Love Notes (Equilibrium Book 1)

by Christina C Jones

  “Marshall Holmes,” he told her, extricating his hand from hers when she didn’t release it in a normal amount of time. His eyebrows furrowed together, and he looked at me, asking, “Is this the photographer?”

  “Hell no,” Mia and I said, at the same time, in the same disgusted tone.

  Speaking of Jules though, I glanced around, hoping she wasn’t going to walk in when Mia was around, stirring up trouble just for the hell of it.

  “We’re trying to have a conversation here,” I told her, trying to be polite instead of outright telling her to get her ass on somewhere.

  Instead of moving, she sucked her teeth. “Shit, so am I. Tell me about yourself Marshall” she added, her tone much different than the one she’d used with me. “Are you moving to the Heights, or just visiting? Either way… I could show you around.” She leaned toward him as she spoke, and he leaned back, making me proud. He recognized Mia for exactly the kind of trouble she’d become – a problem he wasn’t interested in having.

  “Just visiting sweetheart, and I’m pretty sure my brother over there has the grand tour handled. And besides that, I feel like you should know I’m happily engaged.”

  Mia laughed. “What, are you afraid your girl is gonna walk in and see me? All I’m doing is sitting here. No need for her to be jealous.”

  “This is nice and cozy, isn’t it?”

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  When I looked to see Jules, her expression was completely cool, but I knew her just enough to know her annoyed tone, even if it seemed normal to everybody else.

  She was pissed.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Mia drawled, rolling her eyes. “Can we help you? This is a private conversation.”

  Jules’ eyebrow went up. “I couldn’t agree more, so maybe you should see your way out of it. Or do you just thrive on imposing your energy where it isn’t wanted?”

  “What are you trying to say?” Mia asked, standing up.

  Still, Jules was unmoved, except for the slightest one-shouldered shrug. “I’m saying they don’t want to talk to you. Couldn’t you tell by their body language, or hell – the looks on their faces? But then again, you aren’t very good at catching hints are you? I mean, you were in the salon talking about Troy’s sex that you haven’t had in a year – and getting it wrong, by the way – so maybe you’re just dense.”

  “Wait a minute, what?” I asked, as Mia flushed bright red, obviously embarrassed. I glanced over at Marshall to see his hand cupped over his mouth, clearly trying not to laugh about this shit.

  “Let me tell you something,” Mia started, stomping in Jules’ direction.

  “Girl, don’t you bring your ass within swinging distance of me with any bullshit, I promise you I’ll wipe your eyebrows off. Try me.”

  Mia huffed, but she stopped short of getting in Jules’ face. “I have better things to do, and better company than this I could be keeping.”

  “Then go do it, duh,” Jules said as Mia stormed off, then turned to where Marshall was still sitting. “I am so sorry about that,” she told him, extending a hand. “I would say that I’m not usually like that, but that’s not exactly true. I’m Jules, and I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re good,” he said, accepting her hand, but still standing to pull her into a hug. “You must be the photographer, and that was thoroughly entertaining. Nice to meet you Jules, I’m Marshall.”

  “Nice to meet you too. You are just as tall and fine as Troy, like in real life. Wow.”

  Marshall laughed, peeking around her to tell me, “Yeah, y’all will fit in just fine with the Holmes family.”

  Her eyebrows went up as she turned to face me. “Family?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” I told her, and she smiled.

  “Definitely looking forward to that.” She looked back to Marshall. “Again, nice to meet you, and sorry you had to see me act a little ugly with that… woman. I’m gonna head out, and let you boys get back to your conversation.”

  I stood quickly, grabbing her hand before she could walk off. “Actually, let me holla at you for a second before you go. Marshall – you good with that?”

  “Handle your business, bruh. I’m gonna see what this menu is talking about.”

  I gave him a nod, and then led Jules to the back, where I knew we could get some relative privacy. Noticing that one was open, I pulled her into one of the private bathrooms, closing and locking the door behind us.

