Damaged & Off Limits Books 5--6

by C. C. Piper

  I couldn’t have said what spilled from my mouth. Obscenities and curses, mostly. Bellows of rage. I knew I’d called Jessica’s mother and boyfriend every filthy word in the English language. Still naked as the day I was born, I beat that bag until I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, then set my sights on the brick of my apartment wall.

  It was only after that, when I was flat out on my face with blood pouring from my ruined knuckles and my right hand screaming in agony that any rational thought returned. I’d always had a dark side to myself that I kept hidden. I let it out a little at a time with bondage sex and an hour or two in my gym. But this time, that darkness had taken me over. It’d made me freeze at the worst possible time.

  And I knew with great certainty that I’d well and truly fucked everything up with the love of my life.

  19

  Jessie

  MAY

  Mistakes. I was so goddamn sick of making them. I’d made the mistake of agreeing to take the job the Wish Maker had offered me. I’d made the mistake of going on that date with Trevor. And now, I’d made the mistake of telling him the truth about my past. I never should have. I’d felt used up and ruined ever since that horrendous night when I was seventeen, and now, Trevor saw me for what I was. Damaged goods.

  Good going, Jess.

  For a week, there was no contact of any kind between Trevor and me. None. Then one week turned into two and two into three. When my next doctor’s appointment arrived, I went by myself, wondering if he’d show up separately.

  He didn’t.

  After that, my appointments would increase to bi-weekly in preparation for birth. I texted him a copy of these dates and waited to see if I’d receive any sort of response. I did. But it was unsatisfying.

  Thanks, it read. I’ll do my best to attend.

  That’s all it said. I psychoanalyzed the hell out of his words, even sharing them to Ashley to get her opinion. Why did he sound so formal? Did he really appreciate me sending him the information or not? Would he be there to face the gulf of awkwardness that now lay between us like the Grand Canyon?

  The only answer I would receive was to that last question because the appointment came and went without him.

  So sorry, but I can’t be there today. Work is insane right now. Raincheck for the next one? His text said.

  But he didn’t come to that one, either. Nor did he come to the next. Clearly, whatever I thought might’ve been burgeoning between us had ceased to exist. He’d told me he loved me, but we’d been naked at the time. I should’ve known such a promise was destined to be broken. If he’d truly loved me, he wouldn’t have abandoned me—abandoned us. I felt like a moron for hoping. When would I learn my lesson? First my mother and now him.

  Maybe I was simply impossible to love.

  The next month passed in a whirl of Zumba classes, fitness training sessions, and doctor’s appointments. Trevor had continued to text me apologies for his absence, even when I ceased all communication with him, but I no longer cared. I knew when to cut my losses. I’d done it before, after all.

  Even if doing it this time made my injured heart bleed harder than ever.

  Leading my Zumba class had become more and more difficult physically, and I finally went to Lance to request that he find another instructor to fill in for me. He’d taken one long look at me and agreed, even offering me a couple of new fitness training clients to help pad out my income. I appreciated it.

  So that morning in May as flower petals blew in the wind like confetti, I was on my way to the CrossFit gym to put one of these clients through his paces. The guy had a bit of a paunch and said he wanted to get into shape. As a corporate executive, he spent more time behind a desk than anywhere else, and since he’d been divorced for a few years, he decided he needed that to change.

  I was happy to guide him, even though the mention of his corporate job reminded me of Trevor. But then again, most things did. Anyone in a suit. Anyone with light eyes. Any guy with a beard, a goatee, or scruff on their chins. The smell of pizza. Seeing a pineapple. Every blue SUV. The list went on and on.

  “Fifteen,” I counted out, as my client gasped through a set of jump squats. “Sixteen. Come on, four more. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nine—”

  I broke off, suddenly feeling strange. Something seemed to be going wrong inside my skull, and my vision dimmed. I took one step backwards as blackness descended over me like a curtain.

  Before I could do or say anything else, there was a sensation of plummeting to the ground.

  And then, there was nothing at all.

  I woke on the floor of the gym feeling as if I’d been slammed into by a Mack truck. Every single muscle in my body was sore, and I couldn’t make heads or tails out of anything. It took me a while to figure out why I was laying down and even who it was surrounding me. People’s faces hovered above me with expressions of exaggerated distress, but I didn’t know why.

  All I wanted to do was lay here. Why weren’t people leaving me alone so I could rest?

  Ultimately, the thoughts that had refused to coalesce started to rearrange themselves until I recognized a few of the people overhead.

  “Ash … Lance … Chuck …” Chuck was my fitness client. There were other people there, too, people in dark uniform shirts with medical insignia on their chests, but I didn’t know them. “Why are you here?”

  I attempted to sit up. It occurred to me that being sprawled on the floor like this might be bad for the baby. The second I moved, though, the room swirled violently.

  “Hold still,” two people commanded me at once. One was one of the medical people and one was Ashley. It was the uniformed person who spoke again. “We need you to stay where you are, Jessie.”

