by Geri Glenn
I stand, holding a hand out to her, and then help her to her feet. “Depends on how well my conversation goes with him.” I’m only partially joking. Carter knows how I feel about Trey and everything he stands for. Him having anything to do with those guys is a huge middle finger to me.
Georgia nods, her body trembling from the cold chill in the air. “You need to get into the car and warm yourself up.”
Leading her to the car, I turn and catch her eye. “Thank you for being stubborn and forcing me to listen. I know that’s not the way you’re supposed to do things. Will you lose your job over this?”
She shrugs, and a small smile forms on her lips. “Not if they don’t find out.” She climbs into her car, and as I shut the door behind her, she lifts her hand in a tiny wave.
Perhaps I’d judged Georgia a little too quickly. Her coming here and confronting me like that took balls. It also proved that she understood just how much was at stake when shit like this happens with a family like ours. Maybe she’s not so bad after all.
Six
Georgia
I use my key card to unlock the door to Benjamin’s condo. It’s after midnight, and I haven’t heard from him at all since our little one-sided spat at my parent’s house the night before. But it’s Wednesday, and I always spend the night at his place on Wednesdays. Besides, I don’t like the way we’d left things. We need to work it out and learn to handle our disagreements like adults if we have a hope in hell of making our marriage last past the first year.
The condo is dark, save for a lone lamp on the side table next to the couch. “Hello?” I call out into the quiet space. “Benjamin?”
Knowing that he’s probably already in bed, I hang my purse and jacket over the back of the living room chair, and place my boots neatly by the door. Benjamin’s place is always so neat and tidy. Perfect. Almost too perfect. I’m not known for my excellent housekeeping skills, and every time I’m here, I fear doing something to mess it up.
Padding down the wide hallway, I make my way to Benjamin’s bedroom. The door is open, and the moonlight streams into the room through the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city. Benjamin is in his bed, his tall frame outlined beneath the downy blankets, his head cocked low in his sleep.
Part of me wants to wake him, to have the conversation with him that I had planned out in my head a million different ways since he’d stormed out of my mother’s dining room. But I’m exhausted, and even though I’d blasted the heat the entire way here, my body is still trembling from the cold.
Waiting outside of the Fletcher’s home had been impulsive, and maybe a little foolish. Yes, what I needed to tell him had been important, but after hearing Tripp’s warning about that Trey guy and how dangerous he was, I haven’t been able to warm myself up.
I’ve always been of the opinion that people are inherently good, and that bad people do bad things because they themselves have been wronged in the past. But after spending just two days on the other side of town, I’m starting to wonder how naïve that opinion is.
I’m a good person—that’s a fact I know for sure. But I can’t think of a single thing that could ever happen to me to cause me to lose my morals. I can’t imagine not caring about who I hurt with my own actions. People like Trey Harper may have started out good, but along the way, they lost their morals. Maybe as a child. Maybe it was a conscious decision. Maybe they never had them in the first place.
“Georgia?”
Benjamin’s sleepy voice pulls me from my thoughts, bringing me back to the here and now. “Hey,” I say softly. “Sorry I woke you.”
Benjamin pushes himself up on the bed and leans his back against the headboard, turning on the light. “What are you doing here?”
I frown. “It’s Wednesday night. I always stay here on Wednesdays.”
“It’s after midnight…and what the hell are you wearing?”
I glance down at my outfit and chuckle. It’s my first Walmart outfit, and I kind of love it. A sloppy knit sweater over dark gray leggings, and all for less than forty dollars. “It’s new,” I reply, digging around in his dresser drawer for one of the T-shirts I always wear when I sleep here. “I thought it might help me fit in more with the kids.”
Benjamin’s lip curls in disgust as his eyes drift over my outfit. “With those clothes and that classy shiner on your face, you look like you just left the trailer park.”
Straightening, I look at my fiancé—like, really look at him. Even in his recently awoken state, his appearance screams money. His hair is lightly tousled, but it looks like it should be that way, not like it was done by his pillow. His bedroom is decorated as if it came right out of the pages of an interior design magazine—which it did. I’d helped him choose everything in it.
Had Benjamin always been so…judgemental? So superior?
I don’t know why I’m surprised. When I’d made the decision to forgo medical school for a degree in social work, Benjamin had kept his opinion to himself. I think part of him always expected that once we got married, I’d forget about everything I had planned and be the dutiful housewife and socialite, just as my mother is.
Maybe I had always assumed that too. I’d spent my entire life doing exactly what my mother wanted, and when she wasn’t dictating my next move, Benjamin was. Maybe it was weakness. Maybe it was the fact that I’ve been taught from a young age that what you show the world is what gives you value. Whatever the reason, taking the leap into the life I’ve chosen has taught me more about myself than anything.
I don’t want to be Benjamin’s perfect little housewife. I want to be a whole person all on my own. I don’t want to host dinner parties for people I can’t stand, and spend my days shopping for things I don’t need.
Maybe Benjamin’s expectations are partially my fault. I turned the tables on him at the last minute, but isn’t a relationship supposed to be a safe place for you to grow? To learn to be the person you’ve always wanted to be?
