Devil May Care: Boxed Set (142 page)

The ride home took forever. I couldn’t stop praying and worrying. My chest hurt. My stomach ached. My palms were sweaty. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Even praying didn’t make me feel better, even though I tried hard.

When we finally arrived home, I balked. “The hospital…”

“Get out. I’m going by myself.”

What? He couldn’t be serious!

“Please, Dad. I really want—”

“Get out of the car, April.”

“But—”

“Are you that selfish?” he exploded. “You’re keeping me here when I could already be on my way to her.”

Meekly, I climbed out of the car. Dad didn’t even give me the chance to get the luggage out of the car. He just took off.

Dazed, I watched his car until it disappeared from sight. My mind was whirling, and I had to force myself to walk to enter the house. It was oddly quiet and felt empty.

Jacqueline closed the door for me. “April, how are you?”

“Fine, I guess,” I muttered. “Where is everyone?”

“Wes is at work, and the boys are at youth group.”

“Oh. Right.” Great. So it was just Jacqueline, Yvonne, Penelope, and me.

Feeling like I was in a fog, at a loss, I wandered through the house, more than a little distraught. I needed a distraction, but I wasn’t in the cleaning mood. Penelope. The baby. Maybe holding her would help.

It took me a little bit to find Yvonne and Penelope. They were in the parlor. They seemed happy enough, and I hesitated in the doorway. I wanted to hold Penelope, at least I thought I did, but Yvonne’s expression on her face, it was a little strange. It was like she was in her own little world. And like she was almost pleased.

Just then, Yvonne glanced up. “April. How was the ball?”

“Fine.” I stayed in the doorway. Yvonne and I had never interacted too much before. She was normally chasing after the boys, trying to get them to behave. Now she was all about Penelope. Granted, the boys were older now, and they knew how to behave, but seeing her with Penelope angered me. And right now, I would rather be angry with her than worried sick over my mom.

Although that wasn’t quite happening.

“Your father is worried about you. Thinks you need to learn your place.”

I needed to learn my place? No, that was Yvonne. She couldn’t accept what had happened. She had been the one to lose a child. Yes, that was terrible and tragic, but to take Mom’s baby away, to raise her as her own…

“I can help you with that,” Yvonne continued.

“Help with what?”

“Teaching you your place.”

Why? Because you think my mom isn’t a good enough parent to teach me lessons by herself?

Best to ignore her. “Can I hold Penelope?” Holding out my hands, I approached them.

Yvonne held the baby tighter. “She’s so comfortable right now.”

Seriously? She was refusing to let me touch Penelope?

I jerked around and left the room, so angry I wanted to hit something. Beneath the anger, worry and fear welled up. With each step I climbed, I imagined Mom falling down them, slamming her back, hitting her head, over and over again. The stairs were high and narrow. How badly hurt was she? It had to have been a serious fall in order to warrant going to the emergency room.

I walked past my room and entered Wes’s instead. I curled up on his bed. It smelled like him, and it made me feel safe. For a moment, my emotions fled, and I felt better.

But then my phone rang, piercing the silence, and everything came rushing back. I fumbled to grab my phone and frowned at the unfamiliar number on the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“April? How are you?”

“Mom? Are you all right?”

“How are you?” Mom repeated. She sounded frantic.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Are you—”

“You’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Are you home?”

“Yes. Mom, stop. You’re scaring me. What about you?”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” My mom sounded so beside herself that I wanted to cry.

“Yes, Mom. I swear I’m all right.” I could barely get a word in with all of her questions. “I’m home. I’m fine.”

“Good. That’s good.” Mom seemed to melt, not so frantic and worried. Why wasn’t she concerned about herself?

“What happened, Mom? Why were you even upstairs to begin with?”

Mom had a bad knee, and she hardly ever went upstairs. Usually only to talk to me. I thought back to the last time she came upstairs. I thought it was the morning of Wes’s special lunch. She’d reminded me that I needed to go get my paycheck from work. The stairs were too much for her knee, so I almost always went down to see her rather than her trekking all the way up to me.

“April, I love you,” was all she said. “I can’t talk.”

And she hung up.

I stared at my phone. I wasn’t stupid. It was so easy to piece all together. As I figured out what happened, tears dripped from my eyes, and I suddenly understood. My mom must have fallen on purpose because Wes told her I was in trouble.

Overwhelmed by guilt, I collapsed into Wes’s pillows and sobbed as hard as I could.

