Hunt the Dawn

by Abbie Roads

  Her heart was full, painfully full of love for him. He was her moon and stars and night sky. He was her sunshine and green grass. He was her entirety. There was no her without him.

  * * *

  She could barely eat, she was so nervous. No, she was excited. No, scared. She was all three.

  Evan didn’t notice her watching him eat. He was always hungry after his shift at the sheriff’s office, and today she’d cooked his favorite meal. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, and homemade rolls.

  “Evan.” She waited until he looked at her.

  A my god, woman, you can cook smile was on his face as he chewed.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  His smile tumbled off his face—she swore she heard it splat in his gravy. He swallowed, then looked at the table she’d set with her fancy dishes, platters of food, candles, and flowers. “That’s what this is about.” He jabbed his fork toward everything.

  Not what she was expecting him to say. Not at all. Disappointment poured tears into her eyes. “Well, yeah.”

  Evan shoved back his chair and stood.

  She wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure what to say. He seemed…mad. But why would he be mad? They hadn’t exactly talked about having kids, and it wasn’t like she’d planned to get pregnant, but it had happened.

  “Evan—”

  He threw his fork across the room. It clattered and clanked against something.

  Her heart slapped against her sternum.

  He picked up his plate, threw it with just as much violence. Before she could utter a sound, he flipped the table over. The crashing of dishes and splintering of furniture hurt her ears, and she shrunk back in her chair—the only chair still standing.

  Evan stalked from the room out the door. She sat in stunned silence. In less than five seconds, he’d destroyed her meal, their kitchen, and her life.

  Part of her wanted to pack her bags and leave. The other part—the part reminding her that she was having his baby—couldn’t let go so easily. Maybe she’d said something wrong. Maybe he’d misunderstood her.

  She ran after him and caught up with him just as he was about to get in his truck. “Evan. Wait. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  He grabbed her arms, his fingers digging into her muscles painfully and backed her against the driver’s door, trapping her with his body. In his eyes, the man she loved was gone, replaced by a rabid beast.

  “Whose is it?” he shouted, his breath smelling of mashed potatoes.

  Distantly, she heard a car approaching, but she couldn’t focus on anything but Evan. Tears washed her cheeks with their salt. She could barely speak around the terrible sobs racking her body. “Yours, baby. Yours.”

  He was a jealous man. She’d known that from the beginning, but it had never been an issue. He was the sun she revolved around. There was no one else. Never would be.

  He grabbed her chin, his fingers no more gentle than they’d been on her arms. She whimpered and tried to pull away, but he forced her to look at him—in his eyes. “What was the meal about?”

  “It was supposed to be a celebration.” Messy sobs strangled her words, but she knew he heard them. Her entire world had been ripped apart. Everything she’d envisioned for their future—gone. He let go of her chin. She turned her head to the side, couldn’t bear to see the beast inside him.

  “Evan. Let her go. You’re scaring her.” Rob, Evan’s best friend, stood close beside them with his son, Junior. The kid watched her and Evan with wide, apathetic eyes.

  Stupidly, she felt embarrassed that a kid would see her in such a powerless position.

  The rigid length of Evan’s body mashing against her relaxed. The anger in his eyes faded until the man she loved returned.

  Gently, slowly, he gathered her to him, wrapping his arms around her, holding her close, but it felt different—she felt different. She felt stiff as a two-by-four and couldn’t make herself relax into him, couldn’t hug him back.

  “I’m so sorry. I just love you so much and I thought—I was being crazy—I thought you were telling me someone else got you pregnant. I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe because you surprised me.” He whispered the words against her ear, then drew back. His gaze locked on her jaw, on the place he’d grabbed, on the place that still hurt. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” He knelt in front of her and put his forehead on her stomach.

  The fear, the hurt that had clenched her tight loosened.

  “Forgive me. Say you forgive me.” He kissed her belly. “Both of you.”

  He won her over with both of you. “I forgive you.”

