“Weather delay?” I look at the food in various stages of preparation in August’s kitchen, a veritable Louisiana feast. Etouffe, shrimp, beans and rice, and bread pudding. MiMi would be proud.
“It’s okay,” I tell August, my phone pressed between my shoulder and ear as I measure whiskey sauce for the bread pudding. “The food will keep. It’ll be here tomorrow. You will be home tomorrow, right?” Forget the food. I just miss him.
“You got me all Lou Rawls over here,” I joke, waiting for him to laugh back.
There’s just silence on the other end.
“‘You’re Gonna Miss My Loving’?” I sing a little part of it . . . badly. “Remember?”
“Yeah, I . . . I remember,” August finally says, his voice sounding as if it’s passing through a cheese grater. “Babe, there’s something I need to tell you. We don’t have much time.”
I tilt my head up to hold the phone properly. “Don’t have much time? Why?” I ask. “August, you sound weird. What’s going on?”
“Decker came to me a few minutes ago and told me . . .” He clears his throat. “He told me that Avery received a file at work today.”
“Avery, his girlfriend? The sports anchor?”
“Yeah. It was a file about . . . baby, it was a file about you.”
I drop the measuring cup, and shards of glass litter the floor.
“A file?” My breath is choppy. Blood surges in my veins like the Mississippi primed to overflow. “What kind of file?”
The question is superfluous. I already know. I’m as shattered inside as the glass at my feet realizing that the world will know what happened to me. What was done to me.
That August knows.
“It’s pictures of you,” he says, swallowing so hard I hear it over the phone. I hear the anguish in his voice before he says the words. “Beaten, Iris. He beat you?”
He beat me? No, I beat him at his own game. I escaped. I got away.
I survived!
But all anyone will see is a victim. Not Iris, but the black-eyed Susan in those pictures with her lips split open and her jaw swollen twice its normal size. All they’ll say is he beat you? You let him beat you? You stayed?
Weak.
Fool.
And they’ll have no idea who I am.
“August, I wanted to tell you.” I say, pressing down my shame. “I signed an NDA.”
“You could have told me, though. Iris, you should have—”
“Excuse me, but I don’t need a lecture from anyone on what I should have done.” I fight back tears of hurt and anger. Not at him. At Caleb, and whomever leaked this, and at the whole world. “My situation was complicated beyond what you can imagine. If I had just left Caleb, he would have gotten joint custody of Sarai, and that was never going to happen. I would die to prevent that from happening.”
I almost did.
“We’ll talk about that later,” he says. “I’m not mad at you. God, do you think I’m mad at you? For not telling me? No, baby. I’m mad at myself for not seeing it. For not . . . I’m furious at him for . . .” He pulls in a fortifying breath and goes on more calmly. “Right now, we need to get you out of there. Avery isn’t the only one who got this file. Every major news station has it.”
My knees buckle as the scope of my humiliation comes into full view. I grip the counter and raise a shaking hand to my mouth. “What? Oh, God.”
“A car’s on the way to my place,” August says, and I hear the deliberate calm of his voice trying to soothe me. “Grab a few things for you and Sarai, and the car will take you to the airport. Wherever you want to go.”
Spanish moss. The Mississippi River flowing through my veins.
MiMi left Lo and me her tiny house on the bayou. We haven’t sorted through what we want to do, so it’s just sitting there empty, waiting.
“I want to go to Louisiana,” I say. “Not many know about MiMi’s place, that I’m connected to it.”
“Okay. The Waves have a plane that’ll take you there.”
“And you?” I don’t want to sound pitiful, but I need him so badly. I never wanted to be dependent on a man again, but it’s too late. Our hearts are interdependent, and when mine is aching, it needs him. Wants him. I want him.
“I’m coming to you, of course.” He growls over the phone. “God, I’d be there by now if it weren’t for this damn snow in Denver. As soon as I can get a flight out of here, I’ll come. Just text me the address.”
“Okay.” My heartbeat slows just a little.
“A driver will take you to the airport, and a guy from the security team will go with you to the house.”
