“You,” I roared, charging at him.
Chris’s handsome face instantly hardened.
A strong arm wrapped around my middle, lifting me off my feet. I was pulled back against a rock-hard body, my feet flailing in midair for the second time that day.
“You lied to me, you bastard. All along, you lied.” I struggled, pushing at Vaughan’s arms and kicking at his legs. All he did was grunt and tighten his hold around my waist. Damn, he was strong. I was getting nowhere. But did I let that stop me? Hell no. Reason and I had long since parted ways. “You like dick, not pussy. You used me!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Chris sneered. “Get yourself under control, Lydia.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Babe, calm down,” Vaughan whispered in my ear.
“Let me go.”
“Don’t think that’s a good idea. You wanted to stay out of jail, remember?”
“I want to kill him more,” I panted. “Much, much more.”
“No, you’re a nice girl. You follow the rules.”
“Fuck nice. I want to dance on his grave!”
“Are you drunk?” With sharp movements, Chris tore at his bow tie, removing the scrap of silk from around his neck. His gaze raked over me, clearly unimpressed. “You are, aren’t you? God knows, you look ridiculous. What the hell happened to you, Lydia? We’ve been searching everywhere for you. Do you realize how many people are waiting over at the house?”
“They’ll be waiting a hell of a long time. I saw you and Paul together.”
Fear flashed in his eyes. But he covered it quickly, raising his chin sky high. “So? I told you we’d be having a few drinks last night. That can hardly be the cause for all this.”
“You were making out.”
All expression left his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Having sex.”
“Stop it.”
“Screwing.”
His hands curled into fists. “Shut your mouth, Lydia!”
“You don’t talk to her that way,” said Vaughan, voice low and deadly. Still holding me back, however.
Loud banging came from the front door. Next thing we knew, Chris’s demonic platinum-blond excuse for a mother came marching inside, glowering all the while. His father came a step behind her, expression equally thunderous. Awesome. Now the party could really begin.
“Fuck’s sake.” Vaughan hefted me up, holding me closer. “No one in this town respect property rights anymore?”
“You should really lock your doors,” I mumbled, giving up the struggle. For the moment, at least.
“Windows too.” He grunted, unamused.
“Samantha. Ray.” I stood tall. Or as tall as Vaughan’s grip would allow. The woman’s laser-like eyes cut through me, not even bothering with the guy who owned the place. Next my cell phone was thrust in my face. The all too familiar moaning and groaning of Chris and Paul’s porn filled the room.
“This is your phone,” she hissed. “What the hell is this?”
“Why, it’s your son and his bestie having sex.”
Behind me, Chris made a strangled sound. It warmed my cold hard soul.
“Impossible.” The woman swept into the house, her husband hot on her heels. It was almost impressive the way she could constantly look down her nose at everything. You’d think it would give her a headache eventually. Paul came skulking behind them, sticking to the wall, ready to bolt at any moment. As well he might, smarmy bastard. Were it not for Vaughan’s hold, I’d have been tempted to attack him too.
My blood, it boiled. “No, it’s not impossible. You see, Samantha, when two men really love each other and have some lubrica—”
“Lies!” The woman bared her pearlescent teeth. “How dare you.”
“Me? It’s your son that’s been lying, not me. And considering half the damn town apparently knows about him playing for the other team, I highly doubt you were caught completely unaware.”
“Those are nothing but malicious rumors!” One bloodred talon pointed straight at my heart. “You did this somehow.”
“Me?” I scoffed. “Right. So what … I bought a strap-on, dressed up as Paul, and somehow convinced Chris to let me peg him on camera?”
Vaughan huffed out a laugh, his grip on me loosening.
“You’re right. I can totally see that happening. It’s all my fault.” Save me from the woman’s stupidity.
“If you’d only made more of an effort to be attractive for him,” she said. “Done something with your unsightly fat ass, then this never would have happened!”
I lunged, Vaughan again hefting me back, holding on tight. Red colored my world. I was so damn mad I couldn’t even think of a decent comeback. “Oh yeah? Come over here and say that.”
Thin lips strained, the she-demon advanced, taking up the invitation. Only, her son had other priorities. Chris snatched the cell from his mother’s hand, the outburst of violence as far from his usual cool-and-in-control as possible. Face red and eyes bright, he threw it on the ground and proceeded stomping. Once. Twice. Three times. Screen cracked and innards lying bare, the phone had been smashed to smithereens. The homemade porn moaned and groaned no more.
“Good, it’s gone,” said Samantha. “It was obviously a fake anyway. I mean, who could have recorded such a thing?”
“Ooh, good question.” I didn’t even have it in me to be mad about the phone. My ex-fiancé’s furious demented expression was reward enough. Ray’s mouth gaped. Even Samantha seemed mildly stunned. Only Paul remained unmoved. Unsurprised, even.