  “You’re mad that I went at Mia like that in front of your brother,” Jules blurted before I could even say anything, and started pacing back and forth. “I know. It was horrible, and he probably thinks I’m—”

  “Jules, no,” I laughed. “I’m not pressed about that. I threatened to put your ex in the hospital, you threatened to wipe mine’s makeup off. I think we’re good.”

  She groaned. “But in front of him, when it’s your first meeting, I just… I’m so sorry, I just saw her sitting there, so close to the two of you, and I saw red, like how dare she!”

  “Aww, you were jealous?” I asked, making her scowl.

  “It’s not funny. I’m really distraught about this.”

  I grabbed her arms, making her face me. “Don’t be. That’s not even remotely why I pulled you back here. I just wanted to tell you… thank you for encouraging me to go through with this. If it wasn’t for you, this wouldn’t be happening right now – hell, maybe not ever. I want you to understand how much I appreciate this. How much I appreciate you.”

  A little smile spread across her face. “Oh. Oh, well…” She shrugged. “I just wanted you to be happy.”

  “Yeah… I know.”

  I moved my hands up to her face, pulling her into a kiss. Her fists twisted in the sides of my tee shirt as she pressed closer, and I kissed her again… and again… and again. When I finally pulled back, she was looking at me with this look that made me kiss her again… and again, and then her hands were cupping me through my jeans. And then the next thing I knew, she was sitting on the counter with her panties off, skirt around her waist while I ripped into a condom wrapper from my wallet.

  Since I knew better now.

  She groaned as I sank into her, immediately wrapping her legs around my hips to pull me tight against her. “We gotta make it quick,” she breathed into my ear as I plunged deep, and stayed there. “Think you can make me cum, and not keep your brother waiting?”

  “Is that a challenge?” I asked, smirking as I pressed my thumb against her clit, knowing it was a surefire way to get her there, quickly. When she nodded, I gave her a long, deep stroke that pulled a sharp yelp from her throat, and grinned. “Challenge accepted.”

  Her head fell back as she clutched at my shoulders, biting her lip to keep from screaming as I slammed into her, over and over again. Ten minutes later, she was digging into my biceps hard enough to draw blood as her body tensed and quaked with an orgasm, and I went through the last few strokes to finish myself off too.

  Jules was all smiles as we separated to clean ourselves up, but something about her eyes was… off.

  “You good?” I asked her, and she nodded. “You sure?” I pressed, and she nodded again.

  “Yeah. Just gotta go do some family stuff,” she said, which set off an alarm bell for me.

  I turned her toward me, catching her as she was unlocking the door. “You need me to come with you?”

  “What? No,” she insisted. “You have your own family stuff to handle. And Jules is a big girl, so… no. I’ll see you when I get back though, if you’re not out tearing the town up with your twin. Y’all are so damn fine, wow.”

  I knew she was trying to use humor as a distraction, but I figured that if she needed something from me, she would say it – that was the kind of girl Jules was.

  So instead of pushing it, I nodded, giving her a kiss before I opened the door to let us out. I didn’t have a great feeling about it, but I knew I couldn’t force her to do something she didn’t want to.r />
  I just hoped I wasn’t going to end up wishing I’d tried.

  Eleven.

  I should’ve changed.

  Sitting in front of that house, fingers nervously tapping the steering wheel of my Jeep, the adorable, flirty skirt and tee shirt combo I’d been wearing all day, the same outfit that had made me feel great when I put it on, suddenly felt… obscene.

  I should’ve changed, into a turtleneck and sweatpants or something, but my logical mind told me it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. If he wanted to, a man could see you in a hazmat suit and make you feel like you’d left the house in a string bikini for the sole purpose of his pleasure, and that was exactly the kind of man I was about to deal with.

  I couldn’t keep blaming myself for his bullshit.

  And besides… I wasn’t a kid anymore. It made me sick to my stomach to think about it, but I halfway hoped the fact I was a grown woman now would disgust him enough to not look at me the same.

