by L. D. Davis
“Where’s Lucas?” I paused then.
“We stopped at Emmet’s and he wanted to stay there. They were okay with it. They’ll bring him home in a couple of hours.”
“Okay,” I said, and resumed pacing.
“Emmy,” Luke said with exasperation.
I stopped in the middle of the room and looked at my husband. The pressure in my chest was threatening to explode all over the damn place.
“I have to help them,” I said, just barely fighting back my tears.
“Help who?” Luke asked me incredulously. “Kyle and Lily? No the fuck way, Emmy!”
Kaitlyn started at the sound of her father’s booming voice. I didn’t blame her. I jumped a little, too.
In a more controlled voice, he said, “Let them take care of their own problems. You don’t need to be dragged into that shit.”
“I told her to fight for him,” I said more to myself. “But he should fight for her, too.”
“Well, I’m fighting for you, and I want you to stay out of it,” Luke said pushing off of the bed.
“You don’t have to fight for me, you already have me,” I said, sighing in frustration.
“If you wanted to help, you should have told Lily to stay the hell away from that bastard. She could get the shit beaten out of her, too.”
“He won’t do that to her,” I said, waving him off.
“The hell he won’t!”
“He won’t do that to her,” I said more firmly, looking at Luke resolutely.
“How the hell do you know, Emmy?” he demanded.
I balled up my fists and squeezed my eyes shut. “I know you can’t understand this, I know you can’t, Luke, but I know he will not hurt her like that.”
“Even if you’re right, it’s none of your business,” Luke said in a tone that indicated that the conversation was over, but it wasn’t. Not for me.
“It is my business,” I said to his back just before he walked out the door.
He stopped and turned around slowly to face me. “Why, Em? Why is it your business what happens between Lily and Kyle?”
“Until he knows that I have forgiven him, truly forgiven him, he will never forgive himself and he will never go back to her.”
Luke’s blue eyes narrowed and he took a few more steps toward me. “You forgive him? You forgive that asshole for what he did to you and Lucas? For what he could have done?”
I closed my eyes for a beat. “Yes, I do, and I know you can’t understand that either.”
His eyes flashed hot with anger. He shifted Kaitlyn from one arm to the other as he glared at me.
“Are you trying to just get back at me for what happened with Iris?” he asked in a hushed tone.
“I’m not trying to get back at you for what happened with Iris, I promise,” I said pleadingly. “But I can’t pretend that Lily didn’t come here today.”
“I can,” he snarled.
I pointed at him. “You’re not that heartless, Luke! You’re not. You can’t pretend you didn’t see her round belly and you can’t pretend that everything is going to be okay for her without Kyle. You don’t know the things she’s been through in the past. She needs him.”
Now Luke closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he just stared at me for a long time before speaking again, through gritted teeth. “What can you possibly do to help them?”
I stared at him and he stared at me. My heart thudded hard in my chest. The last thing we needed was another rift between us, but I would not feel right, nor would I forgive myself if I didn’t do this.
I told Luke what I needed to do and watched his face fall. My decision could possibly change at least four lives, and not necessarily for the better.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lily
Emmy’s words had hit me hard. After all of the bullshit she had been through with Kyle, and after admitting to me that she still loved him and missed him, she still encouraged me to fight for him. I knew it probably hurt her to say that to me, but she seemed to really mean it. However, despite what she said, I wasn’t sure if I really felt like fighting for Kyle. Maybe it was pride, but I felt like he should have been fighting for me.
After leaving Emmy’s, I was on the road for only a few minutes before I noticed Corsey in my rearview mirror. This pissed me off. Why was Kyle sending someone after me if he didn’t fucking want me? He sure as hell didn’t need me. Emmy said that Kyle does want and need me in his own way, but I was having a very hard time believing that. Sending Corsey or one of his minions after me was more about control than love or wanting. He looked at me as a possession, especially since I was carrying his child, and having the minions follow me around was more about asset protection.
I drove into a parking lot at a strip mall and parked in the furthest corner away from the stores and customers. Corsey parked right behind me and in the rearview mirror I could see his eyes trying to discern what the hell I was doing.
It took a run-in with an armed mugger and a crazy ride in Vic’s truck for me to get smart and carry some sort of protection. I had the usual pepper spray, but I also carried a small switchblade. I touched my back pocket as I got out of the car to make sure the blade was in place. I walked up to the driver’s side window and waited for Corsey to put the window down. He looked so pissed off. I had never seen him looking so angry before. I knew it was my fault and Kyle was probably giving him hell. I felt bad that he was away from his wife and child, but maybe he should have chosen a different line of work.
When the window was all the way down, he extended his arm out of the car, trying to hand me his cell phone. I looked at it as if it was alien.
“Kyle is on the phone,” he said through a clenched jaw.
I sighed noisily and snatched the phone from him.
“What do you want,” I snapped.
“What the hell are you doing in Chicago?” Kyle growled into the phone. “Moreover, why the hell did you ditch Corsey?”
