by Maren Smith
The connection went dead, snapping every tangling knot in Kitty’s stomach and sending them slicing through her as if they were knives.
She stared at her cellphone in shock. Never once in her wildest imaginings had she thought he would cut her off. As if he didn’t care; as if he’d never cared.
Pure panic, cold as ice, filled up the void where the broken knots had been. She dialed Ethen’s number again.
He answered immediately, his icy tone chilling her all over again with its lack of caring. “Do you need me to come and rescue you?”
“Yes,” she choked, but he hung up on her again.
Kitty was out of bed and pacing, her fingers shaking so badly she had to try twice before she could redial. “Please!” she cried, when she heard the click of him answering.
“Please, what?” Ethen snapped back, no longer smug. No longer triumphant. His voice was cold, every bit as cold as she was right now.
“P-please help m-me,” she stammered. Tears obscured everything, but she covered her eyes with her hand anyway. So she wouldn’t have to see. Hating herself.
“Why should I?”
She fought not to cry, and lost. “Because I don’t have anyone else.”
“Why,” he slowly repeated, “should I?”
She knew it wasn’t because he hadn’t heard her the first time. He simply wanted to hear her voice break while she admitted how pathetic she was. “I don’t have anyone else.”
She could hear his smile even in the silence that followed.
“Where are you?” he finally asked.
Expecting him to hang up again, she told him.
“What a naughty girl you are. You’re going to have to work extra hard if you want my forgiveness. Even so, I don’t think you’re going to get it for a very long time.” She heard the faint rustle as he shifted his phone, pinning it between his shoulder and his ear. “Give me your address.”
Kitty had to find a piece of mail, but eventually she obeyed.
“I’m going to hang up now,” he told her. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to fix this mess of yours, but I expect you to be there when I call back and I expect you to do exactly what I tell you to when I do. I’m going to see you very soon, Kitty-girl. If you’re half as smart as you think you are, I suggest you use all the quiet time between now and then to plan out your apologies.”
Kitty sank all the way to the floor, her phone in her hand for a long time after he hung up. She already knew, no matter what she said or did, it would make no difference. If she went back to him, Ethen was going to hurt her because he got off on it. Hands creeping up to caress the slight rounding of her stomach, Kitty drew a deep, but shaky breath. Well, she guessed it was a good thing she wasn’t going back to Ethen.
He’d taken everything from her—home, money, her job, everything right down to the tiniest shred of self-confidence and any kind of security. He was the reason she had nothing. Didn’t that alone make it okay to use him now? She could pretend to be obedient, couldn’t she? Just long enough for him to buy her a plane ticket. She could pretend long enough to get whatever was left of her things out of his house and then…
And then she would call Hadlee and Garreth to come and get her, so she could start building her life back up again. The right way, this time. Without running away or hiding from anyone.
Once she was home, she’d call Noah. She’d tell him what she’d done and why. She’d say she was sorry. She’d probably cry.
She was already crying, because it already hurt. Which only strengthened her resolve that she was doing the right thing. If she waited another thirty days, like she’d promised, there was no way she’d ever be able to make herself go.
On the way back to town, Noah stopped at the gas station parked across the street from the only strip mall within twenty kilometers of Cooktown. It had six shops, five of which catered to the tourists who made this little section of Australia a congested hell for eight months out of the year. Of course, they also made life in this tourist town financially possible for the other four, so no one complained too much.
Among those six shops was Bronson’s Pets, where free puppy kisses were advertised on the store front window in great blue and white-trimmed letters. From across the street, Noah read that advertisement while he pumped gas into his truck. No one would ever accuse him of being a hard-ass again, that was for sure. As soon as his tank was full, he drove across the street to see what they had in the way of cat toys.
