Big Brother Billionaire (Part Three) (4 page)

What was he doing here? I didn’t bother asking the question too many times. I had no idea, and I didn’t know that he did either. There was no pretense on either of our parts, no thought to hide or pretend we hadn’t recognized each other. No, he got closer, and I got closer, stalking down farther past the pole, to the part of the stage that extended a bit into the crowd.

I kept my eyes on him, unwilling to look away for even a second, frightened that he would vanish. But he didn’t look away, either, not when I dropped to my knees, my legs shaking, and continued to crawl toward him, not when I reached my hand out for him, not when he took it.

It wasn’t until I was enveloped completely in his arms that our eye contact broke, and I didn’t care at that point. I felt safe for the first time in God knew how long.

My first thought, when I felt someone pulling me by my hair, from behind, was that it was the bouncer trying to yank me to safety, away from some man he probably determined to be a threat. I released Marcus only to turn away and tell the bouncer to fuck off, that, thanks, but no thanks, I actually wanted this man’s arms around me, and then I saw that it was Ron.

Ron had me by the hair, and he was hitting my face and my body, blows raining down on me. I couldn’t do anything to block it. I was still reaching out to Marcus, still willing him to envelop me back into his arms.

I couldn’t tell how much damage Ron was doing to me. He had his arms around my throat, and I could hear the chain for the locket pop off.

“You fucking bitch,” he was growling, over and over again. “You fucking bitch.”

And then, there wasn’t any pressure anymore. I could hear Ron shouting, could hear lots of other customers shouting, and hoped somehow that I hadn’t hallucinated Marcus being here. What if I had hugged some random guy with Marcus’ dark hair and eyes? That would make all of this incredibly stupid.

I struggled to raise myself up on an elbow just in time to see Marcus land a devastating combination of blows on Ron’s face. The fight wasn’t fairly matched—my stepbrother was a lot brawnier than my boyfriend—and the bouncers all converged to separate them. Marcus came away easy, and it was a howling, bleeding Ron they had to restrain.

My stepbrother came instantly to my side, as did a number of dancers and Jake, looking decidedly twitchy.

“Parker, what do you need?” Marcus asked calmly, stroking my hair back. My scalp was sore from where Ron had grabbed the handful of my hair. My neck hurt, too, but I just didn’t know how bad it was. “I took this necklace from that man. Is it important to you?”

In Marcus’ hand was the locket Ron had gifted me after the first time he’d been outright violent toward me. It was broken, the heart hanging open, empty.

“Throw that away,” I said faintly, feeling sick and tired. “I need to go home.”

Parker,

I didn’t mean to shock you by just showing up at the club, but I’m glad I was there. You don’t deserve to be treated like that by anyone, but especially not by someone to whom you’ve entrusted your heart. I’ve left instructions with you for filing a restraining order, but hopefully, you won’t be seeing Ron around anymore.

I wanted to be here when you woke up, but I couldn’t be sure that you’d want the same thing. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t break my heart.

Here’s the thing, Parker. I’ll never stop loving you. Do with that what you will. I had to make sure you knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I don’t want you to have any questions about what my intentions are.

Do whatever you think you need to do. I love you too much to try to force you into anything.

I just wish there was a way to convince you that what we have isn’t wrong. I don’t care how many people have tried to tell you that it isn’t right. There isn’t a thing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with love. And we’re not related by blood, just by law. There isn’t a law that would keep me from you. In the end, you can’t listen to people who don’t understand what we have. Close your eyes and ears to them and listen to your heart.

I’ll always be here for you. And I’ll be waiting when you decide that you’re ready to give all of this angst up and just be with me.

I love you.

Sleep was my stalwart ally, the only thing keeping me going throughout my ordeal with Ron.

I only vaguely remembered being loaded in a car and carried into my apartment before being placed into bed.

I slept for ages, for the entire next day and that night, not waking up again until the wee hours the following night.

I stayed still in the bed, not knowing what mood Ron was going to be in with me sleeping until such an hour.

It took a good five minutes to sink in: I was alone in the apartment. Ron wasn’t here.

The details were foggy, but I remembered Ron beating me in front of everyone in the club. That was going to be impossible to get past. How could I go up on stage again after that?

Then, I remembered Marcus and sat straight up in the bed.

It hadn’t been a smart move; my head was woozy from the licks I’d taken from Ron, and it didn’t help that I’d been lying down for so long.

But Marcus had been there. I remembered. It hadn’t been a dream, or a fantasy to get me through my sad reality. Marcus had really been there. He’d punched Ron out; he’d carried me from the club; he’d taken me home.

