Sweet Dreams 2(118)

“Laurie would look hot on TV.” Jonas thought this was enticement but it was not.

“Reason one not to do it,” Tate said to Jonas.

“Why is that reason one?” Jonas asked his father.

“Bub, it isn’t gonna happen,” Tate repeated.

“She’d be hot, you’d be cool and I’d be famous!” Jonas shouted.

That’s when Tate got mad, so mad, he didn’t weigh his words.

“You think Dalton McIntyre is the only cracked fuckwad out there? You want Laurie on TV so any sick fuck can fixate on her? Bub. It. Is. Not. Gonna. Happen.”

Jonas’s face got pale and my body got tight. Then Jonas shot up from the floor and ran from the room.

I started to make a move, mumbling, “I’ll go –”

“I’ll go,” Mom said over me, didn’t look at anyone, and swept from the room.

Dad got up from the armchair announcing, “We’re out of beer.”

“We aren’t Dad, there’s –” Carrie started but Dad interrupted her.

“We’re out of beer,” Dad stated firmly. “Mack, Carrie, you comin’ to town with me?”

Carrie looked down at Mack and Mack looked up at Carrie. Then without glancing in any direction but the door, Dad, Mack and Carrie walked out of it.

Carefully, because my stab wound miraculously didn’t hit anything vital, but it still hurt like a mother, I twisted to look up at Tate.

“Baby, you should go talk to Jonas.”

Tate was staring at the TV screen, a commercial now on, he lifted the remote and I heard it go mute. Then he looked down at me and I held my breath at the anger still darkening his features.

“What happened to you isn’t exciting. The aftermath of it, with those fuckin’ buzzards circling, isn’t cool. It’s fucked. He needs to get that.”

“He’s coping,” I said softly, “the only way he knows how.”

“And you?” Tate shot back a question that confused me.

“Me, what?” I asked.

“I was in that house, Lauren. When we went after Jim-Billy, I saw where he had you, I saw what you saw. I saw your blood on that mattress. Are you coping?”

“Well…” I said, “yeah.”

He stared at me, his jaw went hard and a muscle ticked there.

Then he bit out, “Bullshit.”

I turned fully to him. I was lying partly on him, partly on the couch but my movements brought me fully on him. They also hurt but I fought back the pain and put my hand to his heavily stubbled jaw (he hadn’t shaved, not since that night, he was growing back the beard, for me).

“Honey,” I whispered, “I’m okay.”

“I saw what you saw and I wasn’t tied to a mattress,” Tate repeated.

“I’m okay,” I repeated too.

Then Tate glared at me, his entire frame tensed the length of mine and he roared, “He cut off your goddamned hair!”

I stilled and stared at him as Tate shifted out from under me and stalked out of the room. I lay on the couch continuing to stare at where I last saw him. I knew something like this was going to happen eventually. Tate had been nursing a slow burn for days and Tate wasn’t the kind of man to let it smolder and then burn out. He was the kind of man who let it explode.

Gingerly, I got to my feet and followed him.

As I did, my hands went to my hair which Dominic had come to the hospital to do an emergency cut and style on the day I was released which was Christmas Eve, making it seriously nice, Dom showing up like that. But he’d said reporters were outside and “no girlie of mine is gonna face the media with bad hair”.

Dalton hadn’t got the chance to take it all, it now brushed my shoulders and it looked good because Dominic was a master. That said, I liked it better longer and, apparently, so did Tate.

I hit the bedroom and saw Tate standing, staring out the side window to which he’d yanked up the blinds.

“Tate –” I started the minute I hit the room, he turned sharply toward me and I stopped talking and moving when I caught the look at his face.

“Neet’s hair was there, and Tonia’s, and Sunny’s and yours was in a bag, ready for his trophy wall. Jim-Billy hadn’t shown up, you’d have been on that wall, Lauren.”

“But I wasn’t,” I whispered.

“We would have been too late,” Tate ground out.

“You don’t know that.”

“He didn’t hit anything important with his first thrust. He had enough time to get in a second, a third, he could have cut you places, babe, places that only I –”

“Stop it, Tate.” I was still whispering.

“I should have killed him.”