I knew this small slice of peace wouldn’t last. Edward was drinking more and more, and eventually the scales would tip in his favor and my world would return to its brutal normality.
The only time Momma forced herself out of bed was to attend church on Sundays. That was when her spirits were at their best. It didn’t matter how much of a struggle it was for her to get there; whatever peace she got from listening to the sermons was what she needed. Me, though, I felt uncomfortable sitting in the pew beside her. Listening to the Pastor rejoicing about the goodness of God had me questioning everything. The life I lived was like a finely balanced scale, and any additional ounce of weight threatened to throw me under. How did a deity I was supposed to believe in, believe was good, let this happen to me? I was not comfortable with being a hypocrite in a religious building because right now I resented the church and God and everything to do with either of them. I was living in hell under the banner of a faith my momma believed in, and I was dragging myself here for her sake.
Church was also the only time I ever saw Tommy Vincent. The rapist animal sat in the pew with his aging mother like he was whiter than the driven snow. The first time I saw him, I nearly puked up on the spot, and it was just another reason to hate the church. Why didn’t God strike him down before he was allowed to enter the building? I could feel his eyes on me throughout the whole service, and the one time I snuck a glance at him, he leered at me. He was so comfortable with what he’d done I wondered if he’d done it to others. Sitting there, though, knowing he was flaunting what he’d done to me, I decided that he was going to be on my Arya Stark kill list. I only had two names so far, but they were big names.
Edward Livingston.
Tommy Vincent.
At the end of the service I tried to hustle Momma past Tommy and his mom quickly, but it didn’t happen. The most distressing thing about having to stand so close to him was that Momma pretended, too. She’d clearly decided that ignorance was the best policy and to blank it out. If only I could be so lucky. When the fake pleasantries came to an end, he touched my arm to say goodbye, and the flinch of my body gave Momma a reminder that not everyone could brush bad things under the carpet and move on. For a few nights, I toyed with adding her name to my list but then I figured she’d be judged by the God she had so much faith in. I hoped for her sake he was forgiving.
Sundays was the only day Momma joined us for a family meal these days. It was always a pot roast, the easiest thing I could create without screwing it up. Screwing things up would be bad, especially as this was the one meal I dreaded the most because the three of us were around the table. As if that occasion wasn’t strange and tense enough, Edward seemed even more on edge than usual.
I was like a cat on hot bricks waiting for his mood to flip.
“Put her in bed and come back down,” he ordered, nodding in Momma’s direction. She was still half way through the peach cobbler I’d thrown together.
“I should clean this mess up first.” I really wanted to clear the pots. He didn’t like mess and after Sunday lunch, his first destination was always the liquor cabinet and then a chair in front of the TV, whereas mine was dishes, settling Momma and then locking myself in my room. If I waited too long to clean up, I stood the chance of him sucking back too much booze and forgetting that he’d ordered me to leave them for a while. The thought also crossed my mind that he was doing this for fun, making me mess up so he could beat me for it.
“You’ll leave the fucking kitchen be. Sort her, then I have a job for you.”
“What kind of job?”
Edward looked to the heavens and shook his head. “What’s with the fucking interrogation?” He slammed his fist on the wooden table, and the serving spoons jumped in the bowls full of leftovers, as did Momma, who decided to forgo her peach cobbler and start moving.
“Come on, Gigi.”
Getting her upstairs wasn’t too much of a problem. Her weakness just made her slow. What worried me was what would happen when she couldn’t get up and down with my help. I couldn’t carry her and Edward just wouldn’t. I needed her to get better.
Tucking her into bed, I looked around the room she was pretty much living in and hated that she’d resigned herself to a medical condition she’d never even had properly diagnosed.
“Momma, let me take you to a doctor?”
“No, baby.”
“But maybe they can give you something.”
“No one can fix what’s wrong with me.” She yawned and lay back onto a pile of pillows that kept her body upright so she could cough and breathe comfortably.
I hesitated before I asked. “Do you know what’s wrong with you?”
“I do.” I stopped padding the bedclothes around her body and waited for her to continue. “A broken heart, a bucket load of regret and failures, and—” she swallowed, looking at me “—your daddy should still be here, not me. God should have taken me instead.”
I perched on the side of her bed. “Momma, missing someone and regretting whatever you regret doesn’t make you this sick. And if you were gone, he’d still have had his heart attack and then I’d really have no one.”
“You’re going to be okay. I know it. You’re stronger than me, Gigi girl. So much stronger.”
I watched as her head turned away from me and she settled down for an afternoon nap that would bleed into early evening and would definitely mean she’d be out for the count until breakfast. I leaned over her body and kissed her cheek, just as Edward appeared at her bedroom door.
“You’re going the right way to pissing me the hell off. Move it, you’ve got work to do.” He ran down the stairs and waited for me, expecting me to follow him. Not wanting to cause myself any more issues, I did as expected, following him through the kitchen that was still a messy disaster zone from our meal and then out the back door.
When he started towards the barn, I felt a little nauseous. Only this time the back of the barn door was open, too.
“There’s my sweetheart,” I heard, and the voice turned my blood to ice water.
