Chapter 5
Harley
“Mmhmm?” I tilt my hips up marginally, parting my thighs an inch or so, hoping Emit will be able to go deeper. I’ve had years of practice making the best out of a bad situation, and this is no different.
Emit sucks in a breath, his cock jerking inside me, but otherwise doesn’t move.
“Why did you stop?” I ask sleepily, my head thick with exhaustion, my body relaxing further on the plush mattress. I may not be able to rest my head with it hanging over the side, but I still think I could sleep exactly like this for the next twenty-four hours, more comfortable than I’ve been in years, now that my thirst has finally been sated.
“You want me to keep going?”
I hum a yes, but my heart sinks lower when he still doesn’t move. A new rock bottom. “I knew it,” I whisper.
“Knew what?”
“It was fake. It was all fake.” I’m such an idiot .
Emit pulls out of me, just as I thought he would. He slides me backward and rolls me over. I don’t try to stop him. His dark brows are pinched, his cock bobbing hard and slippery between his legs. He doesn’t crush me beneath him or shove his length inside me. Further proof.
“Knew what was fake?” he asks, studying me.
I turn to look at the serene view through the open window, watching the tall grass in the field to the side of my dream house sway beneath the hot wind. Phantom children run through the grass, squealing with laughter as Emit and I chase them around, tickling them when we catch them.
The vision dissolves. “You’re a liar on top of everything else.”
Emit cups my jaw and turns me to face him. “What did I lie about?”
“All that wife and husband and Daddy talk. You don’t want me . You just wanted me to struggle . You took what I had been saving, and it doesn’t even mean anything to you. You’re selfish, just like my brother.” My chest constricts with disgust, bile rising in my throat. “How many other women have you done this to?”
“I swear to god, I’ve never…” Emit leans back, his eyes flitting to my wrists when I roughly shove my hair back out of my face. “Not ever.”
“So, out of all the women you’ve been with, I’m the one who gets raped and kidnapped…not the one who gets flowers and dates and romance. Yay, me,” I say sarcastically, breaking inside.
Emit’s face falls as if devastated. He’s such a good actor.
More vulnerable than I’ve ever been, I say exactly what’s on my mind of my own volition. “You know, if you’d just been nice to me, treated me how you used to, and not just wanted me for what was between my legs, you would have had me. Not just my body but all of me.”
“Harley…” Emit slowly lowers himself, and I roll out from under him, stumbling to my feet.
“Did you know I was half in love with you when I was a kid? That you were the only one, out of every single person I knew, who was sometimes nice to me? Let me tag along without throwing a fit when everyone else couldn’t stand me?”
“That first part, no. But the rest…” Emit winces, moving to sit on the edge of the bed.
“You knew how my family treated me for years and years. Still do. That’s why…” I nod to myself. It all makes sense now. “That’s why, out of all of them, I’m the woman who didn’t get the sweet, kind man that the others did. Poor little neglected Harley,” I say with a sneer. “What’s one more man treating her like dog shit? She doesn’t deserve anything more than that, right?”
Emit shoots to his feet, reaching for me. “Harley, no!”
I race around the bed toward the open door, my hips and thighs aching fiercely, my core on fire. “I hate you!” I scream, hot tears streaming down my face. “I would have loved you more than all those women combined! One fucking tumbler of water, and I was ready to give you everything!” I laugh cruelly at myself while Emit stands there like a god, all abs and ripped muscles, his dick still hard, swinging heavy like a baseball bat—a weapon he used to destroy me. “I’m so fucking pathetic.”
I wheel around, tearing down the hallway with bright white, decorative wainscoting. The hallway spits me out into the large living room with sturdy but comfortable-looking furniture, the front door on the right, a long console table to the side with a key rack hanging above it. I have no idea which of the numerous keys are the ones to his truck, so I grab them all.
“Harley!” Emit roars from behind, jumping ahead of me to block the front door.
I skip back, raging, and dart across the living room toward the back door to the right of the kitchen. Emit is there once again, and I sprint to the stove, having spotted a large knife block to the side of it.
Emit’s fingers brush my biceps, unable to grab ahold of me before I spin around with the largest knife in my hand, swinging my arm down fast, slashing it across his naked chest. He jerks back, pressing his palm down on the lengthy wound, blood seeping through his fingers as he stares at it in shock.
I scream in horror, even though I’m the one who hurt him, and almost drop my knife when he crashes to his knees. He holds his hand out, streaked with his blood, and any guilt I might have felt is snuffed out. That’s what his hand probably looked like when he shoved his fingers inside me without a care in the world and took my virginity.
I grip the knife, twitching with the desire to slash him again and again and again as I take twenty years of pent-up anger out on him. But since I don’t want to catch a murder charge and get sentenced to prison for the rest of my miserable life, I raise a knee instead and kick his chest, shoving him backward, his head cracking on the cool black and white checkered tiles. I grind my heel down in the middle of his wound, hoping it burns as much as my lower stomach does.
