Chapter 7
7
ERIC
Driving home, I sing along at the top of my lungs to the pop songs of the nineties, knowing that the music can never be loud enough to drown out those thoughts telling me to just forget I have brakes. My nerves are completely shot when I get to the hill leading up to the house. I floor it, trying to get home as fast as possible, swerving around a moving truck chugging along halfway up the hill.
I guess the landlord finally approved someone for the last trailer. I knew of at least a dozen people who applied for it, but no one ever got approved. According to Eli, the landlord has his own criteria outside of finances and rental history when it comes to approving applicants. I’ve never met the man, but he somehow approved me for the manor house without me applying. Clarence says he put in a good word for me, but I think he just wanted to get me off his couch .
Pulling up to the house next to my truck, my Mini is practically hidden. I watch as Eli, Jace, Toby, and Spencer head over to the trailer park as the moving truck clears the top of the hill. It’s Saturday afternoon, so Lucky and Shiloh should be at class. Jay should be asleep. That leaves Scott to contend with. Seeing as how he was out last night, there is a good chance he is still asleep or buried in laundry in the basement trying to make up for the lost time. His OCD is nothing if not predictable.
This might be my only chance to get inside, so I grab my bag and make a run for it. Before I can get through the entryway, I crash into someone and knock them down. Looking at the man on the ground, I realize my chances of escaping without questions have plummeted to zero. Lucky is staring at me in horror, tears forming in his eyes.
“Yeah, I know how I look,” I whisper to him as I help lift him back onto his feet. “Please don’t make a fuss and I’ll answer any questions you have in my room.”
I should have known Lucky was going to be home when I saw Toby. I forgot that while he and Shiloh have classes together all week, Toby is in the same Saturday biology class as the two of them, so he should have been gone as well. Lucky immediately fires off a text before I can stop him when we get to my room. At my look he blushes and puts his phone away.
“I had to tell Daddy I wasn’t going to be helping the new guy move in,” he says and moves some of Sassy’s dresses out of the way to make room for him to sit on the loveseat. “Jace speaks really highly of the guy and I wanted to see what kind of man person makes our teddy bear smile like that.”
I pause while unpacking my bag. Jace is one of the few people who trusts even less than I do, so if he says the new guy is good people…
Considering how wound up I am, I can only conclude I did not get lucky last night, and with how my face looks, I’m going to have to make do with toys for at least a few days. Well, unless the new guy is into masks? The soft knock on my door interrupts my train of thought before my libido causes catastrophic side quests for me. Only one person in the house ever knocks that tentatively.
“Come in, Kitty Cat,” I call out, keeping my back toward the door. I know what I look like and if I can prevent Shiloh from seeing it and suffering a flashback, I will.
“Toby said you guys weren’t answering his calls and I… I g-got worried,” the young man mutters as he cracks open the door to my room slowly. “I d-don’t want to interrupt or anything, but I had to make sure you know?”
Lucky gets up and pulls him into the room and I want to slap the boy. Lucky has been here for less than a year. He hasn’t seen one of Shiloh’s meltdowns yet. We are all very careful not to trigger an episode for him if we can help it. Lucky doesn’t see it that way, having to suffer through his own episodes thanks to his monster of an ex-wife and her family. He thinks we are babying Shiloh too much .
“Kitten, I don’t want to scare you,” I tell him before turning around. “I’m alright and it’s over, so you need to just breathe it out, alright?”
It’s obvious that Shiloh is struggling not to hyperventilate upon seeing my bruises, but Lucky holds tightly to his hands and whispers something that calms him. I don’t know what the little shit said, but he needs to share with the class if it can bring our Kitten back from the brink.
“Was it… D-did it… Are th-they…”
I walk over and pull Shiloh into a hug and shush his attempts at questions. I can feel his body shaking in my arms, but he is so much stronger than the broken boy he was when he moved in two years ago.
“They got away,” I tell him honestly, even knowing that it will set him on edge. I swore five years ago that I will never lie on things that are important like crimes, infidelity, or fashion. “But I’m alright. Nothing is broken except for my ego. That will teach me to try and pick up a guy at a rando bar.”
“I thought you went to Pegasus after work?” Lucky asks as he sits back on the loveseat. Shiloh curls himself into the smaller man’s lap somehow like the kitten he is. “That’s where the bartender guy said you were going to when I asked where you were at Mister Drag last night.”