My blood congeals. “No,” I croak. “No. I don’t want that. I don’t want a bodyguard or security or . . . no. Just you, August.”
“Iris, there’s no way in hell I’m letting you and Sarai go to the middle of nowhere by yourselves during this shit storm,” he snaps.
“That’s right. You’re not letting me do anything,” I snap right back. “I’m telling you that I’m not having some strange man staying with me and my daughter. End of story.”
“But Iris—”
“Did you read the file?” I ask abruptly.
We’re separated by miles and an ocean’s worth of silence floating between us.
“No,” he finally replies. “You wanted to tell me yourself, and I know you hate your story, your life being out of your control. That everyone else gets to judge and interpret you. At least with me, I want you to be able to tell your story yourself. That’s how I want to hear it.”
My prince.
He sees me. He knows me. He loves me, and I thank God for a second chance.
“Thank you for that, August,” I say, gulping back tears. “Caleb’s bodyguard kept me in that house. Made sure I could never leave. He stood by while Caleb beat and raped me.”
The word rises from hell and climbs up my throat, burning and sulfurous in my lungs.
“I was . . . I was raped by Caleb on a . . . on a regular basis at gunpoint.” I pause for the softly uttered expletive from the other end. It all rushes back so vividly that my scalp stings when I think of Caleb jerking me by the hair.
“Iris, God.” I managed to hold back my tears, but I hear them in his voice—the agony for me. “Baby, I want to be with you right now.”
“I know. I want that, too. Tonight?” I ask hopefully. “You think you’ll make it there tonight?”
“If I have to drive a bus to the nearest city that can get me a flight out, I will. I promise.”
“Just no bodyguard. Please,” I whisper. “I know it’s silly to you, but—”
“No bodyguard,” he agrees, still reluctantly. “The driver will drop you guys off at the house. You’ll only be there a few hours without me, and I’ll see you tonight.”
I turn off all the food and abandon everything. I know this feeling. I remember my family running, chased by a pending storm. The panic, the hysteria. The terror. I feel it all riding to the airport and flying to Louisiana. Thank God for Sarai. Occupying her, soothing her on the plane, feeding her when she’s hungry—the business of motherhood helps take my mind off the storm whirring around me, picking up strength with every person who sees that file. I’m not googling or surfing the web. I don’t want to know what’s going on. When the time comes, I’ll speak.
It’s only when we are inside and the driver is on his way back to the main road that I really stop to think. To take myself off autopilot and process the implications of the file coming out. Was someone out to get Caleb? It wouldn’t surprise me, of course. Surely, I’m not the only one he’s been cruel to. August knew he was a jackass. Andrew knew. Andrew helped me with the medical reports.
Andrew?
Caleb had something on Andrew to keep him under his thumb. Was this Andrew’s revenge?
If so, thanks a lot, buddy.
Sarai is bathed and in her nightgown of choice, a San Diego Waves T-shirt, and I’m wearing one of August’s button-ups I grabbed from his place when my phone rings.
“Story, Mommy,” Sarai says plaintively, holding up her copy of Goodnight Moon.
“Mommy will read. Just hold on.” I run into the kitchen where I left my phone, making sure to check the caller ID before I answer.
“Lo, hey. Thanks for calling back so quickly.”
“Of course, girl.” Sympathy and anger mix in her voice. “I wish I could be there. I’m stuck here in New York ’til the weekend. How did this happen?”
“I have no idea. A copy of the file was delivered to Avery Hughes. She’s dating Mack Decker, one of the Waves front-office execs, and she gave him a heads-up.”
“Are you okay?” Concern softens Lo’s usual brashness. “You know you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Yeah, I know.” My laugh sounds hollow. “But everyone’s going to judge me anyway. Make assumptions. Presume to know. I never wanted this to come out. It was purely a threat to keep Caleb out of our lives.” I flop onto MiMi’s flower-patterned couch. “Man, this is an ugly couch.”
“What?” Lo laughs. “The one in the living room?”
“Yeah. It’s like one of those gators in the bayou threw up a garden.”
“Yeah, it’s bad,” she says, and we share a laugh that dies at the same time. “I miss MiMi so much.”
