This Love Hurts, Book 1 Read online

  “Why?” I question, crossing my ankles and observing, taking everything in. “What happened that he has to talk to the police?”

  My auntie looks off in the distance, staring at the worn mural on the far wall. It’s nothing special, a mundane piece of art displaying trees and a sunrise made of tiny mosaic tiles. Something to comfort people and do nothing more. My auntie stares blankly at it while my sister stares at me, her hand landing on my forearm.

  “She broke her arm; she said she fell. But the other bruises are older and she has a number of fractures.” My sister whispers the last sentence, swallowing harshly as she lets the implication hang in the air.

  My first thought is that it’s been a long time since they’ve fought. We were children back then and he never touched her like that after. How awful is it, that I know even as my chest goes tight and my fingers cold, that he’s hit her before and yet I don’t want to believe the accusation.

  “Did he hit her?” I ask outright. How the question comes out evenly, I don’t know. I can feel them both staring at me, their eyes boring holes into the side of my face as I stare at the steel elevator doors, wishing a doctor would come down and say I could see my mother, so I can ask her, rather than sitting here with people who don’t know. They don’t know. Mom would tell me. She’d tell me the truth. They had their problems early on, but they’re over. She broke her arm, that’s all.

  Dad wouldn’t do that; he wouldn’t hit her. My mother is a strong woman. She wouldn’t let him. This is all a mistake. Isn’t it? It’s just a misunderstanding.

  Fuck, I think as I drop my head and close my tired eyes. My mind’s playing tricks on me and my emotions are storming inside of me, whipping me around until I can’t think straight.

  “Did he hit her?” I repeat myself, louder this time when neither of them answers. Auntie doesn’t say a damn thing, but she doesn’t stay silent either. She’s deliberate when she grabs one of the two cups off the table in front of us and makes her way around the other side of it, saying she’ll give us space.

  It took me a long time to realize the reason for the tension between my auntie and my father.

  He came from money, had a white-collar job. He was powerful, older and white, marrying a younger black woman from a poorer neighborhood. “Trophy wife” was a term used a lot when we were younger.

  My mother once screamed at her family that they couldn’t be happy for her. That they hated him because he wasn’t like the rest of them.

  I thought she was right because my grandmother, her mother, never did seem to like him. But then again, my father’s mother never seemed to like my mother. It went both ways. All of my grandparents died before I was ten and I hardly remember them but I do remember the way they looked at their child’s spouse. Like they didn’t belong together in any way.

  I thought my auntie had the same ideas as my grandmother.

  Until Mom left him one day, taking us to Auntie Susan’s and both of her sisters told her she needed to leave him. I was too young to realize what was going on. Cadence knew before I did. She’s younger, but she remembers far more than I do. That was the one and only time, though.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” my sister finally speaks, her voice lowered and careful. “They haven’t been getting along recently.”

  “Well, what did Mom say?” I question her, feeling my pulse strike harder. I struggle with the way my sister sees my father. I know they had fights, they had bad moments, but there were so many good ones. So many times they kissed each other in front of us. So many happy memories and occasions that were pure joy. What they went through before was a rough patch. That’s what my mom said, it’s what she called it, a rough patch.

  “I want to know what really happened,” I comment and as I do, I feel warm tears at the corners of my eyes.

  “I think I started it,” Cadence whispers in a choked voice then reaches for her tea. She holds on to it like it’ll protect her, her shoulders hunched inward. “I called Mom because… that guy I was with. He was rough the other night and I don’t know why, I called her and I blamed her.” Her voice cracks as she slumps back into her seat.

  “What?” Disbelief runs rampant through me. Unpacking everything takes time, but the first reaction I have is to protect her, to defend her from whatever fucker she’s referring to. “What do you mean he was rough with you?”

  “He just pushed me against the wall. I told him to leave when we got into a fight over something stupid. I don’t even remember.”

  “Who is he?” I ask and my voice is deathly low.

  “No one now. I’m done with him. I blocked him and he’s not interested in me anymore anyway. Not after what I said to him.”

  I can only nod once before waiting for her to continue.

  “I was upset and I called Mom and told her and she was so… so judgmental.” The hurt is there in her voice, but so is guilt. It’s riddled with it between each quickly taken breath. “So uppity about him and what happened and all I could think is that it happened to her and she stayed with him.

  “And I went off on her… I said some things I shouldn’t have.”

  “You think she got into it with Dad afterward?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but … I just …”

  With one arm wrapped around my sister’s shoulders, I pull her into me and let her rest there as her face contorts and she cries again.

  “Have you talked to Mom?” I ask her and she shakes her head. “It’s been hours,” I remark.

  It takes my sister a long moment to respond, “She was unconscious.”

  There are four nurses in the corner of the hospital cafeteria. And then there’s my auntie with a plate she hasn’t touched, and myself. I move the mac and cheese around with my fork, in the same situation as my auntie. Not wanting to eat, but not ready to leave just yet.

  My mother seemed fine, apart from her arm wrapped in a cast.

