Margaret held her hands out to ease the screen door shut without letting it slam. It was one of her father’s pet peeves. There was no need to encourage the man to snap at her as though she were a five-year-old today.
She could hear the men talking. They were no longer in the living room. They had moved to the study, so she turned down the hall toward her father’s favorite room. Before she reached the entrance, however, she stopped dead in her tracks. Their voices were off. Not quite loud enough. And their tone was combative. And then she heard her name mentioned and couldn’t move another inch. She held her breath.
“Do you really think Margaret has turned over a new leaf?” her uncle asked.
Robbie chuckled sardonically. “You would think after the way Petey, Ross and I roughed her up twelve years ago she would’ve straightened herself out. But I don’t think so.”
What the fuck? She set a hand on the wall to keep from falling. Her legs threatened to give out.
“You’re still following her, right?” This question came from her father.
“Of course. Just like you requested. She hasn’t been staying at her apartment. At least this time she’s fornicating with a man. It’s an improvement over that lesbian bitch she was with for over a year. But this guy ain’t right either. He takes her to the same club she went to with that rug muncher. It’s a fetish club.”
“That could be good though, right?” her father asked. “I mean, at least it’s a man.”
Uncle Rocky laughed. “I hate to tell you this, brother, but that girl ain’t right. If my boys couldn’t scare her straight back when she was a teenager, I don’t think there’s hope.”
Robbie chuckled also. “I’ve even left her a few threatening notes to shake her up. But nothing has caused her to change her ways.”
“Well, she better get on the straight and narrow and stay there soon. If I’m going to become a deacon next month, I need my family by my side. It won’t look good if my own daughter is sowing her wild oats. She needs to come back into the fold and start going to church again.”
Margaret was too stunned to breathe or move. She knew she needed to, and fast. But the shock was overwhelming. What the fuck was she listening to? She lifted her hand to tuck her hair behind her ear but found herself shaking so violently she couldn’t even accomplish that simple task.
Her feet seemed to be stuck in quicksand.
She glanced around. The voices in her father’s study continued, but she could no longer hear them. She’d heard enough. More than enough. She had to get out of there. Now.
Commanding her body to move, she turned silently, made her way to the front door, grabbed her purse and managed to slip out without making a sound. Even the front door snicked shut on a breath. At least something went in her favor.
Without looking in any direction except straight ahead, Margaret headed for her car and didn’t pause until she was in the seat, holding the keys up to the ignition. She dropped them and had to fish them off the floor, panic crawling up her spine for fear someone would come out of the house before she made her escape.
Shaking, she finally managed to start the car and peel away from the curb.
Tears filled her eyes when the shock wore off. She gripped the steering wheel so tight her hands hurt. When the tears fell, she had trouble seeing. She kept driving. No way would she risk pulling over.
She drove for several miles before she realized where she was headed. Suddenly, her apartment was right in front of her. She pulled over, shut off the car and heaved giant sobs, unable to open the door. She sat there for a long time, sucking oxygen in over and over—the true meaning of the ugly cry.
When she finally wiped her face and glanced around, she was relieved to find no one had noticed her. And no one seemed to have followed her. She gathered up the strength to grab her purse and head for her apartment. The moment she got inside and shut the door, she leaned against the wall, slunk down to the floor, buried her face in her hands and cried again.
She cried for the child raised by such a heinous family. She cried for the teenager viciously attacked and beaten by her own cousins. She cried for the mother who might or might not have known any of that happened to her daughter, but was just as guilty by association.
Most of all Margaret cried for herself, for her loss, for the loneliness that crept into her and wouldn’t abate. She wasn’t sure at first why she’d come home to her own place. She hadn’t been there for over a week. But now, as she eased herself to completely lie on the floor, she knew. She needed to be alone. She needed to process everything that had happened.
She couldn’t face Carlton. Not now. This was her fucked-up battle, an inner war of sorts. She didn’t want to see his face or deal with his reaction yet. And the last thing she could manage at that point was submission.
Her submission actually scared the fuck out of her. She’d submitted to her father her entire life, doing what he said, being who he wanted her to be. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had never been the daughter he wanted. But she’d exerted a tremendous amount of energy faking she was someone she wasn’t, for his sake.
And all that time she’d never known he’d actually hired her own cousins to fucking track her down and beat her up in a dark alley? Fuck! And he was still having them trail her around town to make sure she was toeing the line? Goddamn, that was fucked up.
Even more fucked up than she ever imagined.
Suddenly she winced. Holy shit. Her cousins were the ones following her. They were the ones who left the notes on her car. She’d been so stunned since running out of her parents’ house, she hadn’t stopped to realize her stalkers were in fact her cousins. Damn them. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. She heaved back new tears.
She needed to call the cops. But she couldn’t bring herself to sit up yet.
