Then the doorbell rang.
I got out of bed, just for something to do rather than lie awake fuming. Fuck lying awake fuming. This was the second date that he had failed to show up to, and this was also the second time he had not bothered to call me and let me know that he couldn’t make it. Was it that he didn’t understand the protocol of the modern date? Because I could teach him. I did, however, need some cooperation on his end. Three strikes and he would be out.
I huffily unlocked the door and opened it.
I went all the way from pissed to horrified, in one jump.
Adam was at my doorstep, or at least most of him. One of his eyes was completely blackened, almost swollen shut. He had a split in his lip, and he slumped against the doorframe like it hurt to stand. One of his arms was wrapped around his midsection.
“Sorry I’m late, Doll. Had a couple of skulls to crush in Chula Vista,” he said.
My hands went to my mouth.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, what happened to you?”
“Me? Baby, you should see the other guy.”
All the bluster went out of me, my anger replaced by tearful anxiety. I grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, locking the door behind us. I led him to my room. He looked even worse under the light. He pulled his jacket off, and I gasped seeing dried, rust-colored blood staining his vest.
“Relax Doll; it’s not all mine.”
“How much of it is? What happened to you?”
He pulled the vest off over his head. Blue, purple and green bruises were blooming on his skin. I felt tears prickle at my eyes. What the hell was going on? Who did that to him?
“Adam—”
My own sobs cut me off. I didn’t even know I had so many damn tears; I had cried so much lately.
“Hey, Babe, relax. It’s alright. I’m okay.”
He hugged me, squeezing me in a way that probably hurt him with all those bruises he had.
“What happened to you?”
He sat on the bed and pulled me onto his lap.
“I was in a fight.”
“I can see that. With who?”
“With...” he sighed. “I never thought I’d have to get you involved in all this,” he said gesturing to nothing in particular, just his general self.
“What is it, Adam? Hey...” I cupped his cheek so he would look at me. That face. I’d never seen him look so... what was it, embarrassment? Defeat? Shame? He gathered me into his arms and hugged me right to his chest, so I moved from being balanced on one of his muscular thighs to straddling his hips.
“I thought I could keep you from this shit,” he sighed. He looked at me, running his hand through my hair. He did that a lot.
“You don’t have to protect me from anything about you. I’m not going anywhere,” I said fiercely, looking him right in the eye, the one which he still had full use of. I wasn’t going anywhere. As long as he still wanted me, I wasn’t leaving. It had taken me forever, but it had finally dawned on me. Maybe it was that I hadn’t had the confidence before, or maybe it was me allowing what I thought about him to get in the way of what I felt.
I wanted him. I was hooked. I was his. The word made my spine tingle because it was such a scary yet freeing thing to think. I had been giving myself to him all this time, trusting him to make both of us happy. Both my body and the other parts that wouldn’t heal as readily if this ended up not working.
He held me close and lowered us onto the bed, so my body covered his. I scooted down, so my head rested on his chest.
“A little while ago my friend Lawson got in some shit with these guys... one of whom I had known from prison. They run these illegal underground fight clubs. He bet in one and ended up owing them five grand.”
I listened, riveted.
“Is he still in debt?” I asked.
“No. He ended up paying them back, but they wanted me to fight.”
“In their fight club? Why? Wasn’t it Lawson who owed them money?”
He chuckled, the way you laugh at the innocent questions children ask.
“True. It was Lawson, but they didn’t care about that. It wasn’t a fight they wanted out of him; it was money. Back in prison…”
He trailed off like he was trying to measure his words right and get them out in a way that would be palatable to me. I didn’t want him to feel like he had to censor himself for my sake. I could take it. I wanted to take it. We all had things we were ashamed of from our pasts. What was the worst thing he could say? I felt myself hold my breath as he continued.
“In prison… let’s just say I managed to gain a reputation for myself. One of the guys, the one who was with me in the joint knew this, and I guess he and his buddy thought I would be a good draw in the fights.” I inhaled deeply. So he was a little scrappy. I could deal with that. The word I wanted to use was ‘scrappy,’ but the damage to his body that he had sustained during the fight did not say ‘scrappy.’ It said violent. It said dangerous.
Adam had joked when he had walked in that I should have seen the other guy; whoever he fought. The words felt ominous now as he talked about his past. He had used his hands, the same hands he had used to fix my car, the same hands that he had used again and again to pleasure me, to beat another person as bad as he had been beaten himself.
“They were on me about it for days, but I didn’t want to.”
“You didn’t want to fight anyone?” I asked hopefully.
“That and I wasn’t trying to pick up any new charges.”
Of course, I thought, defeated. He just didn’t want to go back to prison.
“You were obviously in a fight… so what happened?”
“They decided to get my attention another way. Lawson was jumped; that was the night you came over. If they could do that, I didn’t want to give them any reason to target anyone else close to me.” His arms tightened around me, and I knew instinctively what he meant. I steeled myself against the shiver that ran through me. My body seized, remembering that night and how fast I had taken off for LA after that. So that’s who had been over.