“She was amazing.” I swipe at the corners of my eyes, surprised by the tears. “I wish I’d had more time with her.”
“You had the time you were supposed to have. I believe we go where we’re supposed to go when we’re supposed to and that people are in our lives when they’re supposed to be.”
“What if they never should have been in your life at all?” I bite my lip. “I wish I’d never met Caleb.”
“He’s an asshole, but your experience with him taught you a lot about yourself and made you stronger than anyone I know.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff, picking at a faded flower on the upholstery.
“Listen to me, Bo.” Lo’s firm voice gets my attention. “The struggle made you stronger. Lesson learned. Move on and show the world what a survivor looks like.”
“I just feel haunted by my mistakes,” I whisper, clenching my eyes closed. “And like everyone will see me as weak.”
“Weak?” Lo scoffs. “Fuck ’em. If they haven’t walked in your shoes, haven’t had to fight for their lives and for their kid’s life, haven’t had to survive what you survived, and lived to tell it, they have no room to judge.”
“Lo.” I can’t manage anything more.
“You have Sarai. You have August. You have me. You had MiMi,” she says vehemently. “One person in your life was an asshole, and you evicted him as soon as you could. I’m proud of you.”
The words spread over me like salve, and I can’t speak because of the emotion choking me—because of how much that means.
“I guess August is losing his mind,” Lo says after a few seconds of silence, shifting the subject.
“Pretty much.” I shove my fingers through my tangled hair and sniff. “He was trying really hard to stay calm for my sake, but ‘lose your shit’ was all in his voice.”
“He loves you.”
“Yeah, he does.” I smile wider. “I love him, too.”
“You sound a lot better than I thought you would.”
“I feel better.” I shrug. “It’s like, yes, I hate that people will know, and I don’t know what this will mean for Caleb—his career, endorsements, and all that stuff. He’s so insulated by his money and his father’s power. I don’t think this alone will take him down. I’m more concerned about him pursuing custody of Sarai at some point.”
My phone signals an incoming call.
“Hey, this is August,” I say hastily. “I’ll call you back.”
I click over and settle back on the ugly couch. “August, hey.”
“Hey.” He sounds tired. “I’m on my way.”
“You’re on the plane?” I ask, my voice and my heart lifting.
“Even better. Flight just landed, and I’m in the car. According to navigation, I should be there in like two hours.”
“Thank you, August.” Some of the tightness in my chest loosens knowing he’s coming.
“Babe, don’t thank me. There’s nowhere else I want to be.”
“Wait.” I sit up, frowning, mentally collating dates and information. “Don’t you have a game in San Diego tomorrow night? What time is your flight back out?”
“I’m not flying back tomorrow.” He blows out a weary breath. “I told Deck I needed to take a day, and he agreed. I’m skipping the game.”
“To be . . . to be here with me?”
“I told you if you were ever mine, I’d play you at the five.” The sound of a smile breaks through his voice. “You’re the center, Iris.”
I don’t answer but absorb his promise to me. His devotion to me.
“And we need to talk,” he continues before hesitating. “Maybe you need to talk to someone soon? A counselor or something.”
“I have a counselor,” I answer softly.
“You do? When do you see a counselor? How did I not know that?”
“I plugged in with a counseling service for survivors at a local women’s shelter in San Diego.” I clear my throat. “I have a lot of baggage to sort through.”
“Can I come?” he asks. “Like talk to them and ask how I should handle things? Or how I can support you? I just . . . I wanna kill him, Iris.”
“I knew you would and that you’d have to see him all the time for games, events, whatever. That’s why I—”
“Mommy!” Sarai yells from the other room.
“Let me go see what she wants.”
“Tell her . . . Gus loves her,” he says, begrudging the nickname.
“She’ll grow out of it.” I grin, because he legitimately hates it. “Maybe.”
“Jared hasn’t.”
“I know, but Jared—”
“Mommy!” Sarai calls again.
“Go. You’re being summoned,” he says. “I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
Sarai is sitting up in bed when I enter the room we used to share. Her eyes are wide, her lashes wet, rounded arms with their dimpled elbows stretched up to me.
