CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Leighton
I never realized how dark it is at night, especially out in the country, until I’m stuck in it. At my childhood home, I never went outside at night by myself. I wasn’t one of those kids who liked to catch lightening bugs. The dark has always scared me. Usually when I’m at home with Holden, we’re inside or we’re outside together. I have to admit I’m spooked to be waiting on him. I can hear all the sounds of the wilderness and my imagination starts running wild. Nobody escaped from jail recently, did they? Or maybe there’s some weird serial killer in the woods looking for their next victim.
“You’re prime pickin’ for them if they are, Leighton,” I whisper as I turn the car back on, turn up the radio, and hope to drown out the sound of my own thoughts. Hoping like hell Sam Hunt can lure me into a sense of safety, I sing along to every song I know.
I freeze when I see headlights in the distance. Glancing at the clock, I know Holden hasn’t had time to make it over here, not unless he was speeding and had blue lights flashing. Since I see no flashing lights, I’m pretty positive this is someone else, and immediately I’m nervous. I don’t know where these nerves come from, I’m unsure why my stomach is tightening and I get a thickening in my throat. I’m working myself up to a damn panic attack. Gripping my steering wheel, I hope like hell they’re gonna drive right by, but they don’t. Instead they park in front of me, and as the person gets out, my breath catches. It’s the last person I want to see, the last person I expect to see. My dad.
He’s walking to the car, the same way he does everything else, without a care in the world. I reach down to make sure the locks are engaged and try to tell myself he wouldn’t hurt his own daughter. I’m aware of how much a lie that is, though. He’s tough. He sent me to jail once and I’m sure he can make it where nobody would ever be able to find my body, if he chose to do so.
“You need help, girl?” he calls out as he makes his way over to me.
I’ve rolled my window down just enough to hear him. “No, my husband is on his way.”
He rolls his eyes, putting his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Your husband?”
“Yeah, I know you heard we got married. It’s been the talk of the town since it happened.”
Once he reaches the driver’s side door, he puts his hands on the top of the car and leans down. For the first time in over a year, I get a good look at his face. Jefferson Strather has aged years in that time. Dad’s always been a good-looking guy, it’s where Brooks got his looks from, and he’s always used it to his advantage. But from where I’m sitting, those looks are gone. He’s got lines on his face, and a deadness to his gaze. “I can help you, I’m your dad.”
I’ve been taken in by that excuse so many times I can’t even laugh about it anymore. Most girls would call their dad, they’d call him and ask him to come help and nothing would be expected in return. Not mine. He’d want me to do something to hurt Holden, and I won’t do that. Lately I’ve been starting to think of our marriage as real. I’ve been feeling things for him, I’ve never felt before. Even if I’m unsure of it, I know I’ll never betray him for my dad. “I don’t need it; my husband will be here in a few minutes.”
That pisses him off.
“As fucking stuck up as your mother. Never wanting to take the help that’s thrown your way. You’ve always been like her, never wanted to have anything to do with me,” he sneers.
My hands shake, so I keep them on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly so he can’t see in the dim lights of the dashboard. “Stop talking about her like that.”
“You never knew her, Leighton. Why does it bother you how I talk about her?”
I’ve never talked back to him, not really, and I’ve never expressed how I feel when it comes to what he’s said to me. I’m nervous, scared as hell he’s going to strike out at me before Holden can get here, but I also know I’m sick to death of not standing up for myself. “Because she’s not here to defend herself.”
“That’s right, she’s not, and you know why?”
Setting my jaw, I’m determined not to rise to his bait. He does this to me every time.
“Because of you Leighton, she couldn’t deal because of you. You and Brooks were such bad kids she had to go away, and she never came back. How do you even live with yourself, little girl? Don’t you have any guilt that you broke up a happy family?”
All my life I’ve heard this, and I’ve tried to be a good daughter – I have. I’ve done everything this man and my grandfather have asked me to do. Purposely I’ve never caused any trouble. The only things I’ve ever done that went against their wishes or surprised the hell out of them was go to college one semester and marry Holden. I’ll never take any of that back either, I swear to God I’ll never take it back. Marrying Holden was the best decision I ever made. Listening to this man, I’m reminded quickly of why I wanted to get out so badly.
“It wasn’t me,” I fight back, feeling the backbone Holden’s helped me find. In the time we’ve been together he’s shown me how to stand up for myself, how to not back down when I know I’m right. “It couldn’t have been me,” I argue. “I found her diary, Dad, and my baby book. Before I left for Birmingham. She wanted us. She loved us. What she didn’t love was how you treated her. What she wanted more than me was to get out from under your thumb and the stigma of being a part of the family. If anything, you snuffed her out.”
