“Yeah. Maybe.”
“If anyone would know his triggers, it’d be his father.”
I didn’t want to think about Ethan having triggers that would set him off like this. I didn’t want to think about him snapping. Because what if I stayed with him? What if I set him off someday? Or what if Carter did, or even Snoopy? And if that happened, as horrible as the thought might be, could I leave? Could I walk away, knowing he might hurt his son if he didn’t have me there to hurt instead? Could I leave knowing he might do something to harm that little boy?
A lead weight settled in my gut at the thought.
I couldn’t go there. Not now.
The clatter of Carter’s feet rushing back down the stairs was the only sound to disturb the painful tension. “Here, Natalie!” he said, thrusting his iPad into my hands.
Leaving the phone on speaker, I set it down on the window ledge and started filming through the blinds with the iPad. I zoomed in as close as I could without thoroughly compromising the quality of the video, staring at the screen in shock.
Because someone else was climbing out of the car.
“He brought someone else with him! Ethan can maybe hold off his father, but if they team up against—”
“You’re not going out there,” London shouted at me. “Don’t even think about it.”
“But if it’s Hay—”
“If it’s Hayes, then he’s hoping you’ll come out there. Don’t be stupid. You’re not going to be the dumb-ass blonde in the movie who thinks she can fend off men twice her size and ends up getting both herself and the badass hero in bigger trouble than they were in to start with.”
Even though I knew she was right, I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want it to be true.
“Who’s that lady?” Carter asked.
A lady? I strained my eyes to see, but whoever had gotten out of the car was still obscured by Ethan and his father. But then Ethan shoved his father against the side of the car, and I realized Carter was right. It was a small woman with graying hair. And she was tugging on Ethan’s arms, trying to get him to release his father.
“Carter, I need you to do me a favor,” I said. “Can you open the window?” Maybe then we’d be able to hear what was going on without going outside.
“Good plan,” London said. “You’ll probably have to flip the window locks open. Can you reach them?”
“I’ll get a chair,” he said. The next thing I knew, he was dragging a chair from the dining room into the living room. He climbed on top of it and stretched to open the locks, and moments later, he slid the window up.
“You have to let him go,” the woman pleaded, still tugging on Ethan’s arms. “Please. You can’t kill him.”
I zoomed in on her face, because something seemed off.
Bruises. Dark, purple bruises all over her face.
Ethan’s mother. It had to be. I needed to get better images. Better sound. I couldn’t do that from inside the house.
“Stay here,” I said to Carter, and before he could stop me, I hurried out the front door, his iPad still filming, leaving my cell phone with him while Snoopy barked in my wake and London shouted something unintelligible at me.
THE BASTARD WOULDN’T stop squirming.
Somehow, he broke my grip for long enough that he could take a swing at me, but he missed me and got Mom, instead.
Or maybe that was what he’d intended to begin with. Wouldn’t surprise me.
Mom didn’t even make a sound, even though he’d pelted her hard enough that she crumpled to the ground at my feet before I got him back under my control, my thumbs pressing on his windpipe.
“You fucking bastard,” I said.
He laughed. It made me want to end him right now. I could do it. It’d be easy. A bit more pressure, and his life would be over.
“You think this is funny?”
He couldn’t speak, but his eyes shifted to somewhere behind me.
I took one quick glance over my shoulder and immediately wished I hadn’t, because Natalie was racing toward us. “What the hell are you doing out here?” I demanded. “Go back inside. For all we know, Hayes is on his way here. Please, Nat.”
But she didn’t respond to me. I might as well have been invisible to her. She kept coming and didn’t stop until she was at my mother’s side.
She got down on the ground next to Mom. Only then did I realize she had something in her hands, because she had to set it down in order to help make my mother more comfortable.
“I’ve got you. Help’s on the way. You’re going to be all right,” Natalie said. “Ethan and I are going to make sure of it, okay?”
Then she shifted things around, and I was able to see what it was she’d brought out with her—Carter’s iPad.
Fucking brilliant. Maybe she shouldn’t be out here at all, but at least she was being smart enough to gather evidence.
Once she had some cloth covering the gash my father had opened up on Mom’s cheek, she picked the iPad up again, moving it so she could capture all the visible wounds on my mother before turning it back to the two of us.
“Tell us what’s going on, Ethan,” she said, calmer and more in control than I’d ever known her to be. It made my chest full to bursting with pride, but there wasn’t time for that now.
I took a quick glance back at her to be sure she had the camera on me now. Then I squeezed my father’s windpipe harder, making sure he couldn’t make a sound. “My bastard father’s been beating the shit out of my mother. He’s been doing it for years. Decades. He used to beat me up, too, until I got big enough to fight back. Now he’s trying to tell the world that I’m full of shit. He wants to discredit me as a witness, saying that I’ve been making up stories my whole life about how he beat me and my mom up, and now I’m spreading lies about Hayes Lennon beating you up. Well, here’s the evidence of what he’s done to my mother.”
