“It matters to me.” He handed me ear plugs. “Put these in.”
I took them from him. “Derrick, it was one night. I went downstairs. Not a big deal.”
He tucked himself in next to me, lying on his back. “You could have kicked me.”
“No.” It was my turn to be adamant and unmoving. “I’m not going to do that. I’d hate to wake up with someone kicking me. I’m not going to do that to you. I’d kick someone if they were hurting me, which you were in no way doing.”
He angled his head so that he stared at me in the near darkness. “I didn’t used to snore. It’s a new-ish thing. It’s been going on for a few years, and despite what Jud thinks, I’ve had it looked at. I know what the problem is. I have a deviated septum. It shifted this way when I was in a serious fight. It was him versus me. He took a brick to my nose. I killed him with my bat. He was someone who came after me. Doesn’t matter. I started snoring after that. I’ve been putting off doing something about it.”
I stroked my finger down his nose. “I’m sorry. Surgery is scary.”
“I’m not scared. Just lazy.” He threw his arm over his eyes. “Go back to sleep, I won’t keep you up.”
I held up the ear plugs. “These will help. Thank you. Don’t stay awake. That’ll make me more uncomfortable.”
I stuck the buds in my ears, and they did cut what little noise was in the already quiet room. I rolled over, pressing my face into his chest, and like I hoped, he wrapped his arms around me. These were such normal conversations, problems that regular people had. Okay, he snored. But most people probably didn’t have the rest of his story, which included getting bashed in the face with a brick.
He ran a hand over my forehead, and I lifted my head to regard him. Derrick pointed to my ear, and I took the plug out.
“Everly.” He waited until I nodded, indicating I could hear him. “When I woke up and you weren’t here, the bed was so fucking cold. I thought maybe you’d taken off.”
I pressed a little tighter to his body. “You don’t put me on the street and I won’t leave in the middle of the night. We’ll make each other those promises.”
“Easy ones to make.” He nodded, and after I put the plug back in, he kissed me lightly on the mouth.
If he snored the rest of the night, I didn’t hear him.
With his strong arms around me, I also didn’t have any more nightmares.
* * *
Breakfast had been an easy, sweet beginning to the day. Derrick poured three cups of coffee for me before I was finally awake enough to consider doing anything else but drink it. With each cup of coffee, he filled my plate, too. Eggs. Bacon. Toast. Fruit.
I grabbed my stomach. “Okay. I’m more than full. I’m stuffed.”
He kissed me lightly. “Good.”
“Good? I’m going to roll into the doctor, not walk.”
“I consider it half my job to put weight on you while you’re with me. Get you back to your pre-Ben size. If that means I keep stuffing you with good, home cooked meals then so be it. You’re not eating cupcakes. Although, we can do that, too.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “How do you look so good in the morning?”
“I don’t.” He dramatically rolled his eyes back at me. “Don’t give me a big head, Everly. You’re the beautiful one in this relationship.”
I could have argued with him on that for two reasons. One, I’d taken a look in many mirrors. He wanted me. I wasn’t going to argue that. But even before I’d been taken, for the second time, I hadn’t been as physically gorgeous as him. That didn’t matter. I had a look. He liked it. Great. I’d had plenty of confidence. Still, in a contest? Yeah, Derrick won every time. Two, was this a relationship? To Derrick and me it probably was. In the past I could have excluded myself from that. Now? He was fucked up, and I was right there with him.
I didn’t know anyone who liked going to the gynecologist. This one was maybe the worst I’d ever been to. He chewed gum the whole time. The good news was he never looked at my back and even if he was a bit of a jackass, his prescription for the pill would work just fine. The look he gave me when he saw Derrick wasn’t lost on me.
It was a small town. I didn’t know how many women Derrick realistically had put on the street, but I was pretty sure my psychotic D had a reputation around town.