“You didn’t know her!” he screams at me.
“Because you ran her off before I got a chance to!” I scream back at him. Tears are pooling behind my lids because this is what happens when I get upset. My emotions come out, and I cry. “If anyone is to blame for the things that have happened to our family, it’s you. Brooks is in jail because you didn’t raise him to respect authority and to care about anyone other than himself. Grandpa is frail and sick because you didn’t think it was worth it to make sure he saw doctors and have good food on a regular basis. I’m gone because you couldn’t keep your fists off me. Look around you, Jefferson.” I call him by his first name, hoping it strikes a blow. When I see that it does, I’m happy and I try not to realize how much that makes me like him. “You’re alone because you’re a miserable excuse for a human being, and you have no one to blame for that but yourself.”
I’m breathing heavily, like I’ve run a marathon. I’ve never stood up to him like this before, never felt like I had the courage to. This is what Holden does for me, this is the woman he makes me.
He rages loudly, shouting as he tries to open my door. The handle doesn’t allow him too, because I’ve locked it. Immediately I’m trying to calculate how far I can go on a blown tire, how badly I’ll hurt my car, and maybe how much time I have to stall until Holden can get here. It’s then I see more headlights in the distance of my rearview. I pray to God it’s Holden.
“You wait until they pass by. Once they do, I’m going to show you what happens to smart mouth little bitches like you.”
I shiver and mentally start taking inventory of what’s in this car. What can I use as a weapon? What can I defend myself with? He’s bigger than me, and I know he’ll take me easily if he wants to. When the lights pull in behind me, I thank God, and I want to cry because I’m so relieved.
“Can I help you, Jefferson?”
I hear my husband’s voice and I want to shout a hallelujah to the sky.
“Just stopping to see if my daughter needed any help. Noticed she was parked on the side of the road as I drove by.” Dad sticks his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his boots.
“I suggest you put your hands where I can see them unless you want me to fire a warning shot.”
“You’d shoot an unarmed man, officer?” Dad cajoles him, in the snarky way he hates for others to do to him.
“I’d shoot any man I thought would hurt me or mine, and what’s in that car is mine, make no mistake about it.”
I’m looking back in my rearview, seeing Holden with a gun trained on my dad. Holden’s hand doesn’t waver, it doesn’t shake, and he doesn’t look at all scared by the man standing in front of him.
“I think you should leave.”
Dad takes one look at him, and then another look at me before he holds his hands up in mock surrender. He backs away to his truck, gets in, and kicks up gravel and dust as he leaves. Holden and I both wait a good five minutes before he holsters his gun, has me unlock the doors, and gets me out of the car.
“Are you okay?” He puts his arms out and I collapse into them.
Since the day I left home, I’ve been scared to death I would come face-to-face with my dad, and I never wanted it to be on a dimly lit backroad with no one around to help me. “I’m good now. He scared me.”
Using his hands, he cups my jaw, tilting my face up so he can look at me. “What did he say to you? Did he threaten you?”
Right now, all I want is to go home and sleep in his arms, forget what’s turned into a shitty night, but I know he won’t let me. “It’s the same old stuff he always says to me. I made Mom leave, and I’m a horrible person. It just upsets me. I think more than anything, he thinks I’ve told people about what he’s doing.”
That’s a spot of contention between us; I refuse to talk about my dad’s operation with Holden. I guess I feel like I’m protecting Holden for once. If he doesn’t know, he can’t be hurt. I realize it’s also flawed logic, because what he doesn’t know could probably kill him, but I have to do what I see as best.
“C’mon, let’s get you in the truck and lock up the car. I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
I agree, I hate being out in the open as well, and I notice he’s taken his gun back out. I let him drag me away from the car and put me in his truck. Before he closes the door, he pulls me close. “There’s another small gun in the console. Anything happens, take it out and fire it. Don’t ask questions, those can come later. This place has got me feeling on edge.”
It has me feeling on edge too, but I don’t say anything. I only nod, trying to look out into the darkness as he makes his way back to my car. I watch as he gets my purse and keys out. Locking it up, he jogs back to his truck and quickly gets in.
Once we’re both inside the cab, I can breathe again. “Let’s go home.” I entwine his fingers with mine, as he heads for our house.
Neither one of us talk anymore about what happened, but when we go to bed, I migrate over to his side and fall asleep with his arms wrapped tightly around me. For once I’m not sure if it’s for his sake, or mine.