“Text me where you’re staying, and I’ll let you know when I’ll come to you. All right?”
“Kayla, please don’t tell him where I am.”
“Avery, Carl doesn’t need me to tell him anything.”
Isn’t that the truth? I used to think my dad knew everything about every who is who of DC society, but Carl managed to make him look clueless sometimes.
“I’ll call you soon.”
“Be careful.”
“Yeah, you too.”
The microwave beeps at the same time she hangs up. Kayla is the “love you” and endless kisses kind of person, but she barely said goodbye. It’s obvious she’s worried, and I feel bad for not asking her more about what’s going on with her. It doesn’t exactly make me a great friend, especially not one that deserves her to go out of her way to help.
Charlie’s eyes pop when Kayla’s bright yellow Porsche comes to a stop on the drive.
She blows out a low whistle. “Remind me to put my order in with Mark later. I might get it in time for Christmas.”
“I didn’t think yellow was your color, but sure.”
Tilting to the side, she looks up at me with a broad smirk. “Look at you getting some sass back. And of course, you’re right—a Porsche should always be in red.”
I’m not sure whether I am getting some sass about me, or whether I’m so relieved to see Kayla showing up on her own, that the haziness from the painkillers I took a little over an hour ago doesn’t feel so bad anymore.
“Is she here on business or to see you? I’m all for a great pair of skyscraper heels, but…a three-hour drive in those is poditricide.”
“What-the what?”
“Foot murder…you know…that shit kills.”
Charlie’s right. I wasn’t quite expecting Kayla show up in a bright white power suit and electric-blue heels. Not that she ever dresses down—her casual borders on most people’s dressy. Still, after the long drive, she still looks ready to kick ass with her long hair straightened into an ebony curtain of shiny silk. Her makeup is flawless, making her dark caramel skin look radiant. She’s a vision of designer perfection, while I’m slumming it in a pair of Charlie’s leggings that are clearly too short for me and Dom’s massive sweatshirt.
“Hey.” Kayla stops short of where Charlie and I are standing on the porch steps.
Her poker face is great because the only sign of her shock over my injuries is the hard swallow and sharp intake of breath. The reaction isn’t surprising given I have it every time I look in the mirror. Even with the slight yellowing over the last week and swelling going down, it doesn’t look better.
“The bags!” she calls, suddenly turning back to her car and fetching a couple of weekend bags from the passenger seat along with her purse.
“I forget how well put together these people are. I’m going to go make drinks…maybe watch the kids or, I don’t know, maybe I’ll go dust off my Louboutins and kick some dirt.”
Charlie heads inside, leaving me alone with Kayla and the odd feeling in my gut that keeps churning the longer I take her in. I’ve never noticed the color of her lipstick before, but every time she smiles, the knot tightens.
“Amazing house.” Kayla looks around the porch and then back at her car. “What’s with the not-amazing dirt drive?”
“This isn’t the city.”
“It’s not the beach either. When you sent me the address, I thought we could sit on the beach and talk, but…”
“Be nice, Kayla,” I tell her, taking the bags from her.
They’re not exactly heavy like I thought they would be, but the weight is enough to make my ribs smart with the tensing of my muscles.
“Forgive me if I’m not a bubble of sunshine when it comes to the Ericksons.”
Of course, I should’ve known better than to bring her here. Kayla’s ability to hold a grudge is as impressive as an elephant’s memory.
“Well, this isn’t business, so maybe you can muster up a smile and soften up that hard wit?”
“Anything for you, babe.”
The word twists the dagger that’s still plunged into my gut. Still, I take a deep breath and show her to the open-plan family room. Cullen’s playing a game on the TV. He’s talking a hundred miles an hour into his headset to one of Mark and Charlie’s friends’ kids. Meanwhile, Iris and Makenna are out by the pool with Charlie.
“You must be hot in that suit.” I take her to the outdoor seating area. We don’t get a chance to sit before Iris comes running in one of Kenny’s purple swimsuits. Long gone is every sweet shade of her favorite pink; all she wants is purple.
“Aunt Kayla!” she sings, wrapping her arms around her best friend.
“Definitely not hot anymore.” Kayla’s face twists into a smile, hugging Iris back, and the familiar sight is so good that it makes all the aches and pains dull.
Every second of the afternoon that ticks by makes me wonder whether maybe I should go back to DC. Maybe she’s right, I should’ve gone to her instead of Dominic. But Dom came to me first—he and Priscilla practically held my hands after I got the news about Dad’s heart attack.
“You know, Carl is really worried.”
“Huh?” I jar at Kayla’s statement while she opens another bottle of water and takes a long drink. Obviously, I know that she and Carl are in constant contact because of work, but again, she sounds defensive over him rather than me or Iris. And she’s my friend, right? Isn’t she meant to be on my side regardless of what she does or doesn’t know?
Allowing my focus to flit to Cullen coming out of the house and joining the girls in the pool, I try shake away the thoughts in my head.
“He’s worried about you and Iris,” she reiterates, eyes widening into a concerned gaze. “You must know how this looks…leaving him just as that article comes out. A federal investigation is…”
The conversation is blowing my brains like her expression tells me hers is apparently already blown.
