Chapter 12
Goldie
I’m on fire . I cry out, my eyes flying open to find the sun just beginning to rise. I roll forward, stumbling out of bed to escape the flames coming from between my thighs, my pajama pants and maternity panties pushed down just below my ass. I clutch my waistband with clammy hands, sweat breaking out on my forehead.
Something crashes into the wall behind me, and I spin, wiping away tears as I yank my pajamas up.
Davis flicks on the bathroom light behind him, staring at me with horror, his face drained of color. He sounds like a man teetering on the edge of a cliff when he says, “I’m so sorry. I was asleep. I didn’t—I wouldn’t—” He trips into the bathroom, closing and locking the door between us. It hardly muffles the sounds of his violent retching.
I pass Lily, still asleep in her crib, as I exit the bedroom to find the hall bathroom in the dark. My stomach churns with nausea as I sit on the toilet to clean myself up, my mind and pulse and breath racing with fear and dread.
I don’t know how long I’m in there for, holding myself around the middle until I’m no longer hyperventilating, having finally made sense of what happened—made peace with it, too. The calm I managed to find splinters when I make it back to the bedroom to find Lily missing from her crib.
I bounce off of Davis when I rush down the hallway into the living room. He’s fully dressed in his jeans and button-down, his ball cap pulled low over his eyes, with Lily asleep in his arms.
“Oh, thank god. There you are,” I whisper, even managing a shaky smile as I place a hand over my heart, willing it to slow down once more.
Davis steps back. He chews the inside of his scruffy cheek and won’t meet my eyes. He’s still pale, either from his horror or from retching.
I twist my hands. “Davis?”
“Just wanted to say goodbye to her before I put her back in the crib.” He swallows. “Didn’t mean to scare you…more.”
“Goodbye to her? But not to me?” I try to smile again, thinking this is some kind of horrible joke that I don’t understand.
Davis doesn’t respond, carefully passing Lily over, our arms brushing. He clears his throat and turns, and I follow him to the front door, where his packed duffel bag is sitting. Waiting.
“I have to leave,” he says, still hiding his eyes.
So, not a joke . “You were going to leave without saying goodbye to me?” It’s like a razor slicing across my chest.
Davis clenches his jaw, picks up the duffel bag, and swings open the front door, finally tipping his chin up far enough for us to make eye contact, though he quickly looks away, staring off to the side of me.
“Why would you leave without saying goodbye?” I can’t keep the tremble out of my voice. “Before we could talk about what happened.”
“Please, Marigold.” I suck in a breath when he says my full name instead of calling me Goldie , honey , or my favorite, baby , in our more intimate moments. “You’re not safe with me. What I did was unforgivable.”
“I know you didn’t mean to.”
“No.” He gives a sharp shake of his head. “No excuses. I shouldn’t have done that to you. And what I did on the porch and couch…and last night…it’s not right. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry,” he says with a croak, stepping through the door onto the porch. With his hand on the doorknob, about to pull it closed, he nods to the table where he left his cash, the keys to the Ford, and his health insurance card. “I found Dr. Patel’s card. Call her.”
I step forward. “But you didn’t—”
He goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. “If you want to call the cops, tell them to contact Russell. He’ll know where I am.”
And instead of showing him how devastated I am, I get angry. “Stop it! Why are you acting like this? Running away without giving me a chance to speak?”
He drops his eyes and stares and stares and stares at Lily when she mewls. Our raised voices have woken her up, and she starts rooting at my chest, but I can’t take my eyes off Davis as he shuffles back without a word.
“So what? One mistake, and now you’re done with me? Done playing house and making me call you Daddy ? Does that mean you’re done with Lily, too?” I’m shouting by the end of it.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Everything was a mistake.”
His words punch the air right out of me.
“I never should have touched you. Made you call me Daddy .” He can barely get the word out. “It wasn’t right,” he repeats.
I scoff and swipe angrily at a tear. “You know what? It makes perfect sense, actually. I should have known my Daddy ”—I spit the word out—“would be just as disappointing as my real dad and Lily’s, too.” My voice cracks when I say, “You’re all the same.”