I sit down on the bed and pull her close, brushing down her hair, which now reaches the middle of her back. She’s growing up so fast. I can barely remember the time when I resented having her, didn’t want her. Now she’s everything to me, and I want time to slow so I have as much of it with her as possible.
“What’s wrong, princess?”
“I . . . I saw a monster,” she whispers, her voice trembling. She’s shaking in my arms.
I draw back and study her face. Real fear darkens the blue of her eyes.
“Bad dream?” I kiss her forehead and rub her back. “Wanna tell me about it? What did the monster look like?”
Her eyes fix over my shoulder, and she stares unblinkingly for a few seconds before answering, “Daddy.”
Panic vacuums the breath from my chest, and before I can ask what she means, a sound behind me turns me to ice.
“Hello, princess.”
I whip my head around. Caleb leans against the doorjamb with his arms folded over his chest.
I’ve never seen him look so disheveled. His jeans and shirt are wrinkled. Shadows and bags lurk under his eyes. For once, the gold is tarnished.
I stand up and position my body in front of Sarai.
“Caleb.” I smooth my voice, kneading out the lumps of fear and anxiety. “What are you doing here?”
His grin is diabolical, mocking my attempt to protect our daughter. “You mean you weren’t expecting me?” he asks, a dark stream of laughter running through his voice.
Maybe I was. On some level, I knew that without the restraints I imposed on him, Caleb would come after me, but I didn’t think he’d find me here.
He’s proven me wrong.
“Did you think I didn’t always know where my girls were?” he asks, his voice a cloaked threat. “I had eyes on you from the time you left the hotel ’til you arrived here that first night.”
He steps deeper into the room, and every step he takes closer to Sarai’s bed, a screw turns in my spine until I’m a taut wire ready to snap. I don’t want to make sudden moves or fight in here. If I can just get him out of this room. . .
“Sarai, you remember me?” He reaches around me to touch her hair.
Sarai nods and says, “Daddy.”
“That’s right,” Caleb says, looking pleased. “I’m your daddy. How would you like it if you and Mommy could come live with me?”
My throat implodes, trapping a scream inside. I dig my nails painfully into my palms, but that’s good. The pain keeps me sharp and aware.
“I wanna live with Gus,” Sarai says, clear as day.
I close my eyes, my head dropping forward, because I think my daughter may have just sentenced me to die.
“Gus?” Caleb asks, a frown pinching his dark gold brows together. And then his eyes latch onto the San Diego Waves T-shirt she’s wearing to bed. “Is that right?”
The words are stones hurled at the bed, but she doesn’t realize it and answers honestly, nodding.
“Let’s go talk in the living room, Caleb,” I urge him, forcing myself to touch his arm and tug. “Sarai was having a bad dream but needs to sleep.”
Their dark violet–blue eyes hold for long seconds. Sarai, perversely, looks more alert than she has all day, not like it’s time for sleep at all.
Finally, Caleb walks into the hall. I turn the lock on Sarai’s door and pray she doesn’t figure out how to get out. Whatever happens in the next few moments, I don’t want her to see it. I have to know she’s safe, or I won’t be able to fully focus on getting out of this alive.
My mind is on spin cycle, whirring with possible weapons, escape routes, distractions—anything to hold him off until August arrives. I decide on redirection—stalling him by pretending he didn’t come here to kill me.
“I didn’t release that file, Caleb.” I gesture for him to sit on the couch while I take the seat a few feet away. He cocks one brow, asking if we are really going to play this game, but shrugs like he has all the time in the world to remind me how much he likes hurting me.
“I know that.” He sits back on the ugly couch, spreading his long arms across the back. “Andrew did. Bastard.”
“What did you have on him?”
He looks surprised for a moment before shrugging. “He accidentally gave his girlfriend in college too much of some drug he was experimenting with, and she died.”
“What? Oh my God.”
“I handled it for him,” Caleb says. “But, of course, he owed me. Idiot confessed and ratted me out.”
