“What’s in your office, Elijah?” I asked. He got angry then. I’ve heard of blind rage before. I was seeing it now. His eyes went out of focus, like he was looking through me. He threw down the fork and stormed out of the room. When I looked down at the table, I noticed his fork was bent.
I got up and hurried out of the room, after him.
“Honey?” I called. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to say I was sorry for pushing him this far. It wasn’t fair of me not to trust him. It wasn’t fair of me to push him. I was going to trust him to tell things in his own time.
It was on the tip of my tongue when I walked to the office.
“What the hell do you want!?” he half-shouted at me. It was unexpected, but I guessed I deserved it for pushing him.
“I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to apologize,” I said.
“Worm your way to the information by sucking up with me, will you?” he asked and his words were dripping with sarcasm.
I shook my head. “No, I wasn’t going to...“
“Don’t think you can just walk into my life and suddenly rule it. I don’t make space for anyone. I thought you knew that when you moved in here.”
I was angry again. He was shouting at me when I was trying to apologize. I wasn’t shouting, I was saying I was sorry. It was enough to get me fired up.
“Don’t tell me you have no space for me in your life after you made me get rid of my apartment,” I said. “You’ve made very sure I was going to stay.”
He threw his hands up in the air, rolled his eyes. “Are we back to that?”
“What else did you expect? Of course that would piss me off.”
“And now that you’re here you think it’s okay to wiggle your way into my personal life?”
“That’s what a relationship is,” I said. I shook my head and turned away from him to leave the office. I wasn’t going to do this anymore. This conversation was pointless, it was just going in circles and if he was just going to scream and shout without listening to me when I wanted to apologize, I wasn’t going to wait around.
“Don’t you walk out on me,” he said and grabbed my arm. His fingers dug into my flesh, hard. I glared at him.
“So you can run away and I can’t?” I asked.
He yanked me back and I nearly lost my footing, but he didn’t let go.
“Let me go, Elijah. You’re hurting me.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do,” he sneered. “Not in my house. You work for me, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean you own me,” I said. His eyes blazed white fire and his face became a menacing mask. I was suddenly scared. I’d never seen him like this, not even in his rampages in the office. He let go of my arm and backhanded me across the face. His knuckles connected with my cheek bone, his fist in my eye, and I crashed backward into the door. It crashed open completely against the wall behind it.
I couldn’t see for a moment. My vision swam and I felt disorientated. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. All I could think was that I was going to die, I was going to die, Elijah was going to kill me. Before I recovered, he grabbed me by my arms and yanked me up to my feet. I barely kept my balance, but I could almost see again.
He stood in front of me, larger than life, and I suddenly felt very small. Small and weak and I couldn’t protect myself.
“Answer me!” he shouted. He must have asked something while I was down, something I hadn’t heard.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words right. I tried to focus on him but my vision swam. I saw him lift his hand again and I tried to duck out of the way but he managed to hit me in the mouth.
A sharp pain shot into my lip, and the blow jarred me so that I fell again. This time I fell into the door opening, and I backed up until I was against the wall by the front door. I heard a gasp to my side, the housekeeper probably but she didn’t come closer.
I didn’t blame her.
As soon as I could find my own feet, I pulled myself up. I found my car keys on the hook behind the door and fled.
I had to get out of here. I had to get as far away from him as I could.
I got in my car and started it, flooring the pedal. The wheels spun and I shot forward. I nicked the gate pillar with the left front corner of the car, but I was safe. I kept going, speeding, getting away. I didn’t care where, as long as it was far, and fast.
I didn’t see the truck from my left until it was too late. It appeared in a flash of light and yellow metal. I swerved and managed to miss it, but I’d lost control. The car spun around and around and the world slid past me, something I couldn’t reach anymore. Then the car jerked to a stop so suddenly I couldn’t stop myself quick enough. I fell to the side, without my seat belt I was being flung around, and the window sped up to my face. I heard a crash, and suddenly there was just darkness. Warm, safe, quiet. Black.
I sat on the bathroom floor, curled in a ball, whimpering. The images crashed down on me so fast I didn’t have time to catch my breath and scream. I remembered everything. I remembered Elijah, wife beater. And Justin, lover.
And every mistake I’d made to end up in the mess where I was now. And it was too much for me.
Chapter 18 - Justin
The moment Alice left, I got in my truck and left the ranch. If I hurried maybe I could catch up with her. I didn’t know where she would go, but she didn’t have a lot of places left. I doubted she would go home so I sped down the road like I was on the run, and skidded to a halt in front of Shonda’s house. I slid out of the truck and ran up to the front door, truck still running and door still open.
I rang the bell. Nothing. I hammered on the door. Still nothing. The house was quiet and empty, and Shonda wasn’t home.
Maybe that was why Grace had come to me instead, after she’d been hurt. Maybe she’d tried Shonda first.
Or maybe she’d just come to me straight away because she still felt that for me, she still trusted me as the person that could help her and save her.
I’d gone and messed that up for her. I should just have told Alice to go away when she’d arrived. I thought back to the last couple of months, my relationship with Alice, and I struggled to remember why I started seeing her in the first place. The sex was good. The rest of it had been so mediocre it had been impossible to invest emotion. And my quest to get rid of my feeling for Grace had failed because even as a rebound, Alice just hadn’t been enough.
I thought back to the cabin, Alice’s bare legs wrapped around my waist, her chest pressed against mine. And Grace’s face when she walked in and saw us like that. After her not being able to remember anything that had happened between us before the accident, that must have been so much worse.
I got in my truck and reversed out of the drive, heading down the road again. I turned into the street that curled through the rich neighborhood and stopped in front of the mansion. It was big and intimidating every time, but she was somewhere in there, and she needed me.
I left my hat in the car and walked up to the front door. The bell chimed through the entire house, and I could almost feel it reverberate through my bones. I waited a couple of seconds. I was just about to ring again when the door swung open and the housekeeper looked at me. She recognized me because her face fell and she glanced over her shoulder.
“Mr. Wilson is home,” she said in a low voice. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be here.”
It was sweet of her. She knew what had happened here a while ago, that Grace and I had slept together in Elijah’s house. I assumed she hadn’t said anything, or she wouldn’t have warned me.
But I wasn’t leaving until I spoke to Grace. “Thank you,” I said. “But I really need to speak to Grace. Is she home?”
“She’s home, but she’s very upset,” she started, but then the door she was clutching onto swung open wider and she got a fright and stepped to the side, making way for Elijah. She looked down like she’d done something wrong.
“Thank you, Rosa,” he said to her and she curtsied and left. I wanted her to come back. But Elijah stood in front of me like a block and his face was twisted in a horrible scowl. His eyes were red and bloodshot, and a cloud of alcohol hung around him.
He’d been drinking, drinking a lot.
“Get off my property,” he growled at me. He may have been shorter than I was but I wasn’t under any illusion that he wouldn’t try to beat me. His hands were curled in fists at his side and his whole posture screamed violence. My heart constricted at the thought that Grace was in there when he was like this. She’d complained to me before that he had violent tendencies.
“I need to speak to Grace,” I said, keeping my voice firm. My feet were planted on the porch, hands in my pockets. I wasn’t leaving, but I didn’t want to look like a threat.
“You’re not seeing Grace,” he said. “She doesn’t want you. Can’t you take a hint?”
That wasn’t what she’d been saying to me lately. She’d come to my bed, not his. But I didn’t point that out.