  But does that mean he’s just moved to another victim now?

  No.

  My Uncle Will had been clear with him, and Will wasn’t the type to forget, or let it slide. He’d threatened to kill him, and I don’t think any of us doubted he would follow through with that.

  I took another deep breath, and finally turned the car off, glancing at the time. I’d been sitting there for nearly twenty minutes, and unfortunately, reality hadn’t changed. If I wanted those letters, I was going to have to go inside.

  Only… did I want them?

  I’d struggled with it, for the exactly two weeks since that phone call. Well… at first. But then so much had been going on, between Love Notes, and Troy, and settling into the community of Mahogany Heights, that it had been fairly easy to just… push it away. Push it to the back of my mind, just like I had with everything else related to these people, for years.

  But then, that alarm had rung.

  I didn’t even remember setting it, but it popped up on my phone, reminding me that no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t just ignore this. It had turned my whole happy mood into complete disarray, so much so that even the front I’d put up to at least show my face at UG had almost gone way left because of Mia’s dumb ass.

  It had taken so much restraint not to say more than I did.

  Initially, I wasn’t even going to go. But I knew that after I’d told Troy I’d swing through, it would be suspicious not to, and I didn’t need him asking too many questions about this – not after how he’d reacted to the phone call. But then I saw him, and all I wanted to do was crawl in his lap and be held, which obviously wasn’t an option. The bathroom quickie had been a passable substitute, a memory to hold on to as I went forth to do something that felt about as appealing as drinking battery acid.

  Troy knew something was up though.

  And as grateful as I was for him to be so attuned to me, I was equally glad his brother was there to take priority. I’d banked on it.

  And now, I had to stop putting this off, and face the fucked-up music.

  I tucked my cell phone into the pocket of my skirt, but kept my keys grasped in my hand, positioned between my fingers to use as a weapon if necessary. After a moment’s hesitation, I pulled my phone back out, scheduling a text message that would automatically go out to Anika if I wasn’t out of here in thirty minutes, maximum, to cancel it. Then I climbed out of the car.

  My hands shook all the way up the driveway, and up to the front door. I forced myself to ring the doorbell, forced myself to stand there and wait, forced myself not to spit in Greg’s face when he smiled at me once he opened the door.

  “My, my. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” he said, leaning in the doorway.

  I swallowed my disgust. “Hi. The letters?”

  “Letters?” he asked, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. I raised my eyebrows, wondering what kind of game he was playing, which for some reason, brought a smirk to his face. “Oh yeah… come in.”

  Common sense was screaming at me not to walk through that door, but I’d made it too far to walk away empty-handed. Instead of making a big deal about it, I stepped in, but tightened my fist around my keys, ready to pretend I was Wolverine if I needed to.

  He’d kept the house up, but that didn’t surprise me. Greg was no slob, not outwardly. All of his grossness was in his head, kept neatly tucked behind the façade of a clean-cut, upstanding sort of man. He was handsome, charismatic, he dressed nicely – none of the hallmarks of the “creep” archetype in books, movies, or TV. But this was how it went in real life – no monster in the bushes, just a grown ass man who thinks his wife’s teenage daughter owes him something.

  “So how have you been?” he asked, stopping right there in the foyer to face me. The pictures that lined the wall there – me as a baby, and then older, up through the time I moved out, mixed in with images of him and my mother – made my skin crawl. I was so distracted that I barely heard his question, and didn’t realize he was approaching me with his arms out until he was already in my face, putting his arms around me.

  I went stiff immediately, and drew my fist back, ready to pop him right in the face, but the hug was quick, and then he stepped back, with this strange, bothered look on his face. I took a step back as he propped his hands on his hips, shaking his head.

  “Greg. The letters,” I reminded him again, not really caring what the hell was happening with him right now. All I wanted was what I came for.