“He hit me!”
“And he’s sorry.” She goes to drink some more water, but the beach ball Cullen and the girls are playing with hits her square in the face, sending water everywhere.
“Karma.” The statement bursts from my mouth, pushed out by the frenzied hammering of my pulse.
“Excuse me?” Kayla pulls a packet of tissues from her purse, shaking one out to pat her face dry.
“Why are you so worried about what it looks like for Carl?”
“Have you thought about what it looks like for you and Congressman Erickson if it comes out that—” She pauses to pat her mouth and chin dry. “—that you ran away with him?”
All those confusing off feelings make complete sense when she drops the tissue onto the table. The ground falls from beneath me as realization hits home.
“You’re not here for me, are you?”
“I’m here to make sure that the situation doesn’t get out of hand. You need to come back and play happy families again.”
“While you sleep with my husband?”
“What?” Kayla shakes her head, getting to her feet with a slight stumble when her heels slip off a paving stone and stab into the grass. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You were my friend, Kayla.” That’s the most disappointing part—she’s really the only person I have left. I loved her like the sister I never had. “Look at me. Look at what he did to me. Is this what you want?”
Kayla studies my face with a stubborn set to her own that tells me that she’s not listening to a single thing I’m saying. It’s heartbreaking to look at her and feel everything but love and happiness.
“Why, Kayla? I don’t…you can do so much better.” It stings that I can say it to her, but it’s taken me this long to figure it out for myself.
Years of being told that I need to measure to a standard that he imagined and expected all boil down to this moment of clarity, where it’s me telling myself that I can do better. I deserve more, if not for myself, then for my daughter.
“You should
leave,” I tell her, taking a deep breath to steady myself as I ignore the twisting and knotting of my stomach. The sad reality of my life. “I’m not going back to DC, and if you think that some speculative article is his biggest concern…you should think about what it looks like for his wife to look like this. Proof that he isn’t the man he makes himself out to be.”
“This is so much bigger than you can possibly understand. You have no idea wha—”
“Get out.”
“Avery, you don—”
“I don’t understand. You’re right about that. I don’t understand how you can look at me and think that…” I know Kayla well enough to see that she’s not listening at all. She’s here on a mission for Carl. Not for me or Iris. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter. Just leave.”
Grabbing her purse from the coffee table, I get up and head for the front door, blocking out all the things she’s saying behind me. At this point, I only want her to leave.
How is this my life? What have I done to deserve any of this?
Opening the door, I hold out her purse and wait for her to get out. Every click and clack of her heels makes my skin crawl. I’ve known her most of my life; I shared parts of my life with her that I would never share with anyone else. I told her about all the crap in my marriage.
Swallowing down the bile that creeps up my throat, I hold myself as strong as I can.
“Carl was right—you’re impossible to reason with.”
“Carl is a cheating, lying son of a—” I stop when Iris comes running toward us. I won’t be that mother that poisons her against her father, even if he is nothing but a cold, hard disappointment. “He’s a fraud, and one day you’re going to look in the mirror, and every bruise and…every mark you see on me, you’ll see reflected back at you.”
“If that’s what makes you feel better.” Kayla grabs her purse, turning to look at me as she pulls an envelope out of it and stretches it toward me. “That should help you see reason.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Rolling her eyes, she crouches to hug Iris. The action makes all the anger bubbling inside overwhelm me.
“Why are you leaving?” Iris looks at her with letdown written all over her face, and while I feel guilty for being part of the reason she feels that way, I don’t say anything.
“I have to go home, sweetie, but I’ll see you real soon. Okay?”
Iris nods, making me want to snatch her up and run away from here as fast as I can.
“How about I go watch you swim again when you come back home?”
Iris pulls completely away, holding on to me so tight that it’s impossible for me not to wince. Looking up at me, teary and blinking wildly, she murmurs, “I don’t want to go back.”
I don’t bother saying anything else to Kayla. We’re done. Closing the door in her face, I sit on the bottom step, sitting Iris on my lap as I hold her to me, hoping that things can only get better.
I’m not sure how long we stay like that, but by the time we head back into the family room, Charlie is standing at the breakfast bar waiting. The envelope in my hand feels heavy, and when I look at it, the glint of my wedding rings is a sharp stab in the gut.
“I’m going to run a bath for Makenna before dinner,” Charlie tells me before focusing on Iris. “You want to use the big tub in my room? It’s got jets that make amazing bubbles.”
“It’s amazing. Best bath ever.” Makenna takes her upstairs as Charlie and I follow behind, taking the bags Kayla brought with us.
Once the girls are happily soaking in the tub, we sit out in the hall outside her bedroom door so they don’t hear our conversation while we can make sure they’re okay.
“First of all, it’s not your fault that she’s a skank. Secondly, before you look at whatever bullshit is in that envelope, what do you want to do?”
“Disappear.” That’s the first thing that comes to mind, and then I catch sight of my rings and a rage I didn’t know I had inside flames hot and violent. “That’s not true,” I murmur, twisting the rings off my finger. “I want him gone. I want him out of my life and away from my daughter.”