Twenty minutes and twenty dollars later, he emerged from the shadows of that store with a full supply of catnip mice, bells inside of little plastic balls, and even a metal food bowl with goldfish playing around the outer rim. His next stop was the grocery store and then he was on his way home, with a bag of cracker goldfish bouncing along on the seat beside him. For treats, he thought, as he turned down the long driveway back to his front door. He couldn’t wait to see what she thought of them.
His next thought was how Kitty must still be sleeping, because when he walked into the house, everything was quiet. All the lights were off, but the sun was high enough and the living room bright enough that he could see all the way down the hallway, past his open bedroom door, to the mound of disheveled blankets that made up Kitty’s side of the bed. It was empty now, and Kitty wasn’t anywhere that he could see or hear.
“I’m home,” he called, coming down the hallway. He paused at the bathroom door to knock, but no one was inside. A damp towel on the rack told him she’d taken a shower, but it had been long enough ago for the tub to have dried. A slow knot began to pull from the pit of his stomach up into his chest.
He tapped at her closed bedroom door next. “Kitty?”
When there was no answer, he cracked it ajar on the off chance that she might be changing. But no, this room was empty too, and then he saw her bed.
She’d made it up, but in a very specific way. The sheets were stripped and the patchwork quilt folded neatly across the foot of the bed, as any polite guest would leave a bed once they had no more need of it. The closet door was open. Her clothes were gone. Her bag no longer hung on a hook in the back. Kitty had left.
Noah stood in the middle of his guest room, too bewildered even to be hurt. That would come later as he charged back down the hall, through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and back to the kitchen again. His was a small house, it simply wasn’t big enough to hide anyone, not even long enough for him to fool himself into thinking maybe he’d missed her the first time through.
No, she really was gone. He didn’t want to heed what common sense was telling him. In the end, he didn’t have to. At the head of the table where he usually sat, he spotted a slip of white paper. She’d left him a note. In fact, she’d used the same note he’d written her, the one in which he’d promised to be back, to write her farewell. Short and to the point, it read simply: I’ve gone home.
Sprinkled along the bottom were little blotches where her tears had fallen. Noah ran his thumb over them, but those were dried now too.
He was supposed to have thirty days. What had happened? And how much of a head start did she have on him?
He started off walking, but ended up running and made it back to his truck with that stupid letter still in one hand and his cell in the other. He tried Kitty’s cellphone, but his call went straight to voicemail. Swearing under his breath, Noah switched to a different contact number. He took the ruts in his driveway much faster than his truck was used to.
“What the hell, blokey!” he snapped once Garreth picked up on his end of the line.
“What?” was the response he got between chews.
Noah checked his watch. It was the supper hour in America, but he didn’t apologize for the interruption. “You heard me. I thought we were mates?”
Garreth swallowed what was in his mouth. “What’s happened?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Noah shot back. “Are you telling me she didn’t call you?”
“No, she
didn’t call me! This is the first call I’ve had all night. What’s going on?”
In the background, a distant female voice called, “Who is it, honey?”
“Noah,” Garreth replied, and then back into the phone asked, “Where’s Kitty?”
“Shit,” Noah said, half under his breath. Shifting into higher gear, he sped back to the main road even faster than before. “Whoever hears from her first calls the other, yeah?”
“Right,” Garreth said grimly. They both hung up and the rest of the ride into town was made in absolute silence.
If he were an American without money, friends or means, where would he go, Noah tried to think. What would he do?
She’d gone home, or so her note had said. And yet, why would she write that without calling the one person who could help her get there? He searched the road for signs of anyone walking. She didn’t have a car, so she had to be out here somewhere. Unless she’d turned to hitch-hiking. He swore again, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t be that stupid, but Cooktown was too small even for a bus system. Except the tour buses, but those only ran during the height of the tourist season and usually only back and forth from the hotel to the beach.
Unless she took a cab, a little voice in his head suggested. Cooktown did have one of those. Literally, one.
Pulling a U-turn in the middle of the road, he very nearly side-swiped another vehicle and drove straight to Old Man Jennison’s home, which doubled as the base of operations for his single-cab business.