I turn and yank a random shirt from the drawer and change right there in front of him, my movements jerky and rushed, the anger I feel growing with each passing second. Without a word, I stalk into the en suite bathroom and brush my teeth, wash my face, and remove my earrings.
Benjamin is still watching me as I storm back into his bedroom and march over to the opposite side of the bed. With more force than necessary, I flip back the blankets, straighten the pillows, and plop down into the bed, turning my back to him. Anger boils in my veins as I feel his eyes trained on me, but I lay there, stiff as a board.
A single fingertip slides along the bare skin of my arm. “We always do something else on Wednesday nights too, Georgia.”
He can’t be serious. Flipping around to face him, I pin him with a glare. “Last night, you stormed out of my parent’s house, and today, you didn’t even call to talk about it. I show up here tonight and you criticize my clothes. Do you really think I’m going to have sex with you right now?”
“Jesus,” he mutters, rolling his eyes as he turns to switch off the bedside lamp. “So dramatic.” Turning, I settle back into the pillows, my jaw set as if it was made of stone, completely ready to ignore him until we can talk about this in a more civil manner in the morning. “I hope you’re not planning to bring your bitchy attitude to the Peterson’s tomorrow.”
My eyes fall closed, and I pull in a deep, cleansing breath, desperately trying to get a handle on my rising blood pressure. I’d completely forgotten about dinner at the Peterson’s. I don’t want to go to the fucking Peterson’s. But we’d planned this weeks ago, and my parents will be there too. If I didn’t go, I’d never hear the end of it.
“Good night, Benjamin,” I say, my teeth still clenched in anger, my mind still racing to figure out if I really know this man at all.
The bed shifts beneath his weight as he leans toward me and presses a kiss to my shoulder. “Good night.”
It takes just a few minutes for Benjamin’s breathing to even out, as he falls into a deep slee
p. As for me, I watch the sun come up as I lie there listening to the man I’d promised my forever to, and wonder if he’s the man I thought he was.
TRIPP
I know I need to talk to Carter, but after Georgia drives off in her fancy little car, I have too many thoughts running through my head to talk to him. I want to kick his foolish ass, but I need to sort my brain out before I even attempt to have a meaningful conversation with my headstrong younger brother.
As I make the three-block trek to Zack’s apartment, I think back to the time I had first met Trey. Zack and I had been about eight years old. We’d been walking home from school when a group of older boys had stopped us.
These boys were in the eighth grade, and were the very reason we normally never took that particular route home. But on that day, we’d been in a hurry. Zack’s father was being released from prison that afternoon, and he didn’t want to walk the extra four blocks the other route had. He’d just wanted to see his old man.
The boys had stepped out from behind a dumpster at the mouth of an alley between two tenements, their fists clenched and smiles on their faces that had made the blood drain from my face. I had been terrified, and even though Zack played it cool, I’d known he was too.
I don’t even know what they were expecting to get from us that day. It’s not like we’d had any money, or anything else worth stealing for that matter. I think they just got off on terrorizing little kids, and we had made the perfect targets.
No matter their goal, they’d gotten one hit in on Zack, knocking his ass to the ground before Trey Harper showed up. He was the same age as us, and one lone eight-year-old wasn’t exactly going to instill fear into a group of five, rowdy twelve-year-old boys, but Trey had one thing those boys didn’t have—rage.
The kid was like a fucking ninja. He ran into the fray of kids, his feet and fists flying, his voice crying out a near-deafening battle cry the likes of which I’d never heard before. Before I even realized he was there, he’d knocked two boys to the ground, their hands cradling their aching nutsacks as tears streamed down their faces.
Zack and I were forgotten as the other three boys whipped around, ready and willing to kick the new kid’s ass, and they would have too if it weren’t for us. Reaching out a hand, I’d helped Zack off the ground, and the two of us joined the fray of flailing fists, taking more than our fair share of hits.
The fight that day had been epic. Zack and I had beat the holy hell out of one of those boys—the one that had hit Zack—while Trey dealt out an odd form of retribution to the other two. When it was over, the five older boys were running down the street, most of them still in tears, leaving me, Zack, and our new hero standing at the mouth of the alley.
“Fucking assholes,” Trey had said, spitting on the ground.
Both me and Zack had just stared at him in awe. He was our new fucking hero. Until he wasn’t.
As I approach Zack’s building, I look up to the top floor, relieved when I see his lights on. Zack lives in a rundown building on the South Side, in the same apartment he’d lived in his entire life. His mother had been dead for over two years now, and Zack had the money to move someplace else—someplace nicer—but here he stays.
After walking the eight flights to the top floor, I trudge to his door and give it a quick knock before stepping inside.
Zack sits on his couch, a beer bottle in his hand, his feet propped up on the coffee table, his eyes on the TV. “Hey, asshole. What’s up?”
“Hey,” I say, closing the door behind me and moving to the chair next to the couch. I drop down into the lumpy cushion and stare at the TV, but pay little attention to what’s actually on. “I think Trey Harper is using my brother to sell drugs.”
That gets Zack’s attention. He looks at me as he sits up in his seat. “Carter? What makes you think that?”
