Vampire born, p.3
Vampire Born, page 3
She grimaced. “I fear you’re overconfident in your abilities to defend yourself sometimes. I know, I know,” she said, waving her hand with a frustrated sigh. “You’ve got a bajillion black belts in every discipline known to mankind. But overconfidence can weaken defenses, and going rogue is not the best option. You should at least have the law there as a witness if nothing else.”
“I appreciate your concern, Ang. As always. Really, I do. But I’ll be fine. If she’s ready to get out, I don’t want anything to discourage her. I’m going to insist on driving so I have my own vehicle and can leave whenever I need to. I don’t plan on taking anything that won’t fit in the back of my Jeep, so we should be out of there long before Greg’s off work.”
“Well, if there is even a hint things may go south, get out of there and call the cops. Don’t let him make this personal with you.”
“He won’t even know I’m there.”
THREE
ARIA
As I drove Cazzie to her house, she pointed at the snapshot of Nick, Sage, and me that I kept stuck in a crevice in the dashboard.
“That’s your husband?”
“Yep. Angie took that last summer at the Fourth of July parade.”
“You look happy.” She looked down, picking at a loose thread on the hem of her sweater. “Bet he’s perfect, huh?”
“No one’s perfect, Cazz,” I said, though I’d always thought Nick was pretty damned close. Perfect for me, anyway, even if I was ready to throttle him for not responding to my text yet.
“You probably think I’m stupid for going back to Greg after everything he’s done.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“Well, I do! I don’t know why I believe him every time. He says all this stuff, swearing he’ll change, and I fall for it, and I go back. And things will be good for a while, but just when I start to think it’s better, it always falls apart again. Something always sets him off. Only took a couple of days this time for him to break his promises.”
“You’re not stupid for wanting to believe the man you love, Cazz. You want him to do the right thing. You want to be happy. You want Billy to have a stable home and a relationship with his daddy. None of that is stupid.” I twisted my hands around the leather steering wheel cover and tried to choose my words carefully, knowing the weight they carried. “But Greg has done more than break his promises. He’s crossed a line. And no matter how much he says he loves you and Billy, you can’t stay with him if he’s going to hurt the two of you.”
“He’d never hurt Billy,” she said, her hands tucked beneath her thighs. “He adores Billy. He’s a good dad.”
I glanced in her direction, my heart aching for her. “He may not have hit Billy…yet…but he’s not being a good dad when he models abusive behavior. You don’t want Billy thinking this is how mommies and daddies are supposed to treat each other. You don’t want Billy scared or worried about you. And the older he gets, the more he’ll realize. The more he’ll see. If he starts to push back against Greg, then it’s only a matter of time until—”
“He’d never hit Billy, okay? I know he wouldn’t do that.”
“What if you’re wrong? You probably didn’t think he’d hit you when you first hooked up with him. Men like Greg, they tend to progress in the wrong direction the longer you stay with them.”
“Well, that’s why I’m leaving him. I’m getting me and Billy out of there.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, smiling at the strong resolve in her voice, the squared set of her shoulders. “I’m proud of you. Trust me, I know it’s not an easy thing to do. But sometimes, we can do for our kid what we’re not able to do for ourselves.”
Her brows lowered as she cut her eyes toward me. “Have you ever left your husband?”
“Nick? No. Nick is the first man I’ve ever dated who didn’t treat me like I was a possession he needed to control. The level of respect he showed me from the very first night was something I’d never experienced, and while I’m aware that says a lot about me and what I had allowed in my life, it’s also him and who he is as a person.”
I hesitated, never comfortable talking about my past, especially the choices I’d made before meeting Nick. But I wanted Cazzie to know she wasn’t the only one who’d fallen for the wrong kind and mistaken it for love, and I wanted her to believe she could find happiness on the other side of today.
