Crying Lambs (2)

I lead her to a stone bench at the top of the stairs, catty-cornered to the bathroom, and sit down heavily, closing my eye. "Let me know when the lambs stop screaming, Clarisse." I whisper.
"What?"
"It's a quote. 'Silence of the Lambs'." Val looks confused and I shake my head, "Never mind.. Not that important." I take her hand and run it over my left arm.
Her eyes grow wide, "Oh my God. Did he..." her voice trails off.
"No. No. That was me. But...he wasn't fully without fault. I was pregnant when I did this-almost a year ago now."
"So," he voice sounded unsure in this new territory. "You have a baby? With Grant?"
"No, I lost it a few months later. Not because of this..." I sigh, "When I told him, Grant wanted me to get an abortion. We had a huge fight about it and..."I hold up my arm and there is the end, the long scar that shows milky in the moonlight. "I loved him. Fully. Desperately. He'd spent so long trying to convince me that I was pathetic, ugly, that he was the only guy who could ever love me. I started to believe it." I stop. The door to the ballroom opens, then slams closed. Val opens her mouth to speak, but I hold a finger up to my lips, gesturing her to get into the bathroom. She walks in quickly and I slip off my shoe, massaging my heel.
"Val?" Grant peeks around the metal door, getting an unintended look down my dress top. His eyes pop slightly and I sit up quickly.
"Apparently, I'm not here. Why you looking? Your puppy dog get loose from her leash?"
"She went to the bathroom." he shoots back. "I wasn't sure.."
"Not sure if the Big Bad Bitch was telling her more horror stories?"
He glares at me, "I don't want you feeding her a line. It's taken long enough to convince her that I'm not the Devil Incarnate."
"You aren't? Wow. Coulda fooled me." my mind, still attuned to Grant's moods, begins to tell my mouth to shut up, because I am about to get myself into trouble.
He moves closer, "Listen, bitch,  know that you talked to her when I asked you about my car. I don't know what you said, but you got her to stay away from me for a week."
"Ooh, poor Grant." I sneer, feeling mean and snarky, "You didn't have your blow-doll for a week. Don't know how you survived, 'cause Lord knows you live for sex."
He sneers back, "I haven't had sex with her. I actually  care about her- you were just a fuck toy. You're still just a pathetic little bitch, aren't you? Still just as ugly and as much of an attention-whore as you were when I left you."
I close my eyes, willing myself not to listen, not to let him drag me back into that place where he has control. "Shut up, Grant."
"You always wanted it." he continues, taunting, trying to pull me back into the sick little games that he played when we were dating. "It was never rape- it's not rape if you don't say no. And if I smacked you around a little bit, it was just to keep you in line."
"So that's what you're gonna do to her? 'Smack her around' to keep her in line? Or has she just given in to all of the shit that you feed her about being ugly and worthless? Gonna knock her up and leave her to die, too? Jerk." I spit, trying to think of something that will hurt him half as much as he's hurt me. "You're just a jerk, Grant, a runner. A coward. Just like your father."
His hand shoots out so fast that I don't even have time to react. All that I know is one minute, I'm standing up, the next, I'm on the floor, dimly feeling pain.
"Bitch." he spits, angrily, slamming the ballroom doors behind him.
Slowly, I stand up. There is blood all over my palms and my face feels sticky. Mutely, I walk into the bathroom, bending over the sink and ignoring Val's face, ghost white, behind me. Carefully, I sponge most of the blood off of my face, and lean my head bac, keeping a towel under my nose. "Crap," I mutter, "I really hope that this isn't broken."
"He hit you." Val's voice comes from behind me. "That's why you kept wanting to make sure that I was ok." I nod, quite an exercise when your head is at a ninety-degree angle with the floor. "But...he hasn't done it to me. It won't happen to me, right? I mean, he couldn't. I love him, and he loves me. Besides, you pushed him."
"Val." I say, closing my eyes, "That wasn't the first time. Besides, if I hadn't said anything, he would have hit me anyway."
"No," she starts to back slowly out of the bathroom, "he just...he wouldn't." she turns and leaves; I slam my hand on the counter: great, I've just lost her.
When I finally make it back to the ballroom, I find Jess and tap him on the shoulder. "Baby," I say, suddenly exhausted, feeling pieces of my world begin to crumble in my hands. "take me home."
Jess paces back and forth in my kitchen, his suit jacket thrown over a chair, his hair falling out of its slicked-back ponytail from him running his hands through it so often. He looks furious.
I sit at the table, holding an icepack gingerly on my nose, hoping that it, along with some carefully-applied makeup, will cover the extent of the damage. Dropping the icepack, I turn to Kent, sitting beside me, looking a little bit lost.
"Hon, can you go get my makeup bag? It's in the bathroom, under the sink. The leopard print one."
He nods and practically runs out of the kitchen. I can understand his hurry: for the entire ride home, and the hour that we have been here, Jess has alternately paced the kitche,, and burst out with angry fragments of thought. I have never seen him lose his temper, but now he looks so angry that I am both scared to be around him, and scared to let him leave.
Kent returns, placing the bag on the table, and watches as I sort through the jumbled contents, surfacing with a tube of lipstick, a jar of concealer and one of liquid makeup, and powder. Fascinated, he watches as I blot and rub and powder away, working until the bruising around my eyes and nose is almost totally invisible. When I look up, he seems dumbfounded, opening and closing his mouth soundlessly, like a fish under water. "Where did you learn to do that?" he asks, incredulous.
"Cosmo." I shrug.
"Cillie," he asks, slowly, "how many times has Grant hit you? You know how to do that way too well for this to have been the first time."
I shake my head, shooting a pointed look at where Jess is now standing shock-still. He looks, first at me, then at the makeup bag in front of me, as if piecing everything together. His eyes are practically glowing. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him!" he turns, kicking a kitchen chair and stomping out the door.
"Damnit, Kent." I snap, "You couldn't have just kept your mouth shut?" I grab my keys and purse from the table by the door where I had dropped thme when we came in, and follow Jess out, Kent close on my heels. Stopping to slide on my heels, I hear Jess' Harley engine turn over and roar out of the driveway.
Outside, I jump into the car and throw my phone to Kent. "We need Chris and Mose, whoever you know that's big. No cops- we've already got enough problems on our hands. You have Val's number?" he nods. "Call." I command, "and put her on speaker. Tell her to get Grant out of there. And to haul ass doing it."