He gave the driver my address and a momentary sense relief washed over me. At least I wasn’t headed back to that locked room. Maybe he did just want to talk, but on the other hand, I was also wondering how he knew where I lived and how long had he known. Did he know Michael helped me? How would he react to that?
He interrupted my thoughts with a repeat of his earlier question. “Were you going to tell me?” His voice was icy again.
The car stopped suddenly. We’d pulled up in front of the small cottage I was renting. It was only a ten-minute walk from the dinner. It took us less than three minutes to drive there. On weak legs I hopped out of the car and walked as fast as I could up the stairs. When I reached into the pocket of my caftan to retrieve my keys I realized I’d left them on the table.
Before I could turn around, Adam reached passed me, stuck my key in and unlocked my door.
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you”
I pushed the door open then stopped in the hall that led to the living room to take off my shoes.
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked again while walking behind me.
I heard the desperation in his voice. I could have answered him outright and assuaged some of his worries. I knew what would make him happy, but in true Eve fashion, I felt the need to antagonize him. Because I was annoyed, I wanted to annoy him as well.
“How do you know it’s yours?”
That was a big mistake. He damn near snatched my arm from the socket forcing me to turn and face him. I winced in pain. If looks could kill, I would have dropped dead just from the weight of his stare.
He scowled down at me, his grip on my wrist was getting tighter by the second. “Say that to me again,” he dared me.
“If you don’t let my arm go…” I left the threat hanging in the air.
His grip tightened even more until my arm began to throb. Fed up, I shoved him and snatched away. It didn’t appease my anger though. With all my strength I reared back and hit him with a hard blow to the side of the head. He took it. Didn’t even flinch. I slapped him next.
When he figured I was done, he said, “I’m sorry for grabbing you in that manner, but if you insist on continuing to push me, Eve, I’ll start pushing back,” he growled in my face.
“You don’t scare me and don’t ever put your hands on me like that again,” I yelled.
I was so livid my anger nearly choked me. I reached up and slapped him several more times until my hand started to hurt. Again, like the hits had no effect on him at all, he took them without flinching. When my hand dropped to my side, his face was bright red.
He straightened and took a step back. “Are you done with your tantrum?” he asked.
“Don’t you ever touch me like that again, Adam, or I’ll show you a tantrum. You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“You think I don’t,” he said.
Suddenly I felt tired. I needed to sit down and come to grips with the fact that Adam knew I was pregnant. I was never getting rid of him. I left him standing at the door. I headed for my favorite chair. When I turned the corner and entered my living room, my soul left my body momentarily. I couldn’t move or breathe. The shock of what I saw paralyzed me.
Adam’s hand on my shoulder brought me back to reality.
I yelled. “What the hell did you do?”
In a few steps I made my way over to a badly beaten Michael. He was slumped over on my sofa with his hands tied, bleeding profusely from his head. I thought he was dead until he wheezed in pain. I reached down to untie him.
“Get the fuck away from him, Eve.” The fury in Adam’s tone caused me to hesitate, but only for a second.
I knelt in front of Michael then searched for the best way to go about getting him loose. There was so much blood I was afraid that if I touched him, I might have made whatever Adam had done to him worse.
“What did you do to him?” I screamed at Adam without looking at him.
Guilt flooded my body. He’d been a good friend. Had even offered to help me raise my child. To see him bloodied and beaten, I regretted calling him. I should have never gotten him involved again. A sudden gasp drew my attention from Michael to the floor beside the couch. I jerked my head in the direction it came from and found a white woman lying on the floor regaining consciousness.
“Who is that, Adam?” My eyes flew to Adam who stared at me nonchalantly.
He behaved as if he didn’t have two people tied up in my home.
“My ex-wife.”
“How did she get in here? Never mind how. Just call the ambulance.”
“No,” he answered while stalking my way.
Before I could react, he bent and grabbed my hand and tried to pull me away from Michael. I refused to budge. We played tug of war for a few seconds until he finally straightened and reached for my hair. I shoved him away. Michael’s hand found mine. He gripped it, trying to get my attention. Adam saw it. The look that came to his face caused me to snatch away.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Michael.
I apologized because I should have been stronger and never involved him. Michael groaned. Our eyes connected. I saw something there that I couldn’t read and didn’t have time to decipher. He needed help. I stood and headed for my purse. My phone was in there.