Why wasn’t he here?

I got out of bed, teetering ever so slightly, and padded around the apartment. It had been so long since I’d been alone that it was foreign. Ron had been a constant shadow for the longest time after the whole letter incident. I felt like I could breathe again.

I used the bathroom and then glanced at my reflection in the mirror and gasped. I had two black eyes and nasty purple bruises shaped like fingers around my throat. Ron had really done a number on me this time. There wasn’t enough makeup in the world to cover this up. I was going to have to sit out from performing at the club and let my wounds heal.

Even as I thought that, I was pulled in two directions. I didn’t want to go back to the club. All my coworkers had seen me take a beating from my boyfriend. I was sure there would be customers who would never forget it, either—the day a man put Parker, the snob, in her place, as if I deserved it. Could I really go back to that?

The other part of me new that, eventually, rent would be due, and I didn’t have any money. Everything I’d socked away, Ron had ferreted out. I supposed I could pawn some of the furnishings and clothing I’d amassed. I certainly wouldn’t be needing Ron’s clothes anymore. But that just wasn’t sustainable. I needed to earn money. I needed to work. I needed that club. It meant everything to me. It was the only support system I’d had in so long. I couldn’t leave it now, even after everything that had happened.

But where was Marcus? That was my other support, my rock, my savior.

My love. My love, yes. And my stepbrother.

Where had he gone?

I turned on every switch and lamp in the apartment until it was bright as day in there, as if illuminating the pathetically small space would show me Marcus’ whereabouts. I actually thought he might be hiding somewhere, checking in the pantry, the cupboards, behind the couch, beneath the bed.

Nothing.

Nothing except a letter.

My first instinct—and one I would have for longer than I cared to admit—was to snatch it up and press it against my chest, vowing to hide it away before Ron caught wind of it. I had to remind myself that Ron wasn’t here, that he was rotting in some drunk tank somewhere, or that maybe he was even in a proper jail cell. That’s how much trust I placed in Marcus. Marcus would see to it that I’d never see Ron again…I hoped.

I opened the letter and read it immediately. Marcus apologized for just showing up at the club like that, left a separate piece of paper detailing how to file a restraining order and get a lawyer, and left a thick wad of cash that he said he’d pulled out of Ron’s pockets, figuring it shouldn’t be there. This was good. This was money I could use during my time off from work. I wouldn’t have to go back with a busted up face.

And yet part of me ached. Marcus had left because he didn’t think I’d want him here. I’d done a hell of a job driving him away from me, building an emotional moat around myself. I kind of wished he was here, just so I could feel his arms around me. I could almost imagine the comforting weight of them, so different from Ron’s. It had been so good to be back in Marcus’ arms, for however briefly, and in spite of the violent consequences.

In the rest of the letter, Marcus reminded me that he loved me and would always be there when I decided that I was ready to accept the love we could share between each other.

I almost went to get some stationary right then and there to fire off a quick reply:
I’m ready. Come back to Miami and get me.

But instead, I stopped. After what had happened with Ron, I knew that I was nowhere near ready to be with anyone else, even someone I valued as highly as Marcus. I owed everything to Marcus. He had, miraculously, swooped in and saved me from Ron, simply by showing back up in my life. That was something I’d never forget, but now I needed to do something for me.

I had to save myself.

This was my life. This was the life I had chosen. It may have felt at first like the wind simply blew me from Los Angeles to Miami. I might have seemed like I tumbled into Ron’s arms, but they were all choices that I had made. And I needed to own them. I needed to accept that I’d made them, assess what had made me do so, and figure out what I needed to do to set my life back on course.

There were things I didn’t learn until later—much later—about that night, about the man who had terrorized my existence for so long before finally losing his shit, about Marcus being there at the club.

Marcus had been worried that I hadn’t responded to his letter, which was silly because he’d written in it that he wouldn’t be contacting me anymore. He thought that would’ve at least elicited a “finally” letter from me, or at least some reaction, but all he’d gotten were crickets. He vacillated from scenario to scenario: I was relieved, I was angry, I was shocked, or I was devastated. He didn’t know if he should give me the space I’d requested in my last correspondence, or if he should come see if I was all right.

Marcus, being Marcus—that is, emotional and with too much money to know what to do with—hired a private detective to assess the situation for him. So for the last part of my relationship with Ron—the truly ugly part of it—I’d been tailed by a professional sneak, recording the names that Ron called me, the times he got physical with me, the way he controlled my every move, the places we went together.