“I met a guy when I was still in high school and fell head over heels for him. Mike was a few years older than me; he was twenty-two, and I was sixteen. He was my first love. The first guy who made me feel beautiful. Made me feel grown, though clearly, I wasn’t. My parents were against it from the start, but since my parents and I butted heads on most everything, I didn’t listen to them. If anything, the fact that they didn’t like him only made me want him more. At first, it was great. He showered me with compliments. Flowers. Presents. Swore he’d been waiting his whole life for me. That I was the only one for him. He was handsome, and he had money. Not a lot, but enough to make me feel like he did. He was like my very own Prince Charming.”
“Sounds like Greg in the beginning. Oh, uh, take that next left.” She pointed toward the next turn up ahead. “All my friends loved him. My mom thought he was the sweetest guy she’d ever met. And he made me feel like I was up on a pedestal. At first, anyway.”
“That’s what manipulators do,” I said with a nod. “They present themselves in the best light possible to suck you in, and then when the cracks start to show, they somehow make you feel like you’re to blame. Like it must be something you did. And if you can just figure out how to be different or act different or talk different, they’ll go back to treating you the way they used to. And it will feel good again.”
“Yep.” She crossed her arms. “It’s like a high you keep chasing, but it’s never as good as it was the first time you took the hit.”
“Exactly. Well, I ended up dropping out of school at seventeen and leaving town with Mike, convinced that things would be better if we got away from everyone. Away from my parents. From my friends, who had begun to suspect things weren’t good. I was embarrassed to tell anyone the truth. To tell them he wasn’t who I thought he was. So, I left with him. Even though he had cheated on me multiple times by then and had lied more often than he told the truth. I gave up myself and my future and became completely dependent on him. By the time things turned physical, I was trapped. I had no job. No education. No money of my own. No way to leave and no place to go.”
Cazzie had turned in her seat to face me, nodding with enthusiastic recognition. “Greg told me to quit working as soon as he found out I was pregnant. Said it would be better for the baby if I was home, and that was how his mom had done it. I’d been working since I graduated from high school, and I wasn’t rich or nothing. I lived paycheck to paycheck. But I had my own car and my own apartment when we met. By the time Billy was born and we got married, I’d moved in with Greg, and soon after that, he sold my car. Everything has been in his name since then. I don’t own anything.”
“So, you start over. People do it all the time. And Angie will be there for you every step of the way. So will I. You’re not alone, Cazz. You have people who care about you who will help you get back on your own two feet.”
She seemed to consider my words for a moment before she turned to look out the window. We were nearing her neighborhood, and the closer we got, the more fidgety she grew.
“What finally made you leave that guy?” she asked while chewing on her thumbnail. “How’d you get out?’
Even after all this time, the memories felt heavy in my chest, making the next words harder to get out than the ones before. “I found out I was pregnant. He’d told me he would kill me if it ever happened, and I had no reason to doubt him. We’d been together three years at that point. Never staying in one place for long. Keeping to ourselves so I had only him to look to. I think on some level, I’d convinced myself that I deserved the way he treated me. Like because I’d fallen for his lies and taken him back every time…stayed with him, then I had to put up with whatever he did to me. But that baby inside me, she hadn’t done anything wrong. And she deserved to live. She deserved the best I could do for her.”
Emotion threatened to overtake my voice, and I swallowed hard to force the lump down.
“I called my parents and begged them to let me come home. My mother arranged a bus ticket, but when I got there and they found out I was pregnant, they insisted I had to give Sage up for adoption as soon as she was born. I refused, and they kicked me out when I was a little over six months pregnant. I’d dropped all my friends when I left town, but luckily Angie’s daughter, Haley, welcomed me back with open arms. We’d been best friends since elementary school, and Angie had always been like a second mom to me. Angie had just gotten divorced and was moving back to New York. She invited me to come up and live with her until Sage was born, and I ended up staying. Since then, I’ve gotten my GED, and next semester, I plan to finish my degree so I can be a counselor and, I don’t know, pay it back or pay it forward, or something like that.”
