Law of Attraction (Tangled in Texas)

by Alison Bliss

  I didn’t know who he was talking about, and it was starting to scare the hell out of me. “Austin, who are you talking about? Where did you see him?”

  “He comes to our house sometimes. I don’t like going with him, though.”

  I blinked repeatedly. “Jeremy? Is that who you’re talking about?”

  “Yeah. I don’t like him. He calls me names.”

  A spark of fury lit inside of me. “What do you mean? What does he call you?”

  “He calls me a brat. But it’s not nice to call names. Right, Momma?”

  “No, it’s not.” I closed my eyes and counted to ten, not that it helped any. Jeremy hadn’t lifted a finger to help find his son. And even now, he wasn’t here to make sure Austin was okay. He just didn’t give a damn about being a father, and the asshole proved it every time he had been given the opportunity.

  Well, that was fine by me because I no longer gave a shit what the court order said. Biological father or not, this was the last time that man would pick up my child and have him in his care. “Don’t worry, baby. You don’t have to see that bad man anymore.”

  A huge smile spread on Austin’s face as he lifted his arms for me to put his shirt on. When he was finally dressed, I gazed over at Emily. “Could you do me a huge favor?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  I hesitated, knowing the last thing I wanted to do was leave Austin’s side right now. But he was content and happy and didn’t seem to be the least bit traumatized by the events of the evening. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same for myself. “Would you mind taking Austin home with you and Jake for a little while? It won’t be for very long, but I have something I need to take care of.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Of course.”

  Emily probably assumed I would be going to find Seth and work things out with him, but that wasn’t what I had in mind. While I had no doubt that Jake would protect my child with his life when it came to Bishop, there was another threat in my son’s life that also needed to be dealt with. One that I would be taking care of myself.

  …

  I pulled into his driveway a little faster than usual, shoved the gear shifter into park, and blew out an irritated breath. If I thought my foul mood couldn’t get any worse, I was wrong.

  Jeremy should’ve been at the hospital tonight waiting to hear if his son was going to be okay. Not sitting around a campfire drinking beer with a couple of his idiot friends.

  I slung open my car door and marched up to them with my hands on my hips and narrowed eyes on Jeremy. “Your son is fine, not that you seem to give a damn.”

  Almost immediately, the two men sitting with him jumped out of their chairs and headed for their beat-up old truck, muttering how they’d talk to Jeremy later. The chickenshits. But Jeremy didn’t seem the least bit concerned by my presence. He just sat farther back in his plastic chair and tipped his hat up to give me a once-over.

  “Aren’t you even going to say anything?”

  He took another swig off his beer, then tossed the empty can into the fire. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to show some kind of care where your son is concerned. I want you to be a man and grow the fuck up.”

  He groaned and rose to his feet, then grumbled under his breath as he headed for his front door.

  “That’s it? You’re just going to walk off? You’re not even going to own up to what you did?”

  He turned back to me. “Jesus Christ, woman. A guy makes one little mistake and you come over here pulling this shit? It was a one-time occurrence. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn straight it won’t happen again. Because you’re not allowed to pick Austin up anymore.”

  “Not allowed. Ha.” Jeremy rolled his eyes. “You can’t stop me. The court says—”

  “Don’t go there. If you think for one second that the court won’t hear all about you letting your five-year-old son wander off into the woods by himself, you’re delusional. I’m going to have your parental rights stripped from you so fast, whether you like it or not. You’re a danger to my son, and I’m not going to let you within a mile of him. Austin deserves better than you. He always has.”

  “I guess no one can be a perfect parent like you, doll.”

  I shook my head. “It has nothing to do with being perfect. It’s about making that little boy a priority and loving him enough to want to keep him safe and secure.”

  “Yeah, well good luck with keeping me away from him. I’m that boy’s father. I have rights.”

  “You’re unfit to call yourself anyone’s father. I’ve tried to get you to take an interest, but you’ve made no effort.”

  “I’ve tried my best.”

  Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “From day one, you’ve never been anything more than a sperm donor and even Austin recognizes the difference. Why do you think he hasn’t ever called you dad?”

  “That’s because you’ve filled his head with lies about me.”

  “I’ve done no such thing. If anything, I’ve kept myself from telling my son the truth about you. That you’re nothing but a chickenshit coward who isn’t man enough to be a father to his own son.”

  “What’d you call me?”

  “You heard me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You bitch.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said with a one-shoulder shrug. “But at least I’m not a disappointment to everyone around me.”

  Fire lit in his eyes, and he reared his hand back.

  I flinched but managed to stand my ground. “You want to hit me, Jeremy? Then do it,” I dared him. “Because once you do, I’ll get sole custody of my son without a problem. It’ll be worth it.”

  He gritted his teeth together but lowered his hand. “Oh, I’m sure you’d love that. But I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of me firing one off at you.”

  I laughed sardonically. “Satisfaction? You’ve got to be kidding, right? You wouldn’t know how to satisfy me if I got myself off. Besides, this is hardly the first time you fired too fast. I should know. I’ve slept with your sorry ass.”