Tommy.
I stopped dead and was about to put my legs into reverse gear when Edward put his hands on my shoulders and stopped me. “Come on now, Ginny. You remember how much fun you had last time,” he laughed.
“No!” I gritted out. My fists were clenched and now I knew where this was going, I was determined to put up more of a fight. If Edward was going to offer me up to the wolves again, I was going to fight so much he’d need to knock me out to let it happen again.
“Relax sister. You do as I tell you, then Tommy goes home to take a cold shower.” My relief was as evident as Tommy’s disappointment.
“What do I have to do?” I asked, terrified.
“Follow Tommy to his truck, and help him carry the contents back in here. Simple as that.”
I turned back to look at Edward, hoping I would be able to spot the signs of him lying. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. Edward’s mask was in place permanently these days and he always looked the same—spiteful and full of anger. “Well run along, unless of course you want some more of Tommy’s man meat,” he warned.
I followed Tommy out through the back of the barn, but kept a safe distance. My eyes scanned the walls and the floor for anything I could use as a weapon should I need to, but the further to the back of the barn we got, the closer we were to where my daddy stored all his tools like he owned a tool showroom. Nothing was out of place or in easy grabbing reach.
Edward had fallen in behind me at the truck and waited patiently for Tommy to open his trunk. “Open the bags, take out the parcels and put them on the shelf in the barn,” he ordered.
My nerves were at an all-time high as my fingers jumbled to get the zippers on the big black bags undone. Inside were twenty or so parcels all stacked and wrapped in brown parcel tape. I hesitated.
“Get fucking on with it,” he growled, and the change in the tone of his voice commanded I do as he asked.
I grabbed as many package
s as I could and shuffled them into my arms before following Edward to a shelf hidden by some boxes at the back of the barn. On my second trip back to the trunk of Tommy’s car, I tried to grab as many parcels as possible. I wanted away from the pair of them, and making trip after trip wasn’t helping to achieve that. The problem was when I tried to juggle the extra parcels I dropped one. Three pairs of eyes followed it as it fell, and it was impossible to un-see the white powder leaking from the split corner.
“You fucking idiot,” Edward shouted as Tommy bent down to pick it up. “Don’t,” he barked again before Tommy had got his hands on it. “She can pick it up.” I panicked and picked it up before hot footing it in the direction of the hidden shelf.
I knew what that powder looked like and I was finding it hard to breathe.
My brother was hiding drugs in our barn.
“What’re we gonna do? They’ll see a package has been busted.” The panic in Tommy’s voice was evident. “Fuck, man! They’re gonna think we’re dippin’ in.”
“Calm the fuck down. I’ll sort it. Again.” Tommy hesitated. “Get the fuck outta here!”
With Tommy leaving, I was alone in the barn with Edward. I couldn’t run, but I also couldn’t keep quiet.
“What the hell are you doing, Edward?”
“Mind your fucking business.”
“Does Momma—”
Edward came up to me so quickly I retreated until I hit a wall. “No. That bitch doesn’t care. About anything. I’m doing this for you bitches anyway. You think the factory keeps the food on our table? You think me humping metal around all day puts gas in the cars and keeps the fucking lights on?”
“But drugs.” My fear was genuine. He was a complete bastard to me and treated me worse than a dog, but we shared blood and I still felt compassion. There are some feelings you just can’t switch off. “What happens if you get caught?”
Edward started to laugh. “I get caught?” He struggled to get the words through the belly roars of hilarity. “It’s not my fingerprints all over those big fat packets of drugs.”
“What?” I was dumfounded.
“You heard. Time to earn your keep, sister.”
Gigi
My terrible dreams about being beaten by Edward had now been replaced by nightmares of being arrested and going to jail.
Edward had picked up a lot of extra overtime shifts at the factory and I welcomed the space. It was a little slice of heaven. I was finding it difficult to concentrate at school. I was hiding some serious stuff from Momma and I was barely sleeping. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Keep my silence and be complicit, or turn him in, and in turn put myself in the hot seat, too.
The slice of heaven was just that for Momma—heaven. She was getting some much-needed rest and I was able to get five minutes peace without worrying about a stray backhand catching me off guard.
With Edward not really around, I would cook our meals and eat them with her in her room. The more time I spent time in her bedroom, the more I realized it wasn’t helping her to get better. There were pictures of my daddy everywhere. His robe still hung on the back of the bedroom door and I knew his clothes were still hanging in the closet. Essentially, she’d holed herself up in a shrine to a dead person. She’d regressed and was back to how I remembered her being when she was mourning him. In her mental state, she struggled to get used to him not being around and no one else’s feelings were a consideration for her. Momma was in stuck in her own selfish grief.
I needed her to snap out of it and come to her senses.
We were living in a drug den and if that world imploded, I needed her firing on all cylinders to help me get through it. I was sick of being the parent; I needed her to step up to the plate and do her job.
Every time Edward returned home, the atmosphere changed and the only small saving grace was that he was so exhausted from working extra hours he usually ate and then collapsed into a food coma fairly quickly. That didn’t matter to me, though. Even though he was asleep, I still had to be on my guard.