“That’s her, then?” She lifted her chin toward the picture. “Your daughter?”
“Yep! That’s my girl. She’ll be turning seven soon, all sass, spirit, and spunk.” I grinned at the snaggle-toothed Sage in the faded shot, her strawberry-ginger hair in pigtail braids and her eyes wide with wonder as she watched the parade from atop Nick’s shoulders. “I can’t imagine a world without her in it.”
“How did you and your husband meet?”
“I got stranded at a club in downtown Manhattan, and he was my knight in shining armor.”
Cazzie smiled. “Sounds like it must be an interesting story.”
“It was the weekend of my twenty-first birthday, and this girl I knew, Ingrid, had offered to take me into the city to celebrate. She said her grandmother had a place in downtown Manhattan where we could stay, and since I’d always wanted to visit the Big Apple, I was crazy excited to go. Sage was only a year old. I’d never been away from her overnight before, but Angie offered to keep her for the weekend. Unfortunately, Ingrid did quite a bit more celebrating than I did that first night. She ended up passing out, and I had no idea where her grandmother’s apartment was or how to get back there.”
“That sucks. What did you do?”
“I had to rely on Nick. He and I had met earlier at the bar, and when Ingrid passed out and couldn’t walk, he literally picked her up and carried her. Then, when I couldn’t convince a taxi to take us, he went and got his car. He even let me drive since I was freaking out about getting in the car with a stranger. I didn’t know the address of Ingrid’s grandma’s place, so Nick had me describe what I remembered seeing in the short time I’d been in the city that afternoon, and he helped me find the right building.”
“Sounds like you got lucky,” Cazzie said with a soft scoff. “Trusting a stranger doesn’t always end well.”
“No, it doesn’t, and yes, I got incredibly lucky.”
“So, that was it, huh? You guys were together from then on?”
“Not right away, no.” I bit down on my bottom lip, remembering the internal turmoil I’d been in during that time. “Ingrid and I got into a huge argument the next morning, and I was set to spend my birthday alone in the city, but Nick offered to show me around, no strings attached. I don’t know why I said yes. I guess part of me wanted good memories for my birthday and my first time in the city. But it was also because we just…clicked. It was like meeting someone I already knew. I don’t know if that makes sense, but anyway, it was an amazing day in an amazing city with an amazing man. After all I’d been through with Mike and having my daughter alone, I’d sworn off romance and promised myself I’d make her my top priority and not bring anyone else into our lives. But when it came time to say goodbye to Nick, I didn’t want to, despite that promise to myself.”
Cazzie wrapped her arms around her waist. “Why is it so hard to keep the promises we make to ourselves?”
“I tried. I really did. When we said our goodbyes, Nick asked if he could come visit me, and I refused. He asked if he could call me, and I refused that, too. But then he asked if he could email me, and that seemed non-committal and easy to walk away from. It also allowed us to get to know each other on a deep level in a relatively short amount of time. We emailed back and forth every day for months. Then, I gave him my phone number and we talked every day, sometimes multiple times a day, for a few more months before I finally agreed to see him in person again.”
“Wow. You must have a strong resolve. That’s impressive.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said with an embarrassed chuckle. “If I’d had a strong resolve, I probably wouldn’t have stayed in touch with him at all. Instead, I ended up married to him. So, yeah. I didn’t really accomplish the goal of avoiding romance.”
"What made you decide you could trust him? How did you know it would turn out okay?”
“I just knew. I don’t know how to explain it. I think it helped that we spent so much time communicating. Taking our time to get to know one another. We found so many things we had in common. We both valued family, even though we both were estranged from our parents. Perhaps we valued it more because of that. We both wanted to dedicate our lives to helping others. Neither of us was caught up in the pursuit of material things.” I shrugged, not sure how to explain why I’d been so certain of him. Of us. “The connection we’d felt when we first met continued to grow stronger, and by the time I saw him in person again—by the time I introduced him to Sage—I just knew it was the right thing. I knew he was someone I could trust with my heart and with hers.”