Frail and bent-backed, seventy if she was a day, his wife, Maybelle, answered the kitchen door when he pounded. The thickness of her glasses amplified her owl-eyed shock at seeing him. “Mr. Carver?”
Pushing past, he searched the cluttered three-room home. “Kitty!”
There was no answer and no sign of either her or Jennison. His beat-up Studebaker of a cab wasn’t parked within sight of the house, not via any of the windows Noah checked.
“What on earth?” Maybelle declared, chasing after him in confusion. “You need to calm down right now, young man. This isn’t seemly!”
“Is she with him?” Noah demanded.
She tried to give him a stern frown, but he pushed past her again, storming back through her equally small house to the living room where a work station made up of phones, books, maps, calculator and a visa machine cluttered the top of a narrow desk.
Drawing herself up to her tallest diminutive height, she knuckled her hands onto bony hips. “Sometimes you have to let them go if it isn’t meant to be.”
Sure enough, the last call logged in the notebook he found lying open on top of the pile had Kitty’s name and his address written on it. He checked the time against his watch. Shit, that had been almost two hours ago. “Where’s Jennison taking her?”
Maybelle’s frown deepened, but not without a glimmer of sympathy. “Cairns Airport.”
“He got his cello on him?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Even if the fare hadn’t already been paid in full, in advance, the answer would still be no. She’s a grown woman.”
Paid in full? The notebook had a money amount, but nothing that showed a payment taken. “How was it paid?”
Pushing him aside, Maybelle dug through the stacks to show him a slip of a paper and credit card receipt. “The card cleared,” she said, thrusting it at him. “I can get a hold of him, but I can already tell you right now, he’s not going to bring her back against her will. That would be kidnapping.”
Noah barely heard her. Taking the receipt, he read the name again. Not Garreth, which he’d been expecting, or Hadlee, which would have been understandable. He’d still paddle Kitty’s bottom to within an inch of all sitting ability, but he’d have understood. But no, the name on the receipt was Ethen O’Dowell, complete with verification information and a home address.
Kitty hadn’t called Hadlee for help. She’d called Ethen.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
Maybelle barely got out of his way before he bowled past her. They had a two-hour head start on him, but Cairns was a four-hour drive. He broke every speed limit along the way, but it didn’t make any difference. Kitty’s plane was taxi-ing down the runway by the time security tackled him at the gate.
“She left me,” he said, watching in disbelief as the plane lifted off the ground.
“Yeah, well,” the arresting officer said, snapping him into handcuffs, “I reckon if you were this much of a nut with her, she can’t be blamed, can she? After you, mate.” Catching him by the collar, the officer pulled him away from the windows. “Start walking. Through the turnstyles this time, instead of hopping over ‘em, eh?”
Chapter 15
The flight back to the States took four hours longer than leaving it had, with three plane transfers instead of two and a layover in excess of seven hours. She didn’t know if Ethen had done that on purpose or if he’d simply got her on the first flight out and that had been her luck of the draw. It was the sort of thing he would have done, but for her own mental sake, Kitty chose to believe it was the latter. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all that. It wasn’t like she’d had a lot of options.
She didn’t sleep a wink the entire trip. She laid the seat back on each plane she boarded, but when she closed her eyes, all she ever saw was another long and awful ride in Ethen’s car. Once he picked her up at the airport. If he picked her up.
Of course, once she got back to the States, she wasn’t quite as stuck as she’d been overseas. She had Hadlee once she got to D.C. Hadlee would drop everything to come and get her. But she’d probably bring Garreth with her. Kitty knew she had some hard explaining to do. Frankly, with every plane transfer that brought her closer to home, all the reasons she’d been nursing for leaving Noah in the first place seemed to weaken. She wasn’t sure she knew anymore how to explain to herself what she was doing or why. How could anyone else understand? Especially not Hadlee, who although she’d run away first, had gone straight into the arms of a man who loved her, and had for months.