I pushed past Adam. I needed to get to my phone I grabbed my purse from the floor where I’d dropped it then remembered Adam had taken my phone. I turned to find him where I’d left him. He removed my phone from his jacket pocket and spitefully threw it against the wall so hard that it shattered into pieces.
T W E N T Y - T H R E E
My anger started in the pit of my stomach and rose, spreading like wildfire. Like always she chose someone else over me. She had her hands balled at her sides as if she was ready to fight me, for him. Why? She didn’t even know him, not the real him. A cruel familiar pain slashed through my chest. My anger morphed into rage. I bit into my lip so hard it bled.
Stalking over to where she stood. Without much force, I shoved her into the reclining chair behind her. It was time to end it all. She tried to stand.
“Don’t fucking move, Eve.”
I was on edge. The stern tone of my voice sounded harsh and menacing to my own ears. It wasn’t surprising to me that her hardheaded-ass remained seated.
“Ask him why he’s here, Eve.”
“No.” She shook her head and stubbornly folded her arm across her chest. “I don’t want to hear anything from you. Just call an ambulance and get away from me.”
She didn’t understand that she was taking me to a place I never wanted to go with her, but a man could only take so much.
“Ask him now,” I roared causing Eve to nearly jump from the seat.
Eve straightened in her chair and shook her head and glared at me defiantly.
“Okay, I see I’ve indulged you too often. Allowing your defiance has made you doubt me. I’d never hurt you, but…”
I turned and stalked over to Michael. He’d managed to pull himself to a seated position, but his head lulled to the side. He looked as if he was a second away from passing out again. Still I could tell he was aware of my presence when I stopped in front of him. I could physically feel the heat of his hate and contempt for me rolling off him in waves.
Hate me? Why? He’d brought this on himself. For five months he’d lied to me. Each time he called and told me he hadn’t found her had caused me physical pain. Then I became suspicious and hired another private detective. He’d found her in two days and sent me pictures of him and her together.
A part of me understood why he lied. He was trying to save her. If I wasn’t around, I would want someone like him in her life. Because of that I’d simply fired and threatened him when I found out he’d crossed me again. That should have been the end to our relationship with him, but then I’d heard their voicemails. He’d offered to help raise our child, leaving me completely out of the picture. He was a fool if he thought I would allow him to live to do that.
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His one good eye shot up at me. There was still fight in him, even though he hadn’t faired so well in the first one. I’d had fun beating him with a baseball bat until he begged me to stop. I grabbed him by his neck. Lifted him from the sofa, causing him to whimper in pain.
“I advise you to ask him why he’s here, Eve, before I make him tell you. My way,” I threatened.
“Why are you doing this? You can’t—” She started, but she was too choked up to continue. She quickly regained her composure. “Stop this. You can’t do this to people.” She started rocking in her chair.
“This is how you behave for him? All the tears and emotions? For him?” It infuriated me while simultaneously hurting my soul. “He doesn’t deserve your tears. Michael tell her why you don’t deserve them,” I demanded. I snatched his head around, so he faced her. “Tell her now.” I leveled a punch to his gut so hard it caused him to fold. I was sure I’d broken one or two of his ribs, but he refused to cry out. Eve did loud enough for the both of them.
“Just leave him alone. You tell me. Please stop this and just tell me. I don’t need the stress,” she pleaded quietly, sounding defeated and tired.
I let Michael go. He crumbled to the floor in a heap beside Jenny. I was having trouble being moved by her tears for another fucking man, but she was right. She didn’t need any undue stress while she was pregnant. I made my way over to where she was seated. Just out of her reach, I rotated my tense neck before speaking.
“He’s the reason my ex-wife knows where you live. Michael here told my wifey dearest where she could find you, and she got it in her pea brain head that if she got rid of you, I’d go back to her.”
She stared at me in confusion then I watched as her brain started and she slowly connected the piece.
Her eyes widened. “You hired him?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it,” she mumbled under her breath. “And she wants to hurt me?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed hard, shaking her head violently. “All of this is because of you.” She stabbed an accusatory finger at me while suddenly jumping up from her seat. “What else did you do? Now that I think of it, you were responsible for what happened with Davis, too?” she blurted out of the blue. “That’s why you were there that day looking like the cat that ate the canary.”
It was a question I wouldn’t answer ever. She read the truth in my eyes though.
“Oh my God, you did. You’re the devil. Do you know what I went through? Never mind. Just take them and go. I can’t deal with them or your crazy obsessiveness right now. I’m pregnant, tired and my feet hurt. Get the hell out,” she yelled and waved toward the door. I reached for her, and she flinched away. “No. Don’t touch me. Just go, Adam. You have to let this fantasy of us being together go. It is destructive,” she declared, a trail of tears streaked down her cheeks.
