“Shouldn’t hate her, beautiful. Pity her but no reason to hate her.”
I lifted up and looked down at his beautiful face in the shadows. “She went after him. She broke up his marriage to my Mom. She didn’t get what she thought she’d get but she stayed so she could have what he could give her. She’s a drunk. She’s miserable and there are not enough shoes and purses and jewelry in the whole world to make it worth him treating her like garbage and beating her.”
“She’s got nowhere to go,” Creed pointed out.
“She’s got a brain and legs that work, she can find somewhere to go,” I returned.
Creed’s arm curled tight around me and he pulled me up and partially over his body so we were face to face.
“You see it as easy but your Daddy’s got a long reach,” he reminded me but I shook my head.
“I told you what they were fighting about tonight, Creed. He’s got another new woman and he isn’t even trying to hide her. He won’t miss the stepmonster if she went. He’d just replace her. She’s willing to do anything to keep her position and that’s just crazy.”
“Seems that way to you, baby, but it isn’t. It’s bigger than that, what he’s doin’ to her, for years, fuckin’ with her head.” His arm gave me a squeeze. “I get you, how she went about worming her way into his life. That was not cool but the punishment isn’t worth the crime. I remember her, way back then, before she connived her way in and he dragged her down. She was somethin’. Now she’s broken. All she knows is the life she has with him. She has no skills, hasn’t worked in over a decade. She’s got a great house, a great car, great clothes, status in town and your Daddy’s a powerful man. We can look from where we are and say without a doubt the devil she doesn’t know is better than the devil she knows. She’s buried so deep under all that shit, no way she’ll see it that way.”
I hated to admit it but Creed was right so I didn’t admit it and just settled, cheek to his chest again.
Creed’s hand started stroking my back again.
Then he asked, his voice cautious, “Your father still freaking you out?”
I knew what he was asking.
Daddy’s behavior had long since stopped freaking me out but he was different lately. Weird. Wired. His eyes bright in a way I didn’t like.
I’d seen it before, for years it had been happening although not frequent. The change. Him being more energetic than usual, happy. Now, it was happening a lot more and sometimes, when he wasn’t that way, he seemed agitated, strung out.
He would also have lots of phone conversations that were on the hush-hush, hidden. He’d jump if you entered a room he was in and he was talking on the phone and he did it like he was guilty or something.
He wasn’t like that. Ever. He had swagger. He didn’t care what people thought about him, the way he acted, what he said. He didn’t hide anything.
Now, he was and the fights with the stepmonster were far more frequent. They never went away but those two had settled into a routine animosity. It was usually only when he came home drunk or she found out he was cheating on her when things got ugly.
It was happening all the time these days.
“Yeah,” I told Creed.
“Wide berth, beautiful,” Creed advised.
I nodded, cheek sliding against his chest.
I could do that. I’d been doing it for years. I could do it for a few more months.
“You know,” I told his chest, “you’ve had this bed since you were a little kid. You should get a bigger bed.”
“I will, in a few months, when we’re gone and I’m buyin’ one for the both of us.”
See?
There it was. Creed making me feel better.
I smiled into his chest.
“Soon,” I began, “we’ll have to open the windows. We lay like this, we’ll hear the crickets. We meet at the lake, we’ll hear the frogs.”
His hand stopped stroking and his arm curled around me as he murmured, “Yeah.”
“Soon after that, no more sneaking. No more driving an hour and a half to have dinner. Just you and me, a big bed, a new puppy then Kara and Brand and a big happy family.”
His arm tightened, he pulled me up and over him so we were face to face again and he repeated a quiet, “Yeah.”
His face was illuminated only by the moonlight but I could still see the hair had fallen over his forehead. I lifted a hand to shift it away and for once, since he was lying on his back, it stayed where I put it.
That almost made me smile but what I had to say made certain I didn’t.
“I have to go back.”
“I know.”
I sighed and felt Creed do the same before both Creed’s arms stole around me. He rolled me so he was mostly on top and he kissed me, slow and sweet.
He was good at good-bye kisses. Great. Fantastic. I’d had a lot of them.
Too many.
I’d be glad when the day came that I got them few and far between.