Vicious Carousel (11 page)

Right now, she felt torn between wanting to burn down the world and bury herself in a hole. She understood, logically, that those feelings, too, would pass. But for now, her emotions were freely pinballing around inside her, no longer restrained.

“All I’m asking is that you try,” Tilly said.

Betsy nodded.

Tilly left her alone for a few minutes to go talk to the men in the kitchen. Betsy didn’t turn when she heard them walk down the hall, followed by the sound of a bedroom door opening. The office, if she had to guess. She really hadn’t had a tour of their house.

Not that she’d been in much of a mental or physical condition to get one.

Tilly’s words still rang through her mind. When she thought back to her previous relationships, she’d guarded herself. Smartly, yes, in retrospect. Still, back then, she’d willingly stepped onto and off of a very slow-moving carousel filled with all the sweet and pretty—and safe, and
boring
—characters one would expect of such a ride.

Nothing with teeth that could bite, or claws that could rend.

Nothing like the monster she’d escaped from.

A kind of functional numbness had set in since she’d limped out the door of that apartment Saturday night. Instinctively, she wanted to cry, to scream, to rage, and yet she stared down at those emotions from some higher vantage point, as if looking at a different person.

She
was a different person.

Damn sure wasn’t who she thought she was.

The others returned a few minutes later. “Well, I think I can work that thing,” Tilly joked as she reached for her computer bag and pulled her laptop out. “I’ll make sure I can access the Internet and printer while they’re still here, though.”

“Do you need anything else before we get our showers?” Kenny asked Betsy.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Tilly had her laptop open and booting up. “They’re good men,” Tilly said, still in that non-snarky tone Betsy knew she’d need to get used to.

She suspected this was the real Tilly, the one Landry and Cris got to see, or some of her closest friends, but a side of her that Betsy had never experienced before this.

The Tilly she knew could be prickly, frank, snarky, and while never deliberately mean and on the offensive without damn good provocation, was someone who never hesitated to throw herself to the frontlines of the battle in defense of the people and friends she considered her responsibility.

“Yeah,” Betsy said. “I feel badly I’m putting them out.”

Tilly looked at her. “Stop. Now. We get it. I’m not trying to be a bitch, but we understand you feel badly about this. The next step is you need to move forward and not wallow. Show them your gratitude by kicking ass and taking names.”

“Is that your motivational speech?”

“Yeah, and I think it still needs some work.” She smiled. “Look, I’m not saying this is going to be easy. At all. I feel more than a little guilty that I didn’t push you harder to wait to get involved with that guy. I feel badly that I didn’t personally start looking into him sooner the way Tony did later on. I feel badly that I didn’t try to reach out to you more often after you ended up with the guy. I feel damned guilty that I could see the signs of abuse there and I didn’t step in a lot sooner and say whoa, what the fuck.”

Tilly tapped on her keyboard for a moment. “That night at the club, when Loren gave you our numbers, she stepped outside and called me immediately before she did it. Unfortunately, by the time I got my ass in gear and got moving to get over to the club, you two had already left. Loren said that when she went to go into the bathroom, Jack had stepped forward to stop her and she told him if he didn’t get the fuck out of her way, he’d wish he had.”

Betsy’s heart thumped. “I didn’t know.”

“I’m sure he didn’t tell you. But Loren said it wasn’t long after that he hustled you out of there.”

That was exactly what had happened. At the time, Betsy hadn’t known why. He’d asked her if Loren had said anything to her while she was in the bathroom, and she’d flat-out lied and said she’d heard someone come in and wash their hands, but hadn’t spoken to them.

All the while, thinking about the slip of paper hiding in her bra. She hadn’t had her purse with her. Jack had put her license in his wallet for the evening. He’d asked to see her hands when she’d walked out, and she thanked god she’d thought to hide the paper.

When she’d stripped upon returning to the apartment, yes, Jack had paid more attention than usual, and then his demeanor changed, going back to normal once she was naked.

