Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5) Read online

  Yet.

  He’d threatened it a few times, usually if I was still crying while he fucked me raw following a particularly brutal beating. They get so fucking hard, like I do, watching you cry, he’d tell me. It’s not fair to leave them to jerk off on their own. They could both fuck you at the same time, one in your ass, one in your pussy. It’s only fair, you know.

  I wasn’t sure if he just enjoyed seeing my panic at the thought of his best friends invading my body in that way or if he truly intended to let them do it one of these days.

  Was tonight the night?

  Whether he intended for that to happen or not, I knew what was waiting for me: a beating I’d never be able to forget, and maybe more. And the longer I put it off, the longer I allowed Ethan Higgins and his son to delay the inevitable, the worse Hayes’s retribution would be.

  Would tonight be the night he lost control and killed me? That might be a blessing in disguise.

  “Come on, Carter,” Ethan said, ignoring my boyfriend entirely—something I could never afford to do. “The keys are in my pants pocket. Right side in the front.”

  The little boy inched toward his father, sniffling but staring wide-eyed at the two men as he fished around in his father’s pocket for the car keys. Once he had them, he walked over to me and held out a hand, looking solemn and serious and scared out of his wits. “Come on. Let’s get in the car.”

  “You’re not getting in his fucking car,” Hayes choked out. His face was looking closer to blue than red now.

  Was that how I looked when he choked me? Did my skin take on that purplish tinge?

  “No,” I said, somehow calm despite the fear-laced adrenaline rushing through my body. “I’m not getting in his car.”

  Ethan stared at me so hard I thought I’d melt from the heat of his glare. “I’m not letting you go home with this son of a bitch.”

  “You can’t stop her,” Hayes bit off.

  “I can call the cops. There might still be some on the property, actually. A few tend to stick around after games.”

  “And I can have you arrested for assault when they show up,” he shot back. “Want your kid to see that?”

  “They’d arrest you, too,” Ethan said.

  “Only if she presses charges, which she won’t do. Either way, your kid sees you being hauled off to jail. Good plan, hero. What a fucking dad.”

  I could feel the heat of both men’s stares boring into me, one daring me to contradict him, the other begging me to do exactly that.

  And there was the crux of the problem. Hayes knew I wouldn’t press charges. He knew he never had to worry about that.

  Because I had nowhere else to go. No one else to turn to.

  He’d made sure of that a long time ago.

  But why did Ethan care? What was in it for him? I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

  Carter urgently tugged on my hand again. “Come on. Let’s get in the car like Dad said. I’ll help you.”

  I allowed him to tug me to my feet, but then I broke free of his grip and crossed over to the two men. “Let him go,” I pleaded, refusing to look into either man’s eyes. I didn’t want to feel the anger in Hayes’s gaze or see the pity in Ethan’s. “Please, just let him go and take your son home. He shouldn’t see this.”

  But Ethan didn’t release his grip on Hayes. If anything, he tightened it.

  I might not be able to see Ethan’s expression, but I could feel it boring into me. Pity? Disgust? Anger? I couldn’t be sure.

  “I need him to see this,” Ethan said, but that response made no sense at all. “And I need you to get in my car.” He was so solemn, as if there weren’t any other possible response he could have.

  “You know I can’t do that,” I whispered, silently pleading with him to understand. But why should I expect anyone else to understand when I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, myself?

  “I know you’re scared to do that,” he replied. “To get in my car. To trust someone. To try to get away from him. But going home with this piece of shit will be worse, and you know it.”

  How could I know that? With Hayes, at least I knew what to expect. I knew what I was getting into. If I did what Ethan asked of me, if I got into his car, then what?

  It was the unknown. He was bigger and clearly stronger, so couldn’t he do even more damage? Better the devil you know, right?

  But then I made the mistake of looking up.

  Hayes was glaring at me like he’d been possessed by a demon, his face red and wild and his eyes almost fully black, bulging out of the sockets with the sort of fury he typically only unleashed when we were at home. I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t a demon, to be honest. But there was nothing but kindness and empathy staring back at me in Ethan’s expression.

  It would be tempting to trust him. Tempting to believe in kindness.

  I knew better than that, though. Kindness was nothing but a façade and trust had no place in my vocabulary.

  “Please,” I repeated, not allowing my gaze to waver as I stared into eyes that looked black as night. “Just let him go. It’s better this way.”

  “How is letting you go home with a monster better?” he replied, his grip seeming to tighten even more on Hayes’s windpipe. “How is teaching my kid it’s okay to walk away from someone in need better? Better than what?”

  I couldn’t answer his questions. There was no answer.

  At least none that he would accept.

  Hayes scrabbled to break Ethan’s grip on his neck, kicking and flailing to get free as he could no longer speak due to lack of oxygen.

  “You have to let him go,” I pleaded. “If he dies, if you kill him, what’ll that teach your son? You can’t kill him.” It was the only argument I had, the only one I could make. If he didn’t go for it…

  Apparently, it was the only argument that held any weight with Ethan. Thank goodness for that.