“I’m sorry. You’ll…you’ll thank me for this.”
“You think I’m going to thank you for trying to sneak out without a word after everything we’ve been through?”
He nods once. “Exactly. You shouldn’t want a man like me around after what I’ve done.”
“You haven’t done anything I didn’t want you to,” I insist, some of the anger leaching from my voice. But then a mental light bulb goes off. Davis is right. I might hate it, but he’s right. I’ve given him too much free reign with my body and heart in a minuscule amount of time. How could I do that? Go along with this insanity? I’m already failing Lily as a mother.
Lily’s rooting becomes more insistent as she cries in earnest. By the time I have her resituated in my arms after dragging my shirt up for her to nurse, Davis has disappeared with the front door closed behind him. With no one to see, I let the rest of the hot, angry tears that were building behind my eyes fall. Let my shame flow freely down my cheeks as I settle into the recliner in the living room, wallowing in a hurricane of self-loathing.
I’m in a stranger’s house, wearing a stranger’s clothes, wholly dependent on a stranger’s generosity since I have no family or means to support myself. I have never felt more alone or disgusted with myself.
I kiss Lily’s forehead when I switch her to my other breast and trail my fingertips through her wispy hair. “I’ll do better from now. I promise I’ll do better for you.”
Davis
I have never felt more disgusted with myself than I do when I jerk awake at Goldie’s cry in her sleep before she flies off the bed. I had been spooning her from behind, pulling her pajama pants down in real life as I had done in my dream, sliding my morning wood through her slit and sinking an inch inside her wet pussy. She wasn’t wet because she wanted me—she’s wet because she’s still bleeding .
Jesus Christ , I raped her—a woman less than a week postpartum, who I promised to take care of. This is not how a good man takes care of his woman. Shit! Not my woman! The horror of knowing I could have unintentionally but brutally hurt her when she couldn’t defend herself, the immense amount of pain I would cause her if she hadn’t woken up in time, the infection and severe complications that could lead to makes me want to take a knife to my heart and dick.
I crash into the wall after rolling out of bed, holding back bile long enough to apologize to Goldie before making it to the toilet to vomit the physical manifestation of my horror. When I drag myself off the floor and look in the mirror, I crash to my knees and vomit again, missing the toilet this time. My dick is streaked with her blood, and I want to take that mental knife and peel my skin off for what I’ve done to Goldie.
I’m a monster.
I can’t face myself in the mirror once I’m empty and have cleaned the bathroom without waking Lily—if Goldie hasn’t already grabbed her and ran. I don’t risk a shower but wash her blood away at the sink, wishing I could scrub my mind the way I scrub my face and teeth afterward.
Goldie isn’t in the room when I step out of the bathroom, but Lily is still in her crib, which means Goldie hasn’t left yet. With self-loathing making my hands numb and shaky and the violet retching having left tears in my eyes and my temples throbbing, I dress quickly in my closet.
I damn near run to the front door to stuff my feet in my boots, then make a run for the Buick so I can leave before I do any more damage. But something stops me. A little tug of the leash in my mind that’s attached to the girls. I drag my palm down my face, screaming at myself internally to fucking leave already , but that leash tightens around my neck until I can’t breathe.
I can’t leave. Not yet. Not when I know I’ll be gone so long. I need one more look. Just one to get me through the next four weeks, if not longer, in case Goldie calls the cops…like she should.
Though my boots are heavy, I manage to soften my steps into the bedroom. Lily stirs in her crib, and on autopilot, I gather my little girl in my arms, pull her close to my chest, and pace down the hallway into the living room, bouncing her softly. I drop my nose to her fine hair and inhale her sweet, newborn baby smell.
Tears gather in my eyes at the idea that I’m leaving them. That I have to leave them. And not only because I have to go back to work but also because it’s the right thing to do. Goldie isn’t safe with me. I can’t take care of her if I’m the one she’s in danger of.
My stomach churns when I hear a thump on the other side of the wall, and Goldie rushes out, fear twisting her expression. I’m going to throw up again. I want to give her a real knife and let her sink it as deep into my chest as I wanted my cock inside her body.