“I’m sorry I missed your grand opening,” he said, his face buried in my hair.
“So that’s what you were up to. Beating another guy to a pulp in Chula Vista. And here I just thought you didn’t want to see me again.”
“The beating happened last night. It might not be obvious looking at me, but I had to lie down a bit before I could do anything after the fight. Make sure he didn’t manage to puncture anything. I’m sorry, Doll. I really am. I’m not proud. Especially after how you reacted seeing me.”
I raised myself off his chest so I could look at him.
“I was scared. I still am. Look at you... I don’t like to think of you doing things like that.”
“I can take a punch Doll, don’t worry about little old me,” he said smirking.
“That’s not the point.” I sat up so I straddled his prone body, resting my hands on his hard abdomen.
“I don’t know how much of your past is still lurking, getting you into trouble today. What I need from you is not to do anything you know is going to hurt me. I don’t know if I can take this sort of stuff,” I said, running my finger gently over a blackening bruise at the base of his ribs.
“I love you Adam, and it would kill me to get a call from the hospital or from jail, or Lawson telling me something happened to you.”
His eyes flashed, and I realized what I had said.
“What was that?”
I felt my cheeks burn. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. I didn’t just say that out loud.
“I… uh,” there was no way I could take it back. There was no way I could pretend that he had misheard me and that I had said something different.
“I’m pretty sure you just said you loved me. Did I hear that right?”
I wanted to die. I could have eaten and digested myself right there from the embarrassment.
“Y-you don’t have to say it back Adam, I just... I just want you to know that you’
ve got me. I love you, and I’m here. I’m not leaving unless you—”
“Say it again,” he said abruptly.
“Huh?”
“Tell me again,” he urged. His hands ran slowly up my thighs. I slept in shorts, so his rough hands were caressing my skin.
“I love you,” I whispered. I gasped as he took hold of the waistband of my shorts and tugged them.
“Get rid of these.”
I eased off of him and pulled the shorts and my panties off. He set to work unearthing his erection from his jeans. He held his hard tool roughly, jerking it into an even fuller erectness. I placed a flat palm on his stomach and straddled him. The hard, warmth of his hand gripped my thigh. I slowly allowed his thick head to pass my lips, savoring even that shallow entry. I felt him lift his hips to thrust into me, his penis only pushing mere inches inside because of the height I held myself above him.
“Come on Doll, give it to me,” he growled. I met his upward thrust, lowering myself onto him completely. I wanted to ride him. I didn’t want him to have to move a muscle. He was sore and bruised after his fight. I was going to take care of him.
Grinding into him, I used my hands to press his body down gently so he wouldn’t move too much. How many times had he been on top of me, thrusting and working me over till I couldn’t move?
“Stop moving,” I urged him. I pulled my t-shirt off over my head, exposing my breasts. His eyes honed in on them. He looked hungry. Mad that he couldn’t flip us over and just drive into me but at the same time enjoying himself very, very much. I sure was. The friction between us was electric. My body throbbed with pleasure.
His hands grabbed my ass, making me fall forward into his body. He held me steady as he thrust up into me, fast and hard. I struggled to hold myself up as I came, warmth and release spreading through me. He hammered into me, making me scream as he came. I looked down at him and kissed him lightly.
“I love you,” he said suddenly.
“Adam, really you don’t—”
“Stop it, Dana. I love you. Don’t argue with me. We aren’t having a discussion.” The corners of his mouth pulled into a smile. I leaned forward and kissed him again, gently at first, and then deeper. Girlish joy radiated through my chest. I felt like giggling.
“Do you have anywhere to be tonight?”
“If you want me to stay, just ask me,” he said smirking.
“I’d like you to stay, Adam. You didn’t make it to the bookstore opening. Stay here tonight.”
It had been one thing getting him to stay the night. He had been happy to. It felt amazing going to sleep next to him, but it was even better waking up beside him. His large, long, lean body was pressed against my back, one of his arms wrapped around me. He tightened his hold around me when I tried to release myself from his grasp, letting me know that he was awake too.
“Trying to get away from me?” he murmured.
“I wanted to go to the bathroom,” I said. I let him pull me back into his body and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I’ll be right back.” I left the room and went to the bathroom.
The sound of voices filtering through the door told me that Adam hadn’t stayed in the room the way I had asked him. I was nervous. What was Mimi going to do to him? He had just been in a fight. He was vulnerable. I finished up and went into the living room. Mimi and Adam fell silent as I joined them.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to have a guest over, Dana,” she said cheerfully. I looked back and forth between the two of them. What the hell had happened while I was gone?
“Sorry about that. He came by late. I’ll make sure I warn you next time.”
“No need. Have fun you two,” she walked past us. I looked down because I knew I would be explaining this later. “Oh. By the way. A package came for you, Day,” Mimi said, indicating the medium-sized box she had placed on the kitchen counter. The address was Los Angeles. Did I end up leaving a couple of books behind again? I thought.