Mom whimpered, but she didn’t try to deny it. Thank fuck for that. Maybe this could all work out for the best in the end. Maybe this would be the final straw, the way I could get her out of the shitty situation she’d been in since before I was born.
If this wasn’t enough, if she hadn’t reached the end of her rope yet…
I couldn’t even think like that. It had to be enough.
“Mrs. Higgins,” Natalie said, “we got video of your husband striking you just now. I just want you to know that.”
“But it’s…” Mom’s voice shook so hard I could barely hear her. “It’s no use.”
“What’s no use?” I demanded. “You don’t have to go home with him. You can stay here with us. You don’t ever have to go home with this son of a bitch again.”
Before she could respond, two squad cars came around the corner, their lights flashing and sirens blaring. The officers got out of their cars with their weapons drawn, two from each vehicle.
“Hands in the air,” one of them shouted at me.
“I’ll put them in the air as soon as one of you restrains him,” I bit off.
“We’ll restrain you both at the same time,” he shot back.
I nodded my agreement.
Two of the officers came forward to deal with breaking us apart. I waited until one of them had my father’s hands in cuffs behind his back before willingly releasing him.
The other officer nodded for me to turn around.
“Am I under arrest?” I demanded.
“Not yet. Not until we have a better understanding of what’s going on here. But since you were just choking this other man, I think we’ll all feel safer if you’re cuffed while we do this, all right?”
I met Natalie’s eyes over his shoulder. They were full of fear. My father was spewing a litany of curses while the officer who’d cuffed him led him a few feet away from us, and another officer—a woman—bent to the ground next to Mom and Natalie.
I nodded my agreement. “Go on. Cuff me, but get someone to take care of my mom.”
“We’ve g
ot an ambulance on the way,” he said, taking his cuffs out and moving behind me.
“You all right, ma’am?” the female officer asked Mom.
She started to nod, but then a sob tore free.
“We need to get her checked out at a hospital,” Natalie insisted. She lifted a bloodied piece of cloth away from my mother’s cheek. “This one’s fresh, but it looks like she’s probably got a lot more injuries.”
“As soon as the ambulance arrives,” the officer said.
Razor and Dima pulled up within moments of one another, both of them hurrying out of their cars to see what they could do. Dima went into the house to check on Carter and Snoopy, and they both ran back outside with him. Carter went right up to Natalie and sat on the street, crisscross-applesauce style, drawing Snoopy down to sit next to him.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked him.
He sniffled, but he nodded resolutely. “Why’d they put you in handcuffs? Are you gonna go to jail?”
“He’s not going to jail,” Natalie reassured him. And I hoped she was right, but it was a thin hope. I’d had my hands on my father’s throat when they’d pulled up. Maybe it was in defense of my mother, but I’d still been strangling him.
Within minutes, the cops had everyone separated to be interviewed about what had happened. I kept an eye on Natalie, Carter, and my mom the whole time, patiently answering the officers’ questions.
After twenty minutes or so, they’d stopped asking me questions for the time being and had me sitting on the curb, still cuffed. Dima and Razor both came over to sit next to me.
“Not looking good, man,” Razor said.
“They’ll arrest me,” I replied. They had to.
“You’ll get off, though.”
“Maybe. Probably. But there’ll have to be a trial.”
“Fuck,” Dima muttered.
That about summed it up.
I watched as the paramedics loaded my mother onto a gurney and lifted her into the back of the ambulance, despite her sobbing protests.
“I’ll go,” Dima said. “Calling London to come, too. She’ll leave baby with Dana and Zee.”
I nodded, because I was too choked up to say anything.
He got up and jumped into the back of the ambulance with the paramedics and my mother, his phone in his hand to make the call.
“This is going to be major news,” Razor pointed out.
“I’m going to be suspended.”
“Surely they won’t—”
“Wanna bet?” I cut in. I cocked a brow at him. “When has anyone in the league been arrested for anything and not been suspended? At least temporarily.”
“But they’ll rescind it pretty fast. Once they can look at all the evidence…”
“It’s not going to be fast.”
He grunted. “Maybe not.”
Then he looked over at Natalie, Carter, and Snoopy. My kid and his dog were sticking like glue to her side. They had to be scared out of their minds, but Carter was handling this better than a lot of grown men would.
“He flies home tomorrow?” Razor asked.
“Yeah.”
“They can come home with one of us tonight. You know—if they have to keep you overnight or whatever. Whoever Natalie feels most comfortable with.”
I nodded because I was too choked up to respond.
He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Gary. The sooner he knows what’s going on, the sooner he can work on getting you out.”
Hell. I’d hardly thought about the team’s response, let alone the league’s. This was quickly becoming a much bigger nightmare than I’d ever anticipated.
And now I had to figure out how I was going to explain all of this to Kinsey, too.
Just when I most wished I could bury my head in the sand and never bring it out again, Natalie caught my eye. She tugged Carter onto her lap, and Snoopy rested his chin on top of my son’s knees—and then Natalie gave me the smallest smile.
I’d gone and fucked up a lot of things in a single stupid move—but maybe not everything.