“It sounds like a fairy tale. It’s good to know someone gets a happily ever after.” Cazzie’s smile seemed genuine, but it faded as she pointed to the road we were approaching. “That’s my street. Turn there.”
She began to crane her neck as soon as I made the turn, and I knew she was watching for any sign of Greg. Luckily, the driveway of their yellow clapboard house at the back of the cul-de-sac was empty, but that didn’t ease the tension surrounding her.
I hesitated before parking in the driveway. I didn’t want to risk getting pinned in or make it obvious we were there, but the narrow strip of curb in front of the house was already occupied, and to park any farther away would slow us down as we loaded her belongings. So, I backed in, making sure I had plenty of room on either side to escape if need be.
“Let’s get in and get out, okay?” I looked over at her as I shut off the ignition. “Move quickly and take only what you need. Don’t get bogged down in sentiments.”
My eyes scanned the neighborhood as I followed Cazzie to the front door. I didn’t see any neighbors, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any watching us from behind their windows.
While I wasn’t afraid of Greg, I’d much prefer we didn’t have to encounter him. It would make this decision that much harder for Cazzie, and if it escalated, it would likely mean we had to get the authorities involved, and not only did she not want that, I didn’t have time for it. I had a test to study for before my night class, and thanks to Andrea Conway, I might have to get snacks and take them to Nick at soccer practice before my class began.
I followed Cazzie inside the house and up the stairs, and as she pulled clothes from Billy’s small dresser and closet, I went to the window to peer down at the street below to make sure no one approached the house.
She moved quickly, only speaking when she needed to give me direction on what to take out to the Jeep, but silent tears streamed down her face without end, and she startled easily, jumping every time I came back in the room.
She’d started in Billy’s room first, filling diaper bags and tote bags with his things, and then once I put those in the Jeep, she handed me his playpen and a box of toys she’d pulled together.
I tucked them beside the bags I’d already loaded, and then pulled out my phone while walking back toward the house. An uneasy prickling crawled across my skin when I saw the blank space beneath the text I’d sent earlier. Nick had never gone so long without some response, even if it was just the black heart emoji or a thumbs up.
In all the time I’d known him, he’d always gotten back to me via text or call within a half hour of me reaching out, no matter where he was or what he was doing. The delay might seem normal to most people, but I knew my husband. Something was wrong.
As I climbed the porch steps, I dialed his number, no longer caring if I interrupted the meeting. It had to have ended already. It had been three hours since it started.
The first ring didn’t even really begin before it went straight to voice mail.
I jerked the phone away from my ear as though it had jolted me with an electrical shock.
Was his phone turned off? Or had he sent me directly to voice mail?
Sharp, twisting tendrils of fear burrowed into familiar trenches deep beneath my skin. My anxiety, never content to be a silent back seat passenger in my head, climbed into the front seat with gusto, and I rushed to prevent it from taking the wheel to drive.
There had to be a reasonable explanation. Perhaps they’d opted to get the ball rolling immediately and he was inside a bank where the signal was cut off. Or maybe the meeting had gone so well, he’d gotten distracted and left his phone behind at the cafe. The phone could have been stolen. Pickpocketed or swiped off the table. He could have dropped it hard enough to break it and render it useless. Or the battery could have run out, and the charger could have failed. There were any number of perfectly good reasons for my husband not to have returned my text or called me. Plenty of good explanations why his phone was going straight to voice mail.
So, then why did my mind insist on dragging out old fears I knew to be faulty to wave them around like banners at the forefront of my thoughts?
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” I argued against my mind’s tricks. “This is Nick, who’s never given us any reason not to trust him. Nick, who’s gone out of his way to communicate openly so we don’t have to fall back into these old patterns. If one time in six years he goes radio silent, could you not just give the man you love the benefit of the doubt?”