  I turned to leave, but barely made it back to my car before Jeremy’s hand twisted into the hair on the back of my scalp. I tried to open my car door, but he yanked me away from it and threw me up against the side of his nearby truck. The moment I turned back around to face him, his open palm slapped across my left cheek, knocking me back.

  Stunned by the hard blow, I held my stinging cheek as the adrenaline coursed through my veins. A red mist filled my vision.

  He sighed. “Damn it. Now look at what you made me do.” He hesitated for a moment but then took a step toward me.

  “Get away from me,” I demanded, the words grounding out between my clenched teeth.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he continued to come closer.

  Afraid of what else he might do, I darted around him to get to my car, but he grasped my arm in a bruising grip to stop me from leaving. When I swung my free arm to strike him, he blocked it and then winched my other arm into an awkward angle behind my back. Pain shot through me, and I yelped. I continued to fight him, but he was too strong and it only seemed to make him angrier.

  Jeremy grabbed my chin roughly and forced me to look directly at him. “You want the truth? Fine. I only wanted joint custody of that brat so I wouldn’t have to pay you child support. Not only that, but I never gave a damn about you. I only fucked you to get back at Jake. But it didn’t work, since he’d already left town. Guess he didn’t want you, either, you whore.”

  “You’re a disgusting pig. Everything about you repulses me.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s not what you said the night you spread your legs for me. You wanted every inch of me inside you. You were practically begging for it.”

  “That’s what you’d like everyone to believe, isn’t it? But I was there. I know what happened between us. We may have only slept together one time, and maybe I came to my senses way too late, but I regretted having sex with
you from the moment my clothes hit the floor. With every half-ass stroke, I just wanted you to hurry up and finish so I could get as far away from you as possible. Even then, I hated myself for letting you touch me.”

  “You’re a goddamn liar. You wanted it.”

  “I’d had a rough day at work, got drunk, and was in self-destructive mode. So I did the one thing I swore to everyone I would never do. You.”

  Jeremy released the grip he had on my chin and whipped another hard blow across my face. Pain lashed through my cheek and into my jaw, clacking my teeth together. I shook my head to clear my vision, but the blinding fear of how far out of control he was sent shock waves through me. Though our encounter had already taken an ugly turn, I needed to get away from him before things worsened.

  So, just like Seth had taught me, I thrust the palm of my hand upward into Jeremy’s nose, hard enough to allow me to escape his clutches. He immediately bent at the waist, holding his nose and cussing loudly, and I took off at a dead run for my truck.

  But I didn’t get the door open before Jeremy caught up with me and tackled me. I tumbled forward onto the ground, the impact forcing all the air from my lungs. My elbows scraped against the gravel as bits of rock embedded into my arms. Jeremy flipped me over roughly, ripping my T-shirt in the process and revealing my white cotton bra beneath it. I quickly moved to cover myself, but Jeremy slammed my arm back against the rock-laden ground and held it down so hard that his fingers left depressions in my skin.

  “Well, well. What do we have here?” His glazed eyes focused on my chest, and he gave me a sadistic grin.

  I knew that look well. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Why not? You like what that other asshole does for you, don’t you? Well, he doesn’t have a damn thing that I don’t. I could show you what a real man can do for you.”

  Jeremy wedged himself between my legs to push them open, and a hard ridge pressed against me through my blue jean shorts. Leaning forward, he pressed all of his weight onto me and held me in place as he reached down and unzipped his pants.

  Panic rushed through me, and I fought him as hard as I could, but my resistance only seemed to excite him more. It was as if there was some sort of prize element involved and my protests were nothing more than echoes in the background that he blatantly ignored.

  He shoved his hand down my shorts and found the top of my panties with his fingertips. The thought of him sliding under them and having access to me made me gag. Damn it, Bobbie. Do something!

  With a sudden burst of renewed energy that he hadn’t expected, I bit his arm as hard as I could and then shoved him off of me. I barely managed to pull my legs together before he pounced on me again. But this time, one of my legs was between his. Hard and fast, I brought my knee up and planted it into his groin. He groaned and fell over, his hands instantly going to his crotch where I’d hurt him most.

  I scrambled to my feet and bolted toward my truck. As I stumbled across the rocky drive, I realized one of my flip-flops had fallen off, but I wasn’t about to go back for it. Jeremy shouted vulgar threats. Loud enough that I worried he was right behind me and that, at any moment, he would grab me once again and finish what he started.

  Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

  I climbed into my truck and locked the doors before Jeremy even made it off the ground. Once I was safely behind the wheel, I started my engine and drove out of there as fast as I could, almost sideswiping the tree at the edge of his property.

  I didn’t know what to do and apparently wasn’t thinking clearly because I headed in the direction of my own home, even though I knew it wasn’t safe to be alone with Bishop somewhere out there still. But my entire body ached and my head pounded, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. My heart hurt and my mind swam with confusion. Because out of all the things that had happened today involving Jeremy, there was one thought that bothered me more than anything.

  How had I missed what a monster he truly was?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Once home, I stumbled into the house on shaky legs and headed straight to the downstairs bathroom where I stood in front of the sink. I didn’t need to flip on the overhead light to see the injuries marring my face, but I did it anyway.