Emit screams shrilly, so I scream even louder, “Now you know how it feels, asshole!”
And then I leave him, broken and bleeding and sniveling on the floor as I race out the front door, finally finding his truck parked at an angle in back. Thumbing through the keys, I find the one with his car manufacturer’s logo and jam it into the ignition. I slam the gas pedal down as I drive away, intentionally running over the trim bushes and flowers planted in the beds bordering the house as I go, the massive tires tearing up the rest of his yard. I have no clue where I am, and I chose a direction at random.
Worry gnaws at my gut when I throw the bloody knife behind me in the back seat, wondering if Emit will call the police. If I’ll be hunted down for attacking him. Even though I didn’t cut him deep enough to kill him, I know I could still face some serious jail time. But when I flick my blinker to take a right at a flashing yellow light, I catch sight of my wrist, the ligature marks even more apparent, raw and inflamed. If the police come after me, I’ll have one hell of a story to tell them. Actually, now I’m kind of hoping they will. It’d serve the sexy, psychotic bastard right, sending him to jail right along with me.
I take right turn after right turn until I finally spot the interstate ahead. I steer the truck off the road, pulling through a gap in the trees, leaving the truck idling as I crawl over the console into the back to find my clothes. They smell as bad as they look, stained with sweat and dirt and now smears of Emit’s blood, but they’ll have to do until I can get back to my car and gather my belongings.
Just as my head pops through my shirt collar, I spot a mound of garbage bags in the truck bed. Hopping out, I open one bag, then another, realizing Emit must have emptied my car. Ok, I guess that’s two nice things he’s done for me. As much as I want to sort through them and find a clean outfit to change into, I don’t have time, knowing I need to get out of here as soon as possible.
Back in the truck, I follow the road signs until I’m headed in the right direction, speeding toward Luther’s house. This truck is a bulldozer, and I’m once again close to running people off the road since I can’t see over the hood. Oh well.
Relief has my shoulders relaxing as soon as I pull onto Luther’s street, his newer-built beige craftsman house coming into view, though it’s not as well maintained as the last time I was here. And just as suddenly, that feeling of relief winks out of existence, dread sweeping in. I’ll find no respite here. I know it. And yet, with nowhere else to go, I stop at the curb in front, staring through the large bay window covered by an ugly green curtain for a long time before I get up the courage to leave the truck.
The house is obnoxiously loud, even from the street, as I make my way up the paved driveway, cutting across the grass to the front door, my hand hanging in the air until I can finally bring myself to knock. And then knock again. And again, until finally, the door is wrenched open with a snarl on Luther’s gray face. Yup, bits of food stuck in his beard. Disgusting.
“Oh. Harley.” Luther stands half-dressed in his sweatpants, scratching his belly, blocking the doorway. When’s the last time he showered?
“Hi, Luther.” I don’t hide my hands behind my back, wondering how he’ll react to his little sister having obviously suffered some kind of trauma.
Luther looks behind him, cursing at his kids to shut the fuck up the way our parents used to yell at us, then turns my way. “What’s up?”
I show up unannounced, swaying on my feet, my clothes filthy, my hair a rat’s nest, my eyes undoubtedly swollen and red, and my brother, who should love me unconditionally and care about my safety and well-being, merely asks me What’s up ?
I force the tears back, beating myself up internally for still holding out hope that he’ll suddenly start giving a shit about me. “Can I come in?”
Luther scratches his temple while a beat passes, then two. Boom, a lower level of rock bottom. I’m about to cut my losses and run, deciding I’d rather risk getting caught by the cops for sleeping in a stolen truck when Luther steps back. “Sure, come on in.”
Marsha pokes her head around the wall separating the living room from the kitchen, yelling above the fray, “If it’s my grandma, tell that bitch to eat shit! She’ll get her money back when I damn well feel like it!”
Luther coughs, the sound wet and phlegmy when he closes the door behind me, and Marsha’s eyes momentarily widen before they track down my body and back up again. And then she smirks. “Well, damn, Harley. What the hell happened to you?”
She glides into the room with my six-month-old nephew, Aiden, who I’ve only seen through pictures that I begged Luther to send to me after I found out he had another kid. He’s naked save for a diaper and a smear of some putrid orange substance across his cheeks.
Marsha wears a giddy expression and roughly grabs my injured wrist to haul me toward the couch, making me whimper. She plops Aiden in a travel crib in the corner behind the couch, where he immediately starts crying, reaching for his mother. Then, she sits with a bounce on the cushion beside me with a fine layer of crumbs ground into the material.
Luther drops onto a well-worn recliner, drawing a hand down his face with exhaustion. They both ignore Aiden and the older kids brawling with each other upstairs.
Marsha props an elbow on the back of the couch like we’re the best of pals catching up and says with a crooked grin, “Tell me everything.”