3. Chapter 3 #2
“Tabitha,” he coaxed. “Look, I am sorry for what I did. I thought you were trying to provoke me, and I reacted badly. I am seriously, truly sorry. Please, may I give you a ride home? I really don’t want you to aggravate your injury because of me.”
At least she looked at him this time. Her face was red, her breathing hard and her frown said with certainty, she’d rather walk than forgive him.
No matter how hard he tried, all he could see in the stubborn lines of her body as she tried to outpace his truck, was the hurt, angry Little he absolutely did not need in his life right now.
He was the sheriff, for crying out loud. She was fresh off the prison bus. At the very least, even just coaxing her to accept a ride could be construed into an abuse of his office.
And yet… why couldn’t he just drive away?
“Tabitha,” he said, in his sternest Daddy-Dom voice. “Get in the car. Come on, you’re just hurting yourself more.”
Her chin hiked higher. His last Little had done that too, usually when she wanted him to punish her.
That wasn’t what Tabitha needed.
She needed to be hugged and rocked. Taken firmly by the hand and coaxed to sit herself upon the lap of someone who loved her, with comforting arms wrapped tight around her shoulders and a loving voice inviting her to tell Daddy all about her terrible, awful, no good, really bad day.
He shook that thought out of his head. Pausing the truck, he let her walk on ahead while he dug through her sacks until he found what he was looking for. “Hey, hold up.” He had to catch up with her again before holding her wallet up so she could see it. “Look what they found in the bread aisle.”
She stopped walking. Staring straight ahead, she glared down the road with the heat of the sun rising in rippling waves off the concrete for a good ten seconds before scrubbing furiously at both eyes with the backs of her hands and then turning to fix that glare on him.
She marched up to his rolled down passenger side window, braced her hand upon it, and in a soft voice that shook—whether from anger or tears, he wasn’t sure—she said, “What do I have to do to get it back?”
“Nothing.” He held it out to her, hating the hard mistrust with which she stared at him before snatching her wallet from his hand. “Your ID is still in it, but there was no money.”
“Guess you were following the wrong thief,” she said flatly.
It wasn’t a joke, and he wasn’t inclined to laugh.
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
“Thanks.” Shoving off the car, she put the wallet in her pocket, then looked at him again. “Now, kindly go fuck yourself.”
He watched her walk away and sighed. Everything in his makeup said not to drive away and leave her like this, hurt, angry… stubborn… but he didn’t have a lot of options. Sadly, there came a point in every man’s life when he had to accept he’d screwed up beyond forgiveness.
Nodding and adjusting his hat, Jeff acknowledged that this was his latest and greatest screwup with an under-his-breath, “Yup.” He rolled up the window.
It felt like he was compounding the wrongness as he drove away from her, down the road to the motel, where he pulled into a wide space on the side of the road.
He wasn’t about to talk to his snake of a brother, so he waited at a respectful distance until Tabitha came home.
She never once looked in his direction, though she walked right past him at one point, muttering, “Jackass,” under her breath as she did it.
He heard her even with the window rolled up.
Figuring he deserved it, he let it go and simply waited until he saw which room she marched into, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Well, no one was perfect, not even Daddy Doms. Chalking this up as a regrettable mistake, he drove up to her room and quietly unloaded her groceries onto her doormat. With a soft knock, he then got back in his truck and went home.
***
Tabitha watched through the flimsy curtains until she was sure Jeff was gone.
Opening her front door, she glared at all the grocery bags and plastic-wrapped boxes of ramen on the stoop.
If she had money, or any other option at all, she’d have taken every bit of it—both the items she’d wanted as well as those unwelcome items he’d picked for her—straight to the dumpster around back.
But she didn’t have options, and she really, really didn’t want to go hungry. She’d experienced her first taste of that while in prison and trying to sleep on a stomach that wouldn’t stop pinching and rumbling wasn’t fun.
Scowling, she bent to grab the first bag and brought it inside. She set it on the long, low four-drawer dresser beneath the wall-length mirror that faced her bed and the table that was the only other item of furniture in the room and returned for the next bag.
Travis was standing there, her groceries in his arms and a smile that was anything but friendly curling his mouth.
Her stomach sank as she stared at her reflections in the silver, mirror-lenses of his sunglasses.
Clamping her mouth shut, she kept her misgivings from showing on her all-too-open face.
“Let me bring these in for you,” he said, his tone keeping up the lie his smiling mouth was trying to sell.
Her gut refused to be convinced. Still, there were no locks on the doors and she didn’t have the right to keep him out of her room.
She reluctantly stepped sideways, allowing him in.
Bending to gather the cases of ramen, she checked the parking lot.
The sheriff had gone. Seeing no one else, she swallowed back the unease and reluctantly withdrew back inside where the door, with springs on hinges, drifted shut behind her.
The old hotel room was so much smaller with Travis in it. She stayed where she was, between the window and door, ready to bolt outside if she had to, knowing she had nowhere to go and no options except to let Travis catch her.
“Just set them there, please,” she hedged as he walked around the small table to look out the window.