  My busted lip had stopped bleeding on the way home, but my bruised cheek was still swollen and throbbed like the dickens. Dirt and gravel dust covered my torn clothes, and tear stains streaked my cheeks. To put it mildly, I looked terrible.

  Fresh tears welled in my eyes as I leaned back against the bathroom wall, unable to keep the horrible memories from flooding back. It had been twenty years since the last time I’d seen a woman’s face looking so battered and bruised. But that time it had been my mother who had taken a beating, and she’d only done so because she had been protecting her only child from harm.

  My knees buckled, and I allowed myself to slide down the wall until my butt hit the cold bathroom floor. I wrapped my arms around my bent legs and buried my face into my knees, sobbing uncontrollably. I hated that I could still remember that horrible night so vividly.

  That night, my dad had come home drunk once again and had gotten upset that I had left my bicycle in the driveway. He’d run it over to teach me a lesson, but that hadn’t curbed his anger any. He was still raving mad when he had come inside, and I’d heard his ranting all the way up in my bedroom.

  When he started up the stairs to take a belt to me, my mother blurted out that she had left the bike in the drive, not me. It was a lie, and he knew it. But he beat the hell out of her anyway, saying that if she wanted to take a beating for me, then he would give her one to remember. And he had. While I had hidden in my closet and waited for the silence to return.

  When the sounds of him yelling and her crying finally died down, I’d slipped from my room and crept downstairs. There, I’d found my mother slumped on the floor, barely able to see me out of her swollen eyes. He had hit her so hard that her bottom lip had split almost in half and it trembled relentlessly as she lay there helplessly watching her eight-year-old daughter call the police on her own father, all the while worrying that he might walk back into the room at any moment and beat on me, too.

  The cops had arrived shortly after and found my dad passed out on the bed in nothing but his plaid boxers. He’d left my mother lying helplessly on the floor like an injured dog while the bastard climbed into the comfort of their bed to sleep off the drinking binge he’d went on. It hadn’t been the first time.

  As the sheriff deputy led my dad out of the house in handcuffs, I’d stepped in front of him and told him in no uncertain terms that I would put rat poison in his food if he ever came near my mother again.

  Though it was the last time we ever saw him, even now I wasn’t dumb enough to believe that a threat by a little girl would’ve kept him away. But the restraining order my mother placed on him the next morning and the amount of jail time he served after that had done the job.

  A sound came from the other room, and I lifted my head peering at the open doorway. Urgent footsteps swept through the house, as if someone was swiftly running from one room to another in search of something. My heart rate increased, and I stilled.

  I wasn’t concerned that Jeremy had followed me home. Even he wasn’t that stupid. Not only had I installed video cameras outside my home, but he knew damn well that I owned a gun that I kept safely tucked away for protection. It would be suicide for any man to come at me like he had earlier while I was in the vicinity of my weapon. Mostly because I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Jake, Cowboy, Ox, and Judd had made certain of that years ago.

  But what had me freezing in place was that I knew the sound of those footsteps, since they’d grown so familiar over the past few months. But unfortunately, they belonged to the one man I didn’t want to find me looking like this.

  Seth.

  I propped my elbows on my knees and rested my forehead against my hands, waiting for the inevitable. Seconds later, the footsteps grew louder until they came to a stop in
the doorway of the bathroom I was in.

  Seth released a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank God. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Please, Bobbie. Just hear me out, okay?” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m sorry, baby. I never meant for any of this to happen. If I had known my presence in your life would’ve put you or Austin in danger, I would’ve stayed away. You have to believe that.”

  I closed my eyes. “I do,” I whispered.

  “Good. Because it’s true. But I want you to know I’m going to fix this. I promise I’ll keep both of you safe. You won’t have to worry about Bishop getting anywhere near Austin.”

  Though he couldn’t see it, a tear rolled down my cheek. “Or Jeremy,” I whispered.

  Seth grunted under his breath. “I could scalp that bastard for letting Austin out of his sight. What the hell was he thinking? What kind of father neglects his child like that?”

  He paused, as if he was waiting for an answer, but I didn’t speak.

  Though my son was safe for the time being, I knew Seth and I were not out of the woods yet, figuratively speaking. Going to Jeremy’s alone to confront him when he’d been drinking hadn’t been the smartest move on my part. And Seth was going to go nuts when he realized what had come of it. But it wasn’t like I could keep it from him. One look at my face, and he would see the evidence of what had happened to me.

  “Bobbie?” His tone carried a note of concern.

  Before I could answer him, he moved forward and kneeled down on the bathroom floor next to me. He was so close that his leg brushed against mine, but I kept my head lowered as I tried to stop the tears from leaking out. It wasn’t working.

  He must’ve spotted the red marks on my arms and the bloody scrapes on my elbow because suddenly his fingers were grazing lightly over each of them. Then he carefully slid one finger under my chin and slowly turned it toward him until my gaze lifted and met his.

  One glance at my face in the dim light and his eyes narrowed, darkening with intense rage. “Did Bishop do this to you?”

  I shook my head.