She didn’t have to flee the country.
She didn’t lose everything first.
She didn’t… For fuck’s sake! Scrubbing her hands through her hair, Kitty turned off her miserable thoughts. She was tired of running down her own litany of woes. Everyone had problems. No one had a perfect life. She’d got herself into this and, one way or another, she’d get herself out. She didn’t know how yet, but the solution would not involve becoming dependent on strangers to straighten it out for her.
Or making Noah responsible for the baby growing inside her.
The layover was more exhausting than it was restful. She stretched out along a row of empty seats and tried again to sleep, but her stomach wouldn’t settle and she had no money even for crackers. By the time she reached the States, she’d been holding onto an airsick bag for half a day. The black circles were back under her eyes. The rest of her looked green, but at least she hadn’t vomited. She saved those awful heaving attempts for that ugly moment when she staggered out of the interior of the Reagan National airport and into the lobby where Ethen was waiting amongst the crowd. Her stomach rolled at the thinness of his smile. His eyes said ‘just wait until I get you alone’ and she barely made it to the nearest garbage can before her guts rebelled.
Ethen turned away, every stiff line of his body unhappy with the scene she’d made. As if she weren’t already in enough trouble; as if he didn’t already have a list of things to make her pay for.
As if she could help it, she thought bitterly, spitting the bile from her mouth and accepting the napkin some sweet old lady offered her, as she patted her back and stroked her hair and murmured, “It’s all right, dear. That turbulence is awful, isn’t it? Well, you’re on the ground now, so things are bound to be better soon, won’t they?”
Arms braced on the trashcan rim, she hung her head until she was sure her stomach was done.
“Disgusting,” was all Ethen said once she reached his side. “Remind me
again why I wanted you back.”
Some months ago, a comment like that would have filled her with guilt and fear. Funny how long flights and too little sleep could change things. Right now, it only pricked her temper.
“I’m pregnant,” she told, making almost no effort at all to hide her annoyance. “And yeah, it’s yours.”
She stared at him, almost daring him to question that. His smile even thinner than before, Ethen looked away first. Neither of them spoke again. When he turned away, she followed him, out of the airport, through to the second floor of the terminal parking garage and away from the bustling crowd. Her irritation, more at herself now than at him, seemed only to grow with every step. Her inability to hide that irritation was growing too, keeping an even pace, and that annoyed her more. She was usually pretty good at hiding her feelings. What was wrong with her now?
She was back in D.C., said the practical voice in her head.
When they reached his car, Ethen opened the rear driver’s side door for her and waited for her to take her place. Neither Puppy-girl nor Pony-girl were present. She was going to be in the car with him for the duration of this ride, alone.
“I’ll make some phone calls,” he said, looking everywhere but at her. “I’ll have it sorted out by Friday. In the meantime, I hope you’ve given some thought to how you want to fix the real situation.”
Warning tickled at the back of Kitty’s neck as she followed his gaze up the nearest support column to the security camera tucked into the shadows, and then half a row further away, to the group of men and women in business suits, laughing and talking on their way to their own vehicle. He was checking to see how many people were around.
“I’m waiting,” he said and she snapped back to find him watching her again. His eyes hooded; his face, masked and cold.
He wouldn’t hurt her while there was a chance of witnesses. That, however, changed the moment she got into his car.
What was she doing? She was back in D.C. now and could call Hadlee at any point. She didn’t have to pander to Ethen’s dominance anymore; she didn’t have to pretend. To be perfectly honest, she couldn’t think of a single thing of hers that he still had that she wanted badly enough to risk getting into his car. And yet, that moment of defiance she had plotted out in her head for when she at last could lock eyes with Ethen and tell him to his face what a piece of shit ‘dom’ he was, that she’d been using him for a change, and that he had nothing she wanted anymore—that defiance was far, far easier to imagine than it was to initiate now that she was standing in front of him.