“You sent it,” I said, realization dawning.
Paul did an awesome deer-in-headlights impersonation. “No, I didn’t.”
“You did. God.” I slowly shook my head, amazed. “You wanted me to know. Why?”
His mouth moved, but he said nothing.
“Were you jealous? Tired of hiding? What?”
“Paul,” Chris fumed. “You wouldn’t.”
The big guy flattened himself against the wall even further. If he could have melded with it, he would have. “I…”
“Tell me you didn’t.”
“Fuck.” Vaughan wiped a hand across his face. “This is unbelievable.”
“Christopher, you told us you outgrew this nonsense,” said Ray, visibly shaking with anger. “That it was just a phase.”
“Oh, god.” Samantha collapsed onto the nearest worn leather lounge chair. “This is an absolute catastrophe. What will everyone think?”
The half-a-head and superior body mass Paul had on Chris didn’t matter. Not even a little. Chris grabbed him by his lapels, shaking him roughly, making his head whip back and forth. “You betrayed me! You fucking betrayed me!”
“I love you,” shouted Paul, a tear trailing down his cheek. “How the hell could I just stand by and watch you marry someone else, even if it was bullshit, huh?”
“I knew it.” My hands curled into tight fists, lungs laboring. I couldn’t get enough air. Anger filled me to overflowing, leaving room for nothing else.
“Yes.” Over on the lounge, Samantha’s eyes lit with glee. “We’ll tell everyone it’s her fault. That she did something.”
“Excellent,” said Ray. “Perfectly believable.”
“What?” I asked, voice low and deadly.
“You love me?” Chris stumbled back a step.
Face taut, Paul followed. “Of course I do.”
The two men stared at each other, lost to the rest of the unfolding drama. Meanwhile, Ray and his wife talked in hushed tones. Vaughan just leaned against the wall, his expression somewhere between shocked to shit and bemused. Fair enough, it wasn’t his life going to hell in a handbasket. It was mine, making it time to take action.
“But you know she means nothing to me,” said Chris. “Nothing.”
“I know.” Tentatively, Paul reached out a hand, cupping Chris’s face for a moment. How tender. How sweet. And really, I’d about had enough. Some part inside of me had cracked wide open.
Fury pounding through my veins, I advanced on the two secret lovers. The fuckers. Chris turned to face me, oblivious as to my intent. Or perhaps not entirely. He tried to raise a hand, but too late. With fingers curled tight and muscles tensed, I swung. My fist drove into his perfect straight nose with awesome aim. Pain resonated up my arm as blood gushed from his nostrils. Man, there was a lot of it. Niagara would have been jealous.
Wow.
Chris yelped, doubling over, hands covering his face. From behind me, Vaughan’s hand descended upon my shoulder. It seemed everywhere people were yelling. Sure, my knuckles hurt. But it was pure satisfaction curving the smile on my face. I slowly stretched out my fingers, flexing them. Painful, though they all worked. Nothing broken. Far out, I’d actually hit someone and I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving than my own fiancé. The room was a whir of action, everyone on their feet. Lots of noise. All I could hear, however, was the pounding of blood behind my ears.
Only one last thing to do before I was truly free.
Such an obnoxiously large diamond ring. Not me at all. I wrestled it off my finger, dropping it at his feet. He looked up, eyes crimson and face a bloody mess. I’d done that. Me. The nothing to which he’d been referring. My most likely demented smile grew even wider.
“Fuck you, Chris. We’re done.”
* * *
I had no idea the police could arrive so fast. It was like the old joke about pornography giving young women unrealistic notions of how long it takes a plumber to arrive. One minute Vaughan sat holding ice to my hand, the next I was facing the long arm of the law.
Boom.
The cop who questioned me turned out to be an old school friend of Vaughan’s (who in this town hadn’t he gone to school with?). Officer Andy seemed sweet and somewhat amused by the whole situation though he hid it well. What with my entire statement consisting of “Hell yeah, I did it,” however, my hopes for remaining at liberty were low.
I hovered in the front doorway, keeping an eye on Chris and Co. Much was ado in the front garden. Samantha had been loudly pushing to charge me with assault while attempting to break the sound barrier via her shrieking.
More than a few neighbors had gathered to watch.
Apparently, according to Samantha, I’d turned into a dangerous criminal out to destroy her family (truthfully, I just wanted to escape them). Also, I apparently made Moby Dick look anorexic and I needed to get a life.
She was probably right about the last one.
Her husband, meanwhile, paced back and forth along the small garden path speaking on his cell. There was a lot of head shaking and mumbling. Off to the side stood Paul and Chris, heads huddled together. The latter’s nose was stuffed full of Kleenex to stem the flow of blood. His once pristine white shirt suit was covered in the stuff. All in all, he looked a ruin. It suited him.
