I nodded and buried my head in the pillow, the tears still falling. When I closed my eyes, I saw Bear’s face again.
Bryce came back into the room. He lifted me again in his arms and carried me to the bathroom. For some reason, when he was near, I felt a lot safer. Once there, he sat me down and turned the running water off. He helped me out of my clothes, tested the water with his hand, and told me, “Get in.”
I obeyed.
Bryce kneeled near the tub, took a washcloth, and started washing me with it. I allowed him to bathe me. I knew that I was just too shaken up to do it myself, to get the blood off of me. I kept my eyes closed as the cloth was pressed against my face to clean off the blood that had leaked from Bear’s body. I was so scared about what would happen to me now. And who was his family? Despite the fact that he had tried to hurt me, I couldn’t help but wonder how his loved ones would feel about him being dead.
Bryce took a deep breath and said, “Giselle, his body is gone. That’s over and done with. The best thing to do is to try to put this behind you. Angel was not supposed to leave. And dude, he saw an opportunity and he took it. Angel left to bail my mom out of jail.”
I nodded my head. He was right about that part. The guy saw an opportunity and tried to overpower me and take it. But inside I didn’t think that I would be able to put it behind me. I had killed a man. All these things that had happened to me just seemed a little too difficult to just put behind me. Bear had terrified me so much that I had murdered him. What should I have done? Although the murder was going to affect me for a long time, I knew I had made the right decision. I hadn’t tried to kill him. I was fighting for my own life. I was protecting myself.
“You can stay in my room with me tonight.”
That was a relief. I didn’t want to go back to the room where it had happened. It would be like reliving it all over again.
After a few more minutes, Bryce rinsed the soap off of me. He helped me stand and held out a towel for me to step into. He wrapped it around me, and I followed him into the bedroom. I let him dry me off and help me into a long, crisp white T-shirt. For once, I cared less about the fact that I was naked in front of Bryce. I didn’t want him to leave me alone at all. He made me feel safe and comforted. I didn’t want that feeling to go away, even if it had to do with a man I had once hated. Once he was done, he pulled back the covers on the bed and allowed me to slip underneath them.
He went into the bathroom again and came back with a paper cup filled with water and a pill. He sat down next to me. “Take this. It will help you sleep.”
Bryce didn’t seem like the bad person that I initially thought he was, and right now he was being so gentle and caring toward me. So I had no reason to think the pill was anything other than what he said it was. Easily, I accepted the pill, tossing it down my throat and swallowing the water in the paper cup before giving it back to him.
When Bryce stood, panic rose in me. I did not want to be left alone. So I protested, “No! Please don’t leave.”
“I’m not.” He put the cup down on a nearby nightstand. Then he lay down next to me on the bed.
I knew that a part of me hated Bryce for kidnapping me, but another part of me hated him for exposing the truth about my husband, a truth that had caused me to question our whole marriage and realize that it was one big-ass lie. For a brief moment after Bryce showed me the DVD and I talked to Percy at the park, I had wished that I didn’t know anything. I had wished that the facade of my life hadn’t been torn down and I wasn’t aware of the truth. I mean, back then life was so perfect. I guessed I’d been lost in all the materialistic things and all the stuff my husband told me and did for me. I had thought I would live out the rest of my life in bliss, with my husband and his money. And now ... my future was in question. Everything was just a mess in my life.
But just as I had to admit that my husband was horrible, I also had to admit that Bryce wasn’t as bad as I thought he was. He was showing me that he wasn’t a monster; he had a heart. From the start he had stopped his goons from raping me. Then, when he got me, he could have done everything from torturing me to raping me or beating me. But he did none of that. And now he was taking care of me, and I was someone that he hated, despised. Although I had plenty of reasons to feel differently about him, he had no real reasons not to still despise me. And I still didn’t know what Bryce had in store for me. But in that moment I welcomed his arms wrapped around me. By Bryce being there and not leaving my side, I felt I was safe from anyone else trying to violate or hurt me. At least I hoped. I didn’t know what other surprises were in store for me.
The next morning I kicked the covers off me and rolled over onto my back. I blinked a couple times before finally noticing Bryce standing over the bed.
“Morning,” he said in a husky voice.
He had never said “Morning” to me before. He must be warming up to me a little bit, I thought.
“Hi. How long have I been asleep?”
“Almost two days.”
“Wow. Doesn’t seem like it.”
“There are clothes for you on the nightstand. Get dressed, and I will get you out of this house.”
I nodded and stood to my feet. “Where are you taking me? Is something going on?”
Memories of what had happened with Bear flooded my thoughts. I definitely didn’t feel as paranoid as I was before, but it was still in the back of my head. I shook my head and tried to focus on something else.
“I was thinking you may want to get some air. And I figured that now you would probably act like you got some sense and would not try to get away.”
The thought of getting fresh air sounded good, so I agreed.
The drive was superlong and seemed never ending. But it was a relief to be out of the house. He exited the 5 on Lake Hughes Road, stopped at McDonald’s, and grabbed us some food. Then we ended up at Castaic Lake. Bryce allowed me to get out of the car and sit on a nearby bench with him.
