43. Della
DELLA
My body is shaking as Hazel is taking me away from the scene. I’m so grateful she’s next to me right now because I don’t know what I would have done after seeing Tripp. How dare he find me and demand I get back with him? It goes to show how little he respects me.
“Besides being the getaway golf cart, which is a dichotomy in itself, how can I help you right now?” Hazel asks while putting her hand on my knee. “In good news, bad things come in threes, and you’re at your quota, Del. Only up from here,” she pats me.
“I can’t believe the entitlement of that motherfucker. To think I’m going to just crawl back. Oh my God.” The rage boils up in me. Rage at Tripp Worthington, rage at my father, rage at the universe. “I should have… punched him or something.”
“I bet you could’ve gotten a shot in,” Hazel affirms. “And if he did anything back, Jaxon would have ripped his arms off his body.”
Jaxon.
I heard a lot of what he said. He defended me.
Even though we haven’t really spoken since the day in his office, he still defended me.
Not that I had any intention of going back with Tripp, but I wonder if he would have confessed all that he did without Jaxon’s goading.
And then, when the disrespect peaked, he hit him and likely broke his nose.
When we turn up the path to the Wills’ compound instead of continuing to the barn where my car is parked, I panic.
“What are you doing?” I ask, scared she’s going to take me to Jaxon’s.
“I’m obviously not leaving you alone. Even if you want to, I’m pulling friend rank. We’re going to my house. Lanie and Molly are coming. And we’re going to be together. We can talk about everything that just happened. Or we can not make any mention of it and drink our faces off.”
“But I kind of want to paint,” I say. The admission shocks me.
Before my mom died, that was my go-to, and since being here, that has wormed its way back into the fiber of my being.
It’s a wonderful thought, and it brings a small smile to my face when it feels like the world I once knew took its final blow earlier today.
Offered as collateral. Holy shit.
Jaxon always made fun of mob things happening in Chicago, but being traded to relieve a debt sure fits that bill.
“Can we meet in the middle?” I ask her.
“What do you mean?” she responds.
“Can we go to my apartment, and Lanie and Molly can come there? I really want to paint. And drink.”
“Let’s do it.” Without question, Hazel turns the cart around and heads back to the barn, where we both jump in my car and make our way to Millstone Ave.
We aren’t inside for more than five minutes when I get a phone call from my father. Rather than let it go to voicemail, I pick up, knowing what’s coming. Hazel holds my hand in support.
“Are you trying to kill me, Elizabeth?” he barks from the other end of the phone line. Not hello. Not thanks for picking up when you haven’t in weeks. “Tripp came to get you, and some goon broke his nose? Are you stupid?”
I let him finish his rant that ends with ‘come home and marry who you’re supposed to.’
“Chicago is not my home, Richard,” I address my father by name for the first time in my life.
“Cut that shit out, you owe me…”
“I don’t owe you a single thing,” I shoot back, vibrating with anger and sadness and betrayal. I could really use a break in these adrenaline dumps. “You sold me off for loan forgiveness, and encouraged me to not finish school so I’d be dependent on him. Tripp confessed everything.”
“Give me a break. I simply got creative. You know I stopped functioning after your mother died because of your choices…”
“I didn’t kill my mother,” my voice raises as it cuts him off, “and I will no longer let you blame me.”
“Your life will be wonderful, Elizabeth.”
“Your spouse never loving you is not wonderful. Tripp never would have loved me. You don’t either. You just saw an opportunity.”
There is desperation in his voice as he tries to get me to hear him. “He’s willing to give you another chance. I spoke with him before calling you.”
“I’m unsure why you think he’s the one giving chances. I’ve decided I’m the chance giver, and bad news, I’m all out. Goodbye, Dick. Have a nice life. Or don’t. You selfish, manipulative asshole.”
I hang up the phone and do what I should have done when I left my wedding: block him. I no longer want the facade of a reminder that my father cares; he most assuredly doesn’t.
Looking at Hazel, she just hugs me, but surprisingly, no tears come. “You good?” she asks.
I nod my head before I can sort my thoughts to answer her.
