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“Brielle, no,” I tell her. “He’d never hurt me. He isn’t that type of man.”
She huffs a humorless laugh. “All men are that type of man.” She shrugs as if she doesn’t believe me before walking away.
I suck in a deep breath before going outside to the SUV. There’s this need inside of me to prove to her that she’s wrong, but that doesn’t stop the fear from making the tips of my fingers tingle as I close the front door. I pull in another deep breath before turning around to face him.
I watch his chest rise and fall as if he’s relieved at the sight of me, but I imagine he’s glad he didn’t have to sit out here and wait all day for me to appear.
As I walk toward him, I work the excuses through my head as to why I didn’t answer my phone. I texted him back, so he’d know where I was, and at the time, it felt like enough. As I close the distance between the two of us, I can’t decide if running would be the best thing.
I hold my head a little higher. Brielle is wrong. He won’t hurt me. He’s never shown any indication that he’d do such a thing. He’s never even raised his voice to me.
What if he doesn’t care enough to get loud?
Even if there’s no hitting, I know this is the very short beginning of the end. Every guy I’ve ever gotten tangled up with is gone within a day or so of that first argument. I can’t wait around for them to dump me. I struggle enough with the ones who seem to want to spend more than a day with me because it doesn’t take much for my brain to convince me that he’s the greatest guy I’ve ever met.
I’ve felt more than I’ve ever felt before with Derrick, and that makes him incredibly dangerous.
Only this time, I’m not mad. Before I’d get so angry for one reason or another, and I’d never be able to let that anger go. I’d hyper-focus on it until I was the one raising my voice, slamming a door, and walking away.
I’m too far from home to throw a fit like that without other preparations.
Instead of confronting me right there outside of the shelter, he simply holds out his hand for the keys then opens the passenger side door of the SUV and waits for me to climb inside. The silence is insidious as I wait for him to circle around the hood and join me in the vehicle.
Maybe we don’t have to argue. Maybe he’s just done and will take me to the clubhouse to get my things.
The silence feels like a punishment, like a manipulation, and as he pulls away from the curb, it makes my hands tremble even more.
Is it from fear? Anger? Worry?
There are so many emotions tangling up inside of me that I’m unable to separate the threads of each one in order to deal with them individually.
He doesn’t circle the block and begin to head back to the clubhouse. Instead, he makes several turns until we’re pulling into the entrance of a community park.
With it being Sunday, there are several groups of kids running around and playing. I frown at the sight of the little girl on the swing, trying to kick her feet so the thing moves. I only see one dad waiting at the end of the slide for his child to come down. All the other adults there are on their phones, heads down, paying no attention to their kids. It’s rather heartbreaking, but I’m not a parent. Maybe they need a break. I know that has to be a thing.
Parents can’t be on a hundred percent of the time.
“Do you know what it would take for any of the Cerberus kids to come play at this park?”
I remain silent because it feels like a rhetorical question.
“No less than two active members per child.”
“Their parents?” I ask, because I don’t know that there’s even one single parent related to the club. At least I haven’t met one yet if there is.
He shakes his head. “In addition to their parents.”
“That seems a little excessive,” I mutter. “I get that the world is a dangerous place and all, but you can’t live in fear. It isn’t healthy.”
“It isn’t fear, Beth,” he says, unhooking his seatbelt so he can shift a little in my direction.
As much as I’ve loved all the attention he’s shown me over the last several weeks, I’m not sure I want a hundred percent of it right now, when I’ve done something he has told me not to do, by taking the SUV and going to the shelter alone.
“You should know from the danger we brought right to Lindell’s doorstep that bad things happen. Let’s not talk about the bad people coming after the club. Acts of violence can happen to everyone. I—”