I hated to see her cry. I hated even more that I made her cry, but she had to understand that there was no way I could do what she asked of me.
“What do you want from me, Eve?” I reached for her again.
She snatched away again and took several steps to distance herself as far away from me as she could in the small living room. Having her flat-out reject me felt like blunt force trauma to my chest. No matter how often she did it, I knew I’d never became accustomed to the pain of it. Every time it hurt a little more.
“I can’t do that, Eve. I tried.”
“You have to. You can’t keep trying to control my life. Trying to impose yourself on me. We don’t fit. We’ll never fit,” she yelled, slamming her hand against the wall.
“No! I don’t want to control you. You control me. You own me. You could command me to do anything, besides leaving. That’s not an option. Tell me what I need to do to make things between us right. I’ll do it.”
“Stop this.” She backed away further, shaking her head. “There’s nothing you could do. Too much damage has already been done. Look at them.” She pointed behind me to Michael and Jenny. “You have people half dead in my living room.”
“Don’t say that. Tell me. I’ll give you whatever it takes.” My voice climbed along with my heart rate. “You want cars? Houses? Clothes? I’ll give them to you. You want me to kill for you? I’ll spend the rest of my life spilling blood on soil in your name.”
“Stop! Do you not know how crazy you sound?”
“Do you want me to cry for you? Beg? I’ll fucking beg. I’ll get down on my knees right here and beg for you. I’ll do it. You could ask me to do anything and I’ll do it, but don’t ask me to let you go. These few months without you nearly broke me.”
When I finished my declaration, a new emotion, one I couldn’t read, was in her eyes along with a look of shock on her face.
Waiting for her to say something, anything, was causing tightly woven strands inside me to loosen and when they completely snapped, I didn’t know what I’d do. Why couldn’t she understand that she needed me as much as I needed her? Now more than ever. We needed to be together, to raise our child together.
I took a deep breath ready to be her—
“Adam,” she called my name, interrupting my thoughts. I watched through shocked eyes as she swayed. “I feel funny,” she mumbled and reached for me, then suddenly she was falling.
My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe, but my body somehow moved. I caught her just before her head hit the side table.
I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. I headed out of the door without a backwards glance. I’d deal with those two later. If anything happened to her and my child, I didn’t know what I’d do.
You’ll snap, the voice chimed in.
I agreed, and if that happened, no one would be safe.
T W E N T Y - F O U R
These last two weeks of living with Adam by choice had been worse than living with Adam in that room by force. Like before, he was always there— everywhere— watching. Only now he hardly ever spoke. He was like a ghost, haunting me. He wasn’t cruel or abusive. He took care of all my needs and wants. He just didn’t speak to me or really look at me. I didn’t know how to take this Adam. In a strange way, it caused me to low-key miss the old Adam. That made me feel weird and conflicted. I was not supposed to care either way.
The silent treatment started the day I’d awakened in the hospital and found out I had preeclampsia and could lose my child. Or we could both die. Adam had the nerve to put all the blame on me like he didn’t have a part in causing me stress. Everything had been his fault. If he would have never brought me to that room…
I wanted to tell him just that but couldn’t. He was worried. It was written all over his face, and I wasn’t a complete monster. He’d listened to the doctor warn us about what could happen if I didn’t go on bed rest and reduce my stress with tears in his eyes. Men like Adam didn’t cry, didn’t feel. His show of emotion was endearing, but scary. I got distracted trying to make sense of it in my head. Then I’d started thinking about what had happened in my apartment.
When the doctor left the room, the first thing out of my mouth had been to ask him about his wife and Michael. I needed to know what had happened to them.
“Did you hurt them?” It sounded like more of an accusation than a question.
I wasn’t exactly surprised when he lost it. His gunmetal eyes had darkened to nearly black. The look he’d given me—a combination of disgust and anger— had me feeling only an inch tall.
“The first thing you do is ask me about them after hearing that you and my child could possibly die?” He’d sneered at me while rising from his seat then he bent down next to my bed so that we were eye to eye. I wanted to look away from the intensity in his eyes but couldn’t, his hand on my jaw made sure of that. “I’d forgive you for almost everything, but if my child dies...” he left the threat hanging in the air.
Adam & Eve- a Tale of Obsession Page 14