  How do you know my name? The question blinked through my consciousness, but it wasn’t what I said aloud.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked instead, but no one answered me. My best friend stared at me like I was on death’s front door. Lance’s eyes were enormous in his face. And Chuck was busy giving an account of something to another medical person.

  “She went down like a ton of bricks. I barely caught her in time. Then, she started shaking real hard and flinging her arms and legs all over the place. I didn’t know what to do, so I held on to her.” Chuck had a shiner coming up on his left eye. Where had that come from? And who was he talking about going down like a ton of bricks and shaking?

  “Calling nine-one-one was the right thing to do, sir. Do you need something for your eye?”

  He waved it off. “I’m fine. I just want to make sure Jessie is okay.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked again, louder this time. “What’s happening?”

  “You collapsed, Jess,” Ashley said, her complexion white as a sheet. “Chuck saw you have a seizure.”

  “A seizure?” I couldn’t make those words compute. Didn’t seizures only happen to people who were epileptic or something? I’d never been diagnosed with that sort of disorder. Had I? I reached up and held my head, but even raising my arms that much hurt. The room continued to swim, too. I really wished the world would stop buzzing and jackknifing around like this.

  And then, the blackness took over again.

  Waking took time and effort to accomplish this time around. It was far more laborious than I could ever remember it being prior to this. It was like those dreams where you’re racing down a hallway towards an open door but can’t ever seem to reach your destination. It was horrifying, and yet my sluggish brain kept me from panicking.

  I was too tired and sore to panic.

  Little by little, though, I found my way back to reality. And it wasn’t a reality I liked. I was in a white room that beeped erratically, smelled like rubbing alcohol, and was far brighter than I thought it needed to be. I felt pressure on my belly and glanced down at a sensor strapped low on my round abdomen.

  I bolted up, or tried to. What I probably actually did was spasm upwards by an inch or two only to slump right back down onto my mattress. The mattress
of this narrow bed. A hospital bed.

  Oh, God.

  “Is the baby okay?” my question came out half-garbled as if my mouth wouldn’t work correctly. What the hell was wrong with me? Had I had a stroke?

  “Yes, Jess. Relax,” Ashley said from behind me. She materialized from somewhere slightly to the left of me. “They think everything is going to be all right.”

  “Tell me,” I said, but my words came out as less of an order and more of a plea.

  “You have a condition they called Eclampsia. It’s basically a severe form of pre-eclampsia or high blood pressure that causes seizures in pregnant women. They’ve got you on a whole cocktail of medication that will hopefully help.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “A few hours. They ran all these tests and things while you were out. They’re doing their best to make sure you don’t have any more seizures. How are you feeling?”

  “Kind of rough,” I said, honestly. Though rough was an understatement. I was still struggling to wrangle my thoughts into anything decipherable. Also, even though I knew I should be more alert and finding out more answers, I could barely keep my eyes open.

  “Rest, then, honey,” my best friend said, brushing my hair back from my forehead.

  And since I felt more exhausted than I ever had in my life, I did.

  20

  Trevor

  “What do you have for me, Hendricks?” I half yelled into my work landline, gripping the receiver so hard I heard a little crack as I rushed to my feet. The action caused my hand to twinge due to the three bones within it that had so recently been broken, but physical pain didn’t matter to me. All I did was switch the phone to my left less injured hand.

  “Nine six three dash two three five.” Hendricks cigar-stained voice rattled back. “It’s his inmate number. He’s currently incarcerated at Lincoln Correctional Facility. Serving twenty to life for first degree murder.”

  My knees went weak as my ass hit my office chair. Well, it wasn’t my own chair since I was working out of an office in Dallas rather than back at the city. Fucking finally. Finally, I had the information I’d been seeking. And, better yet, it was good news. The best. I had this insane impulse to laugh maniacally like the Joker. Nothing about this situation was funny, but my sanity had long since left the building.

  I’d felt half deranged from the moment Jessica had told me about the hideous events of her past. Of the suffering she’d endured. An odd switch had been flipped inside me when she’d explained that her mother’s boyfriend had raped her. That his unforgivable act had impregnated her. That her mother had blamed Jessica instead of her goddamn rapist and thrown her own seventeen-year-old daughter out to the curb like trash.

  I hadn’t reacted when she spilled her heart out to me. I hadn’t moved a muscle for fear that I would do some crazed thing that might freak her out. I’d waited for her to leave, even knowing deep down that she needed more from me. Once she was gone, I’d beaten the fuck out of my punching bag, then hauled off and thrown my fist into the decades old brick wall.

  And then, I did it again.

  Hence, the broken hand.

  That jolt of pain had almost equaled me out and balanced me, but not quite. I’d lost any balance or equilibrium I might’ve ever had, and it wasn’t back even now. Hell, it might never be back. Nothing had felt right since except for latching onto a single life’s purpose.

  Track that motherfucker down.

  Those words are the only things that had kept me from winding up in a padded cell under lock and key. That thought had galvanized me, mobilized me into an action that did good rather than harm. I had to find this evil son of a bitch and make certain he could never hurt Jessica ever again.

  Ironic that motherfucker was actually an accurate description in this case.

