Big Daddy

“Jesus! A little thing like you. I can’t imagine. I guess it made him feel really powerful. Asshole.” He spat the word out like it tasted awful in his mouth.

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t the last time, and it got progressively worse until I tried to leave. That time, I thought I still had a choice, and I had my bags all packed up and was ready to leave when he got off work. I thought I could just tell him I was leaving and he’d be okay with that, but then, he pushed me down and kicked me, broke two ribs before he picked me up and brought me to our bed.” I wasn’t going to tell him how Nick had forced himself on me. “He didn’t take me to the hospital until the next morning when I couldn’t get up to get out of bed. His only concern on the way was trying to get our story straight.”

“So you didn’t tell anyone.”

“There was no one to tell. By then he’d already separated me from my friends and family, and I was so busy with work, that I hadn’t really noticed it happening until I was alone. But he blamed me for it, said it had been my choice. I thought my parents could help me the second time, but they let their admiration for his badge fool them, and he’d said I was close to a breakdown. My parents believed his sob story, and with their help, he got me back.

He waited a month before he hit me again after that, until my parents thought everything was fine, and sadly until I was convinced it would be too. But it just got worse every time I ran.”

“He’s found you all those times? Why not just let you go?”

“He’s a control freak. He once told me that only way I’d truly leave him was in a pine box.”

Chance snarled and his hands fisted at his sides. “I’d like to put him in one.”

My body warmed at the protectiveness of the statement and I suddenly didn’t want to talk about Nick anymore. I took a deep breath and shook my head. “I’m sure I’m just being paranoid,” I said. “Let’s talk about you instead. What do you do here all day? You said you work from home.”

He stood up and tossed his fork into the sink and then put the rest of slice in the fridge. “Come to the back with me, and I’ll show you.” He held out his hand and helped me to my feet.

My body tingled at his touch and I followed as he led me to a big room in the back. “This is my workshop.” He flipped on the light, and the room was full of machinery. It looked like a commercial workshop with expensive gadgets and draft boards.

“Wow, this is nice. What do you do here?” I looked around, and before he could answer, I found a prosthetic arm lying on a table.

“I make prosthetics.” He walked over to a table on the far side of the room, and I saw a few more limbs.

“Did you make your own?”

He looked up as if he were surprised. “I didn’t know you knew about it. Did Star tell you?”

“No, I saw when you had on the sweats the other night. After your shower.” I had wanted to push him back into that bedroom and stripped them down. My cheeks warmed as I thought of myself on top of him, and I was sure he’d seen them redden.

“It’s just usually I can tell when someone knows. They give me this look. I never got that from you.”

“A look? Why would I do that? You’re just a normal guy who’s missing part of his leg. Quite frankly, you seem to be doing better than most men I’ve seen with two.” I turned and perused the room. “This equipment must have cost a fortune. How’d you get into this?”

“Well, thank you. Most people want to pity me. It gets old. You’d be surprised how many assume it makes me half a person, or incapable of doing things. I guess that’s why I do what I do. I like tailor fitting the prosthetics to the wearer’s needs. I haven’t found anything I can’t do with mine.”

“How did it happen? If you don’t mine me askin’,” I added, as I walked around and looked at the legs, trailing my hand along the smooth carvings and the cold metal frames.

“In the war. I don’t really remember much, but a bomb went off next to me, and my buddy was killed, and I woke up in the hospital a week later with half of my leg missing.”

“Damn. You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.”

“There were times I wished it had. The recovery wasn’t easy, and my home life was a mess at the time too.”