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“But, she’s not just a woman,” my better angels remind me. I ignore them. I can’t let this happen again.
I rush out the door, already late to meet Confidence but slowing my steps because I’m not ready for what I need to do. When I think of what my uncle’s shit is about to cost me … the kernel in my gut pops and the blooms are soaked in shock, resentment, and rage.
* * *
CONFIDENCE
I glance at my phone for the third time. Hayes is never late. But, it’s Saturday. I was a little nebulous about the time, he just erred on the other side of eleven o’clock. I turn around and look at my hair again. She didn’t do a permanent color, but she rinsed it with a golden blonde that makes it look like spun gold in the light. She cut it so it skims my shoulders. I feel naked and cold. But my face looks more … I don’t know … visible.
I’m pregnant.
I stare at my reflection and try to see how I’m different. I must be different. Right?
Hayes and I blended our cells together to create a miracle. I think I’m in love already and all I’ve seen is a blue line. Hayes’s DNA has coalesced with mine. That little amalgamation of us has burrowed into my womb and will take from me, blood and marrow. Teeth and bone. And a life will grow from it. I’m falling in love at the speed of light with a blue line. I do what I have been too afraid to since I took four pregnancy tests in the bathroom of Blush. I laugh.
I want to wait and get a blood test before I tell Hayes, but I’m not sure that I can. There’s not a single solitary cell in my body that expects him to be anything less than jubilant when I tell him. We are in such a good place. The litigation with Kingdom is moving along, but so are his side-by-side efforts to help alleviate the suffering of his tenants while they’re in legal limbo. I’ve watched him write checks from his personal account this week that, no matter how much money he has, must have stung a little. But he’s smiled every time he’s paid for something that makes their lives easier. And he’s doing it all anonymously. He doesn’t want the attention, and he doesn’t want to cause any friction with Kingdom’s board. It has just been one more thing about this man who makes me feel like he would move mountains to be with me. I feel the same way.
I can’t wait to tell him what we’ve done together.
“Well, look what we have here,” a voice from beside me calls, and my blood freezes in my veins. I turn my head slowly and take in the tall, dark blond, handsome man whose beautiful smile hides a black, devious heart.
“Barry,” I say flatly and curl my lip in disgust.
“Confidence,” he drawls like he’s making a joke.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“It’s a public place. Or did you have the entire town blacklist me?” He glowers at me.
“I didn’t have anyone do anything. You running around ranting about feminazis and conspiracies did that.”
“That mouth of yours is only good for one thing. And talking isn’t it,” he says.
I roll my eyes at him. “Was that supposed to offend me? Make me cry? Make me care?” I ask with contempt and malice and disgust. “You’re pathetic,” I spit at him.
His expression loses any pretense of charm, and he pushes himself off the window he was leaning on and walks over to me, clearly thinking he can intimidate me.
“You didn’t think I was pathetic when you worked for me,” he says.
“No, I didn’t. But I was also clearly suffering from a clear case of extreme slumming. I’m all better now and I see you for exactly what you are,” I say with a smile. I turn and start down the narrow alley that runs between Blush and Twist. I stop as soon as I realize I’m walking away from people. Away from the light and out of sight. I can hear him rushing to catch up with me. It takes everything I have to not run. I try to reach into
my purse for my phone so I can call Hayes, or 9-1-1. But, my hands are trembling.
I smell it on him like I did my Dad. He’s in the mood to hurt someone, and I just walked down a fucking alley. His hand closes on my arm and spins me around to face him.
“Let me go, Barry!” I yell, and he hustles me farther down the alley.
“I’m just getting started.” He leans forward and puts his face in mine. “And maybe if you ask nicely, once he’s done with you, I’d be willing to give you a—” My hand flies out and up before I can stop to think. The crack of my palm against his cheek and the burst of white-hot pain at the contact make me feel like I detonated a bomb.
He grabs my wrist with one hand and my chin with the other. “You fucking bitch,” he grinds out into my ear. He presses his body into the back of mine and I hate myself for the sob that escapes me when his erection presses into my back. He presses his lips to my ear and whispers, “You’re lucky you’ve got that body. Why don’t you show me what you showed Wilde and Rivers that’s got them so hot and bothered over you?” He grinds into me, and I scream. Loudly enough that it bounces off the dark, stone walls. He covers my mouth with his hand, but not before I can bare my teeth and bite down on his palm. I almost gag at the musty, salty taste of his skin in my mouth. But it does the trick. He lets go and I break into a run. I only get two feet before he’s got me back in his iron tight grip.
The skin on my arm burns as he struggles to hold onto me. I kick him and scream, at the top of my lungs, “Hayes!” before his hand is back over my mouth and his hot breath all over my face. “You think he’ll care what happens to you?” He throws me against the wall and steps between my legs. “I’m going to fuck that cockiness right out of you,” he says and starts unbuckling his pants.
And I start fighting for my life. His hand is still pressed to my face, and now he’s pressing so hard that I can’t open my mouth to bite him or breathe.
I kick, punch, fight, slap. I might as well be fighting an eight-foot wave. He completely overwhelms me. I close my eyes and wail in my throat and beg God to make it stop. I feel his penis, hard and heavy, pressing against the bare skin of my inner thigh, and I think about Hayes and my baby and I want to die. I sob helplessly into his hand and hope he kills me when he’s done. I left Arkansas to escape violent men, and he’s managed to find me anyway.
A loud roar comes out of nowhere and cuts through the ringing in my head and then, I’m falling. His body is yanked free of mine, and I land with a thud on my ass, and look over to see Hayes on top of Barry. His fists are flying and making contacting with sickening thuds and crunches of skin and bone. “You motherfucking piece of shit!” he yells in between his arm’s wild swings.
