THE PORCH LIGHT WAS ON outside Liv’s home when we pulled up. I was worried about what kind of punishment her stepmother would dole out once she went inside the house.
“Looks like she’s waiting up on you,” I said from my spot in the driver’s seat, feeling nervous as hell.
She looked at the house anxiously, too. “Well, you better give me a kiss for good luck. I think I’m gonna need it.”
I leaned over the console between us and kissed her tiny button nose.
She grabbed my tie before I could pull back. “Uh uh uh. I’m gonna need you to really lay one on me before I go to battle.”
And so I did. I dipped my tongue inside her mouth, tasting the innate sweetness that was Liv, my Livvy, my Luna. I pressed my chest to hers until she was pushed all the way back against her seat and kissed the hell out of her.
And this time when I pulled back, she wrapped her hands around the back of my neck and used her thumbs to rub my cheekbones. “I love you to the moon and back, Nova.” The sincerity in her eyes blew me away and I felt like the luckiest guy in the entire world.
“I love you to Pluto and back, Montgomery,” I said, once again pressing my lips to hers.
Later, I’d take solace in the fact the last things we’d said to each other were the most important things either of us could have ever spoken.
Because like a bad dream, the door was wrenched open from behind me and I was on the ground. I barely had time to register the fact that two male bodies pressed me to the asphalt. One with an elbow to the throat and the other with a knee to the stomach. A barrage of limbs and hands and body parts bombarded me, disorienting me.
A scream. Liv’s, I thought to myself, as I tried to fight my way off the ground, but it was a fruitless attempt. There were two of them and only me. They’d caught me off guard. It wasn’t long before I was dragged across the pavement and into the driveway.
Two big guys held me up and kept my arms pinned behind me. Two more surrounded me. Braden and Sebastian. Jesus, what the hell was going on? But I couldn’t focus on them. No, I could only hear Liv shouting in the distance.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Georgina step off the porch. She’d changed from her fancy dress and had a brown suitcase in her hand. “Get in the car, Liv.”
“No!” I heard her shout. She was across the yard from me, but goons surrounding me made it hard to see her.
“You did this to yourself. Now get in the fucking car!” Georgina screamed.
I tried to fight off the two men holding me down. I pulled and I tried my hardest to rip myself free.
“Hold him down, boys,” Sebastian ordered, and I felt my blood boil.
“Liv!” I screamed. “Liv!”
“Please!” I heard her cry as another man shoved her into the back of a black town car. I was going to be sick. This couldn’t be happening.
Georgina threw the suitcase in the back of the vehicle before turning to look at me. In the same way she had before the dance. The way that made me feel less than. “Take out the trash, boys,” she said before climbing into the driver’s seat of the black town car.
She pulled onto the road as the first fist connected to my cheekbone. A blast of pain shot across my face like a bullet hitting its target, but I never took my eyes off that car. Liv’s hand was against the back window, her tear-stained, hysterical face behind it.
No blow to the face could compare to seeing her like that, driving away from me.
The next blow was to my stomach and it sent me to the ground. The men holding me up let me fall to the asphalt. I lost sight of Liv and the car as I took a kick to the mouth. Blood coated my teeth and gums, the taste of metal thick on my tongue. I tried to get up. I had to get to Raven’s car and then Liv.
“Stay down,” Sebastian said, with a deathly calm to his voice and then I was knocked in the head from behind. Blows came from every which way. Pain radiated throughout my entire skull. My ribs screamed in agony and still I got up. Fight, my addled brain screamed at me. Fight for her. I wouldn’t let her down.
It was the sickening kick to my forehead that did me in. Blood poured into my eyes. Suffering filled every inch of my body. They were going to kill me, right here in Liv’s front yard with the beautiful ocean right across the fucking street. I wondered if they’d dump my body in the sea.
Through the haze of blood and pain, I saw the flashing of blue lights. The police. Thank God. Relief swept through me like a rushing current.
Everyone backed away, but try as I might, I couldn’t move. I rolled on the ground, fighting the blackness that threatened to pull me under. I couldn’t go there. I willed my mind to stay alert. I had to get to Liv.
The scuff of shoes on pavement made my closed eyes fly open. Not a foot from my face stood a pair of black boots that fed into a police uniform. My brief stint of relief vanished into thin air right along with the girl I loved. I was done. Fucked. Royally screwed.