  “You two are having a baby?” Rob asked.

  Evan kept his attention locked on her, but didn’t answer the question.

  “Yes. We’re having a baby.” She spoke with an even, unexcited tone, so different from how she’d felt before everything bad had happened.

  “Well, then, congratulations.”

  She pushed a smile onto her lips. “Thanks.”

  Evan hadn’t said anything about being excited to be a dad. But he loved her again, and wasn’t that what was most important? As long as they loved each other, they’d figure everything else out.

  * * *

  “Leave him,” Dad pleaded. “Be the mom you want to be to Evanee and Thomas instead of just some woman who visits them a few hours a week. They need their mom, not an old man, raising them.”

  Dad’s words hurt but were the truth.

  A few hours a week—Evan’s rules. Not what she wanted, but what she had agreed to in order to keep him happy. The simple fact that she put Evan’s happiness above her kids made her a bad mom. The worst kind of mom.

  She rocked her sleeping baby boy gently. Just like Evanee, he’d been born with a thick cap of black hair. And just like when Evanee was born, Evan had insisted she make her father watch him. Evan hadn’t seen Thomas since his birth, and that was the last time he’d seen his daughter too. He had absolutely no feelings for either of his kids beyond jealousy for the few hours she spent visiting them at her dad’s house.

  She’d thought she could change him, make him love the kids, but now she realized how naive she’d been.

  “You can move back here. Save your money. I’ll be here to help if Evan gets out of control. You won’t have to deal with him alone.”

  Dad wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t said a hundred times over the past two years, but today it was tempting in a way it hadn’t been before. She was tired, worn down mentally from being split between pleasing Evan and knowing she was letting her kids down. Up ’til now, she’d focused on Evan, made changes for him, while he made nothing but demands of her.

  “Okay. You’re right.”

  Dad slumped in his chair like he’d gone boneless. “Finally.”

  “I’ll go home tonight, act like everything is all right, then while he’s at work tomorrow, pack my stuff and be gone by the time he gets home.”

  “That’s probably wise.” Dad had seen Evan in a temper. That was part of the reason he’d agreed to take both Evanee and Thomas. Didn’t want Evan to hurt them when he got into one of his moods.

  “I’ve got to go.” She handed her sleeping son to her father, then knelt down next to Evanee. “Baby, I’ll be back tomorrow and I won’t leave ever again.”

  Evanee never looked up from playing with her doll. Why should she? Rosemary was practically a stranger to her own daughter.

  She tousled her child’s hair, stood, and walked out the door.

  Once she was in her car, the doubts crept out of the dark corners of her mind. She loved Evan. How could she leave him? The man she fell in love with was still inside him, still knew how to be a romantic, still knew how to twist her heart into a love knot. But lately, the bad days had been outnumbering the good days. Ah, but the good days weren’t merely good, they were spectacular.
/>   She glanced in the rearview mirror. The two empty and rarely used car seats were a glaring reminder of everything wrong with her life. Her resolve returned.

  She pulled into their driveway, suddenly aware that she didn’t remember one moment of the drive home. She parked next to Evan’s cruiser.

  A stillness settled in her body, something she hadn’t felt in so long that it was foreign. She was doing the right thing. She just had to get through tonight.

  Her legs were steady as she headed up the sidewalk.

  Inside, the house was too quiet, too neat—not at all how it should be. Cartoons should be blaring on the TV. Thomas should be fussing, and Evanee should be banging her toys together. Toys and bottles and laundry should be all over the place. The house should sound and look like a family lived there.

  And suddenly she couldn’t stand to be there. But she knew she couldn’t leave—not yet. She picked up the phone and dialed Rob’s number. He’d intervened a number of times when Evan got out of control. She needed him now.

  “Who you calling?”

  She startled so violently that she dropped the phone. It clattered to the floor, dangling by its cord.

  Evan stood in the kitchen doorway. He still wore his uniform. As he walked into the room, he took off his gun belt and draped it over a chair. “I said, who you calling?”