  With a disgusted look, he threw Hayes back, releasing him with such force that my boyfriend skidded across the pavement and the car keys he had claimed I’d lost skittered out of his pants pocket, only coming to a stop when they collided with my feet.

  Hayes coughed and spluttered, his hands pawing at his own neck in a similar manner to the ways I’d done when he’d encircled my throat with his punishing grip several times before. He would have bruises there, green, yellow, purple, nasty bruises where the redness remained. I should know. I’d borne them numerous times. That was why I wore so many turtlenecks, despite the sweltering Tulsa heat.

  Ethan’s eyes bored into me. I could feel the intensity of his gaze even though I refused to meet it. He stalked over to his vehicle and ripped open the door, and I could finally take a breath—because he was leaving. This part of my torment was ending, and then I’d be left with Hayes and however he intended to make me pay for it.

  But instead of climbing inside and starting the engine, Ethan rummaged in the center console for a moment. When he returned, it was with a bright turquoise Post-It note bearing the Thunderbirds logo, a phone number and address scrawled across it, penned by a hurried hand.

  He passed it over to me, firmly closing my fingers around the scrap of paper. “Call me when you change your mind.” Then he took his son’s hand and led him to the car, making sure the crying boy was securely buckled into his booster seat in the back before driving away.

  But long after he was gone, I could still feel the weight of Ethan’s gaze on me. Begging me to come with him. Pleading. Imploring me.

  I shoved the wadded-up note into my pocket next to my cell phone and tried to swallow past the lump in my throat as Hayes slowly dragged himself up off the ground, but it refused to budge. Regardless of the fact that I was doing what he wanted of me, this would all be my fault. I would pay once we were home. I knew it, and he knew it, and there was no getting around it.

  “Get in the fucking car,” he bit off, his voice harsher, raspier than normal, punching the button on the clicker until the parking lights flashed.

&nbs
p; Without making a peep, I got into the passenger seat, closed the door, and fastened my seat belt, watching in the rearview mirror as Ethan’s taillights faded in the distance, along with any hope I might have once had.

  Hope was nothing but a lie.

  “WHY DID HE hit her, Dad?”

  Carter was in his Snoopy pj’s, snuggled up in his Snoopy sheets and blankets, with Snoopy—our yellow Labrador puppy, who was almost as big as Carter, even though both of them were still growing like weeds—curled up at his feet.

  I brushed my son’s hair out of his eyes and wished I had an answer. He had my hair and eyes, both dark brown. This was the hardest part of being a parent—trying to explain all the shit in the world when there wasn’t a good explanation. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “You understand why I hit him, though, right?”

  He sniffled and nodded, wide-eyed. “Because he was hurting Miss Natalie.”

  “And it’s not right for a man to ever hit a woman or a child. We don’t hit anyone.”

  “’Cept in hockey games sometimes,” Carter said, repeating my explanation almost verbatim.

  “That’s right. Except in hockey games sometimes. But that’s part of the rules, and it has consequences. When you fight in a hockey game, you have to go to the penalty box.”

  Even though I had made sure he understood that fighting was an accepted part of the game I played, he’d never once seen me drop my gloves and fight on the ice. Fighting wasn’t something I enjoyed. Besides, I could help my team better if I was on the ice than I could sitting in the box.

  I’d hoped my son would never see me do it in any context. If he had to see it, though, I was glad it was because I was defending someone who couldn’t defend herself. Because I was trying to right a wrong. Because it was the only thing I could do, given the circumstances.

  “Is he going to hurt her again?” Carter asked, sniffling.

  I took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and held it so he could blow his nose. “I don’t know, Carter,” I said cautiously, weighing each word before I let it leave my lips. “I hope not. I hope he won’t hit her again.”

  That wasn’t quite the truth, though. Yeah, I hoped he wouldn’t beat her up when they got home, but I knew he would. Been there, done that. I’d recognized the haunted look in Natalie’s pale-blue eyes. I’d seen the same quiet desperation in them that I’d seen in my own eyes for years. In my mother’s eyes, too. The certainty that it wasn’t over. The knowledge that she was bound to experience something even worse once they were alone.

  He was probably beating the shit out of her right this very moment, a thought that made me physically ill.

  I should’ve hauled her into my car, by force if necessary. I should’ve called the cops. I should’ve done something—anything—other than walk away.

  What the fuck kind of example was I setting for Carter?

  The thought of what Natalie was probably going through right now had my stomach roiling. Because I knew. I fucking knew what was happening, and I hadn’t managed to stop it. I’d tried, but trying wasn’t good enough.

  There had to be something else I could’ve done. Some scenario I hadn’t contemplated, some argument I could’ve made. But nothing came to me, not even now, after the heat of the moment had died off and I could think clearly.

  If she wasn’t ready to get away, there wasn’t anything I could do to change that.

  Short of kidnapping her and rescuing her against her will, at least. And then would I be any better than Hayes?

  It’d depend on how you looked at the situation, I supposed. I knew how I saw it, but how would she interpret something like that?

  Carter patted the back of my hand consolingly, as if a simple touch could erase the memory of what he’d just witnessed. As if his touch could cleanse and purify my hands after they’d touched that pathetic excuse for a human being. Carter could almost do it, too. “She’ll be okay, Dad.”

