Chapter 35
“You preyed on my son!” Cady-Jo spat at me, Helen and Louise barely holding her back.
“I didn’t!” I yelled, rubbing my head where the door hit it when Cady-Jo burst in before I fully opened it. My scalp stung from her pulling my hair. Yes, the quintessential hair pulling. She’d screamed I was a slut, a liar, and a predator.
Helen, having heard the commotion, came running from the kitchen where she’d been taking an urgent call from another client. She was here to help me go over some legal things I was considering given my manuscript was now missing and my Cady-Jo plan.
“Explain this, then!” Cady-Jo threw the papers in her hand. They skittered across the coffee table, some falling to the floor.
“Is that?” Helen looked at the white pages with black ink. The photos. The damning photos.
Nodding to Helen, I tried to explain. “I know how this looks, Cady-Jo. I can explain.”
“Explain?” She jerked against Louise’s hold.
I was suddenly really grateful Louise had chosen today to come by and bring the ingredients I needed to make this week’s cookies.
“Explain how you lied and have been screwing my son! Explain how you wrote sick, disgusting, sex letters to Jesse!” Cady-Jo’s face turned an even darker shade of red, spit flying from her mouth. “You’re a sick pervert!”
“Jesse? I never gave these to Jesse!” I never would—that thought was disgusting. He was eighteen. A kid, even if he was legally an adult.
“LIAR!” she shrieked. “I found them, bitch. I found them in his room! I read what you wrote. You preyed on both of my sons!” Cady-Jo was practically incoherent with rage.
“Cady-Jo, you need to calm down.” Helen tried to reason with her.
“Calm down? Calm down?” Cady-Jo screeched. “You’re looking at proof she’s been fucking my sons—Jesse is only eighteen!”
“I’m not sleeping with Jesse!” I swore vehemently. “I’d never do that.”
“Look, clearly there is some kind of misunderstanding here.” Louise tried to be the voice of reason. “Let’s just all sit down and talk about this.”
“Those notes weren’t for Jesse, Cady-Jo. I don’t know how he got them. But they weren’t for him or from him,” I added.
Outside, I could hear the sound of sirens in the distance. I knew this was going to get ugly when I saw Jessamina on the street just as Cady-Jo burst in. I just knew she’d call the cops. She hated Cady-Jo as much as Amber-Rae did.
“The fuck they weren’t, you sick bitch!” Cady-Jo tried to advance on me but found herself restrained. “I read every depraved word. I knew it! I knew you were a whore when I met you. I knew you’d hurt my boys!”
“She didn’t hurt anyone.” Helen came to my defense, looking at me questioningly.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “You can tell her. Tell her everything.”
Cady-Jo rounded on Helen in horror. “You knew. You knew she was…she was…”
“It’s not like it seems, Cady-Jo.” Helen was supremely calm, which was crazy given I wasn’t sure if my heart could handle beating this hard.
This is all my fault.
“Cady-Jo. I know you’re angry. You have every right to be angry.” Sort of. “I swear to you, I didn’t do what you think. I never meant to hurt you. We were going to tell you. We were going to tell you this week.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Louise had loosened her grip just enough when it seemed Cady-Jo might listen to Helen.
With a roar, Cady-Jo flung herself at me, knocking me to the ground.
“I’m going to kill you!” She grabbed my head and bashed it off the ground.
I heard a sickening crack and felt pain explode across my skull.
“You ruined everything! You ruined everything!” I wasn’t sure she was even talking to me anymore.
That was how the police found us, the sirens deafening as the cars skidded to a stop out front.
Cady-Jo was hauled off of me, her hands immediately restrained by handcuffs, an officer reading her her rights.
I lay there on the floor for a minute, stunned, feeling something hot trickle down my neck.
Another officer ordered everyone else not to move and rushed to my side. I couldn’t make out his face through my blurry vision. When he helped me sit up, I thought I was going to throw up and curled my legs to my chest.
“Phoebe? Are you okay?” Helen crouched down in front of me, ignoring the police’s command.
Cady-Jo had gone quiet, her chest heaving, fury etched in every line of her body.
“I can explain.” I looked at her, trying to focus my vision that kept blurring in and out. “You don’t need to arrest her.” I tried to get to my feet, Helen helping me, only to fall onto my couch. Something felt wrong inside me and I couldn’t stop to figure out what.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We witnessed her assaulting you. It’s an automatic arrest,” the officer who stood beside Cady-Jo, his hand on the cuffs at her back, said.
“No. This is my fault.” I had to make them understand.
