by Ada Scott
Tied up, with a gag and a black eye but groggily moving and, most importantly, alive. Amy was desperately trying to untie her, but couldn’t get a grip on the ropes through the blur of her tears and with her broken finger.
The police officer pulled out a knife and soon had her free, then ran off to call in the paramedics. Amy pulled her mother’s upper body into her lap and rocked her, sobbing and stammering comforting words. I got down on the floor and did the same for Amy.
Minute by minute, as she calmed down, Amy’s strength seemed to return. I could only marvel at her resilience. She was the love of my life, I was sure of it. Maybe from now on we could go for more than one week at a time without a disaster befalling us. Just a lifetime of peace wrapped in passion.
Amy
Daniel had punched my mother hard enough to knock her out, but she was a tough cookie and came out of hospital the following evening. The police had questioned us all separately, and on the car ride home, she’d been asking some uncomfortable questions of her own.
She knew that Kris wasn’t just some dessert vendor who had met me serendipitously and swept me off my feet. She knew there was some kind of history that entangled Daniel, Kris and me.
I staved off her questions while we were driving, but now that we were home again, she was sitting in her chair expectantly, waiting. How could I explain all this?
This home of ours had been under siege. First by the bank, then by Daniel and last by the forensics team that had picked over everything while we were away.
Something felt off, as if they were treading over the memories my own family had laid down here over the course of generations. Yet, their presence had been relatively fleeting. Their shadows would fade.
I was thankful that, if Daniel had to die here, he didn’t die inside our house. Even Kris’ arm around me couldn’t stop me from shaking when I thought of that.
“So,” my mom prompted, “I guess you’ve got something to say?”
Kris held me tighter. What would we do if my mom took exception to my relationship with Kris if she knew the full story? Would she make me choose between her and the home I fought so hard to save and the man I loved?
“Kris and I have known each other longer than just a few weeks. Since before he turned up selling creampies.” I could hear my voice shaking.
“I gathered that,” she said.
I cleared my throat, glanced at Kris, and continued. “You remember… um… a few months ago, when I said I was visiting Emily because she had chickenpox?”
“Yes.”
“I was really going to meet Kris.”
My mom’s eyes twitched from me to Kris and back again. “OK… but how did you even… know about each other?”
I put one hand on the couch and the other hand on Kris’ knee as if to steady myself. Kris put his hand on top of mine, and my eyes sank as if they were too heavy to hold up.
“Well… um…” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, putting off the inevitable by a couple seconds. “Remember how I made that crowdfunding thing on the internet and I said some anonymous Good Samaritan donated what we needed?”
“I remember.”
“That wasn’t the truth.”
“Well… what was the truth, dear?” she asked.
“I sold… something… for all that money. And Kris bought it.”
“What on Earth could-”
“My virginity.”
Even the crickets outside stopped chirping. The words hung in the air with an almost physical presence, drawing the most attention to themselves as was possible. My mom’s eyebrows had gone from furrowed, to one raised and finally both seemed to be trying to make a sneaky retreat from her eyes as they headed for her hairline.
“Amy stayed with me for a week in New Eastport. That was the arrangement, but we fell in love. Things got… complicated at the end of that week, with Daniel. I’d known him for a long time, but never realized he was flat out crazy. Amy left, but I knew I had to find her or spend the rest of my life trying. I don’t fall in love easily, Mrs. Evans, but I love your daughter with everything I’ve got,” said Kris.
My mom’s eyes focused on a point a hundred yards behind us for a moment, then flicked up as if searching for the words in her own head, and finally came to rest on the two of us again.
“OK. Does anybody want some tea?” She started rolling towards the kitchen.
“Tea?” I spluttered. “That’s it?”
My mom halted her chair. “What more do you want?”
“Aren’t you angry? Disappointed? Embarrassed?”
Mom sighed. “Haven’t I earned a little bit more faith than that?”
“Of course, but…”
“But nothing, dear. I’m your mother. You can’t stop me from loving you, from being proud of you, even if you tried. You could get arrested for grand theft auto and I’d put the newspaper clipping about you up on the fridge. You’re a good kid, you always have been. I’ve waited almost eighteen years to see somebody look at you the way Kris does. I don’t care how you met.”
