Chapter Five #2
right to my kitchen.
Marcus was at my stove. He was wearing another V-necked
sweater, this one light blue, and another pair of jeans that weren’t dark-wash
but they weren’t faded either.
His feet were bare. His hair was slightly tousled. And I
wanted to say after the mortification of my drama last night that the sight of
him at a skillet in my kitchen looking like that I didn’t feel in my coochie.
But that was a lie.
I totally felt the sight of him looking like that in my
kitchen in my coochie.
His eyes came to me.
Oh yeah.
Right in the coochie.
I’d opened my mouth to say something, but at the look on his
face, any words got trapped in my throat and I quit breathing entirely.
“Come here,” he ordered gently.
My feet took me right there.
Still with a fork in his hand, his other arm wrapped around
me and he pulled me close so my front was pressed to his side, his chin dipping
into his neck to keep his gaze on me.
“Okay?” he whispered.
I nodded.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I nodded again.
“Good,” he murmured, giving me a squeeze and turning his
attention to the bacon.
He was shifting it around in the skillet and I was watching
him do this in a weird haze.
But the haze, as hazes are wont to do, even ones you had
standing in your kitchen pressed close to a hot guy, cleared.
I tipped my head back and started, “Marcus—”
The instant his name passed my lips, he again dipped his
chin into his neck and I clamped my mouth shut at the new look in his eyes.
“I have a man looking for him. I’ve hired a private
investigator to look for him. And two of my colleagues are looking for him.
When one of them finds him, they will not take him to the police. They’ll bring
him to me. And I’ll be dealing with him personally.”
Oh.
My.
“How’re you gonna do that?” I
asked softly.
“I’m going to put a bullet in his forehead.”
Oh my!
I stared up at him.
“In the meantime,” he went on like he didn’t just tell me he
planned to assassinate my rapist, “although I figure you know this now, you are
not unsafe. You’re watched twenty-four-seven. I have a man on you at all times.
When you’re trying on shoes. When you’re grocery shopping. When you’re up in
this apartment watching movies. No one you don’t want near you will get near
you.”
After delivering that, he looked to the bacon and flipped
it.
I watched him do this wordlessly.
When he was done, I felt his gaze come back to me and I gave
him mine.
“Is that understood?” he asked.
“Uh…yeah.”
“Right. Excellent. Next topic. I want you to move into my
condo with me.”
Uh-oh.
“Uh…no.”
“Daisy—”
“Honey, you’re bein’ all kinds of
sweet. You’ve been all kinds of sweet. Even after I was a bitch to you
and you didn’t deserve it.”
“You’re going through a good deal.”
“You still didn’t deserve it.”
He inclined his head, conceding the point like only a
gentleman would.
Lord.
“And I appreciate it,” I continued. “Last night wasn’t good.
But it happened and now I can get a lock on it. I promise. Swear. It
means a lot to me you stepped up when I called. I feel bad I did that, pullin’ you from your bed in the middle of the night, but
it felt good you stepped up and did it so sweet. But I’ll get a lock on it.
That’s a certainty. So I’m good now and I’m not movin’
in with you.”
“Then I’ll move in with you.”
“Marcus—”
He slid the bacon off the burner, switched it off, set the
fork aside, and then turned fully into me, wrapping his other arm around me.
“Last night wasn’t not good, Daisy. Last night was bad.
The time it took for me to get to you, I could tell with one look at you in
that corner, you were in hell. After I got to you, it didn’t get much better.
I’m not allowing that to happen again.”
“But, now it’s happened, I can—”
“I have a guest room. It’s nice. You can stay in there.
Alternately, if you prefer to be in your own home, since you don’t have a guest
room set up, I’ll sleep on your couch if that’s where you wish me to be.”
“This is—”
“And you need to talk to someone about what happened to
you.”
I felt my eyes get squinty. “Will you let me finish?”
“Not if you say things that, I’m sorry, darling, aren’t
smart. You’re not looking after yourself. You’re not letting Smithie and LaTeesha look after you. And since you’re not, I’m stepping
in.”
“You been gone a week,” I pointed out snappily.
“You needed time, and I assessed from our last conversation,
space. I gave it to you. You curled up, terrified in a corner, I’m done doing
that.”
“You don’t get it.”
“No, I don’t. You’ve attempted to explain and I still don’t.
Mostly because I never got the concept of bullshit and I still don’t, even when
a beautiful woman is trying to feed it to me.”
Honestly?
I couldn’t take any more.
And because I couldn’t, something snapped in me.
It snapped inside and it snapped me right out of his arms.
I took a step back but lifted my hands and planted them in
his chest, shoving him.
