CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“One more stop before we leave town,” Stuart said and Lou, understanding exactly what he meant, glanced at his boss through the rearview mirror.
Tabby was still a little shaken after what happened with Darius and what he tried to do to her to think anything more than what was obvious: That one more stop would be at her house. She wanted to check it out.
But then she began to panic as she thought about it.
What if he left her there? Now that they had video proof of Darius paying that ticket taker to lie and claim that Stuart was in that BMW, the charges would surely be dropped and his friends would return.
Including those with benefits. What if he didn’t need her around anymore and decided she was better off back where she started? How would she feel about that?
A part of her would hate it. Because it would mean Stuart wasn’t going to be around anymore.
She wouldn’t feel the warmth of his big arms around her anymore.
Or when he held her hand out of the blue when they were watching a movie or even just sitting out on his rooftop terrace.
Or how special he made her feel when he would always listen to her so attentively as if what she had to say mattered greatly to him.
He was a titan of industry who wined and dined with the elites of the world, but she was no peon in his eyes. And she loved him for that.
But the bigger part of her knew she couldn’t rely on this man for her happiness or even for her livelihood.
Just because he was rich and powerful didn’t mean she was.
And she wasn’t about to let him just hand her money like she was some prostitute who gave it up to him whenever he wanted it and now that the party was over, he could get his real “friends” back and he didn’t have to pay for it anymore.
She’d rather be homeless than allow anybody to denigrate her in that way.
Not that she thought Stuart would do that to her.
She looked over at him as he sat there in his fancy suit looking very much like the business giant he was.
He was holding her hand while he looked out of the side window as if he was still trying to figure out who would have paid somebody like Darius to lie about him and to shoot his son.
She was convinced he wouldn’t denigrate her like that.
He’d drop her off and leave her where he found her and go on about his business rather than belittle her with cash. She was convinced of that.
She was even more convinced of it when they pulled in front of her house rather than into her driveway.
Stuart said he wasn’t coming in with her, which shocked her since he could see like she could see that Keith and his brother were hanging outside of their house next door.
They were leaned against their broken-down VW and drinking beers like they did nothing wrong.
She looked at Stuart again. He saw those two straggly-haired white boys next door just like she saw them, which caused her a visceral reaction just seeing them again, but he didn’t change his mind.
He didn’t even get out and open her door for her.
It was as if, as soon as she entered her home, he and Lou were going to take off.
And she would never see him again. Which would force her to get over him rather than have any hope whatsoever of his return.
That would be more like Stuart. From what she knew of him, he was an all-in or all-out kind of guy.
If he was going to leave her, he wasn’t going to beat around the bush.
He wasn’t going to offer her money. He would just leave.
But when she got out of Lou’s car and began walking toward her house, she didn’t feel any fear at all.
But as she looked over at the brothers and they looked at her, it was rage she was feeling.
She wanted to beat their asses. How dare they break into a house she purchased when she was twenty-three years old, and was all she had?
They apparently felt her rage because as soon as they locked eyes with her, and then glanced at that Genesis at the end of her driveway, they got up, grabbed their remaining beers, and went inside of their house. Like the rats they were.
But Tabby had bigger things on her mind. Like Stuart. And if he was going to still be out there when she came back out.
If he wasn’t, she certainly wasn’t going to run after him.
But she wasn’t going to lie to herself either. Her heart would hurt something awful if she walked out and he was gone.
But as soon as she walked into her house, Stuart and Lou got out of the car.
Lou went to his trunk, grabbed a tire iron, and then he and Stuart made their way across the grass of Tabby’s neighbors’ home, up on their porch where they had been drinking beers, and then Stuart banged on their front door.
Keith opened the door angrily, as if he still had it going on like that. Stuart didn’t know his name, but he remembered him as the one that had that knife on Tabby when they broke into her home. He was the main one Stuart wanted.
That was why, as soon as Keith slung that door open, Stuart grabbed him by the catch of his t-shirt and rushed into that house.
“What’s that noise up there?” Keith’s brother yelled from the bathroom down the hall when he heard the sounds of scuffling. He was on the toilet doing a number two. Lou headed in that direction.