“You ever been out this way before?” he asked me after stuffing his last french fry in his mouth. I was surprised. This was the first time he had tried to engage in a conversation with me since he had kidnapped me.
I took a sip of my Coke before saying, “Yeah. My father took my brother and me here once when we were smaller.”
“Did y’all do a lot of things together?”
“Not too much.” I took another sip of my soda. “My parents were workaholics. They always had this notion of building a foundation. They worked their asses off to provide my brother and me. It just sucks how things panned out.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My life is supposed to be different. I’m supposed to be a college graduate by now. My brother should be one as well. It’s the way it was supposed to be. That is what my parents always wanted. They sacrificed their whole life for that. But when things went bad and my father passed and my mother just couldn’t hold it together. My brother and I were really stuck. Then my mother killed herself.”
He looked surprised when I said that.
“But with my husband, things were different. I always felt he represented that security blanket. His foundation was vast. My future and my brother’s future were set the day I became his wife. My worries were over. I had more money than I could ever imagine needing and wanting. Up until meeting you and discovering what I discovered, I never felt a need to question the life I had with my husband. Or the way he acquired his wealth. I never felt a reason to be concerned. And you’re right about what you said about me. How you felt that I was a stuck-up bitch. You were right. I had no right to look down on you, Bryce. After what my husband did to your sister, I’m surprised you haven’t done that to me by now.”
“I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a rapist or even a woman beater. I’m not a violent man at all, unless I have to be. But sometimes in life, circumstances cause you to act out of character.”
He was right about that. It took me back to murdering Bear. I never would have known that I
had it in me to do something like that. I didn’t want to discuss it, though, or think about it. So I said, “But what about your life? What made you follow the path you followed?”
“Look, just so we’re clear, the shit I do, I don’t like it. In fact I hate it. And there is some truth to you saying that I’m committing genocide. But in my defense, this is the only life I have ever known. Imagine your father getting arrested, and you, at the age of ten, have to bag up a brick of cocaine, put it in your backpack, and ride it over to your father’s homeboy’s house. That was the only life I knew. To take care of my brother and my little sister while my father was locked down, I had to take over the business. I was doing something I didn’t want to do but had to do.
“What made the situation worse, hell on earth, was when my mother succumbed to the same thing I was pushing for my father. So then I realized that I was the only person in our household strong enough to hold us down. I stopped going to school and sold drugs to support my family and to support my mother’s addiction, so she didn’t have to be out there selling her body. I couldn’t bear to see that.” He took a deep breath. “So if there’s anybody more ashamed about what I’m doing, believe me when I say it’s me. I don’t glorify shit about the dope game.”
So he had a conscience. He wasn’t one of those big-time drug dealers doing it for the money, hoes, clothes, or the lifestyle. It made me respect him more. I also understood how he felt about having to be the backbone of his family. That was what I became when my father died.
“So we relate on something,” I observed.
“What’s that?”
“We were the source and support for both our families. The one everybody else depended on.”
“You could say that.” He nodded.
“Is your father still alive?”
“No. He died in prison. He was killed in a riot.”
I gasped, in shock. “What about your mother?”
“She is a fully functioning drug addict. Meaning she can’t function without it. Matter of fact, Brianna was born addicted to crack. We don’t know who her father is. But somehow, she turned out okay.”
Damn. We had more in common than I thought. He had lost his father as well. But it seemed that I really had mine and he never fully had his. It gave me a little peace with my father’s death. Because all this time I had felt unsettled about it. I had felt he went too soon and that his death led to my mother’s death, which had devastated me further. Bryce never really had his father. And while his mother was alive, she really wasn’t, because of her addiction. Don’t get me wrong. I still felt like I had two chunks of my heart missing. But nonetheless, his story made me feel a little better. Because I connected with him. He shared my pain.
“You know what, Bryce? You’re an orphan, just like me.”
He chuckled. “I never thought about it like that. But I guess I am. A twenty-nine-year-old orphan.”
“You know what I think our problem is?”
“What?”
“My husband offered me stability. For years, I was afraid of not having something my parents gave me. But it’s that same stability you found in drugs. And to be without it, probably even to this day—”
“Scares the shit out of me.”
“Right.”
Our eyes locked for a few seconds before he said, “Come on. Let’s walk and talk further.”
“Okay.”
We had more in common than I ever imagined. I felt like such a bitch for judging him and for how I’d looked down on him, like he was beneath me. Really he wasn’t. In fact my husband was beneath him. Money didn’t make my husband a better man than Bryce, and if I stripped the money away, what good could I possibly find in my husband given what I now knew? God would probably be more forgiving to Bryce than he would be to my husband.
I hoped Bryce would stay with me again tonight, because I had not completely healed from the Bear situation. I needed Bryce by my side.
Chapter 14
For the next few days, Bryce was kind enough to let me out of his house, and take me out somewhere. Most of the places were remote, but nonetheless I appreciated it. A couple of times, he took me along with him when he went to visit his little brother, whom I had grown to like so much.