  “I’m moving back to Dad’s.” She shouldn’t have blurted the words out. She should’ve kept them secret and hidden until she was safe, but a sick part of her wanted him to beg her to stay, wanted him to promise to change, wanted to give him one last chance.

  “The hell you are.” The beast in his eyes promised to hurt her. Bad.

  She turned to run, but he caught her around the waist and slammed her face down on the kitchen table. Pain dazed her senses, and by the time she could think again, she realized he’d cuffed one of her hands to the table leg. Her wrist ached from the way it was bent over the edge of the table at an unnatural angle. She bucked her hips, tried to move, but Evan pinned her legs against the other end of the table.

  “Evan. No! Don’t do this.” She screamed against the wood. “I won’t leave. I promise. I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  She lay underneath his body. His blood gushed over her, scalding her back and pooling underneath her torso. It dripped and poured onto the floor, the sound loud as a faucet in the silent house.

  She’d shot him. Killed him. With his own gun. She hadn’t meant to, or maybe she had. Why else had her free hand sought his gun belt? Why else would she have aimed the gun over her shoulder at him?

  She began crying and knew she was never going to stop. She cried until the blood cooled, then chilled, and she shook as much from her sobs as from the cold.

  “Rosemary.” Rob was suddenly there, hauling Evan off her.

  He uncuffed her wrist, but she couldn’t move. She was too sore. Too tired. He pulled her off the table but lost his grip on her, and she sank to the floor.

  “Rosemary. Tell me what happened.” Rob’s tone carried the calm authority of a policeman. He knelt next to her, his face expressionless.

  “I…shot him. I killed him.” The sobs ratcheted up to a new level of miserable.

  “Stop.” Rob’s voice was a sharp crack of sound that startled her into silence. He looked around the room—blood covered the table, the floor, had splattered against the wall and part of the ceiling—then back at her. “You’ll go to prison for this. You’ll be lucky to be out by the time Evanee and Thomas have graduated.”

  She wanted to die. She needed to die. Life was over. She reached for the gun.

  Rob grabbed it first, ignoring the blood all over it, and tucked it inside his pants. “That’s not the answer. I have an idea, but you’ll owe me. I’m putting my job and my life on the line for you.”

  “Anything, Rob. Anything. Just make it go away. All of it.”

  And he did.

  * * *

  “Mommy, Junior hurt me between my legs.”

  Her hand lashed out, cracking against Ev’s mouth hard enough that her palm stung. She was horrified at what she’d done, but buried the feeling deep inside. If Ev ever told anyone, Rob would kill her precious daughter.

  “Liar. Never say that again. Ever.”

  Fat tears swarmed in her child’s miserable blue eyes. A red palm print stood out on Ev’s pale face, and blood drizzled from the corner of her mouth.

  “Go to your room. Don’t come out until tomorrow morning.”

  Ev ran up the stairs, the sound of her sobs trailing behind her.

  On wobbly legs, Rosemary crossed the room and sank down on the sofa. She had destroyed Ev’s life. All because of her own stupid decisions.

  Now she was trapped in a marriage to a pervert and his equally twisted son. Trapped too well to leave. She had no family—Dad’s death still haunted her. No money. No job. No car. Where could she and the kids go that Rob wouldn’t find her? How had she ever looked at him as her savior?

  Once she’d threatened to confess everything, but Rob reminded her of what would happen. She’d end up in the psycho unit with the crazy label. She had no proof of anything. No gun. No body. No evidence. No way of implicating Rob in covering things up. Who would believe her over the deputy sheriff who was the sheriff’s chosen one?

  Her children would suffer even worse. With no other relatives, Ev and Thomas would remain in Rob’s custody, no matter what happened. Once she was out of the picture, it would be a matter of time before not only Junior was messing with her girl, but Rob too.

  It came down to degrees of awful. Junior messing with Ev was less awful than Rob. Junior was technically still a kid. He couldn’t hurt her as badly as—

  The SM ended.