I nodded at him and plopped down onto my bed like a starfish. Oh how I love my Egyptian cotton sheets and ultra soft mattress topper. There’s nothing like sleeping on this cloud every night.
“That was the plan,” I tell him pushing myself up on my elbows. “But then Eli the Emperor decided to try and tell me what I can and can’t do with my own fucking life. So I split.”
I lay back down and stare at the ceiling of my room. I don’t need to be looking at Lucky and Shiloh to see their looks of disappointment. At this point, everyone in the house is well acquainted with my act first, think later side effect of my ADHD.
“I just can’t help it,” I sigh. “It’s like I have an out of body experience when someone tries to tell me I can’t do something. No matter what they say or what their reason for it, I have to reject it. It’s not even a choice and I can’t walk back from it until I calm down. But usually by that time, the damage is done trying to prove them wrong.”
I feel the bed dip next to my hip and look over to see Shiloh perched warily on the edge of the mattress. He doesn’t look at me before taking my hand in both of his and says, “It’s never hurt you like this before. This time could have taken you from us.”
I sit up to try and reassure him, but he shakes his head violently still staring at a spot on my wall as if he’s seeing something that isn’t really here.
“No one knew where you were last night,” he says with more force than I’m used to hearing from him. “You were assaulted. You were choked out.”
I must have made some sound of denial because he levels me with a glare full of guilt and rage that I have never seen from him .
“I’m not a fucking idiot, Eric,” he snaps at me causing Lucky to flinch and start typing away on his phone. “I’ve seen those kinds of bruises before – on myself and others who weren’t so f-for-fortunate. You could have f-fucking died last night! Who would have known, huh? We would have just b-been sitting here waiting for you to c-come back to us, never knowing what happened.
“I would wait forever if it meant you came home…”
I watch as the anger in his eyes bleeds away to pain and fear. This is no longer about me. I never knew the extent of what happened to our shy kitten before the incident that brought him to our door, but if it put that look on his face, I don’t want to know or for him to ever remember again.
I pull him to me, not caring about the discomfort my ribs are giving me with the added pressure. Shiloh is clinging to me like I’m going to disappear if he lets a single millimeter of space between us. His sobs and screams are almost incoherent, but I recognize one word before he hyperventilates and passes out…
Mama…
I barely have our kitten tucked in under my blankets when I hear what can only be a herd of elephants thundering up the front stairs. I chuckle softly while Lucky crosses the room to open the door, causing a panicked Toby to fall face first onto my shag rug. As our resident little helps the pup to his feet, he doesn’t take his eyes off the young man sleeping in my bed.
“His mom?” he asks, brushing his fingertips down Shiloh’s cheek. He glances up at me when I nod before returning his gaze back to the man who obviously holds his heart.
I bask in the excess love radiation pouring from the two of them for a minute before Toby’s head shoots up to look at me again. He lunges for me, grabbing my face in both his hands and yanking me in every possible direction to get a good look.
“What the fuck happened to you?!” he practically shouts in my face before releasing me and hurrying back to comfort Shiloh who whimpers in response to his tone.
Once our kitten settles back into a peaceful sleep, Toby looks up at me with a rare serious look on his face. “Never mind what happened. You’re fine, right? You always just say fine so I don’t know why I bother asking.”
I nod and he seems to think of something because he rushes over to my vanity and starts grabbing random things. I hurry to stop him from destroying over a thousand dollars worth of beauty products and hear what he is mumbling, “Gotta cover it up before the other guys come back over. The professor didn’t have as much shit as expected so it won’t take that long to unload…”
Snatching my good blending sponge out of the pup’s grasp, I push him aside and take a seat. It’s not a bad idea to try and cover up as much as I can just in case, but I wasn’t planning on leaving my room for the rest of the day.
“This is just precautionary,” I tell the men who are smirking at me as I begin my full facial routine. They’ve listened to many a rant about fashion and celebrity gossip while I’ve done this on practically any other day. My makeup mirror is my soap box, and my audience is always enraptured. As I feel the soft bristles of the brush glide across my cheek, my soul feels lighter than it has since before the show last night. My makeup, my mask, is my freedom.