“Here,” said Vaughan, draping a checked button-up shirt over my shoulders. “Put that on.”
“I thought your luggage got delayed.”
“Yeah. I lied. Didn’t want you covering up.”
“Ha.” I smiled. Then I stopped. “I am sorry about all this.”
He shrugged. “Had nothing else planned for tonight. What’re they all up to?”
“Ah, well,” I said. “Ray is on the phone to his lawyer trying to best assess how to destroy me while doing damage control to preserve the good Delaney family name. Samantha, meanwhile, is over there busily trying to push your friend, Officer Andy, into hauling me away in cuffs for assaulting her son.”
“Shit.”
Chris looked up, giving me a truly malevolent look. Hate filled his bloody face. To think I’d been about to marry the asshole. At any rate, no matter the provocation, the chances of him letting me get away with hitting him were nil to none. His pride would demand I be punished.
No, he was just letting me stew with this show of deliberation. Jerk.
To think I’d believed all of his sweetness and light for so long. I really needed to bang my head against a brick wall at the earliest opportunity. Try and knock some sense into myself.
Paul tugged on his arm and they returned to their intense heart-to-heart. They actually made a nice-looking couple, Chris with his dark hair and chiseled face, and Paul with his Nordic good looks. Pity about the general acts of bastardry surrounding the entire affair.
“Why hasn’t he, do you think?” asked Vaughan, studying all the people standing in his front yard.
“I honestly have no idea.”
“Hmm.” He huffed out a breath. “You’ve got shit taste in men, Lydia.”
“Understatement of the year, babe.”
He gave me a half-smile. “How’s your hand doing?”
“Swollen and sore.” I turned it this way and that, letting him see. My knuckles were a delightful chunky blue-black. “But I think it’s just bruised.”
“Matches your cheek.”
“Lovely.”
He trudged down the front steps, hands in his jeans pockets.
I slipped my arms into Vaughan’s shirt, doing my best to cover my womanly assets. Wondered if jail was anything like on TV. Guess I’d soon be finding out. A shame I hadn’t kept the ring. Pawning it to pay for my legal defense would have been beautifully ironic. Whatever happened, I was done being the resident fool for the Delaney family. Dumb was never cute.
“Lydia.” Ray stalked toward me, stopping at the bottom of the couple of stairs leading down off the small front patio. “You’re fired, in case that wasn’t clear.”
Asshat. “Am I, Ray?”
He puffed himself up, preening. Lucky one of the buttons on his shirt didn’t pop. “You punched a work colleague, Lydia. One who just so happens to be the boss’s son. You do the math.”
I nodded. “You’re right, I did. Speaking of which, what do you think my chances would be of suing Chris for fraud and emotional distress? Guess I should talk to a lawyer too.”
“What?”
“Goodness, what a scandal that’ll be. The folks in this town are going to be talking about this mess for a good long time, aren’t they?”
The lines around his mouth looked cavernous in the early evening light. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”
“You really want to start digging into the ethics of this situation? I don’t know if that would be wise for any of us, Ray.”
He growled into the phone for another minute. When he faced me again, he was not a happy camper. “Some sort of settlement might be reached if I was assured that video would never again be seen. It would also involve you keeping your mouth shut about anything to do with my family.”
“I also want a reference reflecting my prior work history as opposed to today’s unfortunate events.”
“All right.”
I tipped my chin. Accepted. “I’d also prefer it if your son chose not to press assault charges.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” With a frown, Ray looked to his wife, not Chris. Big surprise who held the reins in that marriage. Not. His wife was a Harpy Queen of Darkness if I’d ever seen one. The chances of me not getting a criminal record tonight were slim.
At any rate, the Delaney’s had oodles more money than me if it came down to duking it out in court with regards to my emotional distress, et cetera. Best just not to go there. Doubtless, Ray would destroy my reputation any other way he could. The doors of CDA’s social elite would be closed to me now. They’d trash talk me all over town and I’d probably never find work.
However this went down, CDA and I were done. A pity, I’d liked it here. The town had a nice vibe and it was neither too big nor too small. What with the lake and the hills, the town was insanely beautiful. For me, it’d been just right.
Oh, well.
There was always my possible looming stint in jail for punching Chris to look forward to. I should try to be positive. Perhaps I’d just get community service or something, a fine. I wonder if I’d be deemed a flight risk and locked up regardless.
God, when I actually started thinking it over, my options were terrifying. The skin on my arms goose pimpled despite the warm evening air. One small tiny miniscule part of me even regretted punching Chris.
No. Never. I’d reclaimed what little remained of my pride by walloping the douche. My hand throbbed in agreement. Sometimes, violence and mayhem just were the answer.