Free Blackwater by Tara Brown

cover my breasts that are spilling out.
    I clear my throat and repeat myself, "I don't have a choice, Mr. Whitlock. I'm not free the way you are. My parents have a lot of say."
    He paces and runs his hands through his hair. Finally he turns; anger is spread clear across his face, "You have a choice. You do. It's 1964 for Christ's sake. You are a grown woman." He is shouting now and pointing to the sky, "The civil rights act is going through this summer. Jesus. You southern belles with your manners and breeding are about as stupid and ridiculous as a girl can get. You'll let them sell you off like cattle?" His words are spit at me.
    I'm ashamed of myself for too many reasons to try to sort through them all at once. I feel the hardening look creeping across my face. My lip is quivering and my eyes are watering again, but I will not betray my emotions to him. I pick my shoes up from the grass and turn away.
    He grabs my arm, "Don’t you turn away from me." My shoes go flying across the grass and my dress makes a tearing sound.
    I shake my head softly, "You are acting like an ass. No different than Martin was." I step away from him but he grips me harder.
    When I look up I see the desperation in his eyes, "Is this what you want? You want him? A savage who would take away your innocence on the back lawn of the Governor's mansion?"
    I shake my head. I can't blink. My eyes are brimming with their maximum capacity for tears. I manage a whisper out, "No."
    He loses the control he has over his emotions and bends his face to kiss me with the kind of passion and intensity, I only have dreamt of. When his lips meet mine, my eyes close involuntarily forcing streams of wetness to slip down my cheeks. My lips are pressed against my teeth roughly.
    He pulls me back and shakes his head. "You won't marry him. I don’t care who I have to kill; you won't marry him." His accent is noticeable when he's angry, like the hold he has over it's undone by his emotions.
    He lets me go and walks past me. He leaves me standing in the mist that is building in the humid air under the canopy of a massive black walnut tree.
    I leave the shoes where they are and walk back toward the house. I walk past it and down the driveway. The lit torches make it easy for me to see where I'm going.
    If my momma could see me she would disown me. What a fantastical daydream that would be.
    Instead of taking the road, I cut through the hayfields that separate our plantations.
    The tear in my dress has given me room to breath, but it's still too tight. I unzip the back and slip the dress down my body. My white slip and bra feel like they glow in the dark, but I don’t care. Who is gonna see me? Who will even care about a girl running through the fields in a white slip?
    I step away from the dress and break into a run. Ramón and I used to run barefoot a lot. Momma hated it. My shoe size went from a size six to an eight. The running flattened my feet out; this was her theory. My theory was that my feet grew because I grew. If she coulda stunted my growth by the time I was twelve, I think she woulda. At nineteen, nearly twenty, I'm too tall, too fat, and my feet are too big. She calls them manly. She calls everything about me manly.
    Her criticism makes me run harder. I'm flying through the field. My toughened feet hit rocks and sticks and hay but it doesn’t hurt. I know it will tomorrow, but tonight my heart hurts and that takes precedence over any other pain.

Chapter Five

    "Danger Lorelei. You're in danger now." Voices filled my head. I groan and roll away from the cold breath. I'm too tired to feel it against my face. There is warmth in my bed and I roll to it. I think it's Em until it too whispers to me, "Sleep my love."
    It's like there is a battle on my bed. Cold on one side whispering of danger and warmth whispering of sleep. I choose the warmth and sigh in the warm whispers, "Sleep, Lorelei. My sweet, Lorelei." The warm breath hits my face as a kiss is planted