Chapter 27: Chapter 27
“I’m so glad you’re home!” Gabby soaked in her mother’s embrace, allowing it to soothe her fragile state of mind. Dorothy was onto something when she said there was no place like home. There was just something about being under the roof she’d grown up in that set her mind at ease. “And you!” her mother crowed, pulling away to grab up Ash and envelope him in a giant hug. “I’ve missed that handsome face.”
All Ash could do was smile abashedly, but she could tell that he was eating up the attention with a spoon. Keeping her arm around his shoulders and him tucked firmly under her wing, her mother turned her attention back to Gabby. “So what brings you two by?”
“Gabby said that you make the best lasagna in the state.”
“Pretty sure I said world,” Gabby corrected him.
Never one to toot her own horn, her mother waved away the compliment. “Haven’t won any awards yet.”
“Only because you’ve never entered any contests,” her father piped up as he descended the stairs into the living room. “I keep telling her she’d be a shoe-in, but you know your mother.”
Despite her humility, Gabby could tell from the twinkle in her mother’s eyes that she enjoyed the praise. “I’ve told you, that recipe is a family secret. Now come on, you three, dinner’s about ready. Go on and wash up.” Before she left to the kitchen, she turned a quizzical look toward Gabby. “Will your boyfriend be joining us tonight?”
“I’m not sure. I have to give him a call and find out.”
“Working hard is he?”
Gabby turned as her father approached her and accepted his welcoming embrace. “He sure is.”
“Your mother and I drove by the construction site earlier this week. It’s coming along real nice, though when I saw the price they’re planning to fetch for each unit in the paper, I needed to take a double dose of my meds to keep my ticker from stopping dead on the spot.”
She’d seen that article too. “Yeah, they’re definitely not geared for the locals.”
“Who the hell ‘round here could afford it!”
Gabby just patted him on the back. Talking about money with her father was a vacuum she wasn’t mentally prepared to get sucked into tonight. “You go on ahead and get ready for dinner before Mom decides to start without us. Ash, you go with him. I’ll be right there after I give your dad a call, okay?”
Having been there before, Ash took the separation in stride and went without complaint. Gabby went to the phone—the same one she’d grown up with, complete with a curly, tangled-to-hell cord. It was as if time made a pit stop in each decade, then ceased to exist altogether after the nineties under her parents’ roof. She took a moment to bathe in nostalgia before picking up the handset and dialing out before she remembered that Blake didn’t want her calling when he was away dealing with club business.
Shockingly, he picked up right away. “Hey, teach, what’s up?”
“I’m sorry, Blake. I completely forgot that you said not to bother you. Just call me later when you can. I’m at my parents’.”
She was preparing to hang up when she heard him call out to her. Pressing the phone back to her ear she let him know she was still on the line. “It’s fine that you called. Unless I say otherwise, my line is always open for you. Got that?”
Her reply was a soft “Yes.”
“Good. Now what’s this about you being at your parents’? Is something wrong? Did that bitch, Jodi, show up at the school again?”
The anger in his voice was startling. Gabby rushed to reassure him that wasn’t the case. “No, no. I just didn’t feel like cooking tonight, and besides, it’s lasagna night.” As if that spoke for itself. And in a way it did. Her mother’s lasagna was kickass.
“Lasagna, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “Think you can come?”
His voice growing husky, he said, “Baby, you know I can.”
“You know what I mean,” she replied, growing breathless at his endearment. The warmth creeping into her cheeks also told her she was blushing. Her gaze cut to the kitchen doorway where she could see everyone claiming seats around the dinner table. Damn him. She needed to get a handle on her libido before she got off the phone or else everyone was going to be suspicious.
“Yeah, baby, I do.” He grew quiet for a moment before saying, “Give me a few to wrap up here, and then I’ll be over.”
“Okay,” she breathed down the line. “I’ll save a seat for you.”
Blake spoke a few parting words into her ear that left her in even worse condition by the time she hung up with him. Hell, she thought, feeling the flush spreading all the way down her body, liquid heat pooling between her legs, she felt like a cat in heat.
Resigned to the knowledge that she’d spend the majority of the evening teetering on a knife’s edge of arousal, Gabby stood to head toward the kitchen when she glimpsed the growing mail pile on the sideboard.
She’d been spending so much time at Blake’s, she’d been neglecting the details of her own life. Dreading the bills that were no doubt waiting for her, she sorted through the stack of envelopes, extracting those with her name printed on them.
Halfway through, she came across one that stood out from the rest. Her name in handwritten ink shouldn’t feel like a stab through the chest, but Gabby couldn’t prevent the way her heart hammered just looking at it. Maybe it was the lack of return address, or the missing postage that had her internal alarms ringing, she wasn’t sure, but it was as if her sixth sense had picked up on something her brain had yet to comprehend.