  She smiled, she gave me a kiss. She said it got stuck in the railing when she tripped. She was trying to hold on to it and instead she only made it worse.

  If it wasn’t for the look on my father’s face, I’d believe her. He got her two vases of daisies, her favorite flower. The smell of them in the hospital room haunts that moment for me. Three vases total, one bouquet from me, lining the room and bearing witness to that conversation.

  I can’t be in the room with them. I don’t know how my sister’s doing it. How she can sit there with speculation but not say anything.

  “How’s the city life?” Auntie Susan asks me and I bring my amber gaze up to meet hers. It falls quickly to her gray sweatshirt with the block letters from my uncle’s alma mater. He passed a few years ago, a car accident caused by black ice.

  “It’s not like New York City.”

  There’s a hum of understanding as she stirs a pack of sugar into a steaming cup of tea. Her dark eyes watch the swizzle stick as she asks, “You like it better down there? I bet it’s warmer.”

  “It is. It’s ten degrees colder here every time I come up.”

  The small talk doesn’t do anything to help the hollow feeling in my chest. Or the numb prick along my arms. I want to talk to someone, but words fail me. That and shame. I don’t want it to be true, but my gut is hardly ever wrong.

  “You know what I told your mama?” my auntie Susan speaks up, and the bluntness of it forces me to meet her gaze. “I told her when she went back to him, that I was always there for her. If she wanted to come stay, if she needed money. I told her if she wanted a family dinner, I’d sit next to him but not in his house. I would never step foot in that man’s house.”

  Hate seeps into her words, her disgust showing through and the first crack in her armor showing. My auntie’s frame is larger, not at all delicate like my mother’s. She shifts her weight and corrects her expression before continuing, hardening her disposition.

  “We make choices, and your mother made hers. Your father made his. I make my own too. I’m not leaving her, but you c
an’t make sense of it with your mother.”

  I don’t speak. Not to her. Not to my sister. Not even to my mother.

  I’m silent as I take it all in. Collecting the bits of evidence and forming my own conclusion. I feel dead inside. There’s this pit in my stomach that’s cold and unforgiving.

  My mother says it was an accident and that’s all there is to it as far everyone else outside this room is concerned.

  I leave before everyone else and without telling them. The last thing I want is to be alone with my father. I don’t want him to look me in the eyes and lie to me. Worse, I don’t want to believe him when I feel so certain that he assaulted my mother and should be behind bars right now.

  Flowers are waiting for me at the hotel desk when I check in. I wish they made me smile, but they’re so much more beautiful than daisies. That’s all I can think.

  They’re the first thing I see and that smell… the smell fills the entire room. Tossing the keys onto the dresser and letting my purse and the luggage bag sit at the front of the room, I make my way to them.

  My fingertips trail down the deep red petals, the smell of the roses covering up the memory of the daisies. A dozen deep red roses.

  After washing my face and changing into sweats, I text Cody: You didn’t have to send flowers. But they’re beautiful.

  His first text hits me like an ice bath washing down my bare skin. I miss you and I’ve been thinking of you, but I didn’t get you flowers.

  A follow-up text from him does nothing to help: Now I wish I had.

  He’s the only one who knew I was staying in this hotel. I only told Cody because he asked if I was staying with my parents and I told him, I always stay here.

  My limbs are shaky as I move to the window of the hotel room. I’m on the second floor so there’s no reason I should see anyone there, but still, I look over every inch and then do a search in the room, checking in the closet, in the bathroom. I search every inch and then lock the door before heading back to the roses. There’s no note. No indication of who they’re from and the clerk at the desk said she didn’t know. They were simply left here specifically for me when I checked in.

  A dozen red roses that keep me up most of the night until I slip into a light sleep, filled with brutal memories.

  Delilah

  Three days in my hometown is plenty.

  Add in two family dinners with forced smiles and my mother doing her best to tell us she’s fine and everything’s all right, and I couldn’t wait to leave. I spent every moment I could in the hotel providing lies about how much I was needed at work.

  There was only one moment I was alone with my father and he called me out on that lie subtly. All he mentioned was the article and he told me the same thing that everyone else did: it’ll pass.

  He didn’t say a word about Mom. He didn’t let on that it was obvious there was tension between us. He knows I think he hit her. He knows everyone thinks it.

  But in that moment at the restaurant when everyone left and I had to go back for the to-go box of leftovers I’d forgotten, he didn’t mention a damn thing but the article when I ran into him scribbling on the receipt at the table.

  Three days of feeling insignificant and like I’m only playing a part in a poorly written film. Four times I tried to reason with my mother, coaxing her to tell me the truth when we were alone. All four times she denied anything had happened other than her being careless. Even when I stared at the other bruises. I’ve never seen a sad smile on my mother’s face until I said I was leaving. I’m just not sure what she’s most sorry about.

  I need to see you. My text to Cody remains unsent even though he’s back in town and so am I. But we haven’t seen each other. I spent two days at home before forcing my way back into the office at work.

  Claire only agreed because I promised I had no intention of doing anything but paperwork.