He glanced back in the direction of town first, then glanced toward his office.
“Right there,” she said pointing to the dresser, her anxiety growing until, finally, he decided it was all clear. He set the groceries on the table.
He drew the dingy curtains closed, casting the room in darkness and making her stomach knot. She opened the door, pinning it to the wall with her back. The room was still too small, but at least they had light and she, at least, had the illusion that someone might hear her if she screamed.
“Making friends?” Travis finally asked as he came back to stand by her.
Tabby shook her head. It took all she had just to keep her breathing slow and steady. She was shaking, though. All through her legs, stomach, her arms... her chest. Suddenly too small to hold the air her lungs ached for, she couldn't seem to breathe right and her pulse raced.
"No." She had to say it twice before she could get the word out of her tight throat. “He’s not a friend.”
"You sure?" Travis softly intoned, the corners of his mouth turning gently upward.
She hated his sunglasses. She couldn't read him and it worried her, especially now with every small hair rising to stand on her arms and across the nape of her neck.
"Yes," she whispered. Her instincts were telling her to move away. He was too still, too friendly, too snake-ish as he leaned in closer. Tall as he was, he loomed over her as he insisted, "Are you sure, Tabby my girl?"
She nodded, unable to make herself swallow much less speak.
She tried to back away, sliding along the door in an effort to move this outside.
Just as she was nearing the threshold, he struck, sun-bronzed hand snatching out to grab the shoulder fabric of her shirt and pin her abruptly against the threshold.
"Where are you going, Tabby?"
"Tabitha," she tried to say, but it was little more than a whisper and not at all important compared to the grip of his hand when he let go of her shirt to gather a more secure grip somewhere else—her neck.
His thumb pressed on her terrified pulse and the heat of his palm burned against her larynx.
As if she didn't have enough trouble breathing as it was.
"Are you trying to get my attention?” he asked. “Because you have it."
She tried to shake her head, but the instant she moved he tightened his grip. "Ah ah," he warned, tipping his head as he stared down at her from behind those damned silver-mirrored glasses.
"I don't want to be angry with you," he offered, and like a drowning woman being offered a lifeline to the shore, she grabbed onto that with both hands.
"I don't w-want to m-make you angry," she whispered.
"No?" He raised a finger, tapping it lightly against her pulse. "I'm happy to hear that, although I will need you to prove it. Because if I see you anywhere near that man again, you'll force me into the very uncomfortable position of having to punish you, and you don't want that. Do you?"
She shook her head, small, quick, back-and-forth jerks of denial that barely counted as movement. "No."
"Don't make me your enemy, darlin’. I promise, you'd much rather have me as a friend."
She nodded the same way she'd just shaken her head, in quick jerking movements.
The knots in her stomach trembled when he leaned back from her, letting go of her neck.
He patted her cheek, the heat of his hand branding her for the few seconds in which he paused, his broad thumb gently tracing along the bow of her trembling lips.
For a moment, she was so sure he was going to slap her that her cheek actually tingled, already striving to absorb the stinging pain of a blow that didn't come.
Travis took his hand back, releasing her. "Wake up is 5 a.m. sharp. If you're not here at the 5:50 roll call, I will not only hunt you down, I will send you back to prison. Is that understood?"
She nodded again.
"There are no second chances."
She shook her head.
Reaching up, for the first time he removed his sunglasses. Here she'd thought being able to see his eyes would make him seem less frightening. It didn't. His eyes were sky blue and ice cold. Despite his soft voice and pet names, zero warmth for her burned in their striking depths.
Shoving off both her and the door, he walked away.
"Yummy. Watermelon," was the last thing he said as he stepped over what few groceries remained on her stoop. She watched him saunter back across the gravel parking lot and didn’t dare breathe again until he was once again back in his office.
She heard the door close. Afraid he might be watching her from behind his white office shades, she quickly dragged the rest of her groceries in out of the sun and closed the door.
Shifting the bags to the top of the chest of drawers, she dragged the table from its place at the window and shoved it in front of the closed door.
She didn’t feel safer. If Travis wanted her, he didn’t have to come through the door to get her.
He was her probation officer and at a single word from him, he had the power to send her back to prison.
There wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
She was alone out here with no one to talk to, no way to leave, and no one to trust. Her cell phone was a useless paperweight since she hadn’t had her charger on her that fateful night three years ago.
She had no one to call even if she could charge it.
Her father, maybe. But how many calls from her had he hung up on or ignored over the last three years.
She’d sent him dozens of letters; he hadn’t returned a single one.
No, she was alone. One hundred percent on her own. There was nothing she could do except keep her head down and just get through this. Eventually, her probation would run out and she’d get out of here, even if she had to walk to do it.
Three more years, that’s all the time she had to do. After that, if she watched herself and worked her job for the farmer, then she’d have money in her pocket to start her life over again somewhere far away from here.
Three years down, three more left to go. All of it spent one day at a time, just getting through it.
Sinking down on a corner of her worn motel bed, she buried her face in her hands and let the tears flow.