Wes

Work was going well. I enjoyed it. It gave me a sense of purpose, something my life had lacked for so long. It felt good to work with my hands, and it felt nice to feel smart for once.

“You’ve been working with some kind of crazy vigor,” Mickey commented. “Getting things done twice as fast, taking up even more projects and requests. It’s great. Keep it up. Just don’t burn out, you hear?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t. I can handle it.” I played it off, but, internally, I knew I had to keep going, keep pushing myself. I was saving up as much as I could so I could share with April. I had a feeling she wouldn’t want my money, but she was going to get it anyhow. She needed it more than I did. I was doing this for her. And myself. We both needed to get the hell away from here.

Building her this emergency fund felt like the only productive thing I could do to stop me from throttling Walter in his sleep. After I got off the phone with April, I was so tempted to wrap my hands around his throat. I was that angry. Picking out a college was one thing, but to pick out a husband who would abuse her like Walter had abused her over the years? That was crossing the line. The only thing that saved Walter was that I had been distracted by P and P after I told Roslyn what her ass of a husband had in store for their daughter, and then I had been the one to find Roslyn at the end of the stairs. I had been the one to take charge, to call for an ambulance. Yvonne had been dealing with the baby, I guessed. P and P were getting ready to leave for youth group, and Jacqueline…I wasn’t sure where she was. Useless. She could never be counted on for anything. But as much as I resented her, I hated Yvonne almost as much as I hated Walter. She was a class A bitch, and she almost painted Jacqueline in a good light, which was saying something.

So, here I was, working extra hours just so I wouldn’t have to go the house. I would’ve stayed by Roslyn’s side in the hospital as a proxy for April, but since I wasn’t family, they wouldn’t let me stay, not even after I worked up the nerve to say I was her step-son. They probably thought I was lying. People tended to take one look at me and my ripped and stained clothes and my leather jacket and not believe me. Whatever. I didn’t care what they thought.

I took off for work straight from the hospital. I wasn’t sure when April and Walter would be getting back. Hell, for all I knew she could be returning with a wedding ring on. The thought made me furious. I should’ve paid more attention whenever the whole Virgin Ball or whatever it was called had been brought up, but I just couldn’t deal with it. Not the idea behind it, not that Walter was dragging her to it.

Although it did give me delicious chills that headed straight to my cock every time I thought about what we had done while she wore her dress, that we had slept together, that she wasn’t a virgin or pure for that ball.

But that would be it. A one-time thing. I knew it. I kinda accepted it. I also knew that, realistically, no matter how much I wanted to run away with April, we couldn’t. Not even if she wanted to too. It would ruin her life. She had dreams to fulfill and so much potential. Walter shouldn’t stand in the way of it, but then again, neither should I.

And the difference between us was that I would step aside and let her go, let her grow, let her become the woman she wanted to be. I didn’t want to force her to come along with me. Hell, I didn’t want her to choose me. I was bad news. Yeah, so I had a job, but it wasn’t enough to be able to support us both long term. She deserved a better guy, a better life.

The thought of her leaving me, though, was killing me.

When I did make it back to the house, I was shocked to find April there. And not only here when she should be at the hospital, but here in my room, on my bed. I closed my bedroom door, shrugged out of my leather jacket, letting it fall to the ground, crossed over to her in three long strides, and pulled her into my arms. I had to smell like grease and sweat and oil, but she didn’t pull away. She clung to me, holding me so tight, and I didn’t want to let her go. I rubbed her back and murmured into her ear. I wasn’t even sure what I was saying. I just was trying to get her to calm down, to stop crying.

As soon as she pulled back, I wiped her tears away. I wanted to ask why she was here, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that.

“Wes…”

The way she said my name, it made my heart break.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

She embraced me tightly again. “No.” She shook her head against my chest.

“Not even a ride to the hospital?” I offered. No way would she be able to drive herself there, not with her being so worked up.

She shook her head again. “I can’t.” She sniffed and pulled back enough to wipe her nose.

“Because he doesn’t want you there,” I growled.

“Don’t. Let’s just not talk, okay?”

So we didn’t talk. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t do anything. We just clung to each other like we were each other’s anchors. And maybe we were. Maybe we were brought together for a reason. Maybe they weren’t completely wrong about God and his big plan and all of that.