“I talked to that social worker just now, the new one. She said that a group of men stopped by the center today, and one of them handed Carter a paper bag.”
Zack swears under his breath, and then tilts his head. “Wait a minute. You talked to her just now?” He glances at his watch. “How late does that center stay open?”
“She called me this afternoon and I hung up on her. Then, when I got home tonight, she was waiting outside my house.”
Zack raises a brow. “She cute?”
I roll my eyes, not bothering to answer that question. Zack loves women. Every time I see him, he’s with a different one, and since he started his little gigolo business, it’s rare to see him without one.
Zack sees right through my avoidance and belts out a laugh. “Oh, she’s cute all right.”
“She’s fine,” I clip out, not liking the idea of Zack even thinking about Georgia. “Now, about Trey. How the fuck do I handle this with Carter? Do I talk to him, or do I go right to the source and deal with Trey himself?”
Zack blows out a heavy breath and flops back in his seat. “I don’t know, man. Carter’s a smart kid. Have you told him about Trey and what went down with the three of us?”
I shake my head. “I never wanted to get into that shit with any of the kids.”
“You might not have much of a choice, bro. The kid needs to know what a piece of shit that guy is.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, but the idea of digging up the past just to teach my brother a lesson turns my stomach. “Yeah, maybe,” I concede. “I don’t know. I guess the best I can do is just talk to him for now, see where his head’s at, ya know?”
Zack watches me without saying a word. “I don’t like talking about it either,” he says, finally breaking the silence. “That shit back then was fucked up. But unless you tell your brother what that fuckface is really like, he might end up in the same damn situation. You don’t want that to happen.”
That’s the last thing I want to happen. “I’ll tell him what I have to,” I state, meeting Zack’s stare. “Nothing more. No kid needs that shit on his conscience.”
Zack presses his lips together in a hard line, his head nodding in agreement.
The idea of telling my brother the hell I’d gone through just before our mother disappeared makes me uneasy. Carter isn’t stupid. He knows I’m no angel, and that I have some dark shit in my past that he doesn’t know about. But I doubt he knows just how dark my past is. Not really.
“So…” Zack drawls, a grin transforming his face from serious to teasing. “Tell me more about this social worker.”
Rolling my eyes, I reach out and snag the beer from his hand, glad to find that he’d hardly touched it all. As I lift the bottle to my lips, I extend my fist in his direction and slowly lift my middle finger.
Seven
Georgia
I’m already halfway down the stairs when my mother calls my name. Lately, her voice grates on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard, and the way she says my name makes me shudder.
My relationship with my mother has always been strained, even when I was a little girl. Maybe it was the constant reminders of how I fail to be the picture of perfection she expects me to be. Or maybe it’s the way she huffs with disapproval every time I open my mouth. Whatever the reason, I’m getting tired of it.
“She’s always late, I swear,” she says from the front entrance.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Addington,” Benjamin intoned. “It’s never a trial to wait on a beautiful woman.”
My feet hit the bottom step as Benjamin finishes speaking, and I paste a smile on my face. “I’m here and ready to go with five minutes to spare.”
Benjamin steps forward to place a chaste kiss on my cheek, a bouquet of pink roses in his hand. “Ravishing,” he murmurs, handing them to me.
Taking the flowers from him, I press my nose into their soft petals and close my eyes. The truth is, I don’t know how to deal with him right now. We hadn’t discussed anything since we’d gone to sleep the night before, and with my mother standing just five feet away, I feel trapped.
“Thank you,” I say finally, turning to pas
s the flowers to our housekeeper, Marsha. She takes them and scurries out of the room to find a vase and some water. I want to go with her and avoid this whole evening altogether, but I can’t.
“You’re still coming to the Peterson’s, aren’t you?” Benjamin asks my mother as he helps me into my coat.
“Oh, yes. I’m just waiting on Albert to come down. He had to stay at work a little later than he’d expected.”
Ugh. Her sugary sweet voice is giving me a toothache.
After a swift goodbye, and a promise to see her soon, I follow Benjamin out to his waiting Bentley, where the driver already has the door open to the back seat. “Thank you, Charles,” I say as I pass him, and once inside, Benjamin ducks in and sits beside me.
“I meant what I said, you know,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“That you look ravishing. You know how much I love the color red on you.”
Benjamin’s gaze rakes over my body, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s always been this…predatory. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it before, but the way he’s looking at me right now makes me uneasy.
“Benjamin, we need to talk.”
His head drops to the headrest behind him as he blows out an exasperated breath. “Here we go.”
Okay, now that’s just rude. “Please, don’t be that way. We need to talk about last night, and the night before that. We can’t just pretend nothing happened.”
He doesn’t look at me for several seconds, and I almost wonder if he’s going to ignore me altogether. But he finally lifts his head and turns in his seat to face me.
“Okay, we’ll talk. But it can wait until after dinner.”
That’s when I realize that he has no idea why I’m upset. I can tell just by looking at him. He doesn’t understand that his words last night and his storming off at dinner the night before that have made things between us so strained. He’s placating me, and hoping I’ll just get it out of my system and move on.