  There’s always plenty of that to do, was her answer.

  It wasn’t a yes and it wasn’t a no. So here I stand, in my office staring between the piles of cases that need to be sorted and filed electronically and my empty cup of coffee. Aaron is technically in charge of these tasks, but I’m grateful to simply be doing something and he’s grateful for the help.

  If I told a younger version of myself who thrived on working in the field that I’d be hiding behind files in a silent office for days on end because of PR pressure … I would have snorted the most disbelieving laugh followed by a quick, “Fucking hell I will.”

  Reality is a bitter pill to swallow sometimes.

  The rap of a quick knock at the door is a pleasant distraction. “It’s open.”

  Claire’s gaze moves from me to the stack of folders over a foot high and the open cardboard filing box. “You busy?” As she asks, her smile quirks up and her left brow raises comically.

  “I think I need another coffee before I dive into the next stack,” I comment offhandedly. “You have something for me?”

  At my question, she makes her way into my office, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  “Just checking on you.”

  With my head down, moving several folders from one pile to the next, I peek up at her and her dark gray skirt suit before answering. “I don’t need checking on.”

  “Of course you do.” My motion pauses in the air, a manila folder in my clutches before she adds, “We all do.”

  I’ve been an honor roll student, salutatorian, and been given every kind of overachiever trophy a person can be awarded. I don’t like the idea of being someone who needs to be “checked up on.”

  “I’m good. Almost through with this stack and then it’ll be ready for Aaron to put in the system and be digital.” My statement is practically robotic if not for the dismissive tone.

  Crossing her arms, Claire leans back, one heel up and braced against the closed door. “Shaw is clumsy and Tanner struggles to read the jury.”

  The huff that comes from my lips brings a smirk with it when she adds, “They’re too green and I want a string of cases to go our way. I might’ve managed an article with the Journal but it’s on hold until we have a series of verdicts go our way.”

  “Running defense?” I question her, hating that she spent any time at all to combat the article that ran last week.

  “I’m doing what has to be done. We need you in there.”

  Silence weighs heavy on my shoulders. I can’t remember the last time I went this long without preparing to go before a judge. I haven’t even gone to Bar 44 or seen anyone other than Aaron and Claire since the article hit.

  “Everyone goes through it,” Claire speaks up as if reading my mind. “Shake it off and meet me in the boardroom. I’m not giving this case to one of them to fuck up. Nail it and we’ll ring it out for all it’s worth. As far as I’m concerned, the investigation has been conducted and we found nothing.”

  “What are we looking at? Case wise?”

  “Double homicide,” she says. Her answer is spoken easily enough and with the glimmer of a challenge in her eyes, a fire lights inside of me.

  This is why I do what I do. I put the bad men behind bars. Some people claim we’re only here to show the evidence. That there’s no desire or intention to punish.

  Fuck that.

  “You need this,” Claire claims and I nod.

  “I need it more than you know.” I let the truth slip out firmer than I would have liked.

  “How’s your mother?” Her question comes with an assumption that I need the case as a distraction. She’s not wrong.

  “She’ll be all right. Just tumbled down the stairs and hurt herself pretty bad.” Even to my own ears, the statement is spoken without any emotion. Inside, turmoil spreads, disgust even because I don’t tell her what I really think. Sucking in a breath and letting it out in one go, I stare down at my boss in her typical professional attire and tell her I’ll be there, abruptly ending the conversation.

  I’m busy making sure I put the files back in the correct boxes
and email an update to those who need it when Cody messages me.

  I need you tonight.

  That’s when I see the message I never sent him, still waiting: I need to see you.

  I change it to: I want to see you too, but I have a lot of work and probably won’t go to Bar 44.

  Even though the three moving bubbles make me aware that he’s writing something in response, I quickly add: But I need you too. There’s a vulnerability I don’t like in my words, so I lighten it by adding a joke: Come to my place? Make it a quickie?

  I can’t explain why I feel sick to my stomach over it. Or why unease spreads through me until he responds, It’s a date.

  Delilah

  “I heard you might be leaving town for a while.” My voice carries a purr to it as the bottle of beer hits the high-top table. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. and the bar’s clearing out.

  A week of normalcy does wonders. No one’s brought up the article and as far as I’m concerned, it never existed.

  “Bad news travels fast, doesn’t it?” Cody’s formerly charming expression dims under the bar lights. Office, trial, Bar 44, and bed with Cody. Every day on repeat.

  “I thought you were going home?”

  “I am,” he answers, tipping back his drink.

  “Going home is bad for you?” The disbelief in my voice makes me feel like a hypocrite and Cody’s amused expression displays the sentiment.

  “I don’t really have a home anymore. And I never liked that town to begin with.”

  There’s something sobering I didn’t know about Cody. It’s easy to get along with the man, easier to get in bed with him. But getting information out of him is something far more difficult. I consult my wineglass, giving him a moment before questioning more. “Your parents?”

  “They passed when I was younger. I went to live with my uncle who never wanted kids and he has dementia now.” He shrugs, but nothing he said is casual in the least.