“I don’t have to answer your questions anymore because we’re not together anymore, asshole! You can’t tell me you don’t want to be with me and then have your goons following me around.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe!” Kyle yelled back at me.
“I don’t need or want your fucking protection, Kyle!”
Up until that very moment, I had not been sure what I wanted to do about him, but my decision flew out of my lips before I could really consider it.
“I’m done with this,” I said and then swallowed back a sob. “I’m done with you and being in second place to Emmy. I’m over this. Take your bar, your penthouse, and your hired stalkers and shove it all up your ass.”
I threw the phone at Corsey and he just barely caught it before it could hit his face. He looked at me with a surprised expression on his face. He put the phone to his ear, and I had no doubts that Kyle was giving him some kind of instruction. I walked to the back of the truck as I pulled my knife out of my pocket. Quickly I opened it and stabbed the back tire. I went to the next back tire even as Corsey was stumbling out of the truck shouting at me. I put the blade into that tire, too. Corsey caught up to me with the phone still in his hand and to his ear.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted at me.
I reached up, snatched the phone from his ear, and hurled it as far as I could across the lot.
“Fuck you!” I yelled at him and marched back to my rental car.
Corsey followed after me and tried to stop me from closing my door. I know this was wrong…so very wrong, but I was so very angry and so very over this shit. I reached into my purse with one hand and brought the pepper spray up to his face. He froze instantaneously.
“I promise I will spray so much of this shit in your eyes that your future children will feel it,” I growled.
“I can’t believe that you’d do that to me,” he said in disbelief. “We’re friends, Lily,” he said, looking hurt.
“If I am your friend you will go back to your
truck and wait for triple A to fix your tires and you will let me go. You know this is bullshit, Corsey. You know it!”
He leaned in close to me. His dark eyes were weary, but hard. “If you were the mother of my unborn child, I would do anything to keep you safe, and if you cared anything about your baby, you would allow me to do my damn job.”
I stared at him with an open mouth. He just insinuated that I didn’t care about my baby. I wanted to spray him just for saying that.
“The person you need to keep me safe from is your boss,” I answered. “He’s the only one hurting me, and if he cared about this baby, he wouldn’t have run away like a little bitch. Step. Away. From. The. Car.” I held the spray with my finger on the trigger.
Corsey stared me down for a half a minute more before stepping back. He must have really known I wasn’t bluffing. I closed my door and drove away.
***
I drove through the evening and night. I stopped at the rental car place and discovered the XTS was where I left it. After some thought, I parked the rental and dropped the keys in a mail slot. I got into Kyle’s Cadillac and continued the next couple of hours towards…what I didn’t know.
I had told Kyle that I was going to move out, and I really felt that I should, but even after all of my hours of nothing but time to think, I couldn’t decide definitively what I was going to do. Moving back in with my friend in Camden was out of the question with a baby on the way. Since Kyle had apparently set Lydia, Mom, and the kids up so that they wouldn’t have to worry about anything, I now had more money. I could afford to live on my own while working at Sterling Corp. As for that, I decided that staying there would be okay while Kyle was in London. Maybe by the time he’d come back I would be on maternity leave and I wouldn’t have to deal with him. Taking the position that was meant for me at the bar was out of the question. I didn’t want anything else from Kyle, and if that meant having to throw my dream away in the process, I was prideful and stubborn enough to do just that.
I just wanted one more look at it before I threw it away.
The sun was just beginning to rise when I pulled into the newly paved lot at Lily’s. Marco had come up with the name, but maybe he should change it to Marco’s, because Lily wasn’t going to be there.
I got out of the car and used my key to let myself into the bar. I walked around, zigzagging through the tables, running my hands along the mahogany bar, and straightening the bottles of alcohol. It was like Marco had been in my brain when he designed the place. It was exactly how I wanted it, and it made me sad that I was going to give it up, but I had to break away from Kyle before my broken heart killed me.
A slight sound in the kitchen made me pause in my wanderings.
“Hello?” I called out, expecting Marco or one of the managers to shout hello back, but all I got was silence.
Okay, stop spooking yourself out, Lily.
I waved it off. My nerves were a little shot.
I knew that the moment I started the Caddy up that the chance of Kyle’s goons tracking me again was high. I was surprised no one had showed up at the diner yet. I pushed the door open to the kitchen so I could get one last good look at it. I made it halfway down the long isle between the prep table and the stoves when I realized I wasn’t in the place alone. Someone stood off to my left, in the doorway that leads to the walk in refrigerator.
The alarm system was supposed to be installed later that day. It was almost overlooked completely, until Marco asked me if I wanted all of my liquor stolen. SHOTZ had not had an alarm system, but I was willing to do it anyway for my place. The problem was that it simply wasn’t installed in time.
“You can try to run, but you won’t get very far before I catch you, and then I’ll be angry that I had to chase you,” he said, stepping into the light.