IN THE END, the police arrested both Ethan and his father, and the paramedics took his mother to the hospital to be evaluated, and I was left behind with Carter and Snoopy. Dima went to the hospital with Ethan’s mother, and Razor stayed behind with me, helping me sort out how I could get Carter to the airport tomorrow if Ethan wasn’t released in time to do it.
That turned out not to be necessary—a couple of the higher-ups involved with the team managed to press the courts to set bail in a timely fashion, and he easily met it. They had already set things in motion for the league to determine what sort of repercussions he might have to face—a fine or a suspension, most likely, but we would have to wait to see how the league ruled. Still, by lunchtime the day after all the drama, Ethan was home.
The same could not be said for either of his parents. The bail set for his father was more than the elder Higgins could post as of yet, and the doctors decided to keep Mrs. Higgins in the hospital overnight for observation, as she had a broken orbital bone, and they were concerned about a possible concussion.
“Dad!” Carter rushed to his father’s side the moment he came through the door.
I wasn’t far behind him, but I was too overcome with emotion to say a word.
Ethan wrapped his strong arms around both of us, lifting us off the floor in an enormous bear hug. I sobbed against his shoulder, holding on for all I was worth.
“That was the longest night I’ve ever had,” I said when he finally set me back on my feet.
He kissed me hard. “Not for me.”
“No?”
“No. The first night you were in the hospital. Hell, all the nights you were in the hospital, but especially the ones when you were unconscious. They were a lot longer.”
For some reason, that simple statement made my stomach flutter.
I blinked back tears and stepped away, wanting to give Ethan some time with his son. They needed it after the drama and trauma of yesterday.
He didn’t let me get too far, though. He snagged me around the waist and tugged me onto his lap on the couch. Carter jumped up beside him, and Snoopy followed suit, and Ethan tucked my head against his chest.
I felt so safe like that—safer than I’d allowed myself to feel in years.
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Ethan said into the silence.
“Big day?” I repeated. I couldn’t come up with what could be bigger than the last twenty-four hours or so.
“When they’re going to arrest Lennon.”
My heart pounded wildly against my ribs.
“And now that my father’s facing charges, too, that’s going to seriously hurt his defense,” Ethan said. “He’s not going to get away with it. Neither of them is going to get away with it.”
I squeezed my eyes to keep my tears at bay, nodding slightly.
“How would you two feel about me asking my mom to come and live with us?” he asked.
I looked up at him in surprise.
Ethan shrugged. “She’s going to need some support. Someone she can count on. This isn’t going to be easy for her. She’s been living like that for thirty-five years.”
“So I can get to know my grandma?” Carter asked.
“If she wants to come, yeah.” Ethan looked down into my eyes. “If you’re okay with that. I mean, we’ve got that room all set up. She could have it. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
“I won’t?” My breath fluttered through my lips.
“Not if you move up into my room with me.” His face was a mixture of torture and hope. “I know you’re not sure if you love me yet—”
“I do,” I cut in, and this time, there were no tears. “I love you. I realized that in the middle of everything. Or—well, maybe I already knew it, but I accepted it then.”
Ethan didn’t immediately respond, but his expression was everything. Heat and love and fear, and maybe a bit of pride, all rolled up into one longing look. But then he turned to Car
ter. “You be okay with that? If we invite my mom to come live downstairs in Miss Natalie’s room, and Natalie comes to stay with me?”
“Natalie could share my room,” Carter said. “Snoopy wouldn’t mind.”
Ethan and I both burst out laughing.
“That’s a sweet offer, buddy, but I think your room’s going to get a little crowded. Your dog already takes up a lot of space, and you’re growing like a weed.”
Carter shrugged. “It’s okay. I just want Natalie to stay. She can share your room.”
“And you don’t mind if we invite my mom to stay here, too?”
“She can’t go back home with that man,” Carter said adamantly.
“No. That’s the plan.”
He nodded. “She should stay here.”
“Yeah?” Ethan asked, looking at his son.
“Yep.”
“Yes,” I agreed, too.
“Good,” Ethan said. “You’d be okay if this became a permanent thing? All of us living here together?”
“Can we bring Mom, too?”
Ethan chuckled. “Your mom wants to stay in Michigan. Her parents are there.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“She’s going to bring you down to visit for Thanksgiving, though.”
“She’s coming, too?” Carter said.
I nodded. “That’s the plan.” And my stomach clenched again at the thought, because it felt as if I would be put on trial. I knew I was overreacting with that, but I couldn’t stop the sensation from creeping up on me.
“That’s okay then. We should have my grandma come stay here.”
Snoopy barked, as if to give his own consent.
Life was suddenly looking very different.
WITH ETHAN’S FATHER in jail pending trial for domestic violence, and Alex and Jason agreeing to rat Hayes out in exchange for a lesser sentence, suddenly, the case against my ex was taking shape.
The day that they called to let me know the plan had worked—that Hayes had shown up in court to be sure his buddies didn’t implicate him and he’d been arrested—was the first time in recent memory that I could take a full breath.
“It’ll all be over soon,” Ethan said over a glass of wine.
Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5) Page 21
