“Wait.” Lauren leaned towards me. “You lost your virginity to Jake?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Have you slept with anyone since him? Besides Cooper, I mean?”
“Nope.”
“So, Cooper is only the second guy you’ve ever slept with?”
My cheeks burned and I nodded.
“Holy shit.”
I sighed. “Yep.”
“And you did it in a bathroom.”
“You can stop talking now.”
She giggled again and nodded.
We sat there in silence, each thinking and processing to ourselves. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but I was kicking myself for wanting Cooper so desperately. He’d just ridden in on his white horse and I’d gone cross-eyed for him. He was kind, smart, and hotter than anything. He wanted to protect me. I didn’t stand a chance. He was every badass protagonist I ever wanted to write.
And my antagonist? Jake crossed my mind, too. More than I wanted him to. I was disgusted with the man I’d first loved and I wanted him to go away.
It didn’t seem like that was happening, though. Especially not when two officers arrived, led in by Tucker and Branson, and asked me about what had happened at the house. They still hadn’t been able to serve Jake with a restraining order and they were still under the impression that he wasn’t in town.
When I vehemently argued that he was and that I’d seen him, they looked skeptical, but listened. It went on like that. They couldn’t find him. He hadn’t been spotted in town by anyone but me. A neighbor of mine had actually seen who they believed to be a teenager writing the slur on my garage door. Had I pissed anyone else off? Was it possible that I’d just seen a shadow or something in the window?
By the time they left, I was angry at the world. Jake was making me look crazy to the police and I could feel it in my bones that he was planning something. He was a lazy asshole, but he’d never been dumb.
I just hoped that whoever I ended up with from Black Dog Security was ready.
Chapter 21
Cooper
“Are either of you feeling sick?” I looked down at Macey, curled up in her bed, pale and looking weak.
“No. We’re both fine. I don’t think it was anything she ate while she was with us, Cooper. We dropped her off with Lilah this morning, like you asked, and she was fine.”
I sighed. “I just figured I’d ask. I have a doctor coming over to see her, but I figured if one of you was sick, we could chalk it up to food poisoning and not have to worry about anything else.”
“I’m sure it’s something simple, son.” Mom sighed. “Lilah hasn’t gotten any nicer after all of these years.”
The woman in question was standing across from me with her hands on her hips. I agreed with my mom, but it wasn’t the time to hash out what a pain in the ass my ex was.
“I’ll call you and let you know how she’s doing.”
“Thank you, Cooper. I love you.”
“Love you, too.” I hung up and checked the time on my phone before slipping it back into my pocket. The doctor should’ve been there already. I rubbed my hands over my face, feeling the rough beard I’d been growing, and sighed.
“You two seem to have really gotten closer. Guess you forgave her for cheating on Daddy dearest?”
I tossed a look at Lilah and paced the small room. Macey looked the worse for wear, but she hadn’t been sick in a while.
“You also seem to be getting close with the chubby girl. What’s her name again?”
Frustration bubbled in my gut, but I kept my mouth closed. I wasn’t there for Lilah. I didn’t need to talk to her.
“Sonnie. She seems nice and… boring. I remember you liking it with a little more excitement.”
I sat down next to Macey and stroked my hand over her hair. She was clammy to the touch and had kicked off the covers Lilah draped over her. My chest ached for her. I hated seeing her sick.
“So, you’re just not going to talk to me?”
I looked back at Lilah and nodded. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Lilah. You’re being nasty for the sake of being nasty. I’m just here to make sure Macey is okay. That’s the reason you came to get me—right?”
“And what if I came to get you for other reasons?”
I scowled. “What about your boyfriend?”
“What about him?”
“Knock it off. I’m not interested.”
“Why? Because you have Betty Crocker back at the office waiting for you? That’s bullshit and we both know it, Coop.”
Hearing her call me Coop was like a button that made Sonnie’s voice play on repeat in my head. I wanted Sonnie saying it over and over again, shortening my name to give it something special. It also made me see Sonnie’s eyes welling up with tears when I’d left with Lilah.
Lilah took my silence as a green light. She stalked across the room to me and touched my shoulder. “Come on. We always had it in the bedroom. I know what you like, Coop.”
I shrugged her hand off and scowled. “I’m here for Macey. That’s it. I’m not interested in you or anything you could offer me. That ship sailed a long time ago, Lilah.”
She glared at me, but backed off. When a knock came from downstairs, she went to get it without saying anything else.
I breathed out a breath of relief when she left. She sucked all the air out of a room with her conniving. I shook my head and looked back down at Macey. She groaned in her restless sleep and then gagged before a bubbling volcano of puke came out of her mouth.
I rushed to turn her over onto her side and held her head over her trashcan while her little body shook and strained to get all of it out. My mind blanked everything out, except for making sure Macey was okay. I’d never seen her look so frail and it was consuming. The fear that she wasn’t okay, no matter how ridiculous, was there and it was strong.
I lost track of time, sitting there, holding her and rocking her in my arms. While the doctor was there, after he left, I held her. She threw up a few more times, once on me, but she finally settled into another restless sleep.
