Chapter 36
“Now that’s sorted, it’s time for bed.” He stood and, to her surprise, picked her up in his arms.
She let out a surprised cry that immediately turned into a cough.
“Does this often happen to you? Where you start to lose your voice?”
She shook her head. He carried her into her bedroom and set her down.
“Should have had Hack come in and check on you today.”
She used his phone to type out a message. “It’s just strained. The humidifier and the hot honey drink are helping. It might be all better by tomorrow.”
“We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow. But I’m in charge of your health now, so if I think you need the doctor, then we’re going to call one, all right?”
She nodded. She’d never had anyone care about her health, except for her sisters.
He tucked her into bed and made sure she had everything she needed, including Snaggles by her side and a glass of water on the bedside table. The heating pad had already been plugged in, but he turned it on and tucked it by her tummy.
She was growing tense at the thought of him leaving her on her own, she wasn’t sure what was wrong, but she didn’t want to be in the room alone.
However, she also didn’t want to ask him to stay. He was no doubt tired and wanted to get some sleep of his own.
“Do you need any painkillers?” he asked her as he brushed her hair back off her face.
She shook her head. “Took some.”
Her eyes widened in horror as she realized she had spoken. It was just so hard to type all the time.
And it was just two words.
Cash’s face grew stern. “You couldn’t even last five minutes, hmm?”
She grabbed the phone to write out a message. “Small words don’t really hurt my throat. It’s more longer sentences.”
“You don’t want to add lying to your punishment,” he warned.
Addie groaned. Shoot.
“You were given plenty of warnings, baby girl.”
“You’re not really going to spank me, are you?”
“Well, I should, trouble is there’s no privacy in this house. Everyone can hear everything. So unless you want your sisters, Ralen, and Butch to hear you getting your bottom reddened, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
Oh, thank God for that.
“But tomorrow morning, you’re going to write one hundred times: I will not talk anymore.”
No, he was kidding. She couldn’t do that.
“A hundred times?” she asked
“Yes, you’re very naughty. And if I had to, I could always take you out to my truck to spank your bottom.”
No, she didn’t think that would be necessary.
“No, no. I’ll write the lines.”
“I thought you might see it that way. And you might need some corner time, just to contemplate whether it’s a good idea to disobey Daddy.”
Oh, man. She liked hearing him call himself Daddy.
“Is there anything else you need from me tonight?” he asked.
She shook her head no. She wasn’t going to ask him to stay.
“I have a feeling that might be a lie,” he said. “And we’re not allowed to lie to each other, are we?”
Oh, shoot. She forgot how easily he could read her face.
“So I’m going to be really nice and give you one more chance to tell me if there’s anything you need from me.” His voice was stern again, and she couldn’t resist answering him.
“Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
His face seemed to soften, which didn’t really happen that often. Cash was a hard-looking guy. He often seemed all hard lines and firmness.
As though a lot had happened to him in his young age.
“Of course I can.”
She smiled.
“That’s better. I like it when you smile. I don’t like to see you stressed or scared or anxious.”
“Pretty sure I’m always one of those things. Unless I’m hiding in my bedroom.”
“Hiding in your bedroom?” he asked. “Do you do that a lot?”
“All the time,” she typed. “I don’t really like to leave.
I like all of my things around me. Strange places and lots of people stress me out.
I live with Dotty and Monroe and I work from home, so I spend most of my time in my room.
Anything I need, I can get delivered. So I don’t really need to talk much.
I guess maybe that’s why my throat is easily irritated. ”
“Did you talk a lot as a kid?” he asked
She frowned. “I think I did when I was younger. My mom had some issues. She could either be overprotective, telling me about all the dangers in the world and how I had to stay inside to keep myself safe; or she’d completely lose it on me, yelling and screaming, and telling me how I’d been unwanted and how she wished I’d never been born.
I guess I learned to be quiet so she didn’t notice me as much.
“Jesus, fuck. Your own mother said that to you?”
She nodded.
“What about your sisters? Did she do the same to them?” he asked.