Inside was a box. I lifted the lid, and I felt like all the blood in my body suddenly dropped in temperature by 50 degrees.
The scream fought its way out. I felt activity around me. Adam’s arms wrapping around me.
In the box was a number of pictures, printed on regular paper like they were taken on a phone camera. I was in every one of them. Me walking on the street. Me with my dad. Me at the store. Me with Mimi. Tied in a length of red ribbon was a tidy lock of hair. My hair.
He had found me.
Henry was back.
20
Dana
You’re not staying here.”
Adam’s voice sounded like he was very far away as he said it. More accurately, I was very far away. I had felt arms clutch me to a solid chest and then the embrace of someone much smaller; Adam and then Mimi. The box. The pictures. The hair. Oh my god, all those phone calls from numbers I didn’t recognize.
How had Henry been able to find me? How long had he been out of jail? I thought about where he would have to be in order to snap some of those pictures. How many more were there? Had he been going through our trash? Why the hell had he kept that hair? I didn’t need to check my scalp for the bald spot. I knew exactly when and where he had taken it. Hair was one of the more innocent things you could take from someone’s body since it didn’t require mutilation, but it still made me feel sick. He had sent it to fuck with me; his favorite pastime.
I knew Adam was referring to me as he made the statement, but I had nothing to give him back. I felt immobilized. Stunned into silence. The contents of the box were the absolute last thing I could have possibly anticipated seeing, but what got me was how familiar all the items inside were. It was me. It was me in that box. A condensed little package of my inner life. The inner life which I had been trying to create away from LA and the drama that had happened there. The pictures weren’t dated, but they were a couple of weeks old, at the very least.
Christ, my hair though. The lock was intact; the strands blunt on one end where he had used scissors to cut it off. He likely didn’t even wake me up the night that he did it. All I remember was waking one day and wondering why one bit of hair behind my ear was sticking out so much. I wondered vaguely whether it would be more or less creepy if the hair had come directly off my head or had been collected from my brush over months. The sinister thing was that he had kept it. What the hell did he do with it? Just how much of my stuff did he have? Briefly incapacitated, the conversation progressed without me.
“Well, where the hell do you expect her to go?” Mimi asked him.
“My dad’s house,” I said robotically. At least my flight response wasn’t disabled.
“No. My house. She’s staying with me,” Adam said.
“How do you know he doesn’t know who you are?”
“Look at the pictures. He photographed you with your dad. He has to know where he lives.”
“I think she should go back to LA.”
“If she does he’ll just follow her back there. You really want to give him home-field advantage?”
“Guys—” I attempted. The fog was lifting, and there was no way the two of them were going to have a conversation about me and what my next move was without my input.
“You can’t stay here either,” he said to Mimi.
“Guys!”
The two of them fell silent and looked at me.
“I’m not running away anymore.”
“Dana. You can’t play games with this guy. You know what he’s capable of. If he’s back, he’s probably angry on top of crazy,” Adam said.
I shook my head.
“I’m going to the police.”
“You need somewhere safe to stay before you do any of that.”
“The sooner I call the police, the sooner he gets put into their custody,” I said, the dots connecting mentally.
“Fuck the police. You don’t know where this guy is. He had to be in San Diego if he could take any of these pictures, but he mailed this from Los Angeles. He could b
e anywhere. How long do you suppose it’s going to take to issue the arrest warrant and get him if he’s mobile?”
I rolled my eyes. Fuck the police. They had the most power in this situation. He arguably had more experience with arrests and being arrested than I did and I didn’t have any solid points to argue him on besides my wounded pride and confidence. I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want him to hijack my life like he had before. I didn’t want to lose sleep at night, afraid that if I woke up, he would be there standing over me. I didn’t need to be afraid to fall asleep at night because I feared he would show up again and do something worse next time. He had injured me before. If he was enraged, there was no telling what he could do to me now.
“Adam, if this starts again, when will it end?” I asked. “He stalked me for months in LA. I moved here because I wanted to get away from it all, to have a fresh start. I can’t let him scare me all the way into Mexico.”
“Your safety is the most important thing to me right now, Dana. I’m not asking you to go to Mexico. Stay with me. Mimi can stay with Anthony,” he said glancing over at her to see whether she had any objections. “When you are both at addresses he likely doesn’t know; you can start contacting the authorities.”
I sighed and looked at Mimi.
“Will you be able to stay with Anthony for a while? Will he mind?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“If I tell him what happened, he might understand. Although, that may lead to a number of other questions he might have; personal questions Day… about you.”
I shook my head.
“It doesn’t matter. You can tell him whatever he wants to know. You just need to be out of here.” I looked at Adam. He was looking at Mimi like he wanted to say something but he wouldn’t.
“What?” she asked him.
“Is Anthony your only option?” he asked carefully.
“He’s not the only one, but he’s the best. It probably wouldn’t be too much of an imposition if it was him. If push came to shove, there is always my parents. Why do you ask?”
ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Page 15