***The ride home was awkward, and what I pulled into when I arrived at her street was anything but normal.
There were police cars, fire trucks, and news crews everywhere.
“Oh, no,” Mercy moaned.
“What the fuck?” I asked as we passed car after car.
There were literally people everywhere.
Didn’t these assholes know that this was the last thing she needed right now?
Then I saw the huge crowd, and I was thankful we were in an unmarked car, because I pulled through a loop around driveway and started driving in the opposite direction.
“What’s your second choice?” I asked.
She shrugged. “My parents, I guess.”
She said it with the upmost reluctance that I was fairly positive that that was the last place on earth that she wanted to be.
“You’re going to have to talk to them eventually,” I said as I started to drive.
Not towards her parents, but to my place.
Why, I couldn’t tell you, but I did.
It was monumentally stupid, but she needed it.
“I know,” she whispered brokenly. “Just…not yet. They’re just going to tell me I told you so, and I’m not ready to hear that quite yet.”
I refrained from asking the question that was on the tip of my tongue, but only just barely.
“How about my place…or a hotel?” I offered.
She looked at me with her heart in her eyes. “Your place.”
And that was the beginning of how I became well and truly fucked.
And not in a bad way.Chapter 3Back in the day, I used to call them names when someone pissed me off. Now, I just unfollow them on twitter. That’ll show those motherfuckers!
-Mercy to Miller
Miller
When I got home the next day after dropping Mercy off at her house, I threw up for an hour.
Once I got all the food and water up, I started on the bile. Then the dry heaves finished up the entire lovely round.
I couldn’t breathe, and all I could do was replay the previous day’s events in my mind, wondering how the hell a woman would be able to get over what had happened to her that day.
“You okay?” Foster asked a while later.
I held up my thumb. “Fucking peachy.”
I wasn’t okay.
I was far from okay.
I’d done nothing but hold a woman that could do nothing but cry for the last day.
I was literally exhausted, and I felt like a fucking dick for just dropping her off at her house. However, that’d been what she wanted, so I’d done it.
Even though I’d been extremely reluctant to do so.
“She take it?” Foster asked softly.
I shook my head. “No.”
Foster was speaking of the morning after pill.
After hours of trying to convince her to do it, she’d finally flushed it down the sink while tears had coursed down her face at an alarming rate.
Foster had entered our apartment somewhere in the middle of me trying to convince her, and Mercy telling me of her ‘values’ of not killing a child, no matter how that child was conceived.
She’d said, over and over, that if ‘God wanted her to have a child with that…man, then she’d have one. And she’d love it.’
I’d refrained from disagreeing or agreeing.
Personally, I had a feeling that she wouldn’t take it when I’d received it from Cleo’s woman. Me, playing devil’s advocate to a poor woman who’d just been raped, was mainly for Mercy’s benefit. She needed to know the consequences of keeping a child that’d been conceived like that…if she was even pregnant.
Only time would tell, though. And I wasn’t one to preach to her about right or wrong.
I didn’t know the bible like I probably should. I was a Christian, and I spoke to God, but I wasn’t an avid church goer.
I was a man who believed in God and country. Country more so than God, but that was neither here nor there.
“It was her decision not to, I just hope she realizes what’s going to happen to that kid if she stays in Kilgore. Everyone will know that that baby was conceived by rape, and the child will never live it down,” Foster said softly, leaning his bulk against the doorframe.
I turned on Foster with a snarl turning up the tip of my lip. “That child will not be bullied. If he or she is, they’ll have to answer to me.”
I’d practically spat that, hurtling the words at my brother as if he’d been the one teasing the defenseless child.
Foster held his hands up in surprise. “I wasn’t saying I was going to do it! I was saying that that was going to be what happens. People are dickheads. Especially those old busybodies that have nothing else to do but talk their head off about everyone’s problems but their own.”
I just shook my head. “Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen, because I’ll fuck them up.”
He snorted. “The autopsy was done last night on the attacker. He had nothing in his system except a minute amount of alcohol.”
I looked at the toilet bowl, thankful that the cleaner had come only two days ago to clean the apartment. I wasn’t a big fan of puking, and puking in a toilet that stank of piss and shit wasn’t my favorite thing to do.
“Well, that explains a lot,” I said, sarcastically, before pushing myself to my feet.
He eyed me warily wondering if I’d finished or not. He probably stood there and took pictures of me the entire time.
He was a nice brother like that.
“How was her place?” Foster asked, following me into the kitchen where I promptly chugged a full can of beer.
He watched me in silence, waiting for me to finish before I answered.
“Ghost town. After she went to bed last night, I called her pop and then Chief Rhodes, who took it upon themselves to clear that mess up. They let every single radio station, news station, and newspaper in the Ark-La-Tex that was there, know that if one video showed up of Mercy, that they’d personally sue them,” I said, just before I belched.
“Five,” Trance said, walking through the front door without knocking.
I flipped him off.