“Oh, we don’t have the same mother. We’re all half sisters, each of us had different moms. And our dad was never really around. He left us when I was young.”
“So the three of you didn’t grow up together?”
“Well, we kind of did, sort of. It’s hard to explain, but you see, we all grew up in the same town. I met my sisters at school. I didn’t know I even had sisters until then.”
“Jesus, your mother never told you about them?” he asked incredulously.
“My mother wanted to pretend they didn’t exist. She didn’t send me to school until I was seven.
And that’s only because Child Services paid us a visit to tell her that she had to enrol me, or start teaching me at home.
I was really happy to go to school, even though my mother refused to help me with anything.
Up until then she’d kept me fed and in clean clothes.
After that, she seemed to give up. She got sick and took to her bed. ”
“That fucking bitch. No matter what she had going on, she should have looked after you. So you went to school?”
“Yep. And that’s when I met my sisters which was the best thing that ever happened to me.
The three of us immediately bonded. They looked out for me.
Brought me food from home, gave me clothes that they’d grown out of.
Dotty and Monroe tried to get their moms to let me live with them, but they refused and I get it. ”
“Do you?” he said. “Not sure I do.”
“Dotty’s mom was actually married to our dad, and he cheated on her with our moms in our own hometown.
So, I totally understood why she didn’t want me in her house.
Monroe’s mom cheated on her husband and got pregnant with Monroe.
They had other children, and Monroe always got left out.
Her mom wanted to forget she existed. There was no way they wanted to take in another child that would be a reminder of the affair that her mother had had with our dad. ”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“The worst thing is that everybody knew. Everyone in our town knew that our dad had been sleeping around. Dotty’s mother was always humiliated, and Monroe’s mother always had to live with the fact of what she’d done.
And my mother, well, she never went anywhere, so I’m not sure how that affected her. But she had her own demons.”
“Christ, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“Mom was so paranoid about everything. She would go on and on about how I was going to come to a bad end by going to school. That someone would kidnap me. That they’d follow me home and hurt her.
That I’d bring germs home from school that would kill her.
I never had very many friends. I was always the weird kid, the one with dirty clothes and unkempt hair.
But then I made this one friend. I snuck out of my bedroom to go to her house.
It was the first time I’d been invited to a friend’s house.
But I slipped as I was climbing back into my bedroom window and broke my arm.
My mom decided that I had fallen in with bad influences and pulled me out of school.
I was utterly miserable and couldn’t go anywhere.
I thought I was going to die in that house until my father actually stepped in and insisted that she send me to school.
I think Dotty put pressure on him because he’d never cared before or since. ”
“Fucking bastard should have done more.”
She nodded.
“In high school most of the kids left me alone because of my sisters. Everyone was scared of Dotty or they loved Monroe. But when Dotty went to college, I only had Monroe. She was away at a cheerleading competition when I got paired up with the most popular boy in school.”
She paused for a moment, thinking back. Did she want to tell him this? Not really. But she probably should so he knew part of the reason why she was the way she was.
“This boy was really nice. He talked to me. He made me smile. But he was just my partner in the project, nothing more. Some of the girls didn’t see it that way.
His girlfriend thought I was flirting with him.
They followed me as I walked home from my part-time job one evening and surrounded me.
Taunted me. There was a large group of them that even included some boys.
They started shoving me. I fell and they threw things at me, kicked me. ”
“Those fucking bastards,” he snarled as he drew her out of the bed and onto his lap.
“Yeah, I don’t know what they would have done if somebody hadn’t come along and stopped them. This woman with a baby in a stroller rushed up to them. She was so fierce. She yelled at them, and took a video on her phone. Then she called the police as they ran off.”
“Please tell me the cops did something about them.”
“Well, they were all minors. There wasn’t much they could do. They all got warnings. One of them even got sent away to boarding school by her parents.”
“That wasn’t enough. I’m going to need their names.”
“Their names? Why would you need their names?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about that part. Just make sure you get me the names.”