“You got that right,” Cady-Jo spat, finally speaking, blue eyes blazing accusations. “How could you? Ty? And Jesse?”
Louise picked up some of the papers and was frowning down at them. “I think there has been a serious mistake here.”
When I looked at her, I knew. Even if I didn’t want it to, my secrets—all of them—were coming out.
“Someone needs to explain what happened here.” The police officer who was in charge looked expectantly between all of us.
Helen went to speak for me, and I put my hand on her arm.
“I’m not Phoebe Lebonaire. Well, I am. I’m just also A.J. Lane and P.J. Alexander.”
There was a stunned silence. Even Cady-Jo, who looked murderous only moments ago, was suddenly looking uncertain.
“The author A.J. Lane?” the officer asked, looking shocked and a little in awe only to flush when Helen cut him a quelling look.
“Yes.” Then I did something I’d never done in my life.
I claimed me. With my head splitting, my stomach threatening to empty its contents, with five people, one who hated me, one who knew my secret and was still my friend, and one I hoped would still be my friend (I had no illusions about Cady-Jo wanting to be my friend after this) and two strangers, I told the story I’d never been able to write. Mine.
“So that’s it. All of it. The only thing I don’t know is how Jesse got my papers. He wouldn’t have stolen them from me.” I needed that to be clear.
“This is Ty’s handwriting.” A subdued Louise held up the damning love letters for inspection. Just in case Cady-Jo didn’t believe me.
I sank back into the couch, trying to ignore the pain in my head. It felt like a concussion. I’d had one before, so I wasn’t too worried about it. Right now, it was nothing compared to the ass-kicking my heart had just taken.
“They were in his closet,” Cady-Jo said lamely, not an ounce of hostility to be found anywhere.
“Okay.” What could I say to that?
No one spoke for several minutes and the silence helped dull the ringing in my ears.
I waited for it to come. The judgment. The condemnation. I remembered my parents’ reaction, my brothers’, even Jeremy’s, when they’d learned what I wrote. It didn’t register that there was a person sitting in this room who had known for a while and wasn’t disgusted.
“What do we do now?” The officer holding Cady-Jo, but loosely, given she seemed carved in stone, asked the other one.
“We’ll take Ms. Parker in. You’ll have to come and make a statement as well, Ms. Lebonaire.”
I shook my head and then grabbed it with a sharp gasp. I wouldn’t be doing that again. “I’m not filing charges.”
“Are you...?” I felt a face hover near me, and a hand moving my hair. “Crap. Radio EMS. She’s got a head wound.”
“Phoebe?” Helen was at my side, and I tried to open my heavy eyelids, but I was tired. So tired.
“What have I done?” Cady-Jo’s ragged whisper was what forced me to look at her. All six of her. That wasn’t good.
“I’m so sorry, Cady-Jo. I never meant for this to happen.”
“Phoebe!” Jesse’s yell was like a knife to my brain and I cried out, grabbing my head. “What’s the police—? Mom?” Jesse beelined for me on the couch. “I didn’t do it, Phoebe. I didn’t take your things. I would never.”
“Jesse, what are you doing here?” Cady-Jo asked, and I waited for her to lose her shit again now that he was here. I’d hoped she’d believed me, but you never knew.
“Delilah called me at school and I drove straight back.” Jesse frowned. “You’re bleeding.” He stripped off his sweater, pressing it to my head. “What the hell happened here!?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t need him knowing his mother attacked me.
“Folks, this is going to have to wait. We need to take Ms. Parker to the station and the ambulance just got here for you, Ms. Lebonaire.” The officer made the fact he was in charge clear.
“Why is Mom being arrested?” Jesse ping-ponged between everyone and then burst out, “You attacked Phoebe?” Glaring at his mom, having put two and two together.
“Don’t!” I told him. “It’s not her fault.”
“The hell it isn’t!” Jesse fumed.
The sound of footsteps, followed by two new voices, interrupted everyone. The EMS guys were efficient and had me up and walking in no time. I tried to get Jesse to go with Cady-Jo, as she was led to the squad car.
Helen promised to go with her and make sure she was okay. I made it clear I didn’t want Cady-Jo charged.
Walking felt like I was on a boat that was pitching in rough water. I hated boats.
The rumble of a truck came and I knew…I knew. Ty was here. With my ears ringing, it was a lot harder to figure out the direction I heard the sound from. I looked around, my vision blurry, but not blurry enough.
I saw it a second before the sound cracked through the air like a whip.
“Gun!” I yelled, grabbing Jesse, who was walking by my side, throwing myself over him.
A second crack of the whip split the air. Everything went black and there was nothing. Blissful nothing.