I looked at Kris, almost in shock. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I remember what it was like to be looked at like that. I wasn’t always just an old lady stuck in this chair, you know, I used to dance in this very room with your father. He looked at me like…” she trailed off.
“You’re not just-” I started, but she continued anyway.
“I know you were desperate, Amy, but what you had was yours to give, not mine or anybody else’s. It wasn’t my decision to make. I would have advised against it, though, just by the way. Now… tea?”
The crushing weight of a mountain lifted off my shoulders and I almost sighed in relief. I hadn’t realized just how much guilt I was carrying.
“I’ll take one,” I said.
“I’m OK, thanks,” said Kris.
My mom rolled to the kitchen to make some tea as casually as if we’d just been talking about the weather. I turned to Kris and rested my forehead on his shoulder, desperately willing my heartrate to come back down out of the red-zone.
Kris kissed the top of my head and reached over to rub my back. Earlier today, while we were waiting to see my mom in hospital, he’d told me that the Robertsons, the family in the farm that backed on to ours, were open to negotiations on Kris buying their property.
We were so close to realizing all our dreams. If that worked out, then Kris and I could live together. It would be only a short skip through the fields to visit my mom, to grow my aloe vera, and there was more than enough space if Kris wanted to build a house somewhere for his own parents, assuming they hadn’t grown too attached to the place they’d lived in for the past few years.
Eventually, a very long eventually, this house would pass down to me and Kris and I would move back in and raise our family here. It all flashed in my mind’s eye as I rested on the shoulder of the love of my life.
Home. It’s worth fighting for.
Check Out Other Books by Ada and Alexis
InnocenceForSale.com/Bree (Innocence For Sale #2)
Bree
I wish my mom never dragged me along when she ran off with her junkie boyfriend Antonio. The worst thing about it was she was having an affair and they took fifty million dollars of Andrew’s money when they went.
Now he’s got fifty million reasons to want us all dead and, after years of life on the run, I can’t take any more of their abuse, so I’ve *got* to get out of here… somehow.
Andrew
It couldn’t have been any more poetic when I saw Bree auctioning her first time on Innocence For Sale.
After years of searching for my revenge, it fell right into my lap. Mouth-first.
I’ll take everything she’s selling, and more. She’ll moan my name, she’ll tell me where Julia, Antonio and my money are.
I knew all that. I didn’t expect to find an accomplice, my other half, the only woman who ever made me want to grind out our pleasure non-stop until we can’t see straig
ht.
Just when I think I’m going to drive off into the sunset with my dream girl, it looks like we’re going to have to make a last stand instead…
Bound for Life (Bound to the Bad Boy #1)
Bruno
I sacrificed everything for her. I traded my freedom, surrendered my very soul as I killed for the mafia, all in exchange for her life. But despite the skulls I've cracked, the blood I've spilled, they're after her again. They think they know the carnage I can cause, but when it comes to her, they've seen nothing yet.
Serena
The man who stole my heart and ran has returned, hotter and badder than ever. And once more, I need him to save me. The mafia is on a war path, and I don’t know if we’re going to get out alive this time.
Still a Bad Boy (Still a Bad Boy #1)
Kendall
He wasn’t supposed to notice me. Jace Barlow: the most powerful man in the city. Mysterious, scarred, pure muscle and tattoos.
He was my first. That didn’t stop him from pinning me against a wall, using me for his own pleasure until I screamed his name.
Now my boss thinks I’m getting the scoop of the century, but all Jace is giving me is climax after leg-quivering climax. When he puts his hand on my throat and growls in my ear…
“You are mine.”
I know it’s true.
I’ve fallen hard and I’ve never felt safer…
Until I see him kill somebody.
Jace
I dedicated my life to taking down the Picolli Crime Family from the inside. I made a name for myself, the mafia’s most brutal enforcer. I worked my way up the chain, and my revenge came. A righteous bloodbath.
Then I took their place so they could never come back.
Nothing else has ever mattered. Until Kendall.
She was an innocent girl for me to defile, and then leave her ruined for other men like all the rest. But she makes me so hard I ache for release, and for the first time in my life, I want to have her again.
Kendall’s the chink in my armor my enemies have been looking for.
I don’t care.
She is mine and I’ll die before I give her up.