In truth, I was constantly stressed about Momma. She wasn’t getting better and as time dragged on, I was starting to really worry, but I still couldn’t convince her to see a doctor. Edward wouldn’t be in favor of that, either. We had no medical insurance and if I asked him for money, he would just refuse.
After I’d done all my early morning jobs, I kissed Momma goodbye and raced out to catch the school bus. I was running a little behind, and on my way made a split-second decision to take Momma’s car. If I got home before Edward he’d never know. I threw my back pack on the passenger seat, put the key in the ignition and was greeted with silence instead of the clunky turn over of the engine. “Come on” I flipped the key back and forth, and got nothing. “Dang it!”
Cursing myself for wasting more time on a whim, I grabbed the back pack and raced down our street, which was more of a dusty dirt track after the wind and rain last night. I was exhausted by the time I made it to the bus stop. We were a good distance away and normally I enjoyed the solitude of the walk, but running it was no joke. I was no good at sports. My top clung to my sweaty body as I leaned back against the vinyl seat on the bus and tried to blow air onto my face because I knew it was red and splotchy. By the time I got to school I was still a hot mess.
Topher had pretty much left me to it since I’d walked away from him, although I knew he was keeping a watchful eye on me for signs of anything strange. I was sure that if I showed up looking more of a mess than normal or with broken limbs, he’d step in and speak to the teachers, and because of that, I knew I had to keep my distance. His offer of help was always there in the back of my mind, though, and I’d never be able to openly thank him for caring.
His friends had started to give me a hard time, though. Their focus was on the negatives. I’d turned him down and I lived in a house that confirmed I was a hick from the hills. I’d managed to ignore this for quite a while. Honestly, being the different kid in the class, I was used to people talking about me even when I was right in front of them, but things were getting out of hand. Topher was on the football team and had caught the eyes of most of the cheer squad, in particular Aurora Reynolds. I knew she fancied him, and Topher knew it, too, but he still chose to ask me to go to the summer formal with him. I wasn’t stupid. I was aware of how it looked and I knew what they were saying about me. I was more than aware of my surroundings. I could read a mood far better than the rest of them. It was how I stayed alive outside of school after all.
Aurora had been working her ass off to get him to notice her and it hadn’t paid off. It didn’t help that everyone knew she was interested in Topher and I’d shunned him, like I was too good for him. His friends added to that falsehood and made sure everyone knew what had gone down at my house. Unfortunately, they perceived that Topher had been burned, and so he went stag, which broke hearts far and wide, particularly Aurora’s. She kept putting the work in, but he kept ignoring it and while Aurora convinced herself he was playing hard to get, I sensed it was different. Topher didn’t seem the type to be chased. He wanted to do the chasing, and this was what led him to do the unthinkable and come to my house again. I was beyond a challenge for him and that just made things with Aurora and her friends a lot more difficult for me.
I’d been in the bathroom trying to cool off with some water after my bus sprint. I’d even attempted to rub some tissue paper under my armpits. I was conscious of being a sweaty, smelly mess, and they intercepted me as soon I hit the hallway. I could tell from the expressions of Aurora and her gang of nasties that something was about to happen. The way they looked at me gave them away.
“Let me get this straight. You have the most wanted guy in school snapping at your heels, and you said no?”
I did what I always had and ignored her, but as I went to walk past them, they formed a circle and stopped my progression.
“Nothing to say?”
“No.”
“I don’t get it, do you, girls?�
� She sneered. “Dresses like she’s homeless, has limp hair, and eyebrows that are about three years past a wax. He is way too good for you.” I felt my anger prickle. Topher was definitely way too good for me, but with the way she was behaving, she was just proving that she didn’t deserve him, either. “You know what? I think this little mouse still has her V card, unless she gave it to a hillbilly. I hear they do that where you live. Maybe even gave it to her daddy. Oopsie. Daddy’s dead, isn’t he?” She laughed, and the others laughed on cue.
They all continued to laugh, and I wanted to push back at her words. Her mentioning my daddy was cruel, and joking about something as personal as virginity was not on. But joking about it when I’d been subjected to something so awful, was something else. The whole scene was vile and vindictive without them bringing my daddy into it. I was starting to feel the red mist of my temper rising.
Aurora leaned in, and I could smell the chewing gum she had between her perfect lipsticked lips. “Do you hicks from the hills like it rough? Did he make you take him in one go on your first time?” She leaned back to her audience. “My mom says the whole family is fucked up and they’ll just keep fucking each other until the gene pool resembles something from a creepy movie.”
I felt embarrassment spring to my cheeks.
“Look at her. Who did you fuck? You fucked someone. I can see it? Did you have to do it in the woods, like a sacrifice on an altar or something? You redneck piece of trash.”
The whooshing in my ears was swallowing me whole.
How dare she come at me like this, spewing this hatred out? Before I could talk myself down, I became my brother’s sister. Quick as a snake, I raised my hand and belted her up the side of the head. Minimum contact with maximum impact meant all the pain in the world. I knew exactly how that felt and I loved that I’d been the one to get in there first.
Gigi: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 4