It grew dark. She lay on the hardwood floor, her face pressed against the dark wood, the coolness a refuge that grounded her to the earth. The only thing she knew was the wood against her cheek. She spread her fingers on the slats, thinking perhaps she could also grip the floor with them and not disappear.
Her cell rang many times. She didn’t move to answer it. It sat in her purse next to her body and she left it there. She didn’t care who was calling. She wanted to talk to no one. She didn’t have the energy to speak to Carlton yet, and she’d rather die than answer a call from her mother or father.
She had no idea how much time passed. It grew dark. Hours. Her face had dried, but it felt tight from the streaks of tears. She didn’t even sleep. She just lay there almost dead inside.
She didn’t flinch when a knock sounded at the door. She’d known it would happen eventually. She’d never entered past the foyer and she hadn’t turned on a light, but anyone who came looking would know she was there by her car out front.
“Maggie? Are you in there?” Carlton. She’d know his voice anywhere, and he was the only person alive who called her by that nickname. “Maggie. Please. Open the door.” He was persistent. She knew that about him. He wouldn’t leave. And if she were honest with herself, she wouldn’t love him as much as she had grown to if he were the kind of man who would give up on her.
But he wasn’t. If she didn’t open the door, he would break it down.
Pulling herself from the floor, she reached up and turned the handle enough to unlock the door and allow him to get through.
He pushed it open slowly. “Maggie?” He stepped inside, glancing around the dim room for a second before he spotted her on the floor. He pushed the door shut behind him as he gasped. “Maggie? What the hell? What happened? Are you all right?” While he fired all the right questions she’d known he would ask, he bent down, grabbed her shoulders and held her at arm’s length to assess her for injury.
“Baby, talk to me. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. Tears fell with renewed force, shocking her that there was
enough moisture left in her body to produce them.
Carlton hauled her into his arms and lifted her off the ground. He cradled her against his body and carried her to the couch.
She cried harder at how caring he was, her tears mixed with her runny nose, soaking his T-shirt.
“Baby. Talk to me.” He smoothed her hair back as he sat with her in his lap. He tipped her face up to meet his gaze, but she saw nothing through the haze of her tears.
“Maggie.” His voice was sharper that time. He shook her shoulders a bit. “Do I need to call the police? Did someone attack you?”
She shook her head, perhaps too violently as she realized what a mess this was and how her situation must have appeared to him. “No. I mean, yes. Someone did attack me, but not today. Twelve years ago. We need to call the cops, but not yet. I need to pull myself together.”
He flinched. “I’m confused. Talk to me, baby.” Whatever the hell had happened with her parents, it was bad. He’d never seen her like this before. Agonizingly distraught.
Even when she and Lori broke up, he’d never seen her this upset.
He’d been out of his mind when she hadn’t returned home. He’d called her several times and then driven to her parents’ house. When he didn’t find her car, he didn’t go to the door. Instead he drove to her apartment. He’d sat in his car for a full minute, hyperventilating, when he realized she had to be inside.
His fear of cars was irrational. He knew that. And he needed to get a grip on himself before he let his fear manifest as anger. It wasn’t her fault he hated her driving around.
“Maggie, open up to me. This isn’t fair. You scared the shit out of me. Do you know how worried I’ve been looking for you?”
She squirmed off his body with enough sudden energy to face him head-on. She stood next to the couch and pointed at him. “You? You were worried. Fuck you, Carlton. This is so not about you and your concern for my safety. This is about me.” She jerked her finger to point at herself.
He opened his mouth, but then he sat there stunned, saying nothing.
She continued, backing up and then pacing around the room. Stomping really. She dug her hands into her hair and pulled them through the long locks, yanking hard enough to wince. “My parents are fucking freaks, Carlton. I’m in a state of crisis here. So don’t fucking talk to me about your concerns right now. I can’t take it after what I’ve been through today.”
“Okay,” he managed to mumble.
Maggie paced the room for several minutes. He watched as she got her breathing under control and then finally turned to face him.
Carlton leaned forward, afraid to do anything else. “Talk to me, baby. What happened? Did you confront your parents?”
She lifted her gaze to meet his and took a deep breath. “I never even got a chance. My aunt and uncle were there. And their oldest son, Robbie.”
“Okay.”
“I went outside with my mom and aunt to sit on the porch. When it was time for lunch, my mom sent me in to give the men a head’s up.”
Carlton pursed his lips, fear climbing its way up his spine. He pressed his palms together and leaned his elbows on his knees.
Maggie picked at invisible lint on her shirt. “They were talking in my dad’s study. I heard my name from the hall, so I stopped in my tracks and listened.” She licked her lips. She didn’t speak again, her gaze focused on something across the room Carlton was sure she didn’t actually see.
She didn’t move until a tear ran down her cheek, and she flinched and reached to wipe it away.
Bile rose in Carlton’s throat. He forced himself to remain still and quiet. But it was a challenge. “Go on.”
“It was my cousins.”
“What was your cousins?”