Right after the incident with Bear, Angel came over with lobster tails, which he threw on the portable George Foreman Grill he had in the kitchen. He apologized to me over and over about the incident.
“You didn’t know he was going to do what he did, right?” I asked him.
“Right. I swear.”
“Well, then it is okay. Yeah, it still bothers me, but I will be able to push past it eventually. And whatever is left of it, hey, I will just find a way to deal with it. ’Cause from the way my future looks and the things that I have discovered, there is going to be a lot more stuff coming my way that I am going to have to deal with.”
“I like the way you think, Giselle,” he said, flipping over the lobster tails. “Damn, I wish things were different and you—”
“Boy, don’t even try it!”
“I was going to say you and my brother could have hooked up.” He changed his tone so he sounded nerdy. “Damn. What kind of a guy do you think I am?”
I laughed. “Your brother and I are from two different worlds. Our meeting is simply by circumstance.”
“Yeah, but you two connect on some shit. He told me. And I’m over here enough to see the way he looks at you, and you be looking at him back on the low. I’m good at reading body language.”
I laughed it off. But I was thinking about how Bryce had talked to Angel about what we discussed. Made me feel like I was on Bryce’s mind. But not in a bad way.
“Look at you blushing.”
I laughed again. I really liked Angel. It sucked that he, his brother, and his sister were born into the predicament that they were born into. And I really hoped he did what he said he was going to do, go to aviation school.
“Giselle, go look in the bottom cabinet,” he whispered.
“Okay.” I pulled the cabinet door open and saw a birthday cake. I peered closer at it and saw Bryce’s name on it. “Today is his birthday?”
“Yeah. And that’s why if you try to do something dumb, like escape, you going to ruin what I got planned.”
I laughed at that.
I knew that no matter how cool Angel was, I would not be able to get away from him, so I didn’t bother. I was trying to make the best of my situation. And Bryce had already told me that if I did anything stupid, I would be tied to the bed again, with a gag in my mouth. He was cool, but he was still sticking to his plan. He didn’t talk too much about it to me, but I knew he was still using me as a ploy to get his sister back. I understood and respected it. I didn’t want to test the waters. And I was happy to get out of the room, so why not? That did not mean I was happy with still being held here. I didn’t want to be a prisoner of anyone, and that included my husband. But I had no say in this ordeal. I just prayed that Brianna would be found and Bryce would let me go, so I could make my own decision about where I would go. I knew it wouldn’t be back to my husband.
Angel went on. “What you think the lobster tails are for? That nigga loves them. He don’t like celebrating it, though. Our little sister, Bri, would always make him a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, whether he wanted her to or not. She started making them out of her Easy-Bake Oven. Then she learned how to cook them in a real oven.” He chuckled. “That girl loved to cook. She started watching the Food Network and trying to make shit off of there. That Paula Deen and that couple that cooks together. She said she wanted to open up her own bakery when she finished up school.”
His lips twitched for a second before he added, “So, anyway, year after year she would always make my brother and me a birthday cake. She said we had to have one every year.” He chuckled sadly. “So I couldn’t stop her tradition, even if I had to bring a store-bought one. Even if it meant she wouldn’t be here.”
“When is thi
s stuff going to be done?” Bryce asked, walking into the kitchen, interrupting the conversation.
I closed the door to the cabinet quickly.
“Giselle, how that potato salad looking?” Angel asked.
I had made the sides, potato salad and corn on the cob. I didn’t mind doing it. I checked the corn, which was boiling in the pot. “Let me pull the corn out, and we’re good.”
Bryce looked surprised to see me so at peace with what I was doing. But I liked Angel. Really I did. He took my mind off current things. Things my mind needed to be off of.
I pulled the corn out of the pot and placed it on a plate, while Angel put the lobster tails on the table. I handed him the corn and then pulled the potato salad out of the fridge, like I was at home.
“I didn’t think you could boil water, as pampered as you seem to be,” Bryce told me.
“I haven’t been rich all my life. When I lived with my parents, I did most of the cooking,” I replied. I locked eyes with Bryce and saw his approval.
“As far as I’m concerned, that shit’s unheard of. All the broads I run into want to be taken out and get an attitude if I ask their ass so much as to make a sandwich, man. So Giselle got a plus from me,” Angel said.
Bryce didn’t respond to his brother. He just continued to stare at me.
When we sat down to eat, I laughed at Angel. He and I could not get enough of the lobster tails, and we both went through six of them on our own.
I was surprised to see Bryce sample the potato salad and corn.
“How is it?” I asked him.
“Good, bab—” Bryce cleared his throat before he got the full word out. “Pretty good,” he said, correcting himself.
I looked down at my lap. It sounded good to hear him call me that, even if only halfway. It was funny how at first I was every bitch in the book. Now he had to stop himself from calling me “baby.” Like he couldn’t let on that his view of me, as well as his feelings, were changing. But I knew they had, because mine had.
Sweet Giselle Page 13