She’d quickly let that incident slip from her mind. Mostly so she didn’t risk him thinking something had happened once he’d appeared satisfied that it hadn’t.

“So,” Tilly said, “when you start thinking you have this huge burden of guilt for what’s happening now, dump it. There are several of us shouldering our own burdens of guilt that you’re in this position. No, we can’t police everyone. We’re not a nanny state, for chrissake. People are adults and we can’t stop every bad decision out there. But several of us comparing notes realized too late, unfortunately, that we should have stepped in sooner. If nothing else, to get you alone, speak with you, and make sure you were okay. And we failed you as friends. And for that,
we
feel guilty.”

She’d had no idea. Betsy had assumed she was totally alone now. Well, before Saturday night. She’d assumed once Jack had cut her parents out of the picture that it was her against…well, everyone. Because Jack had sworn that if she tried to leave him, he’d ruin her, turn any- and everyone against her.

Then Loren had slipped her their phone numbers.

Never would she have dreamed that maybe everyone was already against
him
.

“This is how today will go,” Tilly said. “Finish eating. I’m going to make sure I can print something and access the Internet before they leave. We’re going to get you a shower and get you dressed and then we’re going to go see Ted Collins at his office to talk to him for a little while. I’m also taking you shopping. Back here, work on your resume, and then comes the hard part.”

That
all
sounded hard right at that moment. “The hard part?”

She looked grim. “We’re going to track down your parents, and you’re going to let me talk to them.”

Cold fear filled her. “My parents?”

Tilly set her laptop on the coffee table and turned to her. “You haven’t actually talked to your parents, have you?”

She shook her head.

“When and what was your last contact with them?”

“I sent them a Christmas card, but that was before Jack talked to them that night.”

“You mean the phone call you aren’t even sure really happened?”

“But I was right there when he called them!”

“He called someone, but you don’t know who. He could have called his own fucking voicemail, for all you know. Or he could have faked making a call.”

Betsy wasn’t sure if her thrumming pulse was from fear or hope.

“Maybe he did call them,” Tilly continued. “Maybe he called them and sent them pictures. Maybe he didn’t. But do you want to spend the rest of your life not knowing for sure?”

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

“Did they ever send you any mail?”

“No. I sent them my new address, too.”

“Sent them how?”

“I mailed them a card.”

“
You
mailed them a card?”

“Yeah, I gave…” Her voice trailed off.

Tilly grimly nodded. “You gave it to him and he supposedly mailed it for you.”

Heat filled her face. She nodded.

“Right. Here’s what I’m going to hope is the best-case scenario. That we contact your parents today and they are overjoyed to hear from their missing daughter, whom they were worried might have fallen off the face of the damned planet. Second-best-case is that Jack told them you didn’t want anything to do with them and they let it go. Worst-case is he did send them pictures and talked to them. But somehow, I doubt he did that.”

“Why?”

“Because he would have been risking your parents calling the cops to do a welfare check. I know if I had a daughter and some douche called me and told me what Jack supposedly told your parents, as soon as I hung up the goddamned phone, I’d be calling the cops to go check on her.”

“Oh.”

Tilly cocked her head. “What?”

It took her a moment to answer. “I felt really hurt by them just accepting what he said and did without wanting to talk to me about it.”

“You did, huh?”

“Yeah. He even made a point of twisting it around. Saying that he could accept me as ‘freaky’ but they couldn’t. Meaning he was right to take control over me because I didn’t belong with ‘vanillas.’”

And then he’d followed it with a tender session to “prove” to her that he loved her.

Betsy felt ludicrous admitting all of that now, but in the cold light of day, and in the safety of Kenny and Nolan’s living room, and with Tilly’s strong shoulder to lean on, she realized how deep she’d been dragged into Jack’s bullshit at the time.

“And you never, at the time, thought he might be pulling one over on you?” Tilly gently asked.

Her left eye blurred with tears as she slowly shook her head. “How fucking stupid am I?”