“The ones who followed me and Leslie that night. The ones who beat us up and screamed those hateful words at us.” She stood straighter. A fire burned in her eyes, fury Carlton hoped to never see in anyone’s expression ever again in his life. “My own cousins fucking followed me and my girlfriend, beat us up and ran like the fucking bastards they are, leaving us to die.
“My father and my uncle fucking told them to do it.” She yanked her gaze back to the floor as though facing him with this information was more than she could bear.
Carlton couldn’t move. He sat stunned in his seat. And that was a good thing.
Who did something like that to their own child?
Maggie’s head bolted back up. “Can you believe it? My fucking father.” She was screaming again now. “That asshole and his brother fucking hired my cousins to rough me up to set me fucking straight.”
Carlton swallowed. It seemed his heart stopped beating. He couldn’t think of a thing he could possibly say at that moment. Rage burned in his entire body. If he moved, he would break something.
And he’d never heard so many cuss words coming from her mouth. But he’d also never imagined a time when they would be as necessary as they were. She’d dropped more F-bombs in two minutes than he’d ever heard from one sweet mouth. And still, she was totally in the right.
The rage that ran through him made his ears ring until he felt like he were in a bubble. He watched as Maggie sobbed, tears running down her face. He watched, but he couldn’t move from his spot, nor could he hear a sound.
Who did something like that to a child? Their own daughter?
Carlton gripped his knees with both hands, hoping to keep himself from jumping off the couch, tearing through the door and making his way to Maggie’s parents’ house to fucking kill her sad excuse for a father.
He didn’t though, and that’s what mattered.
His gaze moved to Maggie, the woman he’d fallen in love with, the broken woman who’d been treated with such disrespect for so many years. Her head was tipped toward her feet and she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.
He said the first thing that came to mind. “We should call the police.”
Margaret lifted her face. “Yeah, cause that’s not all.” Her shoulders slumped and she didn’t meet his gaze. “They’ve still been following me.” She turned to face the wall away from him.
“What?”
“Apparently my father still has them tailing me, everywhere. I knew it, but I didn’t want you to freak out, so I didn’t tell you.”
“You knew your cousins were following you? Like recently?” He thought about the car that had driven by his house so slowly the other night and shivered. He gripped the arm of the couch with his fingers until they hurt.
She turned to face him. “I knew someone was following me. I’ve already gone to the cops.” Her voice was dead calm.
Carlton took a deep breath, staring at her. He wanted to jump up and scream, but that wouldn’t help right now.
She continued while he sat silently, “They’ve been leaving nasty notes on my windshield while I was at work.”
Now he stood, slowly. He walked past her, through the kitchen and out the back door. She had a small balcony, and he used every inch of it to pace back and forth, trying to get himself together before he screamed.
Minutes passed. He ran his hands through his hair until it hurt from pulling. His heart still pounded. He couldn’t stop the flames that threatened to consume him. His face was so hot it burned.
The sliding door opened, and Maggie stepped out after a while. “I called the cops. They’re on their way over.” Her voice was still dead.
Carlton turned to face her. He opened his mouth, but she held up a hand. “Don’t start. I’m not in the mood right now. I’ve been through hell. Either support me or leave. I’m exhausted. My world is fucking upside down. I don’t need you to lecture me about fucking safety.”
He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “You’re right.” He wanted to turn her over his lap and spank her sexy ass, but she couldn’t handle that right now.
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“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You’re a worrier. Way over the top. I wasn’t really sure if someone was following me or if I was being paranoid. There was no way to know who left the notes, and I did go to the cops. There’s nothing different you could have done but worry more.”
And fucking drive you everywhere. Which was precisely what she didn’t want, so he had to understand where she was coming from. He didn’t have to like it, but he got it.
“Come back inside. I need to be able to hear the front door.” Maggie backed through the sliding door, nodding behind her.
Carlton followed.
She led him to the living room and sat in a chair. Not the couch. A chair. Where he couldn’t touch her. She curled her legs under her.
Carlton wanted to know what else happened. “What did your dad and uncle say when they found you standing there?”
She let out a long breath. “They didn’t. I backed away and left the house without a word.”
“You didn’t face them?”
“Fuck no. Not going over there again in my life.”
So her parents didn’t even know what she’d found out. He leaned back against the couch. Great.
They sat in silence. He felt like he was walking on pins and needles with her. He couldn’t say anything because if he did, she might go ballistic on him. Not that he could blame her.
He jumped when a knock sounded at the door, and then he stood and took two strides to get to the entrance before Maggie.
Two police officers stood outside.
Carlton let them in, and they spent the next half hour going over all the specific events of today, the last few weeks and twelve years ago. Neither cop thought there was much they would be able to do or prove. But they did suggest Maggie get an order of protection.
When they left, Carlton turned toward Maggie again. “Let’s go home. You need sleep.” He felt almost as wrung out as she looked.
Bound to be Tempted: Emergence, Book 4 Page 21