The doctor gave me a speech about safe sex, eyeing Derrick while he did so. If it was weird that my boyfriend, which was how I’d introduced Derrick, stayed in the room during the exam, he also didn’t comment.
“I help fund this clinic.” Derrick said to my unasked question as we exited, having filled the prescription. I supposed that went a long way in all things, even against HIPPA laws, which come to think of it, no one asked me to sign off on the whole time I was in the clinic.
I swallowed down my pill. Normally, you had to wait until you got your period, but given that mine was always irregular and had been virtually nonexistent during the kidnapping and I wasn’t pregnant, it was as good a day as any to start it.
“Derrick, I have a couple of problems.”
This caught his attention. “Let’s see if I can manage some solutions. What’s up?”
“I don’t have any money or a phone. I love being with you. But I feel a little trapped. I know that will hurt your feelings. I’m not sure what to do but to be completely honest about it. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do about either of those things because I have no money and I need money to buy a phone.”
He held out his hand. “You’re not hurting my feelings by telling me the truth. I appreciate it. If I’m being unreasonable on something, say that. If I’m being an ass, say that. I’ll do the same with you. Okay?”
I supposed that was fair. “Yes.”
He ran a hand through his hair that he’d left loose because I’d told him I liked it. The man bun might be hot, but the loose hair was irresistible. “The phone I’ll get you. Easy enough. I’ll get it now. And I’ll install the app that keeps us safe from viewing. Kade made the app. It’s just for us. And as for the money, hold on, I think I remember a conversation I want to make sure about from a few months ago.”
I sighed. “If you’re paying for the phone, can you take it away if you get mad, like… like I’m a child dependent on you?”
He laughed and then his face fell. “Oh, you’re not kidding. No, worst case scenario, I’d stop paying for it and you’d take it over, but I can’t imagine that. You’re stuck with me. That makes me your personal killer and cell phone getter.”
“You’re going to teach me how to do half of that for myself.”
He nodded once. “Yep. Hold on.” Derrick put his phone to his ear. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m on the street with Everly. No, she’s fine. Just out of the doctor. Healthy. Yes. No, that’s not why I’m calling. Her money. Did you…”
It must have been Warden on the phone. He was the money guy. Amazing that I could already tell by topic who talked to who.
Derrick gave me a thumbs up. “Yeah, I’ll tell her. No, I’m not telling her that. You tell her that yourself.”
He hung up the phone. “You had two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank.”
I sighed. “Yes, it was a savings bond from my grandmother. The last of my savings. Do you suppose I can get a phone with that?”
He shrugged, taking my hand. “I don’t know. I wasn’t done.”
Oh. “Sorry, go on.”
“Warden broke into your account when you were taken. We were looking into all avenues. At first we thought you’d left. He thought to track you that way. We quickly realized what happened. The point being, after we knew you were Ben’s prisoner, we had so much less we could do until we waited for him to fuck up so we could find you. Warden took your money and invested it. You have a lot more now.”
I did? My heart fell into my stomach, and I tried not to be excited. “How much money?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He says if you leave that in there, you’ll have a cool hal
f mil by Christmas. Just to trust him. And he also said he misses you. I told him I wasn’t going to repeat that.”
My ears rang. How did Derrick deliver this announcement, this life changing news, like it was nothing?
Chapter 9
We went to the cell phone store and the bank. But it all passed in a blur. I signed something and got handed a checkbook. How my money had ended up in this particular bank, of which I was pretty sure I wasn’t a member, I didn’t question. That was Warden. If he could turn my measly few hundred dollars into hundreds of thousands of dollars in six months, then he could certainly get it put where we could easily get to it.
Derrick handed me my phone. I’d had an earlier version of it before, when I’d had my own phone, before all of this happened. But now my contacts were different. There were six entries, and I wasn’t surprised by who was in them. Derrick. Judson. Kade. Trace. Warden. And then one that said Help.
“What is the Help one?”