  This errant thought was not unlike others I’d been experiencing. It was unsettling, this feeling of being so out of control. I’d wondered more than once if I’d had some sort of mental break, if I had legitimately become certifiable over all this. But then, I’d pushed any concerns about that back. My stability or lack thereof wasn’t as important as what I was doing now.

  I knew his name, though he’d apparently held multiple identities over the years. The slippery asshole had been born Brighton Jennings Caulfield the Third. He sounded like old money, but he wasn’t. His grandfather had been successful, but his dad had run the family business straight into the ground. Mister “the third” had been worthless from the get-go.

  He’d been a mean kid in juvie. In his twenties, he’d committed a series of misdemeanors like shoplifting and petty larceny. He’d been accused of more heinous acts, but there hadn’t been enough evidence to convict the bastard. Then, in his thirties, he’d upped his game by getting involved in organized crime. Around the same time, he’d also gotten involved with Jessica’s mother.

  “Send hard copies to my address,” I told Hendricks, the private investigator I’d hired through the Wish Maker the day after I’d pounded my fist. “Maintain tabs on him.” Without another word, I hung up. I abandoned the company’s landline and retrieved my cell.

  “I have a target I need destroyed,” I said, sounding relatively calm considering what I was asking.

  “Such a contract would be three times the rate of your other arrangement with us,” the Wish Maker replied, her ancient voice benign despite her words.

  “I agree to those terms. I’m texting the info now. When will this be complete?”

  After a short pause, she answered, “Seventy-two hours.”

  There was a click. It was done.

  I peered at my phone, taking note of the date. An entire month had gone by since that night with Jessica. It seemed impossible. Time had quit behaving correctly. It’d jump past me like it was on fast-forward, then drag by as if it had stopped altogether. These four weeks had been nothing but distracted work through my bank and demanding constant updates from Hendricks. I remembered next to nothing else about this time.

  I’d been reprimanded by my boss. I’d gone from a rising star in the company to a guy holding on to his job by his fingertips. It was why I was here in Dallas now putting out fires in a satellite office rather than back in Manhattan. Lars had been watching me with a gimleted eye as soon as I’d started to go off the rails.

  Initially, he’d been sympathetic. He was a fair man. But over time, he’d become impatient with me. I hadn’t explained any of the reasons behind the abrupt gap in my performance. So, he’d sent me here with an ultimatum to increase this office’s accounts or else. Well, the “or else” had been more implied than stated as fact, but it’d been there.

  I’d disappointed him, and once upon a time, I would have been upset by this. The opportunity he’d granted me had been why I relocated in the first place. My whole adult life had been about my career. But now, it wasn’t. It was about retribution. It was about making sure Jessica was safe, and would always be safe.

  Even though I knew she must hate me now.

  I deserved her hatred. So many times I’d wanted to go to her, to talk to her and apologize. I wanted to hold her in my arms and assure her that everything would be all right. But I hadn’t been able to do that. I couldn’t. Not until I knew for a fact it would be the truth.

  And the only way to do that was end the man who’d hurt her.

  I’d already performed a few of my nana’s old rituals. Not the old Hollywood use of Voodoo dolls being stuck by needles, but chants asking the spirit world to expose this evil man to the light. To unearth him like a skeleton being expelled from the proverbial closet.

  Now, he had been, and the wheels were in motion to take him out for good.

  I’d expected to feel better having taken this step. Relieved somehow. But maybe that would only come when I knew him to be dead. Then, at that point, maybe I could go back to living my life again. What was left of it.

  A peal of thunder made me peer out the window into a stormy sky. It was mid-afternoon, but the sk
y had grown as dark as night. A whipping thunderstorm had arrived without warning—the last glimpse I’d taken outside had been of a sunny Texas day. I’d forgotten how different the weather was here, how much more tumultuous. It reminded me of myself.

  This office faced east toward Louisiana, towards home. I was closer to New Orleans than I’d been in months, yet it still felt as far away as another planet. I’d considered talking to my best bud more than once about my current situation, but I hadn’t done it.

  Jax was happy in his life. He was settled and at peace for the first time in years. Bugging him with my current state of insanity seemed unfair somehow, inappropriate. So I hadn’t done it, but for some reason, now that I’d just ordered a real-life hit on another human being, I felt more tempted to reach out to him than I had in a long time.

  Maybe because I felt like a blissful family life—even though it’d nearly been within my grasp—wasn’t in the cards for me.

  I’d allowed my obsession with Jessica’s rapist to consume me rather than spending time with her. But I just couldn’t face her without a gift in hand, and the best gift I could offer her was the knowledge that that man could never touch her again.

  I still held my cell loosely in my hand when it buzzed with an incoming call. I glanced at the screen, wondering if I’d managed to summon a call from Jax out of the ether, but I hadn’t. The call was from Jessica.

  I hesitated as the icy fingers of foreboding itched up my spine. Other than texts, I hadn’t communicated with her at all. Even though keeping my distance from her until I’d resolved the situation fully was necessary, it also sucked. I missed her morning, noon, and night. But talking to her might wear away at my resolve to finish what I’d started, so I let the call go to voicemail.