and died. He yanked that knife from her body and stabbed me when I tried to attack him.

"I broke free and ran from the house with the knife still in my chest. I missed the first step and fell down the rest to the ground. I saw your truck and tried to get up and when I did, he was on me. He tried to squeeze the life from me and I tried to kick free. I got him in the crotch but that didn't break his grip. That's the last thing I remember." She was crying freely now. "She's gone, Gary! And I almost lost you as well! They told me Rudy shot you three times." She was hugging my leg tightly crying.

I gingerly pulled her up and onto my bed beside me. It was a tight fit and jostling around to get the both of us was painful for me, but the pain was worth it. Shiloh was still crying so I just held her. She moaned "Momma's gone!" over and over.

Kaitlyn came over and hugged us both, crying as well. After a few minutes, Kaitlyn excused herself to give us some time alone. We just laid there, me drugged to the gills and Shiloh sniffling. Eventually Shiloh's sniffling stopped and her breathing evened out.