And then, unbelievably, there’s her relief. Bone-deep relief at finding the two of us in the living room, and I don’t understand it. But when we fight, and she tells me how disappointed she is with me, how similar I am to her dad and Lily’s father, I want to tell her that I’m worse. I’m the worst of them all, and I deserve so much more than her disappointment.
But I can’t face her any longer to tell her that. To beg her to call the cops because I’m too weak to turn myself in. And so I walk out the moment she’s distracted, letting the mental leash choke me until my head pounds even harder as I drive away in the Buick, stopping after I make it onto the main road so I can vomit again.
* * *
I wish I could talk to Dad one more time, though I wouldn’t be able to face him any more than I could face myself or Goldie. He would ask me why I look like I’m knocking on death’s door. I would tell him what I had done. He’d likely ram his wheelchair into my shins, then have a nurse help him run me over, back and forth, and I’d welcome it. Tell him to do it again. And again. And again.
Russell knows something is up when I get to the warehouse. He follows me around like a mother hen as I run through my pre-inspection, peppering me with questions about my days home.
I lose my patience and whirl on him, trying to curb my irritation. I fail. “You need something, or can I get back to my job without you hovering?”
He crosses his bulky arms over his thick chest and asks me point blank, “Where’s your woman and the baby? They taken care of?”
“She’s not my woman. But yes, they are.” They’re even better off now that they’re out of reach of my depraved behavior. Goldie’s free to recover without me skulking around her, demanding things of her body right after giving birth. Even if she ever forgives me after all this, I’ll never forgive myself for putting my sexual desires above her health.
Russell tilts his head and sets his jaw before asking me—the same as he did when I first arrived with Goldie in tow—“You sure about that?” When I nod, he clicks his tongue. “Guess you were right. Huh.”
I slap my clipboard against my thigh. “Right about what?”
“I thought we mighta had another Wyatt and Dolly situation, but Wyatt never woulda left Dolly, especially if she’d just had a baby.”
I want to burn the warehouse down to the ground. “Well, Wyatt doesn’t have to pay his mama’s bills. I’ve got other responsibilities he doesn’t.”
Russell puts his hands up. “Cool your jets, son. I’m not judging you.”
But he is. I can tell by the way he eyes me like he’s waiting for me to explode. Waiting to see if I’ll back out of the job like he and I both know Wyatt would. But Goldie isn’t Dolly, and I’m not half the man Wyatt is.
Right before I climb into my truck, I do something else I’m ashamed of. I let my anger get the best of me when I ask Russell, “Where’s your woman? She taken care of?”
His blue eyes turn to ice as he stares me down. “I ain’t got no woman.”
“You sure about that?” I shoot back. I click my tongue, mocking him, and cross a line that rightly deserves a fist to the face or worse. “Guess you’re right. Because if she were your woman, that’d mean you’re no Wyatt, either. He’d never let Dolly work like a dog, taking on a second and third job to pay for her surgery.”
Russell drops his arms and steps into me, head to head. He may be nearly twenty years my senior, but he’s got to have at least twenty pounds of muscle on me since he spends his time off the clock in the gym instead of out on the road.
“You’ve got no business talking about things you don’t know,” he growls.
I puff out my chest, not backing down. “You don’t either, old man.”
He jams his finger in my chest, forcing me to take a step back. “I oughta kick your ass, son.”
“I wish you would!”
Russell rocks back in his boots instead of knocking my head clean off my shoulders like he should for speaking to him the way I have. But he knows what I’m thinking. He doesn’t need to beat me up. I’m doing plenty of that to myself.
After climbing into my rig, Russell catches the driver’s side door before I can close it. “You and me. We have things to discuss when you get back.”
My stomach bottoms out, my angry bluster having evaporated. “You gonna fire me, Russell?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll see you in four weeks,” is all he says before he walks away.
By the time I make it to the border of Texas and New Mexico, I’m hollow. Like I’ve cut out pieces of my soul as I drive farther away from my girls and the decent man I thought I was before meeting Goldie. I’m left with nothing but the rotten dredges, long gone on the road I despise, sitting for hours upon days upon weeks in my loathing.
This is my penance.