“Damn, you boys did a number on him,” Sheriff Rothchild said and I closed my eyes. This was it. I didn’t know what would come next, but I knew it was nothing good. Not with this man involved.
A criminal.
A rapist.
He picked me up off the ground and I would’ve screamed and fought him if I could have, but they’d beaten the fight right out of me. I had nothing left. I was dangerously close to losing consciousness.
“Help me get him in the car, Braden.”
They pushed me into the car, but not before I spat a mouthful of blood into Sheriff Rothchild’s face.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from his cheek as he stared down at me lying across the back seat of his cruiser. “Boys, break the window in the front from the outside. Make sure it looks like a break-in. We’ll call this self-defense.” He didn’t take his eyes off me the entire time.
He slammed the door and climbed into the front of the police car and started it up. I had no idea where he was taking me. I could barely lift my head, make a cognizant thought.
“I see why Livingston likes you so much, Adam. You got your momma’s good looks for sure. Those eyes. They did me in, too.”
Nausea rolled through me and I gagged as I prayed for darkness. Fuck, I wanted it to take me. I couldn’t listen to him talk about my momma.
“But I warned you. I told you last time I saw you to stay away from her. But you boys from the mainland. You’re dumb as shit and never fucking listen.” He took a long breath. “Like that fuck-up Boone. He was supposed to be watching you and your father, but he just had to fuck with Livingston. You guys can’t keep your poor dicks in your pants, can you?” He chuckled wickedly.
“I get it. I’ve always wanted what’s not mine, too.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks and onto the leather beneath me. I wanted to die. This man. He’d taken everything I loved from me. Twice now.
It wasn’t long before the car came to a stop, but I couldn’t even lift my head to see where we were.
He dragged me out the back of the car. “Come on, you sorry sack of shit. Stand up.”
I leaned against him and he leaned down into my ear. “You won’t contact Liv again, now will you? It’d be a shame if your poor father was jumped again, wouldn’t it? He might not make it this time.”
I sucked in a breath, shock sending a whole new wave of pain through my body. No. Not my pops.
He laughed, pure evil echoing in my ears. “What now? You didn’t think that was random, did you?”
I bucked back with all my might and I spat again, this time hitting his shoe.
“You little fucker, you better be careful who you fuck with.”
He dragged me across the parking lot and into a building I’d never seen the inside of in all my time in North Madison.
Two feet into the Madison County Jail, he leaned close enough so only I could hear. “Your momma. She was one of a kind. I loved it when she begged. Both times.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and held my breath, praying for blackness, but all too aware of what he was saying. “Especially the night I came to your apartment. She was creating too much of a stink. She was causing problems for me.” His fetid breath made my busted lip curl. “She begged for her life. And for you as I shoved the pills down her throat, a gun to her head.”
I shook my head, my brain feeling like it was swimming. “Noooo!” I screamed. Agony and misery ripping at me. I’d been too happy the past few months. It was time to pay up.
He shoved me to the floor without a care in the world. “Book him. Breaking and entering over at the Montgomery house. Aggravated assault as well. Mrs. Montgomery will be here in the morning to file a report.”
I lay there bleeding and not just for myself. But for my mother. My father. For Liv.
“Don’t worry, Adam. Braden will take care of Liv,” Sheriff Rothchild threw over his shoulder as he left.
No. Please, no. Misery screamed in my veins. Torment blasted through me. Every bone in my body pounded. But it wasn’t just pain that blazed through me as I lay on the dirty county jail floor. No, it was something far greater.
Vengeance.
To be continued…
The story continues with In Her Space coming November 15th 2018
In Her Space
I was reunited with Livingston Montgomery in the broad sunshine of a Carolina morning, right where she belonged; in the light.
It’d been too long since I’d seen her face.
She had changed, but so had I.
I was Adam Nova, reformed bad boy. Now, successful business man.
I had it all, except for the one person I’d always wanted, and now I was back to claim her.
She was living in the shadows, just a shell of the former girl I knew.
But it didn’t matter that she tried to hide from me in the dark.
I’d follow her into the deepest depths of hell.
I just wanted to be In Her Space.