But Stuart didn’t waste a second of his time. As soon as he forced Keith into that house, he began punching him with licks so hard that Keith was bleeding by the second punch. He tried to fight back, but Stuart was too big, too strong, too much of a man for a punk like him to handle.
“Hit me back, asshole,” Stuart was yelling as he punched him. “What’s your problem? You only beat on women? Is that it? You only terrorize defenseless women? Is that how you roll, bro? Is that how you roll?!”
Keith was screaming and covering himself up to deflect those heavy blows, but Stuart would not let up. He was determined to deform his face.
In the bathroom, Lou was beating Keith’s brother with that tire iron as he sat on the toilet. He was beating him so hard that the brother was covering up and screaming too. Both brothers were screaming high-pitched. Both brothers were screaming like cackling hens.
When the second brother passed out, Lou made it back up front and tossed that tire iron to Stuart.
Keith was on the floor still wiggling and begging when Lou removed his pee-stained pants.
And as Lou held him down, Stuart grabbed him by the catch of his long, blond, straggly, dirty hair, took that tire iron and shoved it up his ass so hard that Keith screamed like an operatic singer. He was beyond the top of his lungs.
“You wanna rape somebody,” Stuart was screaming has he continued shoving, “rape that! How does that feel? That feel good? Or does it feel like an iron up your ass? But you wanna rape somebody. You wanna just take it from somebody. Then rape this, asshole. Take that, motherfucker!” And then Stuart twisted it again and again.
Inside Tabby’s house, she had already checked every room and was pleased to find nothing disturbed, and then she stood at the entrance to the bathroom, where it all went down, as if she was afraid to breach the threshold.
But it wasn’t fear. It was sadness. Because she knew she’d never look at that bathroom again and not think about what happened in it.
But then she heard screams coming from what sounded like outside. Was somebody harming Stuart?
She hurried down the hall, through her front room, and out onto her front porch.
And that was when she realized the Genesis was empty and those screams were coming from Keith’s house.
And she knew they weren’t Stuart’s screams. She’d heard him scream a time or two in bed, at the height of their passion, and he didn’t sound anything like that!
There was an ass-whooping going on next door, and Tabby was Here.
For. It! She couldn’t be more pleased. Her only regret was that Stuart didn’t let her in on it.
That was why she went back into her house, walked all around that bathroom, and then made it back outside just as Stuart and Lou, with that bloody tire iron in a garage bag, were walking across the lawn and heading to the Genesis.
She locked up her home, Stuart stood at the back passenger door holding it open for her, and she hurried down her driveway and gladly got inside. He didn’t leave. He avenged what they tried to do to her. And he didn’t leave her. What a man, she thought as she got inside.
“Are they gonna be okay?” she asked when Stuart got in beside her.
“They’ll live,” he said. “They’ll be bloody and bowed, but they’ll live.”
“And you can rest assured they’ll never tell anybody what went down over there today,” Lou said with a grin. “You can rest assured of that!”
Tabby didn’t know what he meant, but she was onboard whatever it meant. Those bastards would have no doubt done even worse to her had Stuart not shown up. She had no tears at all for those two.
But as they left Larkin again, she was curious like Stuart was: Why would her ex-boyfriend, a clothing store owner from Ohio, be a part of an assassination attempt in New York? She couldn’t make it make sense.
Stuart could feel her anxiety. He hated that she had to go through so much. He took her hand and rubbed it. “You okay?”
“I’m good. Are you okay?”
“I am if you are,” he said with a smile. Then he looked at Lou. “Take us home, Louis,” he ordered. Then he looked at Tabby. “That’ll work for you?”
Less than two weeks ago, Tabby would have said she was already home if Stuart would have made that declaration.
She would have reminded him that 10727 Beaver Avenue was her home and always would be.
But the idea of home had shifted for her.
Home to her no longer felt like a building, but it felt like Stuart.
It felt safe. And warm. And kind. It felt like walking into a room and immediately knowing that you belonged there.
That was why she didn’t dispute him when he gave Lou that order. Because home was wherever Stuart was. Stuart was her home. “That’ll work for me,” she responded to his question, he smiled and squeezed her hand again, and they left Ohio in the rearview mirror. She had no reason to look back.