“Shut up.” She chucked my alarm clock at me.
I caught it in midair then put it down. Her anger was starting to boil. She wasn’t getting her way and she didn’t like it one bit. She’d grown attached to me in our short time together, and she expected me to fall for her exceptionally good looks, soft hair, and her beautiful legs.
Not gonna happen.
She finished getting dressed then gave me a look of menace.
I chose to ignore her rage. “I can take you home if you don’t feel like driving.”
The coldness in her eyes didn’t fade. “You’re such a jerk. I’m amazing and any guy would be grateful to have me.”
Any woman that called herself amazing was way too vain for my taste. Confidence was nice and very sexy. But arrogance…not my thing. “I’m sure that’s true.” I did my best to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
She grabbed her purse then stormed down the hallway.
She was going to call me for a booty call in a week.
I followed her to the door and opened it for her. “You okay to drive?”
“Like you give a damn.” She stormed out and disappeared down the hall.
I shut the door and locked it, glad she was finally gone. When I entered my bedroom, my phone was lit up with a text message. Francesca’s name was on the screen, and my irritation immediately evaporated. It was a picture of her shoving an enormous muffin into her mouth. There was a caption underneath. I saved you a few.
My lips pulled into an involuntary smile and my thumbs moved across the screen as I typed a message. Make sure you don’t eat mine.
I can’t promise anything but I’ll try.
Fatass.
Hey, we both know I have a beautiful ass.
I smiled again. You really do.
Come by The Grind tomorrow and I’ll hand them over.
If there are any left…
I’m giving you the bird right now.
And I deserve it. I stared at the screen for a few more minutes and hoped she would say something. Our conversations were one of the few things that made me happy. The rest of the time, I was dissolved in pure darkness.
When I knew she wasn’t going to say anything else, I set the phone on the nightstand and set my alarm.
Then it began to ring.
I grabbed the phone and checked the caller ID.
It was my mom.
I knew this wouldn’t be good. In fact, it would be terrible. I’d gotten this call so many times, and it never failed to ruin my day. I closed my eyes and released a deep sigh before I answered it. “Are you okay?”
Mom’s voice came out terrified over the line. “He’s bad again…” My father screamed in the background, and it sounded like things were crashing and breaking. “I’m in the bathroom. I don’t know what to do…” The tears in her voice made my hand form into a fist.
“Call the cops.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
I didn’t want to get sucked into this. I hated being a part of it. But I couldn’t turn my back on it either. I was the only thing keeping my mom out of an early grave.
“Theodore…”
“Hawke.” I hated that name. I refused to let anyone call me by it.
“Please.”
I wasn’t strong enough to separate my life from this. If I ever wanted to have a normal life, I needed to move on and never look back. But I knew I could never do that. “I’m on my way.”
***
As soon as I stepped inside the house, I saw broken furniture on the ground. Plates were shattered into pieces, wine bottles were smashed into piles where they’d fallen, and a chair had been broken into sticks.
“Open this door right now!” Dad was banging on the bathroom door. He shoved his weight against it like he was trying to open it. “Now!”
My body immediately tensed as I stormed down the hallway. Once I reached him, I grabbed him by the back of the neck then threw him down hard into the ground. My father used to torment me because he was much bigger than I was. But things had changed. I was the stronger one, and I never let him forget it. “You’re a worthless piece of shit.” I slammed his head down into the floor again and his eyes suddenly closed as he was knocked out. When he didn’t stir, I knew he would be out for a few hours. “Mom?”
She cried from inside the bathroom.
“Mom, he’s out.”
She sniffed loudly from inside.
“You can come out now.”
The door clicked as it unlocked and then it cracked open. Thin and frail, she looked down at Dad. Instead of being happy he was knocked out, she looked sad like she pitied him.
It didn’t make any sense.
She wore a nightgown and her hair was almost gray. It lost its color many years ago. Her thin arms were bony, and she was more than a foot shorter than me. She stared at my father for a long time before she looked up at me. “Thank you, honey.”
“You okay, Mom?” I put my arm around her and examined her body for bruises. Fortunately, she had none.
She nodded slightly, her eyes still glued to his body on the floor.
“You want to stay with me tonight?”