He rocked back on a foot but I retreated three, lifted my
hand, and jabbed a finger at him.
“You don’t get it!” I shrieked.
“Then give it to me,” he whispered.
The change in his tone didn’t register on me. The look on
his face.
Nothing.
“I forgot my lip gloss. My lip gloss!” I screamed.
“Not my tips. Not my phone. Not somethin’ important.
My…fucking…lip gloss.”
“Okay, honey,” he said gently.
“Went back for fucking lip gloss.”
“All right, Daisy.”
“Out of the blue,” I swung my raised arm wide and dropped
it, “he jumps me. Do you know how it feels to be somewhere you think you’re
safe, doin’ something you got every right to do, and
some asshole jumps you?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t feel real good,” I shared.
Marcus didn’t say anything.
“I can take a slap. I can take the back of a hand. Daddy
taught me that. Not to mention a number of Momma’s other men who had that kinda thing honed real good.”
I watched his jaw get hard, a muscle shift up his cheek, but
that didn’t register on me either.
“I can even take a punch. More than one asshole I let in
there gave me that lesson.”
“Christ,” he bit out.
I ignored that and the emotion behind it.
“But that, that, and what he gave me after he gave
me my beating, that I hadn’t been taught.”
“No woman needs that lesson.”
“Well, I got it,” I snapped.
“And he’ll get his.”
“Right, with you puttin’ a bullet
in his brain?”
“Precisely.”
I cocked my head to the side, feeling my hair move with me,
and ground out, “You barely know me and you got that much feelin’
for me you’re willin’ to take that on your soul?”
“Yes.”
At that, the firmness of it, the simplicity, I
rocked back like he’d shoved me.
“You don’t want me to do that, he didn’t rape me. That’s
your call,” he stated. “I’ll have him brought to the police. You don’t give a
fuck about that asshole, he’s dead. At my hand. And I won’t take pleasure from
it. But it cannot be denied, when it’s done, it won’t give me satisfaction.”
“Now you are tryin’ to
scare me,” I accused.
“No.” He shook his head. “In my world, actions have
consequences. You are far from dumb, Daisy. You know the world I live in. You
might not know the rules but you know there are rules. And no one breaks them.
If they do, they suffer retribution as decreed by the laws of the street. He
violated my turf and I mean that in the sense I own part of Smithie’s. But he
violated something that’s just plain mine and for that, he suffers the
ultimate reckoning.”
Lord.
He was killing me.
“I’m not yours,” I whispered.
“Honey, please start paying attention.”
At that, I shut up.
Marcus didn’t do the same.
“That’s the man I am, Daisy,” he declared. “And that’s going
to happen regardless of what I say next. Which is, right now, you have one
chance. If what I just shared scares you. If it turns your stomach. If it’s
something that you don’t want in your life, I’ll walk away. You can have all
the bacon and you’ll never see me again. But if you don’t say…right now…that’s
something you can’t take, then we’re sharing the bacon, the eggs I’m going to
make, and a whole lot more when the time is right.”
At the thought of never seeing him again, I wrapped my arms
around my stomach and kept my eyes glued to him.
Marcus didn’t move. He kept watching me. He did it silently.
And as he did it, something settled in him, in his frame and
in his face.
It was a sight to see. A thing of beauty.
And it scared me spitless.
After a while, he spoke, his voice just as firm but a whole
lot more gentle.
“In terms I hope you’ll understand, darling, in fairytales,
the prince vanquishes the wicked queen. The evil stepmother. The malicious
goblin. In real life, Daisy, to avenge wrong done to his princess, if the need
arises, the prince puts a bullet in somebody’s brain.”
Yes.
Killing me.
Without me telling it to do it, my mouth whispered, “Why?”
“I just explained why.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Why me?”
I asked and Marcus didn’t hesitate even a second to answer.
“Because my mother left me when I was six. She wasn’t a
loss. She left me with my father, who was a decent enough father, a good man,
but a stupid one and very weak. We didn’t have much because he wasn’t capable
of giving me much, but there were more reasons. We didn’t live in squalor.
However, the little we had wasn’t much better. Then, when I was ten, he’d
gotten himself under the weight of a debt he couldn’t repay since he made dick
but he also liked to play the ponies. They busted out his knees first. Then
they took his thumbs. After that, they took his life.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“He had a daughter from another relationship, my
half-sister. She grew up with her mother and she didn’t have much either. The
good in my dad, he made sure my sister was in my life. As much as we could be,
we were close. When Dad was killed, she was all I had left. And she had a
choice. Take me on or let me go into the system. She took me on. She was
twenty. And she put a roof over my head, food on the table, and a lot of love