  Lathan’s vision returned. Honey’s hand was on his cheek, her thumb caressing his skin. He smelled her worry in the air.

  “Are you all right?”

  Shit. He’d stayed in too long. It only took a few seconds for each SM, but somehow Honey had noticed. His face heated up, a bead of sweat tickled its way down his spine. He felt like he’d just been caught in the middle of an immoral act with his pants down.

  “I’m fine. It was nothing.” Dealing with his shit was the last thing she needed.

  “What happened? It was the same as that night at the diner.”

  He felt everyone’s eyes watching him. Knew exactly what they’d seen. It wasn’t natural for anyone’s left eye to roll around the socket independent of the other one. Gill called it his poltergeist look. “Later. We’ll talk later.”

  “He’s fine.” Gill spoke from the foot of the bed. Must’ve come running when he thought Lathan’s ability was about to be exposed.

  Honey kept her hand on his face. “There’s just one thing I need to do, then I’ll be ready to leave.” She faced Junior and Senior.

  Junior looked and smelled like his entire world had just died. That was odd. Lathan would’ve thought the asshole incapable of love.

  “I’m going to offer you both a deal you don’t deserve. When I walk out of this house, I’m never going to think about either of you ever again. You’re going to leave Lathan alone, forget you ever met him. And if by chance I see you out in public, you better turn and go the other direction. Because I’m done with the secrets, and I’ll start talking to anyone who’ll listen.”

  Chapter 13

  By the time Gill parked at Lathan’s back door, the gray sky had finally faded into evening. The day was almost over. About time. Honey had soldiered through everything, but every warrior had limits and Lathan didn’t want to test hers.

  He heard Honey speaking to Gill, but couldn’t make out the words.

  Gill raised his hand in a semi-friendly acknowledgment. Honey got out of the car. Little Man greeted her with his paw in the air, doing his best impersonation of a good dog.

  Lathan paused, ha
nd on the door handle, a chuckle tumbling around in his throat.

  Honey fit into his life so seamlessly that he didn’t want to remember the pre-Honey days. If Gill would quit staring at his colon and pull his head out of his rectum, he’d see how much better Lathan’s life was because of her. Worry about being overwhelmed by SMs—gone. Struggling to understand speech—gone. He could hear. Fucking hear. It wasn’t perfect—her having to touch his cheek—but he wasn’t going to tread on the miraculous.

  Gill touched Lathan’s arm, gaining his attention. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I need Evanee’s statement about the ring.”

  “When you’re done, can I get a ride to the car dealership?”

  “You’re going to buy a car? For her?” Gill jutted his chin toward Honey.

  She was scrubbing at Little Man’s ears. Anyone who thought dogs weren’t capable of facial expression had to be blind. Little Man’s jaw hung open, his eyes were partway rolled up in his head, and his normally dangling jowls were pulled back in an intimidatingly toothy grin.

  “For us.” Lathan said, still watching Little Man and Honey. Gill touched his arm again.

  “You don’t have experience with women. You don’t know what they are like.”

  Lathan sent him a look full of warning.

  Gill held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “You sure about her? This thing with her is speed-of-light quick.”

  Lathan met his friend’s gaze. Held it. “She’s the only thing I am sure of.” He got out of the car and was only vaguely aware of Gill driving off as he watched Honey and Little Man. Honey darted in one direction, changed course, went another, and Little Man frolicked after her. Fucking frolicked—like he was a twenty-pound puppy, not a two-hundred-pound beast. Joy bubbled out of Lathan in a laugh he didn’t hear, but felt in his chest and throat and mouth.

  Honey finally ran up to him, laughter on her face, the smell of spring on her skin—happiness. That she could be happy after the bipolar kind of day she’d had was evidence of her strength. “You’re feeling good.” He couldn’t not touch her. He put his hand on her neck, his thumb caressing the sharp bone of her jaw.