With a shaky breath, I stood up in the flower bed and peered through the camera lens.
They were in the kitchen, Mr. Rollins prowling back and forth. “I told you I expect dinner on the table when I get home,” he barked loud enough for me to hear.
“It’s almost midnight, asshole,” I muttered under my breath.
I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Rollins in a nightgown as she scurried past the kitchen door, shoulders hunched.
He caught her by the elbow and slapped the plate out of her hand with a crash.
A dog barked next door, one of Mrs. and Mr. Clemson’s Saint Bernards, scaring the heck out of me.
Mr. and Mrs. Rollins disappeared from view, and I used the opportunity to pull out the cordless phone. But there was no dial tone. I was too far away from the base.
He was shouting again inside, but I couldn’t see anything. Shit. I needed to get a better view. Camera still rolling, I looped the bag over my shoulder and took off running around the side of the house. In the dark, I banged my hip off the rusty grill. But that pain was nothing compared to what Ansel Rollins was inflicting right now, I reminded myself.
I limped around into the backyard to the rickety, rotting deck off the back of the house, and there, through the sliding glass door, I saw them. He backhanded her across the face hard enough that I gasped. His brutal grip on her arm kept Mrs. Rollins from folding to the floor.
“You disgust me, woman,” he said and hurled her into the kitchen table. “You make me fucking sick.”
This had to be enough evidence, I decided, feeling pretty sick myself.
Mrs. Rollins was crumpled in a dining chair like a wadded-up piece of paper. Silent sobs shook her frail shoulders. I hated him. I hated Ansel Rollins for ever existing. For treating his wife like that, for forcing his son to stand between them. I hated the man with every fiber of my being.
“If you don’t quit your bawling, I’ll give you something to bawl about,” he slurred.
Stop crying, Mrs. Rollins. Please stop crying.
Suddenly, the woman’s head came up. I saw her mouth moving but couldn’t make out what she was saying.
“What did you say?” he snarled.
“I said, I have nothing because of you,” she said, getting to her feet on shaky legs. Tears were still streaming down her cheeks.
Oh God. I tried the phone again, but there was still no dial tone.
“The only reason you have anything is because of me.” He moved into view, and every muscle in my body went tight when I saw what he was holding. He was drying a long, serrated knife on a dish towel.
I remembered Lucian’s bloody arm. Assault with a deadly weapon.
I left the camcorder on the deck, angled toward the door, and ran. I was inside my house in seconds, dialing the phone and flipping light switches.
“Mom! Dad! He’s hurting her again,” I shrieked from the foot of the stairs. A light clicked on upstairs. “We have to stop him!”
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Ansel Rollins is attacking his wife with a knife again, and if Wylie Ogden doesn’t arrest him this time, I’m going to sue the entire police department,” I shouted into the phone. I had to get back. I had to stop him or bear witness.
I heard my parents’ muffled voices coming from upstairs.
“Hurry!” I said before dropping the phone on the floor and bolting back out the door.
The tree frogs were still chirping outside, but I barely heard them as I sprinted across our driveway and into the Rollinses’ backyard.
I landed on the deck with a flying leap. Through the glass door, I spied them. He had her pinned to the table, the knife to her throat. There was blood on the linoleum.
Dogs were barking frantically now, but the rest of the neighborhood was still.
I had no choice. He had to be stopped. I had to stop him.
I picked up an old, cracked clay pot and, with a primal scream that came from the depths of my soul, hurled it into the glass.
The door shattered, sending shards of glass and clay everywhere.
Someone was calling my name. Multiple someones from the sounds of it. But I couldn’t scream back. I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot as Mr. Rollins stared at me through his busted door.
We locked eyes, and I poured every ounce of hate that I carried inside into that one look.
“You’re gonna pay for that, you little fucking bitch.”
I was shaking with fear, with rage. “Fuck. You. You stupid, worthless piece of shit!”
He lunged for me, and I felt pain around the edges of the rage. I fought him as the shouting got closer, as the sirens finally cut through the night, as the tree frogs stopped.
Snap.
23
I’m Not Done with You Yet
Lucian
Hold your damn horses. I’m coming.”
The irritated voice on the other side of the door did nothing to calm me. She was here. She was fine. Which meant she’d snuck out on me like I was some shameful one-night stand that she didn’t want sticking around for breakfast.
Sloane Walton was about to learn a very serious lesson.
The front door swung open, and I enjoyed the flicker of shock on her pretty face. She was wearing a robe. Her hair was damp and her face free of last night’s makeup. She looked young and fresh…and nervous.
Had she tried to wash away what we’d done like it had never happened?
I hadn’t. I woke to a bed full of pillows and no Sloane. Five minutes later, I was in the car.
I slapped a hand to the open door in case she thought about shutting it in my face.
“What are you doing here? Did I leave something—”
“I’m not done with you yet.” I’d fucked her into the early hours of the morning until neither one of us could move. Then I’d fallen asleep with her back pressed to my front, my face in her hair, and slept like the dead. When I woke, there was one clear thought in my head.
Sloane wasn’t out of my system.
“Excuse me?” Her squeak was indignant and accompanied by a dangerous narrowing of the eyes as she took immediate offense.
We were both poised to fight. However, our bodies seemed to have different ideas. One second, I was standing on her I’m Probably Reading welcome mat; the next, I was crossing the threshold and hitching her up with one hand on her curvy, little ass. She wrapped her legs around my hips and speared her fingers into my hair, pulling my head down to hers.
Her mouth found mine, and a bolt of relief sliced through me.
She still wanted me.
That was all that mattered. One more time. That was what we needed. Then it would be out of our systems.
I kicked the door closed and spun around to press her against the wall. A picture frame tilted, then smashed to the floor.
“Sorry,” I muttered against her mouth and whirled us away from the wall. I needed to find a place to pin her down, hold her still. To make her stay.
But she was already frantically working the buttons of my shirt free, and I knew there was no chance in hell that I was going to make it upstairs to her bedroom. I dragged her robe open and threw it on the floor. Underneath, she was wearing one of those lacy bra tops that did nothing to hide the pucker of her nipples from my ravenous gaze.
I’d barely registered the small, purple bruise just above her nipple when she shoved a hand between us and found my belt buckle with a triumphant cry.
God, I wanted her. I craved her hands on me, her pleading whimpers of “please” and “more” in my ear. I needed to be inside her again.
I stumbled into the family room, bumping an end table and knocking over a lamp in my haste. The shade popped off and fell to the floor.
“It’s fine. I hate that lamp,” Sloane said against my mouth as she went to work on my fly.
I kicked the coffee table out of the way, spilling a pile of paperbacks onto the floor. My shins finally met an appropriate flat surface. The couch.
We landed like a felled tree with me barely managing to cushion our fall. Her hands abandoned my zipper and gripped my shirt. Something hissed, and a flash of gray and white fur darted over the cushion onto the console table behind the couch.