22. Audrey
AUDREY
My fingers were tight on the steering wheel as I drove to the donut shop between Blackwell Falls and Carlton. I’d already been to the apartment where I’d packed a suitcase for myself and an equally large suitcase for Ella, one filled not just with her clothes but with her favorite toys and books.
Taking her to the apartment first risked letting her get comfortable, which might make getting her to the ranch harder. It would be easier for her if we went straight there, if I framed it as a surprise adventure.
Now I imagined my conversation with Dean, imagined the story I’d tell him to give him the information he deserved — that Ella and I would be staying on the ranch — without giving him ammunition to use against me in a custody battle.
That had been Dean’s primary threat — his primary weapon — in the two years since our divorce.
The great Dean Ashcroft, CEO of Ashcroft Distribution, the largest trucking and distribution company in the northeast, had allowed me to retain fifty-percent custody of my daughter only because of what I knew, and only because he’d chosen not to fight me on it.
Dean had always made that clear: if he’d wanted sole custody, he could get it. He was being generous, and he never let me forget it. Sure, I could air the dirty laundry, but I had no proof of wrongdoing on Dean’s part.
Dean, on the other hand, could bury me in legal fees, squeeze me dry until I had no choice but to retreat.
His generosity was a scythe over my neck that I had no choice but to accept because Dean’s threat wasn’t an empty one.
Dean had inherited the business from his dad, Bill Ashcroft, and the Ashcroft family had been benefactors of the Blackwell police and fire departments for decades.
At first, I’d thought it was nice: the Ashcroft family giving back, supporting small-town government in a place where the budget was always tight.
But the discoveries I’d made about Dean — the storage unit filled with women’s belongings, the innocent observations made by our daughter after visits with her father — had brought fresh context to the Ashcroft family.
Maybe the Ashcroft family hadn’t been generous at all.
Maybe they’d just been smart.
Maybe they’d been greasing the wheels, ensuring they’d have cover if anyone ever found out what they were up to.
Of course, I had no proof Dean’s parents were in on Dean’s illegal operation, but I knew now that anything was possible.
Dean had taught me that.
People weren’t always who you thought they were: sometimes they were much worse and far more dangerous.
I pulled into the donut shop and parked two spots away from a blue Honda. The donut shop was open until seven p.m., but I always made a point of avoiding the far corners of the parking lot.
Just in case.
Dean was more likely to be reasonable if he was on display, if people were watching, and I felt safer knowing we could be seen from the road, that a customer or employee from the donut shop could come upon us at any time.
I put the car in park, rolled down my windows, and turned off the engine.
Dean was always late, another of his power plays.
Wait for me, bitch. What else are you going to do?
I flipped down the visor to check my reflection, a habit from my years with Dean, his need to control me creeping from where I went and who I saw, to what I wore, how I styled my hair, whether or not I wore makeup.
It was a hard habit to break, and I surveyed myself critically, wondering what Dean would see in my make-up free face, my hair loose around my shoulders, the cotton sundress and sandals I’d changed into at the apartment.
I flipped the visor up a little more violently than I’d intended, mad at myself for giving Dean’s opinion even a passing thought.
I stared into the windows of the donut shop where a man stood behind an older woman in line, the older woman pointing to donuts behind the cash register while a young, dark-haired teenager put the pastries in a box.
My thoughts strayed to the Bulls: Graham, Ridge, Holden.
I’d only been at the ranch for a day and already I was off-balance. I’d expected our arrangement to be more clinical: sex only, minimal interaction otherwise.
But so far they’d been friendly and welcoming, the ranch like a refuge from my real life, which between the hospital and Dean teetered on the traumatic pretty much 24/7.
The Calloway ranch felt more remote than it was just fifteen minutes outside Blackwell Falls. It was quiet, serene, and I was still surprised by how relaxed I felt there.
Even the cottage was nice. When Graham had said “foreman’s cottage” I’d pictured a one-room utilitarian place to sleep and not much else.
But the house was clean and cute, with plenty of room for Ella and me and enough privacy from the main house that I didn’t have to worry about Ella being exposed to the Bulls.
That would be inappropriate, and I was determined to keep them separate.
Mondays, Tuesdays, and every other weekend I’d be a doctor and Ella’s mom. The rest of the time I’d be… whatever it was the Bulls wanted me to be.
My pussy fluttered at the thought. The kiss with Ridge had lit me up, and I’d been replaying it ever since Graham busted in on us in the workshop. I’d wanted Ridge enough that I would have fucked him right there, that I would have fucked him in front of Graham, which I guess was the point.
Heat flooded my body at the thought of having both of them at once, feeling one of them inside me while I took the other’s cock in my mouth, feeling them fill me up while I stroked Holden’s dick the way he’d stroked it in the shower, in the tunnels when he’d watched me ride the mechanical bull.
Movement in the rearview mirror caught my eye and I spotted Dean’s white Escalade glide into the parking lot.
My heartbeat kicked up a notch, and adrenaline flooded my body.
It was my usual fight or flight response around Dean, a response I now had around any man whose voice was too loud, whose movements were too fast.
Maybe that was why I was comfortable around the Bulls: so far I’d never heard a single one of them so much as raise their voice.
I took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, then murmured the prayer I always said to whatever deity might be listening before I saw Dean.
“Please help me.”
Short, simple, and to the point, the prayer meant a lot of things.
Help me be calm for Ella.
Help me be steady for Ella.
Help me do the best thing for Ella.