“Let me put it this way, you’re going to press that button if you’re in big trouble. It will get you help. The other thing to do in that moment as you are hitting that button is to see if you can get yourself totally noticeable to a satellite of some kind. The algorithms Kade has set up into the satellites will try to zoom into you the second you hit that button. The less hidden you are the better.” He shrugged. Derrick did love to do that, particularly when he talked about something that was not at all shrug-worthy. “But that’s never going to happen with you because I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right by your side.”
That was sweet, and since this was Derrick, he probably meant it instead of being dramatic. He might actually always be right there. I put my hand on his arm. “And you’re going to teach me how to kill.”
“You know how to kill. Every human being ever born does. If they say that they don’t, they’re lying. I am going to refine how you do it. Later today, yes.”
I touched the end of my hair, chopped with no care for how it looked. “Before we do that, can we fix my hair? I realize, it’s vanity, but there are some things I’d like to set right. So that every time I look in the mirror it’s not a constant reminder. I have that every time I close my eyes.”
He touched my cheek. “That’ll stop. Eventually. And yes, we can get your hair fixed.”
Good or bad, everything that happened today was all too much. He had to understand how off kilter everything was for me right now.
“I’m not special. Not particularly, you know. I’m not nicer than everyone else, not prettier than most people, certainly not smarter. I’m not… special. Ben kept saying I was the right girl, wrong reasons.”
Derrick opened and closed his mouth as if my words struck him silent and then he had to say something but he wasn’t sure what. “Why did he say that? What did he mean by that?”
I tried to think. “Oh.” I rubbed my eyes. “So much of that time is a blur, like I can’t hold onto to one memory over another. It jumps around in my head.”
“That’s the trauma.” He made no other moves or comments. Just stood there, waiting. I wanted to deliver what he asked of me.
What had Ben said? I put my hand on my hip—the way he stood when he was joyful. One hip slightly in front of another, his face in my space like he had every right to be there.
“Everly.” He had a low, scratchy voice. It wasn’t sexy. It was… grating. I tried to imitate it, and maybe I did a good job because Derrick narrowed his eyes like he didn’t enjoy the sound. “They took you because your father was such a bad man, they took you to give you to me.”
“Not true.” I heard Derrick but right then he couldn’t interrupt the memory.
“They took you because you’re nothing. A woman. An ant. Less than that. Expendable.”
“Everly, not true.”
I didn’t want to debate it with Derrick right then. Okay. That wasn’t true. Fine. This was still my memory. He wanted to know what Ben said. I was giving that to him.
“But all of that aside, they took you for the wrong reasons. You were the right choice. Your daddy has been a naughty boy. Hiding all that money for us, hiding us from their view. It wasn’t just that he took their memberships. No, he made us impossible to find. You’re the right girl, wrong reason.”
I blinked. We stood on the street. I wasn’t attached to a St. James Cross, ready to be whipped. I wasn’t vulnerable to anything right then because Derrick was with me. Still, my hands shook. Where had we parked? We’d moved around in the car so much that day I wasn’t sure where I was anymore.
D linked our hands together. “Everly.”
He just said my name. It was enough. “Sorry. I was attached to… to a cross right then. It wasn’t pleasant.”
“To a cross?” He looked away. “That’s a new one for Ben. Or maybe not. I don’t know. What you said to me, it’s interesting. Important. Thank you for telling me that.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go get your hair done. You can do more than that if you want. A whole spa day.”
I shook my head. “I think I’d rather get working on the teaching Everly Murder 101.”
“Okay.” He kissed my temple. “That’s what we’ll do.”
“I never really was a spa girl. I don’t like people touching me if I’m not… invested in having sex with them. I don’t feel better having a rub down. I feel obligated to make conversation with the masseuse. The last time I tried it, I knew all about the troubles she was having keeping the chickens in her backyard alive.”
He side-eyed me. “Seriously? That never happens to me. People don’t tell me their life stories. Even when I’m doing famous pitcher and not assassin vibes.”