  “Yeah,” I said, because he needed to hear it, not because I believed it.

  “You’ll take care of her.”

  But how could I take care of her if she wouldn’t let me?

  I finished reading Carter his bedtime story, then gave both him and Snoopy kisses on their foreheads before turning out the light.

  “Leave the door cracked tonight,” Carter pleaded as I made my way out of his room.

  He hadn’t asked for that in a couple of years. Not since his nightmares had stopped.

  Back in the early days, after Kinsey and I had split up, he’d had a lot of nightmares. Kids took everything in, thought it was all their fault. I knew that. I’d lived through that. So he’d blamed himself, somehow, for our inability to make our marriage work out, and it had manifested in nightmares.

  But once we’d been able to convince him that Kinsey and I were still friends, and that we both still cared about each other and—most importantly—still loved him, the nightmares had come to an end. If they came back now, because of Hayes Fucking Lennon, that would give me one more reason to want the bastard dead.

  I left the door cracked and switched off the lights, then headed back downstairs for a beer. Once I was relatively assured that Carter would be able to drift off to sleep, with Snoopy standing guard, I took out my cell and tried to come up with what I could possibly say to Kinsey to explain what’d happened.

  No matter how long I stared at my phone, though, nothing came to me. So I did the only thing I could do.

  I called her, despite the late hour.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded, sounding half asleep. “Is Carter okay? What happened?”

  “Carter’s going to be fine,” I cut in before she could get too worked up.

  “Going to be? Meaning he’s not now?”

  “We witnessed a guy beating up his girlfriend after the game tonight,” I said. “One of my teammates,” I added, almost as an afterthought even though that was the last thing it should’ve been.

  “Oh, shit,” Kinsey breathed into the phone.

  That didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “What’d you do?” she asked.

  Because she knew. She knew all about my abusive father. She knew how I felt about this shit.

  She fucking knew.

  “I almost killed him,” I admitted.

  “Shit.”

  “Had the bastard’s throat in my hands. I could’ve done it, Kinsey. I could’ve choked the life out of him. I was so close. So fucking close to doing it.”

  “But you didn’t.” She said it as if she knew that, too.

  “No.”

  But already, I was second-guessing myself. Already, I wished I could turn back the clock and have a do-over, because that bastard deserved to die. And because I had an idea of what was happening to Natalie right this very moment.

  And because I felt like a piece of shit for allowing it to happen.

  “And Carter saw all of this?” my ex asked cautiously.

  “Every last bit of it.”

  “But you talked to him about it afterward, right?”

  “Talking doesn’t undo it.”

  “No,” she said on a weighted sigh. “But it’ll help him understand.”

  Could a kid ever understand the kind of thing my son had witnessed tonight? I’d never been able to process it. I’d never understood what had led my father to do the kinds of shit he’d done. Why no one had ever stepped in and put an end to it.

  My teachers and coaches had to have known. I’d gone to school every day covered in bruises and scars that couldn’t be explained away by simply stating, He’s a hockey player, and hockey’s a rough game, or You know how kids are these days.

  No one, not once in my life, had ever tried to stop him.

  And now I was no better than any of them. Because I’d walked away. When it was all said and done, I had walked away and left Natalie to deal with it on her own.

  I was as bad as Hayes.

  Maybe I’d never lifted a finger against her, but I hadn’t stopped him from
doing it, either. Hell, I might have made things worse for her.

  “He asked me to leave the door open tonight,” I said.

  “He just needs some reassurance. That’s all it is. He needs to know you’re there.”

  Yeah, I was here, all right. I only hoped it wasn’t me he feared.

  The rage that had welled up inside me and spilled over was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He’d witnessed me almost kill a man. And he’d seen me walk away from a woman in need. Those were two things I’d vowed to myself that he would never, ever see, but they’d both happened in the same night.

  “Is Snoopy sleeping with him?” Kinsey asked.

  “That dog sleeps on his bed even when he’s with you.”

  “Then he’ll be fine. He’s got his puppy to protect him, and he’s got his daddy in the next room. He’ll be fine.”

  I only wished I were as confident as she was.

  ALEX’S AND JASON’S cars were both parked at the curb when Hayes pulled into the driveway. My heart plummeted at the sight, even though I’d already anticipated their presence. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, I’d managed to convince myself that they wouldn’t be here.

  No such luck.

  Hayes didn’t press the button for the garage door to open until we were sitting in the driveway, which only increased my anticipation and dread. He hadn’t said a single word the whole way home. His silence caused my thoughts to swirl at an alarming pace. I’d come up with about a thousand different scenarios about what I might be up against, each of them equally terrifying.

  He pulled into the garage and put the car in park, but he didn’t shut off the ignition.

  I stayed perfectly still, trying to avoid any movement that might draw his ire. But I couldn’t stop my chest from rising and falling, rising and falling, rising and falling, at breakneck speed. The longer he made me wait, the worse it always was, because the anticipation allowed my imagination to run away with me.

  When he finally moved, I flinched. But he’d only reached for the buttons at the side of his seat to move it away from the steering wheel and angle the seat back farther than it already was.