She’d somehow contracted a stomach virus. It looked like she’d be fine in a day or so, but the doctor warned Lilah and me that we’d probably come down with it too. Sure enough, before the end of the day, Lilah was locked away in her room, making sounds that could’ve been from any monster movie, and I was feeling queasy.
I knew I should call Sonnie and check on her, but by the time I felt comfortable leaving Macey’s side, it was just so I could find a bathroom myself.
Chapter 22
Sonnie
I was at Branson’s house for the night. It wasn’t where I wanted to be or where Branson wanted me, but it was where I was. Mercer hadn’t come out of his office, Vince had gone off to check on another job, Tucker’s house was apparently gross, and Cooper was MIA. Not that anyone besides me seemed worried.
Branson was quiet. Too quiet. I liked my peace as much as anyone, but in my state of anxiety and stress, I needed something to distract me. Like Vince’s dry humor or Tucker’s loud burps. I didn’t think of how Cooper would distract me because I was angry at him for not thinking to say anything to me.
Branson’s house was as quiet as he was. It was clean and nice, but there wasn’t a lot to it. No real décor, no photos, just walls and furniture. The room I was holed up in was bare, except for a bed and a dresser with nothing in it but a few dust bunnies.
He’d disappeared to somewhere else in the house, but was so silent that I had no way of placing him in any certain location. I had my phone, but it felt almost like sacrilege to pull it out and make a call while everything was so quiet in the house.
So, instead of doing anything to entertain myself, I curled up in bed and tried to go to sleep. It was early still, but I’d had a long few days. An early night wouldn’t hurt me. Only, instead of sleeping, I lay there and thought of all the things I wanted to say to Cooper.
When that got old, I moved on to Jak
e. I daydreamed about how I would rip him to shreds with words so acidic that he’d cry by the time I finished. I kept myself busy by reciting angry sentences at him in my head. I swore like a sailor in them and didn’t cry from being so angry, like I knew I would in real life.
At some point, I realized the lights outside of my room had gone out and everything was dark around me. I didn’t know when Branson had done it, but he’d moved stealthily through the house without me knowing.
Tired of thinking of ways to make Jake cry with my sharp tongue, I moved on to Lilah. I had plenty of ideas about what to say to her. I mouthed them all, keeping myself busy in a way that felt both silly and therapeutic. I knew Kellie would be proud of me.
When I felt like I was finally growing tired, I rolled over onto my side and stared at the blank wall across from me. I counted to twenty and then to one hundred. Exhaustion tugged at me, but my brain wouldn’t cut off. I looked at my phone for the hundredth time. Still no messages or calls from Cooper.
When I was just about convinced that Branson’s house would drive me absolutely insane, I heard a light pecking at my bedroom window. At first, I couldn’t place the sound. I strained to hear it again, just to gasp when it happened a second time. I sat up and looked around, finally placing it at the window. I went to it and looked out, expecting to see a tree branch tapping at the glass, but instead I saw a figure across the yard.
My heart leapt as a hand came up in a wave. Cooper. Cooper had come to see me when he could.
Excitement bloomed and I hurried to pull on the jacket Branson had let me borrow. Not wanting to wake him up if he was asleep already, I silently left my room and made my way to the back door. I opened it slowly and then shut it softly behind me. Barefoot on Branson’s wooden back porch, I wanted to cringe away from the cold, but I wanted to see Cooper and hear what he had to say more.
I was overly excited and if I’d just stopped to think about what I was doing, some sense of pride would’ve slowed me down, surely. Instead, I all but ran across the large backyard to where Cooper was standing in the treeline. He’d moved farther back, away from the house. Probably not to bother Branson, I assumed.
If I’d stopped at all to think about what I was doing, I hoped that I would’ve been smarter. As it was, I was tired and upset. It’d been a long day and I wanted to feel comforted by the fact that Cooper hadn’t dismissed me as a thing for someone else to do. I was desperate and that desperation sent me running into the night to meet the man I wanted to mean something to.
In the night, it was easy to convince myself that I mattered. It was easy to think that I was running out for a clandestine meeting. It was easy to think that a man much smaller than Cooper could be Cooper. Only when I was right on Jake did I realize it was him and not Cooper.
Too late, I realized that I’d run out into the middle of the night like an idiot, into the arms of my husband, the man who wanted me dead.
I meant to scream, but no sound came out. It gave Jake just enough time to grab me and snap his hand over my mouth. As he shoved my back against the rough bark of a pine tree, I looked up at him and thought of how wrong he’d been if he thought he was taking me without a fight.
“Who’d you think I was, Sonnie?” Jake whispered harshly against my face, his breath a rank mix of dark beer and peanuts. “I never thought something so easy would work. Why didn’t I just try this a while ago? You’re so desperate that you just come running at the sight of any man in your backyard? Or were you expecting someone?”
I jerked against him, wanting desperately to separate his balls from his body. I mumbled against his hand, but he didn’t move it to let me snarl at him.
“I like you better like this. Unable to talk, unable to complain. Unable to ask any stupid fucking questions.” He dropped his head and groaned into my ear. “I hated listening to you babble on. The past few years have been torture. You owe me everything and more, you bitch.”