“If he’s hurt you like this before…”
“He hasn’t—not in this way. I mean, he was always heavy-handed and short-tempered. But not like this.”
“I know you don’t want to press charges or report this—”
“It’s not about what I want, Charlie, it’s about protecting Iris. I failed to protect her already, and now I can’t even talk to her about it because I’m scared that she’ll hate me or that I’ll screw her up.”
“At the end of the day, it’s your decision and I’ll support whatever you decide…no matter what. I don’t want you to regret what you didn’t do because you’re scared. You have no reason to be scared.” Threading her fingers with mine, she squeezes my hand. “I’ve got your back.”
“I know,” I tell her as I rip open the envelope.
I only have to read the header of one of the top DC family attorneys to know that my hope has let me down once again.
Hope…hope is a fucker. A liar and a thief. And as hard as I try to hold it together as I read through the document, I can’t.
“He’s going to take her away from me,” I whisper to myself. It’s loud enough that Charlie hears and takes the letter from me. “I didn’t kidnap my own daughter. I took her away because he hurt me. He hurt me in front of her, and I… He said he would kill me, Charlie.”
She’s on her feet and pulling her cell from her pocket in a flash. “We’re going to fix this.”
I hear what she’s saying, and stupid hope has me almost believing her until the pale lines on my finger glare up at me, and I realize that I’m stuck. I’m never going to be free of Carl and his crap. And while it’s a great notion that everything will work out and it will be okay…he’s still the one calling the shots.
“Mark’s going to talk to Gretchen. I need to take a photo of the letter and send it to him so she can read it.”
“Gretchen?”
“She works for Cole Securities, and Mark said she’s at your disposal.” Pausing in front of me, she gives me a wicked grin. “Trust me, Gretchen’s great. She’s a kickass attorney, and she knows pretty much everything about everything, and if she doesn’t, she knows someone who does. Point is, we’re going to nip this shit in the bud stat.”
“God, Charlie, you don’t need to do that. Mike already said that he’ll help me with whatever I need. I feel terrible enough for intruding into your home and family.”
“Shut up!” She knocks my knee with her foot. “You’re here because we’re friends and I want to help you. It’s been a while since I got to stick it to someone or something. I don’t want to lose my touch, so you’re doing me a favor.”
Trust her to find a way of making me smile right now. If not for any other reason than the certainty that she really will do everything she can to stick it to Carl with me.
“I can’t lose her. She’s my baby, the only good thing to have come out of the last eight years. I can’t let him hurt her.”
“And we’re not going to let any of that happen. We got this. Trust me.”
I nod, even though I’m suffocating at the possibility that if I don’t return to DC with Iris, the authorities that are meant to protect us will rip her from me and hand her to a father that doesn’t even love her.
Chapter Eight
GARRETT
I’m not sure what I’ve just walked into. The house is eerily quiet; none of the kids are running around. The TV is off for once with Mark and Charlie sitting at the table looking through a shit ton of paperwork.
“Come on, Gretchen!” Charlie growls into the phone. “There’s gotta be something else we can do.”
There’s a moment of silence as she listens to whatever Mark’s company lawyer tells her. It’s clearly not what she wants to hear, but she seems resigned to the fact when she puts the phone down.
“I’m guessing she told you the same
thing she told me?” Mark exhales in frustration.
“You’re not getting divorced, are you? That shit’s messy, and I don’t want to pick sides because Charlie wins. Hands down.”
“Not funny.” She levels me with one of her glares before standing to her feet. “We need you to sign a report on Avery’s injuries.”
“Sure. Once she allows me to take a look, I can write you whatever you need.”
“You’re not going to let it go, are you?” she asks me the same question Avery asked a few days ago when I last saw her.
“Nope.” I lean back on the breakfast bar, realizing that I’ve spent more time in their home or thinking about their home this week than ever before.
There’s something about Avery that I can’t put my finger on, but I can’t stop thinking about her. About all the things she said the other night, because I do understand some of what she’s going through. Maybe not from her exact perspective, but enough to know that this is the calm before the storm.
“I think I’ve managed to calm her down enough to nap.”
I turn to find Avery standing in the doorway I just came through. Her eyes are red, and the swelling that’s already gone down some looks puffy from tears. She looks almost as tiny as Charlie engulfed in the same sweatshirt she was wearing the night that Mark called me here to look her over. Her bare feet curl as she sags into the doorjamb.
“Gretchen said that unless we do this formally, we can’t expect a judge to throw out the paternity case. I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to, but…”
“I don’t want to be charged with kidnapping my daughter either, so I guess I have no other choice.”
“You can go back to DC, stay at your dad’s house, and get your bearings from there.” Charlie gives her an option that doesn’t actually sound like one from her gritted tone.
“I can put someone on you, make sure Carl doesn’t step out of line,” Mark tells her, all his usual humor still nowhere to be seen. “But you must know that I can’t do much more in terms of Iris.”
Avery looks at me, brushing her long hair from her face. It never ceases to surprise me how beautiful she is, even with all the injuries she’s sustained. There’s a light in her eyes that’s so compelling especially with the circumstances she’s in.
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