  He scoffed. “You really just think the world revolves around you, don’t you?”

  “Just give me the letters, and I’ll be gone.”

  “There you go with those demands again. You really don’t understa—”

  “Where are the letters?!” I surprised even myself with that, but I wasn’t about to stand here and listen to…whatever the hell he was talking about. The longer I stood there, the more disgusted I was, to the point that I was back to not even being sure I cared about the letters.

  They wouldn’t change what happened.

  “You don’t get to come in my house, smelling like another man, making demands, little girl,” he growled at me, then shook his head. “Every motherfucker in the city can put his hands on you, but your little ass starts screaming for help over a peek?”

  “You are repulsive,” I spat, laughing even though it wasn’t funny. It was ridiculous. “I smell like “another” man? There is no other man, you vile piece of shit, there’s one, and it most certainly is not you. You give me my goddamn letters, and then you never contact me again.”

  He smiled.

  He smiled.

  And I knew for certain, right then, what a little part of me had already suspected before I pulled into the driveway.

  “There aren’t any letters,” he told me, in a mocking, sing-song tone. “I told your ass you had two weeks, but you wanna be in control, want to make demands, want everything to work how you want it to, but guess what? Your time was up three hours ago.”

  “What did you do with them?” I asked, hating the emotion that choked my voice.

  He grinned even harder. “Barbecue.”

  My eyes narrowed as I swallowed the urge to sob, forced myself not to dive at him and put the key to my Jeep right between his eyes. I couldn’t help the quickly building tears, but I’d be damned if he was going to see them. I said nothing, just turned and reached for the door.

  That was when he grabbed me by the arm.

  “Get the fuck off of me!”

  I tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t budge, snatching me toward him.

  “You need to learn some manners. This is no way to treat your – Ahhhh, goddamn it!”

  Greg backed away from me, holding his groin after I found just enough strength and leverage to jab my keys into him as hard as I could. I’d been aiming for his thigh, thinking it would distract him enough to back up, so I could hit him in the face, but this was even better. I didn’t waste time thinking about it – I got my ass out the door and into my car, locking
the doors behind me before I started it.

  He came rushing out of the house behind me with his eyes wild and pissed off as I jammed my keys in the ignition. I whipped my Jeep out of his driveway with little regard for anything except getting the hell out of there. I cringed when I heard the distinct crunch of metal on metal that no doubt meant I’d left my mark on the shiny black Lincoln – his car – that had been parked at the curb, but I didn’t care.

  Once I was on the street, all I cared about was my foot on that gas pedal.

  Until I made it back to the Heights, I was on auto-pilot. I was too stunned by what had happened for my mind to even roam free, at least not until I pulled into the parking garage. As soon as the car was off, it was like it hit me all at once, and I sat in the car and sobbed until I felt like a dishrag, damp and worn out.

  I’d put myself through that trauma again for nothing.

  He was never going to give me those letters in the first place.

  I didn’t doubt they existed. Letter writing was my mother’s “thing”, had been since before I could even remember. There were days, before she changed, because of him, that I would just sit and watch her write letters to my father after he was gone, in neat, sloping handwriting that graced custom stationery.

  I wanted to know what she said in those letters to me.

  Obviously I knew it didn’t matter, that it wouldn’t change anything. That any possible apology or explanation would’ve needed to come from her mouth for it to mean anything, and even then… it would’ve been too late. The second she chose Greg over me, it was too late.

  But that didn’t stop me from wondering if she regretted it.

  I hoped she regretted it.

  I hoped that it ate her up inside, that she could barely look herself in the mirror, that it snatched away her sleep. I hoped it hurt, hoped it haunted her, hoped she despised herself for essentially sacrificing me.

  That was ugly, and I knew it.

  But I didn’t care.

  I forced myself to leave my car, and started walking, with no destination in mind. The sun was starting to go down, and the temperature was dropping, sending goosebumps over my bare arms. I should’ve gone home… but I walked right past my building instead.