Which was ridiculous. How harmful could a letter be? It was probably just a neighbor welcoming her back to the cul-de-sac and had chosen to hand deliver rather than bother with the post.
Just to prove to herself how stupid she was being, Gabby tore into the letter, finding a greeting card inside—the serene image of a single rose lying on a sandy beach with crystal blue waters lapping in the background. As cards went, this one was about as unthreatening as one could get. Relieved, she laughed to herself at her own absurdity as she stuck her thumb in the seam, reading the poem on the front first—Roses are red, Violets are blue—before flipping it open.
Her heart stopped.
Brace yourself, puta, I’m coming for you.
Trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm, Gabby somehow drummed up the strength to close the card and tuck it away in her purse. The last thing she wanted was for someone else to find it before she could figure out what to do about it.
She could go to the police, but something inside her told her that whoever these people were, they were beyond the police. Anyone who worked outside the law and was as vicious as that man had been had ways of getting what they wanted, and she had zero doubts whatsoever that what he wanted was her dead.
Because she sure as hell wasn’t planning to give him what he wanted.
What scared her most was that he clearly knew where she was at, and because of her stupidity and weakness, she’d led him and his lackeys right to her parents’ doorstep. Now not only was her life on the line, so was everyone she cared about.
***
It took some convincing, but Gabby finally allowed Blake to talk her into staying the night with him. It was commonplace now, she imagined, for her to do so. At least, that was the impression everyone had left her with. When she’d attempted to stay home, Blake and her parents homed in on her, questioning her reasoning and asking if she was okay.
All through dinner she’d kept her focus on the conversation around the dinner table. She responded, laughed, and nodded at all the appropriate times, but apparently she hadn’t been hiding her apprehension at all.
They all appeared to have reached the same conclusion: that something was on her mind.
They weren’t wrong, but she fought to make them believe they were. It was for their own good. Until she could figure out what her next steps were, she needed to keep this new development to herself.
She just wished that she was at home now, so she could watch over her parents. If anything happened to them because of her…
She bit her bottom lip and sucked in a quiet breath to stem the flow of tears that threatened to fall. No sense in dissolving into a blubbering mess. It certainly wouldn’t solve anything.
Lying in Blake’s bed, staring up at the ceiling, she wondered where’d she’d be now if she had resisted him the first time. If she hadn’t accepted that invitation, she would be lying in bed now, in her parents’ basement, keeping vigil over the two most important people in her life.
Instead, she was pinned beneath the hulking arm of the man who was slowly but surely stealing her heart, hating herself for dragging him and his precious son into her drama.
Her heart drummed faster at the thought of having not just one, not even two or three, but five lives in her hands. If only she’d run in another direction, she’d only have to look out for herself, but she’d been selfish and look where it’d gotten her.
She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to any of them.
Turning her head on the pillow, Gabby watched Blake sleep as she thought of all the laughs, the smiles, and the warmth he’d brought into her life in such a short amount of time. Even tonight, in as dour a mood as she was in, he managed to pull her into his orbit and make her smile. It was nothing more than a simple, bearded nibble to that sensitive spot between her neck and shoulder, but it’d worked. He’d pulled her out of her funk just long enough to gift her with a few last moments of normalcy—story time with Ash, followed by sweet, passionate lovemaking before crashing for the night.
For a brief moment, she allowed herself to linger, to expand her thoughts to the future and entertain a world of what-ifs. A world that resembled closely the one she’d glimpsed in that box of pictures sitting on his closet shelf.
The fantasy shattered like so much glass, yanking her back to the cold, stark reality laid out before her. The seriousness of her situation hit her full-force, as well as the understanding of the danger her staying there represented to everyone around her. In that moment, she knew what she had to do.
Carefully, Gabby extracted herself from the bed, lingering only long enough to look back and ensure that Blake remained asleep, before tiptoeing around the room, gathering her clothing and her overnight bag. There was no other way that she could think of to protect those around her than removing herself from the equation altogether. If Blake knew what she was up to, he’d do everything in his power to bar her from leaving. And she would be weak enough to let him.
Escaping into the bathroom, she rushed through getting dressed and packing the few toiletries she’d placed out on the counter—further evidence of a world and a future that would always be just a little too far out of reach. Then, as silently as possible, she crept to the front door and worked the latches, slowly opening it and slipping out. Reaching back in, she depressed the lock on the handle before closing the door behind her. The only sound of her leaving was the soft click of the latch hitting home.
Tears gathered in her eyes as Gabby jogged to her car. There was no helping the sound of the engine or the crackle of the tires on the packed gravel, but nonetheless, it was several hours before the calls began streaming in.