That’s how Marcus found out what I did for a living, and how he made the decision to come see with his own eyes just how terrible my life was.

He’d knocked the stuffing out of Ron, especially with the knowledge of all the freebies the detective had slipped his way.

As it turned out, Ron wasn’t a rich heir with loads of money in properties around the globe. His name wasn’t even Ron. He was a professional swindler, charming and charismatic, able to talk himself in and out of situations, and an outright sociopath. He was a felon, had served time for crimes similar to the ones he committed against me, and was wanted for several more. He changed his name and appearance from time to time when he wanted a fresh start—or fresh meat. Much later in life, many years from the Parker who was sitting in her empty apartment with two black eyes, I’d see a combination of photos of all of Ron’s various identities. He could sport a mustache, muttonchops, a full beard, a shaved head, and that grating man bun equally as well. You had to give the asshole some credit. He really knew how to make a change in his life and still look good doing it.

But those eyes never changed. He couldn’t do a thing to alter that piercing stare, the one that saw his victims’ various weaknesses and knew just what he needed to do to exploit them.

I’d been lost, lonely, eager for companionship and attention and love. I’d practically given myself to him, body and soul, all for his taking.

I needed to be stronger than that. I needed to shore up my defenses and do everything in my power to never be a victim again.

My first step was to jot off a quick letter to Marcus, but not the one I actually wanted to write.

There aren’t words to tell you how grateful I am for you showing up in my life when you did
, I wrote,
so I’ll just say thank you. You saved my life. I had been in a bad place when you found me, and you’re the one who gave me a push back toward the right direction.

Here’s the thing, though. I need to go on my own journey, make sure I can get myself to where I need to be. Thinking of you gives me the strength to find that place, but I can’t be with you until I can fully accept myself, and I have to find the person I want to be first.

Part of it felt like punishment, and I wanted to cry out at how unfair it was. Hadn’t I been punished enough by the infliction of Ron in my life? I hadn’t asked for that. I hadn’t asked for him to hit me, to abuse me, to control my life from the inside out. Why couldn’t I run into Marcus’ open arms and make everything better?

The logical part of my brain, the portion that had clicked back into action with the removal of Ron from the picture, knew that I needed time and space to be myself. As a girl getting ready to enter her senior year in high school, back in Los Angeles, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. I hinged all of my hopes on Marcus when I met him. It was a beautiful dream, and a beautiful period of my life, but I realized that the idea that I needed Marcus in order to have my life play out the way I wanted was counterintuitive.

I needed to save myself. I needed to know myself. And I needed to figure it all out by myself.

There were several orders of business I needed to address first, however.

I took Marcus’ advice and hired a lawyer to deal with the restraining order, and keeping Ron—or whatever his real name was—away from me for good. Happily, after Marcus had left the club with me that night, the bouncers had held Ron long enough for Jake to call the cops. That was how they found out he was wanted in several states for various crimes, mostly against women. Ron was looking at a long and busy stint in jail ahead of him.

If I felt like being dramatic, I would’ve set fire to my apartment and all of its contents. But since I didn’t own the apartment—and the fact that it didn’t really make sense to ruin so many nice items—I sold off the accessories and furniture pieces that reminded me of Ron.

The apartment that was the result of my spring cleaning, so to speak, was what I thought a nun’s cell would look like. Ron had been the one to encourage me to fill this place up with décor and furniture. I’d never needed much more than a bed and a couch.

I tried to search inside of myself and figure out where my tastes ranged, as I’d apparently been dependent on other people to tell me what I liked.

With the money I’d gotten from selling all of the old stuff in the house—plus what Marcus had given me—I gradually started rebuilding my aesthetic life along with my emotional one.

It might’ve seemed stupid—or shallow—but the process was one of the biggest catalysts to me moving past everything that had happened. It was a great way to examine myself closely, to ask myself to form my own opinions on things for once.

I found I appreciated clean and modern décor—clean lines, no frills, functional and comfortable, beautiful—to everything else. To me, that meant I liked to embrace things that were uncomplicated, that showed you exactly what they were at first glance. I wanted to know what I was getting and that it would serve its purpose immediately.

After my apartment was cleaned, refurbished, and arranged to my liking, I looked deeper: What did I want out of my life?

Parker at eighteen years old would’ve said something along the lines of “marrying Marcus and traveling the world with him.” I’d always wanted to travel, but why was it contingent on Marcus? Why couldn’t I rely on myself to see some of these dreams through?