“I’m sorry.” I assemble my features into concern. “Has there been much backlash?”
Maybe it was the wrong thing to ask. The adrenaline coursing through me is muddling my thoughts and has my fight-or flight instinct in overdrive. There is no “sit down for banal chatter with your predator” instinct, but that’s the route I take because in a physical fight with Caleb, I’d have no chance.
Taking flight from him, I’d have no chance.
The longer I delay a physical confrontation, the closer August comes.
“Backlash?” He barks out a laugh like the rabid dog he is. “I’ve been cut from the Stingers, lost all my endorsements in a matter of hours, and my father has basically disowned me.”
“Your father?” I ask, shocked because Mr. Bradley has always navigated any rough waters for Caleb.
“Too damning, I guess.” Caleb shakes his head. “The league is taking a very hard line on this, and my father can’t be seen on the wrong side of it. Probably making me an example.”
“I’m so sorry,” I lie.
“Sorry?” he spits, sitting forward suddenly and shrinking the space separating us. “This is your fault.”
“No. I kept my end of the bargain.”
My mind hums like a machine, thinking on overdrive of a plan to escape as I watch his skin mottle, his eyes narrow, and his fists open and close, like he’s itching for something to pummel.
“So you did,” he admits. “But unfortunately for you, all of my . . . incentives, shall we say, for letting you go and leaving you alone . . .” His handsome faces creases with a half-grin. “Are gone.”
I don’t know if he moves first or if I do. I don’t know if the predator and prey are somehow psychically linked and we move in harmony, but it becomes a hunting party. He’s the hound and I’m the rabbit. I rush past him to the kitchen. Heavy, rapid steps eat up the floor behind me.
If I can just get to my purse on the counter.
It’s in sight when he circles my waist from behind and lifts me off the ground. My arms windmill and I flail, kicking at his legs, a dervish of flying, fighting limbs. He hurls me to the floor. I skid across the linoleum and land in front of the sink. I’m scrambling to my knees when he grabs a fistful of my hair and rams my head into the cabinet.
I haven’t felt this kind of pain in a long time, but you never forget it—the hurt that blossoms from one single spot and infects your whole body. The room tilts, and blood runs into my eyes.
“Caleb, please.” I force my tongue to move. “I can explain.”
“Explain!” he screams, squatting so his breath blows over my face. “Can you explain why you fucked him, Iris?”
Oh, God.
He wipes the blood from my face tenderly but then grips my jaw in one large hand until I’m afraid it will crack.
“And you gave my daughter to him,” he hisses.
“No, I—”
The back of his hand sends my head swiveling on my neck, a flower on a fragile stem. The swelling has already started. My forehead and my cheek throb to the familiar beat of my racing pulse. He touches my thigh, just below August’s shirt. I scuttle away from his touch, but he drags me back by my ankle, quickly pinning me to the floor and planting himself between my thighs. He gathers my wrists in one large hand.
“I’ve missed you, Iris.” He breathes the words into my neck, his dick pressing through my panties. I squirm my hips, trying to dislodge him.
“No. Caleb.” My breath heaves with fruitless exertion. “Don’t.”
“Is that what you say to West?” he screams in my ear. “Do you say don’t to West, Iris?”
“Mommy!” Sarai’s voice reaches us from behind the locked bedroom door.
“It’s okay, baby,” I call back, fighting the tears that would make her more anxious. “We’re playing a game, okay? Mommy will be there soon.”
“Is that what you think?” he asks. “That we’ll just go back to business as usual? After this?”
“If you get help,” I say in as reasonable a tone as I can manage with a man determined to take me by force, “you can see her. You can be part of her life. You may get back on the Stingers. Your dad’ll come around. There’s no telling what your father can accomplish.”
“And you’d come home?” he asks, his eyes almost sad, his mouth a wistful line drawn through the middle of his madness.
What do I say?
“Maybe,” I lie. “If you get the help you need, we could see, Caleb.”
His grip on my wrist relaxes just a little, just enough. I pounce. I shove him with all my strength. His bulk shifts. I surge to my feet and dive for my purse on the counter. It’s barely out of reach when he catches me, pressing my stomach painfully into the counter’s sharp edge.