Tilly hugged her. “Okay, another rule. Stop saying
that
. You’re
not
stupid. You made a bad choice about who to trust. Believe me, we’ve all done that at least once in our lives. Eat your breakfast, and we’ll get through today. Hopefully by tonight you’ll have at least one emotional boulder rolled off your back.”

Luckily, Tilly hadn’t come armed with only her laptop. Before the guys left, Tilly went out to her SUV and brought in a shower chair. “This was Lan’s. I loaned it to Abbey after her back surgery because she wasn’t supposed to bend over.” She smiled. “Hopefully you won’t need it for long, but trust me, it’s your new best friend.”

After the men left for work, Tilly helped Betsy into the shower. Yes, the shower chair proved to be a godsend. Tilly made Betsy do some slow, careful stretching under the warm water, while Tilly held the shower head for her. Then she made Betsy shave what she could reach of her legs before Tilly helped to finish what she couldn’t.

“Feeling better?” Tilly asked as she combed out Betsy’s hair.

“Lots.”

Betsy forced herself to stare into the mirror at her reflection. Her face looked horrible still, some of the bruises already starting to transform from purple to an ugly brownish green that was almost worse. Her right eye was a little less swollen today than it had been, but it still looked horrific.

In the bedroom, Tilly started dumping bags of clothes that the men had grabbed from the apartment—what few there were—onto the bed and sorting them. The dresser drawers in the guest bedroom were empty, as was the closet. So Tilly started folding and putting them away.

“I’m noticing a distinct lack of any kind of professional clothes,” Tilly noted. “And remind me to give extra kudos to Kenny for what he picked out for you. Dude has style. Let me guess, Jack made you get rid of your work clothes?”

“Yeah,” Betsy admitted. Tilly had helped her dress in the comfortable jersey maxi skirt and a different loose top. They were some of the very few clothes Jack had allowed her to keep that weren’t fetish gear.

“Okay, seriously, what the hell?” Tilly asked as she finished putting everything away. “You’ve got like less than a week’s worth of regular clothes.”

“He wouldn’t let me wear clothes at home unless it was cold,” she said.

“Oh.” Tilly’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “I know some people do that, but they usually have exemptions for daily stuff. And they don’t throw away the rest of someone’s clothes in the process.”

“He decided what he thought I needed and I had to donate the rest to Goodwill.”

“Okay.” She sat on the edge of the bed next to Betsy and took her hands in hers. “Do you trust me?”

Betsy nodded. Tilly was one of the few people in this world whom she absolutely trusted.

“Will you
please
indulge me for at least the next few days?”

“What do you mean?”

She gently tucked Betsy’s damp hair back behind her ears. “I am not going to be able to be around much for you over the next several months once I start working for Leigh, Lucas, and Nick. So I want to do as much as I can, right
now
, while I can. June, Loren, and Eliza will step in as your primary mentors once I’m out of town, but I called dibs on getting the ball rolling.

“I have what most people would probably label an enchanted life, if they didn’t know my history. Which, quite honestly, isn’t something I’m going to burden you with today. Let’s just say I earned my good fortune. And I have a very rich husband. I also have no sisters or nieces or daughters, and never will. All I have are friends I’ve adopted as family. Meaning when I want to spoil them, I do.”

She gently took Betsy’s hands in hers. “Saturday was a symbolic birthday for you. A
re
birthday. And I want, as your friend and someone who cares about you, to spoil you rotten over it. Can you
please
let me do that, without you feeling guilty about it? I wouldn’t be doing this if I couldn’t afford it. I will also admit it will help me assuage at least a little of my own guilt about what happened. All right?”

Betsy nodded. “Thank you.” She leaned in and hugged her. “Thank you guys for saving me.”

It was comforting to feel Tilly’s arms around her, holding her, stroking her back. It’d been a long time since she’d felt that kind of true safety and love.

“You can thank all of us by showing us the kick-ass woman I know you are, rising above this, and making us all proud.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now, another question. How long’s it been since you’ve been to the hair salon?”