They were the only things that mattered.
I got out of the car and approached the Escalade, which Dean always parked a little closer to the back of the parking lot even when there were lots of spaces in the front.
Just to fuck with me.
He got out of the car and closed the driver’s side door, then approached me without getting Ella out of her booster seat. This was the only time we had alone during pick up and drop off, and Dean always made use of it.
“Hey.” I couldn’t deny he was handsome, even now, even knowing everything I knew about him.
His dark hair was thick and shiny, slicked back with expensive hair products, and his face was still mostly unlined.
I had a flash of the Bulls, their lined faces weathered from hard work in the sun, then pushed it away.
“Hey. How is she?”
Be pleasant. Keep the focus on Ella.
“Cranky.” He cracked his neck, a gesture that sent a shiver of fear up my spine because it was something he did when he was looking to pick a fight.
I’d learned to see those things coming.
“Oh no, how come?” I kept my voice light.
It wasn’t his fault if Ella was cranky, even when it was his fault.
It wasn’t his fault when he pushed her to move too fast, when he sat on his phone during their time together until she acted out to get his attention, when he let her get overtired and missed her bedtime because he was busy watching football or hosting some new girl at the house.
He didn’t know I knew about the girls. It was something I kept in my back pocket, in case I needed it later.
But I knew. I knew he brought them around Ella all the time. I knew he called them — all of them — his “special friends.” I knew he disappeared into the bedroom for a “business meeting” while Ella watched one of her shows. I knew the bedroom door was locked when she got hungry and went to find him.
He exhaled his frustration, then tried to run his fingers through his slicked-back hair. It didn’t really work with all the product, but it was a practiced gesture of frustration he couldn’t shake.
“The usual.” He waved his hand in the air like that could wave away Ella’s six-year-old frustrations. “She needs the crust cut off her sandwich, she wants to go outside when I have a work call.”
I held back the things I’d said when we were married: she’s just a kid, she has big feelings and is learning to express them, the more patient you are with her the easier she’ll be to manage.
The platitudes — true as they were — hadn’t worked back then and they definitely didn’t work now. Dean thought he knew everything, about Ella and everything else.
“Did she nap?” She was too old for naps, felt better — behaved better — when she stayed awake all day and went to bed at her normal time, woke up at her normal time.
Routine, that was what Ella needed. That was how she thrived.
But naps for Ella meant more time alone for Dean, so he always made her take a nap even when she didn’t want to.
“Not for long.” He sounded defensive because he knew the nap would make bedtime tougher for me.
I nodded, filing the information away for later.
I jumped, my nerves raw from dealing with Dean, when Ella slapped the back window of the Escalade.
“Let me say hi to her and then I want to tell you about our summer plans.” I opened the door to the backseat, happy to give Dean a chance to get his head around the fact that Ella and I even had summer plans, if you could call living at the ranch “summer plans.”
My heart melted as soon as Ella came into view, her smooth cheeks lifted in a grin, her blonde hair in the same braid I’d made for her Friday morning.
Ella didn’t like when Dean combed her hair, and Dean had given up trying.
She was clutching Bun-Bun, the dingy bunny that had been white when she’d gotten it for her second birthday, and her brown eyes lit up at the sight of me. “Mommy!”
She flashed me a toothless grin. She’d lost the second of her front teeth just a couple weeks earlier and her adult teeth still hadn’t worked their way in.
“Hi there, peanut.” I leaned in to hold her face in my hands and kissed her cheek. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of graham crackers and our laundry detergent. “Did you have fun with Daddy?”
She pouted. “He was busy with his special friend."
I bet he was.
“Let me talk to Daddy for a second and then I’ll come get you,” I said. “I have a surprise!”
Her eyes widened. “For me?”
“For you! Just sit tight for one minute, okay?” I shut the door and turned to face Dean, who’d stepped a couple inches closer while I’d been talking to Ella.
He ran his hand over his slicked-back hair. “What’s this about summer plans?”
“Nothing fancy.” I kept my tone light as I laid out the explanation I’d formulated in the car.
“I have a chance to sublet the apartment to a visiting attending for some extra cash this summer, and a friend of mine from the hospital offered me a cottage on her farm at no charge. I can’t afford a real vacation this year, but at least Ella will get to play with the animals, maybe learn to ride a horse. ”
“Which friend?” Dean demanded.
“You don’t know her,” I said.
Dean’s shoulders relaxed at my repeat of the pronoun “her.” That was really all Dean ever cared about: making sure no other man ever got close to me again.
“Where is this ranch?” he asked.
“Just outside town. It won’t affect visitation.”
His expression had grown dark, and I could see him fumbling for something to use, a blunt object with which to pick a fight.
Figuratively speaking, for now.
“What if I wanted to see the place?” he asked.
I swallowed. “I’d have to say no.”
“No?”
Here it came.
“Yes, Dean. No. It’s not my property, and the judge already said neither of us have a right to details about the others’ personal life.
I didn’t get to see the hotel when you took Ella to the city with your “special friend” last winter, and I didn’t get to see the house you rented by the lake last summer. ”
“That was only for a month.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re Ella’s father and I trusted you to keep her safe.” I had trusted him with our daughter, once, even when he’d made bad decisions. But those days were gone. “You’ll have to do the same.”
I turned away from him, reaching for the back door of the Escalade to get Ella, then gasped when he grabbed my arm and hauled me behind the car, where Ella couldn’t see us.
And that was when my heart started hammering, the blood rushing in my ears.