“I’m done talking,” he rasps into my hair. One hand loosens his belt while his thickly muscled arm circles me, pinning my arms to my sides. His hand fumbles under my shirt, and I hear my panties rip.
“No!” I screech and struggle and fight with every ounce of resistance I have.
Sobs shake my shoulders, and my head droops forward helplessly. He’s nudging, hard and aroused, when he shifts and tries to get in. I wiggle one arm loose just enough for me to turn, and the edge of the counter digs into my back. I slap at his head and punch wildly. His fingers, thick and long and strong, manacle my neck, squeezing mercilessly, not budging even when I claw at them, desperate for air. My vision darkens and the stars come out, bright pins of light penetrating the velvet blanket falling over my eyes. With the last of my consciousness, I stretch to my purse, drag it toward me. I pull out MiMi’s jeweled knife. Angling down, I thrust blindly, sinking the blade into flesh.
He howls, jumping back to grab his leg gushing blood. I stumble past him out of the kitchen, gasping for breath, massaging my throat, tripping across the floor. If I can just get him outside, away from Sarai.
I’m almost at the front door when a sound fires behind me. Pain explodes in my shoulder with atomic force, sending me to my knees. I clutch my shoulder, blood running through my fingers.
He shot me.
In all those months he held me against my will with that gun, he never actually shot me.
He means to kill me.
“It’s useless to run, Iris.” He drags his injured leg behind him and over to the wall where I slump, so disoriented with pain, I can barely move.
“I never wanted to hurt you, baby.” He pushes my hair back with the barrel of the gun, making me shudder. “I only wanted to love you, but you messed that up.”
A bitter laugh cracks my lips. “You lying piece of shit,” I whisper. “I can’t even count all the ways you’ve hurt me.”
I don’t wait for him to answer, but go on, ignoring the seething crater in my shoulder.
“I have a cracked tooth.” I tap a molar on the side. “Right here. I lost twenty percent of the hearing in my right ear when you busted my eardrum. You fractured my wrist, and it never healed properly. It aches all the time.”
I ache all the time.
“You’ve done nothing but hurt me.” Tears and blood from my head wound mingle on my face.
August.
His name whispers through my thoughts. I say a silent prayer that Sarai will make it through this, that August will take care of her. That he and Lo will make sure she doesn’t forget me. Sorrow, wide and deep, swallows me, for all the lost moments with her and August I’ll never have. My stolen second chance.
“New rules,” Caleb says, pushing the gun into my side. “We either live together, or we don’t live at all. Those are the rules. I do have one gift for you, though.”
He pulls something small from the pocket of his jeans, opening his hand to reveal MiMi’s gris-gris ring. It glints against his palm, so unassuming, so powerful.
I know I can’t actually hear her voice, but the sight of the ring MiMi crafted to protect me brings her words, spoken to me in this very house, back to mind.
You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.
He can’t hurt you.
Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.
Strength. Dignity. Courage. All these things belong to you. Take them back.
“I only wanted us to be together,” Caleb says, his sorrow, his madness and ruthlessness twisting in his voice. “And one way or another, we will be. It all ends tonight.”
The hell it does.
His rules. His dictatorship. His girl. For too long, he’s acted like he owned me, but I’m not his. He doesn’t get the last word. It’s my life. My body. My spirit.
Yours to keep and yours to share.
There is a reservoir in my soul. A pool of strength, lying in wait. Like MiMi’s Mississippi, it surges through my veins, cleansing me, renewing me, imbuing me with the power of a thousand priestesses. Lending me ancient courage born a thousand years before.
I slam my fist into his injured leg, scrambling out of the way when he grabs at the wound. I push against him, shifting our bodies until the gun flies from his hand. We both dive for it, blood leaking from my shoulder and gushing from his leg. Our hands wrap around the barrel and the handle. He presses me to the floor, and we fight and fumble until our fingers overlap on the trigger, the gun wedged between our bellies. It’s him or me.
Or maybe it’s both of us, because together we pull the trigger.
