Nodding, I slowly got up and made the call, listening to Dad lose his shit when I told him what was going on. I only got to his fifth ‘mother fucker’ when I lost the lid on my stomach contents and vomited my soul down the toilet. It was fortunate that I’d been so close to it, otherwise, I would have had a mess that would’ve made me do it again, cleaning it up. It was never-ending, as each spasm deep in my gut brought up everything I had inside me until all I could do was dry heave and pray for death.
A cold, wet cloth being placed gently on my neck was heaven, but the shock of it also made me jerk and whimper.
“Guess who gets to play hooky with me today?”
Welp, seeing as how I wasn’t in a fit state to walk, let alone work, I wasn’t going to argue. I also didn’t argue when he picked me up, flushed the toilet, and took me over to the sink. However, I did hit him weakly in the throat when he told me that if I didn’t brush my pukey breath, he’d make me gargle bleach and set Dobby on me.
ElijahThree days later…
I’d just thrown the last bag into the back of the truck when the sound of an engine getting close pulled my mind off the mental checklist of things I needed to do. Well, the checklist of things I needed to do here, which was about half the size of the list I needed to do when I got back to Sadie. Then again, a lot of that list included groveling, so there was that.
The most recent report from her dad had come in, and when I’d read that she’d received some postcards from the fucker back in England, I flew into action and packed up. Every report so far said she was okay and Ned was intercepting them, and he was contained, so this had come out of the blue and, I didn’t like it. She wasn’t safe anymore, even with Jackson with her, and I’d spent long enough getting my head together and needed to get back to her. They could say there was no need for concern, but it didn’t make a difference to me now.
Grassy Point in Sarasota Bay, Florida, was where I’d come with Coop, to a small house hidden in some of the undeveloped land that we’d bought together four years ago, and it’d done me well while I kicked my ass for a lot of things. The time away had helped me let go of the lingering guilt I felt about Coop, it’d numbed me to how his family had treated me after he’d died, and it’d just stressed what I already knew—I couldn’t live without Sadie Dahl in my life.
The last one had been strange for me because I hadn’t known her for long in the grand scheme of things, so I’d had to pick that apart a bit more to understand it. My worry was fucking up and going into something that I was reading incorrectly. I didn’t want to hurt her more than she’d already been hurt in her short life. But, after I’d dealt with the other two things, I’d understood even more that I wasn’t going to do that. I finally had focus back in my life, and I felt freer than I had in a long time. It’d also hadn’t involved me getting into fights to work it out, either.
I needed to get back to her and explain what’d happened, as well as apologize for being the kind of asshole who’d have sex with a woman who was a tyrant and a bitch, and not even remember doing it. I get that I was at a bad place in my life back then, and the shit with Levi and Charlotte had made my mood plummet even further, but that wasn’t an excuse for being that level of asshole.
So, I’d packed up and was going to drive straight through after I got my shit in the vehicle. Which was what I was doing, so seeing my brother’s truck coming toward me on its jacked-up wheels confused me.
As soon as he came to a stop, he was out of the cab and striding toward me. At first glance, if you saw Marcus and Jackson together, you’d think they were identical with zero differences. They copied each other’s hairstyles and appearances to fuck with people, but once you got to know them or spent time with them, they couldn’t be more different, including visually.
Smiling widely and happy to see him, I closed the distance and held a hand out. I got as far as saying, “Marcu—" before his big beefy fist hit me on the jaw, almost knocking me off my feet.