“A dark cloud has followed me since the night my mom died, even before he pushed Tripp on me. But I haven’t had that same darkness here.
And though I can speculate a number of reasons, I think one of them is because my father isn’t in my ear, filling it with toxic thoughts and guilt.
Calling him an asshole felt good. Really fucking good. ”
“I’m not sure if I’m happier or prouder right now,” Hazel rubs my shoulders, and I take a deep breath, processing it all.
When the other two arrive together, Molly starts concocting the same drinks we had when they helped me move, and hands them out.
“Okay, you can tell me to fuck right off, but what happened? Tripp showed up here trying to take you back home? How delusional is that man?” Molly opens.
“I don’t even know the half of it, and I know he’s off his rocker,” Lanie agrees.
“Yup. I can’t believe it either. Obviously, I blocked Tripp soon after the wedding and set my email settings to route anything he sent to spam.
I don’t know. Between being so wrapped up in everything happening here, and having Quinn take care of all the back-end stuff related to the wedding made it easy to bury my head in the sand and hope the infraction of leaving was egregious enough to just let me go.
But that was wishful thinking. I should know people like Tripp Worthington don’t give up.
Part of me is surprised he didn’t come earlier,” I shrug my shoulders and take a huge sip of my bourbon drink, which warms me as it goes down.
“Was this always a possibility in your head?” Hazel asks. “We should have been more vigilant, Del.”
“Eh, I didn’t know which way he was going to go.
He never seemed to like me. Part of me honestly thought that maybe he was feeling the same pressure from his family to marry me and would feel relieved when I left…
at least after the embarrassment died down.
It must sound so stupid to you guys, but I was so underwater and so close to everything that I didn’t realize how bad it was. Now I know.” I shrug again.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
The banging on the sliding glass door makes us all jump, and we look at each other.
Who the hell is here… and knocking like that?
I get up, and when I see Tripp on the other side of the glass, I gasp.
His suit jacket is off, but the white shirt is covered in the dried blood from earlier, and he’s looking unhinged, hitting the glass so hard I’m worried it might break.
“Holy shit,” Hazel says from behind me.
“Go away, Tripp,” I shout.
“Open the door, Elizabeth,” he yells back, his voice muffled but still clear.
I look at the three women who have taken up residence behind me. “You guys should go. He shouldn’t bother you if you go out the front door.”
“Go?” Molly says. “Shut up, Della. As if we’re leaving you to deal with this psycho on your own.”
“Seriously, Del,” Lanie agrees. “Besides, I could take him hand-to-hand without breaking a sweat.”
My head turns to her to question that, but my attention is brought right back towards the door.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
“I’ve never seen him like this before,” I say. Tripp has made me feel lots of negative things over the past few years, but I’ve never feared him. Now the unmistakable feeling is bubbling up inside of me.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
He’s going to break the glass.
“Open the fucking door, bitch! I am taking you back to Chicago right fucking now.”
Molly calls the police, but I’m worried for my friends who are refusing to leave. I take a step closer to the glass to appease him.
“Tripp, please calm down,” I say loudly.
“Calm down? CALM DOWN?” he shouts. “My nose is fucking broken. You left me at the altar! I am at the center of the rumor mill in Chicago. No one gives a shit about you because you don’t fucking matter, but everyone sure has an opinion about the fact that a Worthington was stood up by a no-name bitch.
You will come back. You will marry me. You will give me children. You were promised to me!”
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
“You don’t love me, Tripp,” I shout.
“No shit. And you don’t love me!” he shouts back.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
My heart is racing, and I’m worried about what will happen if that glass gives.
“Fine, Tripp!” I shout. For a second, I see a flash of satisfaction come across his face. “Fine, let’s talk. Just stop.” I’m scared that if he has to fight his way in, he’s going to be angrier than if I just let him in.
“No,” the chorus of women shout from behind me.
He grabs the flowerpot I have on my bistro table and chucks it at the door as a last hurrah. It hits the edge of the glass with a thud, and spiderweb cracks radiate out from the point of impact. That’s enough to have me racing to open the door before he hits it again.