Could this be our normal? Was this possible?
* * *
The hairdresser fawned over Derrick enough that she didn’t ask me too many questions about what had happened to my hair. I’d prepared a whole story in my head about alcohol and poor choices, but I never got to use it. When she finally focused on evening out my mess and giving me some bangs—I really did look better with bangs—Derrick stepped outside to go make some phone calls. I couldn’t read him all that well and not because my emotions had taken a vacation lately but because he was pretty good at hiding his. Still, I was pretty sure this was Derrick on edge for wanting to do something that he wasn’t getting to do.
Gal, the hairdresser, smiled at me. I’d guess she was in her late thirties but she might have been older. It was hard to tell when people took good care of themselves as she clearly had. Her skin was gorgeous, and she didn’t have a wedding ring. I didn’t want her anywhere near Derrick. I blinked. Okay, I was jealous. That was… different.
“So… I think you don’t usually wear your hair this short, right?”
Maybe now I was going to make my poor choices speech. “No… I…”
Oh forget it, I didn’t have the whole lie in me. It was just no.
“Do you want to soften it up a little bit?”
Did I? “What did you have in mind?”
* * *
I stepped outside to find Derrick leaning against a tree, his phone pressed to his ear. He looked up when I walked toward him, and he hung up the phone.
He lifted his lids, just slightly. Did he hate it? I touched the end of my hair. Everything was even now, fixed, and also slightly different. She’d put the slightest amount of red into it. I’d always been dark brown, so dark it was almost black, and when the other girls bleached, I hadn’t. This was the very first time I’d put dye in my hair.
I pointed behind me. “I count on you to tell me the truth. Is it really bad? I can go back in and make her put it back.” I thought I could. I hadn’t asked her if that was something she could immediately do. I wasn’t certain what that would entail.
“You’re gorgeous.” He tugged me to him from the back of my neck, his hands caressing the skin that was visible there. “It’s… softening. I liked it the other way, and I like it this way, too. You look like you could be a kindergarten teacher.�
�
I swallowed. “Oh. That doesn’t sound sexy.”
“Oh, it’s sexy honey. And tonight I’m going to make you a kindergarten teacher who knows how to take out bad guys. Tomorrow… well, someone is being dropped off at our house.”
I didn’t miss the our. “Who?”
“You’ll see. Come on. Let’s get some food and go see what kind of gun handling you can do.”
* * *
I hit the target pretty well. Derrick didn’t give compliments, but he didn’t criticize either. He watched me while I reloaded the revolver. I’d hit the target every time. I might not have killed my target in the first shot every time, but I would with the second one. This wasn’t a deer. I didn’t need to concern myself with being humane. If they deserved being shot, maybe they deserved to have it hurt.
“That’s good on that.” He nodded. “Good enough.”
I set down the gun. “You don’t want to give me some advice about my grip or how I’m holding my arm or something.”
“I’m not training you to be a ninja or an assassin or any of the above. This isn’t some kind of combat training. Or any kind of shit like that. This is me teaching you how to kill. It’s not actually all that hard. Someone starts out alive and ends up dead.” He picked up the gun and pointed it at the target but didn’t fire. “We hope that person is the other one and that you walk away. You can manage a gun well enough that should you have the opportunity to have a gun then, yes, you will kill that person, presuming they don’t shoot you first.”
Well, that was good. I supposed. I rubbed the back of my neck. “I kind of pictured doing it the way that you did that day in the casino. You walked in and shot the dude, dead.”
“Yes, well first thing we did was get past his guards. Kade must not have had that on camera for you. They had guns. Then we went in the room and yes, I shot him, without anyone taking any hits back at me.” He pulled a knife out of his jacket pocket. “You were there the time that I took out several people with a baseball bat. We were all battling that day. I walked away. They didn’t. You walked away, but not well. You got concussed. If Trace and I hadn’t been there, you’d be dead.”
Dark Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #2 Page 10