Shocked wouldn’t begin to describe how I was feeling. I was furious, but biting through that was the horror at realizing, once and for all, how he really felt about me.
“I’ve had it all planned out for a while. My first plan didn’t work out so well, though. I wanted you to have to support me and watch as I lived a life that would make your skin crawl. Stupid fucking judge ruined that one. So, instead, I’ve decided to take everything from you. Your dirty grandpa’s millions and everything you’ve got, too. I want it all, Sonnie, and I’m going to take it.”
If I’d been calm enough to roll my eyes, I would’ve.
“You should’ve gotten that will. You should’ve done a lot of things differently. Instead, here you are, almost thirty and alone, about to become another statistic. You trusted the wrong man, didn’t you, Sonnie? You thought that because this guy worked with a security firm, you could trust him. You went home with him and then things got carried away.”
I looked back towards the house and prayed Branson would look outside at what was going on. I really wanted to be rescued at about that point.
“It doesn’t seem like soldier boy is coming out to save you. You did a good job of leaving the house quietly. You came out, just like a good girl.”
I shook my head enough to get his hand away from my mouth and spit at him. “Why are you doing this? Why didn’t you just get a fucking job and make your own money, you lowlife?”
Jake’s knuckles slapped against my mouth, forcing my lips to crack against my teeth as they collided. “I had a job. It was never good enough, though, was it? I was never going to amount to enough for you and your family.”
I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but the more he talked, the more time I had before I had to deal with him wanting to murder me.
Chapter 23
Sonnie
“So this is all about some sense of inadequacy you felt with my family?”
Jake gripped my shoulders and slammed me into the tree trunk. “This is about your family laughing at me behind my back for years. They never thought I was good enough for you. So I quit trying. Let them mock me while I sat fat and happy. While I fucked my way through all of your friends and all of our neighbors. All while you worked and worked, never knowing a single thing.”
I swallowed more blood that kept coming from my lips and held his glare. “Congrats? You cheated. You want a medal for it?”
“I didn’t just cheat. You paid for every bit of it. The joke was always on you. As it should’ve been. As it should’ve stayed. You paid that judge into not granting me alimony, didn’t you? You should’ve had to continue to support me. God knows I deserved it after having to sleep with your dumpy ass for all those years.”
If he was trying to hurt me, it wasn’t working. In the face of real violence, his measly words were nothing. I could handle him talking. I wasn’t sure I could take getting hit many more times. “How do you plan on this working?”
“That’s the genius in it all. You’ve been telling the cops I’ve been harassing you, but they think I’ve been out of town. Thanks to a cock- and money-hungry woman I know, I’ve been hanging out in Florida for weeks. Just tonight, I was with her at a club. We stayed out late and got drunk and then went back to her room and fucked like bunnies. No cameras in the club or in the shitty little motel we stayed at, so who’s to say I wasn’t there? No one will see me here. Except you. And you’ll be cold and rotting, waiting for someone to find you.”
My heart leapt and I made the easiest decision of my life. I wasn’t going down without a fight. He was strong, but I wasn’t a frail woman. I was strong in my own ways. He clearly didn’t give me enough credit.
Jake opened his mouth to say some other disgusting thing, but I surprised him by screaming at the top of my lungs, for all I was worth. By the time he got my mouth covered again, I’d stirred up the wildlife and a few dogs close by. Barking and howling shattered the depth of the night. My mouth was still open, so Jake’s fingers slipped into my mouth and I clamped my teeth down as hard as I could.
/>
Nature took over and I bit until I tasted his blood and then kept biting until he yanked his bloody fingers from my mouth. While he clutched his hand, I yanked away from him, ripping my skin on the tree bark, and tried to run towards Branson’s house.
Jake recovered and tackled me. We were in the middle of Branson’s backyard then. As Jake rolled me over and sank on top of me, his fingers fumbled to latch around my throat. I jerked my head from side to side, fighting with everything I had.
“Your blood is everywhere, Jake. You can’t hide that. You’re done!”
He gave up on my throat and pulled back enough to slam his fist into my cheek. Pain bloomed out and my eyes rolled as I fought to stay conscious.
“You deserve this! You don’t get to go on and be happy and fucking rich. I earned that money!” He hit me again and then wrapped his fingers around my throat again.
Adrenaline surged through my body, but it seemed to stop just before my hands. I tried to force my arms up but nothing worked. I just lay there, feeling the life drain out of my body.
Jake squeezed harder and snarled down at me. His face was a mask, but in it there were pieces of the same boy who’d proposed to me, on one knee in front of my whole family and about ten dozen multicolored roses. Had the man over me always been there, lying in wait?
Even as I tried to suck in air through a bruised and constricted throat, I was horrified at the idea of having spent almost every night of my adult life sleeping next to a man who had murder in him.
I didn’t want to die under him. Even if he was caught, I didn’t want the last thing I saw to be the face of a monster who’d fooled me for so long. It fueled me to fight harder. Gasping for one last breath, I lifted my arm and clawed at Jake’s face. I dug my nails into whatever I could and found purchase in the soft skin under his eyes. I felt it tug and pull under my nails before breaking.
Black Dog Security- Complete 5-Part Series Page 14