Storming in, he grabs my wrist and shakes me.
His breath smells of alcohol, and I try to remember if I ever saw him drunk before.
“Why the fuck did you do that to me?” he seethes.
All the anger he has been holding since our wedding day is pouring out.
“You made a fool out of me, and I’m going to teach you a lesson... ” He raises his hand to strike me.
I swallow my breath and brace for the impact.
Click.
The sound doesn’t register for me, but I see his face change as he looks towards my friends.
It brings my attention there too, and I see Molly with a gun pointed directly at him. A gun I didn’t know she had, carried, or knew how to use.
“Listen to me, motherfucker. Let her go, or I swear to God, I will drop you.”
Tripp’s rage has given way to disbelief, with a hint of fear. “You wouldn’t,” he challenges.
“I’m the reigning High Plains Marksmanship gold medal champion six years in a row. I fucking assure you, I would.”
Tripp drops my wrist and steps back. He’s so used to just getting what he wants that I bet he can’t even comprehend someone challenging him like this. But things are different out here. Money doesn’t come with the same privileges as back home, certainly not for an outsider.
“Elizabeth, we’re leaving,” he says, not taking his eyes off Molly.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to go with him, but I also don’t want to enrage him again. Because I bet Molly is not bullshitting about the marksman thing, and has no problem hurting Tripp. I don’t care about him, but I don’t want her to get into irrevocable trouble because of me.
I open my mouth to reply, but before I can, two police officers enter the room, guns at the low and ready. I’ve met the one, Alan, before.
Well, this has turned into a spectacle.
Tripp’s hands go into the air.
“Put that shit away, Molly,” Alan says. I’m confused for a minute before I remember that Alan and Molly are cousins.
“I apologize, officers. I was just trying to get my fiancée to come home.” Tripp’s entire demeanor has changed into the public charmer he wears so fucking well. It’s scary as hell that he can flip on a dime like that.
“Really?” Alan questions. “Is that why the glass on the sliding door is cracked?”
“It’s just a misunderstanding. She opened the door to let me in,” he says.
“You know how hard you have to hit tempered glass to crack it? Your hand looks a little bruised there, and you reek of alcohol. What’s all over the ground out there?” Alan says, pointing to the dirt that is strewn all over the deck.
“Just a moment of panic. I don’t want to lose her, you see.”
Alan looks at me while his partner doesn’t take his eyes off, Tripp. I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t know, but I’m sure he can see the fear on my face when I look back at him.
“What happened, Della?” he asks.
“He…” I hesitate. This is going to piss him off even more,
“He was punching the glass, and she opened the door to let him in because she didn’t want the glass to break.
And then he grabbed her wrist and told her he was going to teach her a lesson.
His fist was raised, Alan. He woulda’ hit her.
” Molly holds my wrist up. Though not bruised yet, there are undeniable, angry red finger marks.
Alan looks at me, and I just nod. I have no doubt Tripp would have hit me.
What I don’t know is how hard or how many times.
Before anyone says anything, Everest screeches into the room. What the hell is he doing here? Everyone glances at him, but then Alan looks back at Tripp to continue.
“Well, you’ll have some time to think about losing her. You’re under arrest.”
“On what charges?” Tripp scoffs.
“Domestic assault. We’ll deal with the property damage and unlawful entry at the station.”
“Get the fuck out of here. It was a conversation. I didn’t hit her.”
“I will get the fuck out of here with you in handcuffs. You have the right to remain silent.”
He doesn’t fight the cops, but glares at me. If looks could kill, I’d be dead. I know he has connections in Chicago that can probably make this disappear, but that backing won’t reach all the way out here.
After he is taken out, I am left with another police officer who is talking to me about everything, but when he leaves, I’m shaken up.
All the adrenaline I had has worn off, and every ounce of energy is gone.
Not wanting to talk much, I retreat to my painting room while Hazel and Molly stay; Lanie left with Everest.
Amberheart doesn’t owe me anything, but these woman are sure working overtime to mend the things that broke me.