Because I felt better when I was around her. I felt like I could be a better person. Like I had potential too. Like I wasn’t a loser no one wanted to raise. Like I wasn’t messed up or scarred. Like I had worth.

And as I held her, it wasn’t anything sexy or sensual. But it was still intimate. It was bonding us. I recognized it, and it terrified me. We were step-siblings. Her father was a controlling asshole. She had faith. I didn’t. There were so many reasons why we shouldn’t be together.

And I wanted to give them all the finger. I liked who I was when I was around her, laughing and joking and teasing. I felt free to be me. For so long, I had put up walls, putting on acts and shows for the other kids at school, trying to either fit in or be ignored depending on if I gave a fuck about trying to make friends or figuring I was better off alone. With her, it was real. All of it.

That night, we ended up sleeping together. Not having sex. Just laid in my bed all night long, holding each other. It was amazing. My bed was kinda small for us both, so we had to cuddle. Now, I wasn’t normally much of a cuddler, but with April, it felt right.

Maybe it was because we feel asleep early, or maybe it was because we knew we couldn’t get caught, we both woke up really early. April woke first, and she woke me with a kiss on my cheek. When I opened my eyes, she kissed my lips. She put her tongue in my mouth, and I knew I had only fooled myself by thinking our sleeping together was only a one-time deal.

Turned out, it wasn’t just a two-time deal with either. That night, April came to my room, and when she closed and locked the door behind her, I knew I was in for it. There was a fire burning in her eyes, a fire I had given her the kindle for, and I stroked the flames all night long.

The next night, I went to her. I was frustrated that Lizzy wouldn’t keep away from me at school. Plus Walter and Yvonne had started up again with their passive aggressive shit over dinner, and I had had it.

And April seemed just as frustrated. Walter was keeping her from visiting her mom, and even though I told April repeatedly that I would take her, she refused to go. It made me hate the man all the more that he had instilled so much fear in her that she was too afraid to visit her mom in the hospital because he might find out that she had sneaked behind his back.

Our frustrations boiled over into rough sex. I pulled on her hair to deepen our kisses, and I thrust hard and fast and deep, and she responded by bucking her hips against me in rhythm with my wild lunges and scratching her nails down my back. When she slapped my ass hard, I lost control and came. But I wasn’t done with her that night, and we ended up having another two rounds.

At this rate, I needed more condoms.

The next night, though, it was different. April closed the door behind her, and we talked about what we wanted out of life, if the world was perfect. And it was relaxing and fun and deep and intense, and I wasn’t sure who kissed who first, but we didn’t rush. We took our time. We were gentle and tender, and…it was almost…it was almost love making.

I’d fucked a fair amount of girls before April. I had sex with a few, meaning that it wasn’t just for the point of coming. But this time, it was so different from any of the other times. It was more of a connection almost. I held April the rest of the night, curled up against her, and it was perfect.

It was love making.

And it freaked me out, so the next night, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it again. And April was more tense too, so I knew the perfect solution.

I went down on her, eating out her delicious pussy. She loved it. There weren’t a lot of things I could do better than eating out a girl, plus it helped to relax her.

No matter what we did—whether I was eating her out or it was rough sex, or love making—all of it was hot as fuck. Which was amazing and mind blowing.

But it also made the thought of leaving her harder and harder.

On the other hand, it also clearly gave April some much needed control over her life.

While all of this was going on, the rest of my life wasn’t quite so hot, and most of it stemmed from the accident. I was haunted by visions of Roslyn’s body on the stairs, her shoulder dislocated, blood dripping from her mouth. I would remember the look on her face when I first found her and told her what was happening to April, and that was when I knew Roslyn was a good woman trapped in a vile household. She needed her daughter, and her daughter needed her. I still couldn’t believe how manipulative Walter was, that he wouldn’t let April see Roslyn. He knew just what to say to keep control of April, to trap her with guilt, always saying Roslyn needed her rest and didn’t need anymore stress on her plate.

As for Jacqueline, she kept pressing me about whether or not I got myself a car, and I kept on lying to her even though it was getting harder and harder to. I was claiming I was working on a fixer upper at work, and I was either walking, catching rides from April or friends, or taking public transportation.

Walter, the scumbag, made my skin crawl every time I saw him, but I kept tabs on him as best as I could. He was leaving the house more and more frequently, and no one, not Jacqueline or Yvonne, would tell any of us where he was going, and somehow, I doubted he was running off all the time to see Roslyn.

Just what was he up to?