Suddenly I understood why Kyle was so protective of me. I understood why I always had to have someone nearby incase trouble sparked up, because trouble was right in front of me and I was completely alone. Instinctively, I put my hands to my belly to protect my baby. I had left my pocketbook with my pepper spray and pocketknife on the bar, which was of no freakin’ use to me now.
“Where have you been?” I asked in a rush of breath.
“Under the radar,” he grinned. “Those assholes that were following me thought they were smarter than me, but they weren’t. It’s really just luck we’re here together today, but I’m not going to waste my opportunity.”
“To do what?” I choked out.
“To make you mine once and for all,” Vic said.
I would like to say that I fought him and won, but when he held up the enormous gleaming kitchen knife, I knew it was a fight I would lose. To make matters worse, a pain tore through my abdomen and back that nearly brought me to my knees. I let out a terrified cry as Vic grabbed me. I was less worried about what he would do to me and more worried about the fact that I just went into preterm labor, just like I had with Anna.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kyle
The penthouse felt dead without Lily there. I missed the sound of her little feet padding down the hall to my office, or her talking to the chefs on The Food Network while she watched the little television in the kitchen when she was cooking. I hated the silence that followed when I would close the door, so unlike the sound of her voice greeting me or cursing me—depending on what I did or didn't do that day. Her intoxicating scent that hung lightly in every room was now stale. The bed was especially empty and cold without her body in it. When I was startled awake in the middle of the night by a nightmare, Lily wasn't there to convince me that I had been dreaming, that I had not hurt her or hurt Emmy again.
I felt as if I was in a tomb, and that was only two days without Lily in the house. It made me sick to believe that she had been enduring similar feelings for well over two months, and I was the one making her suffer. I compounded things however by popping into her life, giving her hope only to rip it away. The fact that she was pregnant and most likely terrified probably made her feel ten times worse.
After leaving Lily naked and hopeful in bed again, I went to Marco's place. He took the beating I gave to him and then offered me a beer. We drank in silence for a long time before he finally said, “Get your shit together. Next time I won’t just kiss her, I’ll take her heart.”
Even though I had wanted her to move on, the thought of Marco or anyone else winning her heart was almost too much to imagine. The idea of someone else raising my child pissed me off. I couldn’t imagine Lily with anyone else but me, but I was fucked up and didn’t believe I’d be any good for her. I still didn’t know my next step whenever she walked her little bullying ass back through the door.
When Corsey told me what she had done to his tires and how she had bullied him into letting her go, I couldn’t even blame him. Lily was a bully sometimes, and Corsey adored her. He would never do anything that may hurt her. I paced the penthouse, waiting to hear something—anything. I blamed myself for pushing her to this point, and if anything happened to her or the baby, I would hold myself responsible and no one else.
Corsey had informed me a couple of hours ago that the GPS had kicked back on in the Cadillac and it appeared that Lily was headed back to Philly. I knew when she finally walked through the door I’d have a fight on my hands, and I’d be lucky if she only ripped my balls off. I had to make sure she took steps to keep her and the baby safe, without me, because the more I thought about it the more I knew I couldn’t stay.
The images of Emmy’s injuries plagued my mind and haunted my dreams. The video of her walking into Larkin’s office looking every type of broken played in a loop in my mind. Sometimes in my nightmares I saw Lily’s face instead of Emmy’s. What was going to push me over the edge next time? How much would it take before I beat her and possibly injure or kill our baby? It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.
As I was considering this, the doorbell rang, which pissed me off. The concierge should have called me to let me know someone
was stopping by, especially so early in the morning. I couldn’t even imagine who it could be. I didn’t exactly attract many visitors, and I couldn’t imagine Lily ringing the doorbell.
I threw the door open, prepared to scare away the person on the other side, but instead I just stood there, staring. I blinked a few times, rubbed my eyes. Were my nightmares now haunting me as I was awake? Was I losing my fucking mind?
“Are you going to let me in or are we going to stand here and have a staring contest? Because technically, I’ve already won. You blinked like half a dozen times.”
Emmy didn’t wait for me to invite her in. She pushed past me, leaving the scent of her hair that I once loved so much in her wake.
***
I stood in the kitchen at a suitable distance watching her with apprehension. Emmy stood at the stove, apparently very much at home, barefoot, making pancakes. She had exclaimed that she was starving as she made a beeline for my kitchen.
"I love this kitchen," she said for the fourth time. "I love this whole place!" She looked at me with a big smile that made my heart skip a beat. Actually, my heart had not beat correctly since it stopped at the sight of her at my door.
“Emmy, why are you here?” I finally asked her.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” she frowned now and stared at me with the spatula in her hand.
“Do you really even need to ask me that?” I asked tiredly.
She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to the stove.
“You look terrible,” she said. “Have you been sleeping?”
“No, not really,” I sighed and rubbed my forehead wearily. “My girlfriend happens to be MIA. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
She turned her brownish green eyes on me. “You mean the mother of your unborn child that you deserted because of your sudden case of Mangina? How does it feel to have a vagina of your very own?”
