Almost Doesn't Count (32 page)

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Authors: Angela Winters

BOOK: Almost Doesn't Count
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“So why is he telling me to stay away from you?” Porter asked. “What do I have to do with this?”
“Oh my God.” Billie realized what was going on. “It's not related, Porter. He's . . .”
It was a small world, Billie thought. This was just too small. If Reedy was connected to Ricky, then that meant that Ricky was somehow involved in drugs, which answered so many lingering questions that she'd had but pretended to forget because she had feelings for him.
“What's going on, Billie?” Porter asked. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“I have to go,” she said quickly. “I'm sorry, Porter. I'm glad they've caught him. You look like you'll be fine.”
“Billie!” Porter yelled after her as she started out.
Billie swung around to look at him. She was distracted by her thoughts, but the look on Porter's face got her attention. He was scared.
“They got him,” she said. “He won't hurt you again.”
“That's not it.” He gestured for her to come back to the bed. “You don't understand.”
She rushed back to his bed. “What don't I understand?”
“Tara,” he said. “He said that if I didn't leave you alone, my daughter would be next.”
Without knocking or ringing a doorbell, Billie stormed into Saturn House like a tornado of rage that belied her tiny frame.
“Ricky!” she yelled throughout the house, heading straight through the foyer into the living room.
She saw a few people sitting in the living room. One man was reading a book while a woman was on the floor playing a board game with a child.
“Where is he?” she asked in a demanding voice. “Where is Ricky?”
None of them said a word. They all looked too scared of her. The man, an elderly man of about seventy-five, pointed toward the formal dining room.
“Ricky!”
Ricky stepped out of the dining room just as Billie reached it. He was wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans, and wiping his hands in a kitchen towel. He looked utterly confused.
“Billie, what the—”
“How dare you?” She walked right up to him and pressed her index finger into his chest. “How dare you threaten my daughter!”
“What are you . . . ?” Suddenly seeming to realize what she was talking about, he looked behind her at the people in the living room, all of them paying rapt attention.
“Come with me,” he said, grabbing her by the arm.
She jerked free of him. “Don't touch me. I can walk on my own.”
She followed him through the kitchen, into the hallway. He moved into a cramped spot underneath the stairs where the door to the basement was.
“Keep your voice down,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. “Don't the people living here have a right to know who you are and what you do?”
“Before you say something you'll regret . . .”
“I regret all of this, Ricky. I regret ever meeting you, ever being put on your case. And, oh my God, do I regret caring about you for even a second.”
“I would never hurt that girl,” he said. “I don't even know who she is.”
“Then why did Reedy threaten her?” she asked. “He did that for you, attacking Porter. What were you thinking?”
He stopped, looking at her for a moment as if to assess where she was emotionally. “I was doing this for us. You said he was the reason we can't be together. He was making you miserable. It was just a little street justice.”
“It was a crime,” she said. “And that lowlife drug dealer you sent to commit it confirms everything I thought about you.”
“That I care about you?” he asked. “That's why I did this. I just want us to be together.”
“And because you're a lowlife, this is the only way you know how to make that happen. Attack an innocent man and threaten a little girl.”
He was shaking his head, clearly disappointed. “I can't believe you don't appreciate the lengths I've gone to for you.”
“You're a drug dealer, too, aren't you?”
His blinked, seeming offended for a second. “You're my lawyer, Billie. You can't tell anyone what I tell you.”
“You think that's going to protect you?”
“I do what's necessary to keep my shelter safe,” he said. “I don't sell drugs, but I pay Reedy to keep drug dealers away from me.”
“And to do odd jobs for you,” she said. “Like beating up lawyers.”
“I won't admit to anything,” he said. “Dammit, Billie. I thought you were down.”
“I'm down,” she said, “but not that low.”
“You're still on my case,” he said. “I don't want this to interfere with you—”
“I'm not on your case anymore,” she said. “It's over. You've won that one, but you've got bigger legal problems to worry about.”
He smiled. “You can't say anything about this.”
“I don't have to,” she said. “Reedy is gonna say everything for me. He was caught, Ricky. I don't know if you know that.”
From the expression on his face, he hadn't. His concern was growing.
“I still have strong connections with the district attorney's office,” she added. “Many of them still owe me a favor from old cases. I didn't have to give them a reason why. All I had to do was call in a favor and ask them to offer Reedy a great deal if he talked. And from what I hear, he talked.”
Just then the basement door burst open and hit Ricky in the head. He fell back against the wall as two small children ran out of the basement, laughing, in a world by themselves.
“Dammit!” Ricky yelled as his hand went to his forehead.
When he looked up again, Billie was gone.
 
When Justin opened the door to his hotel room at The Mayflower, his expression was predictably annoyed.
“Sherise,” he said. “I told you I needed time. What are you doing here?”
She stood at the door, smiling kindly. “Why would you tell me you were here if you didn't want me to come over?”
“I told you,” he said. “It was only if something happened with Cady. An emergency. You never listen.”
“Why aren't you at work?” she asked. “Are you gonna let me in?”
“No,” he said. “I'm not going to let you in. I'm working from home today.”
“You're not at home, baby.” She lifted up to look behind him into the room. “You're in a cold hotel room and maybe not alone, which is why you don't want me here.”
“I'm alone.” He moved to block her view. “I don't want anything to do with Jennifer.”
“Now that you know she was using you,” Sherise said. “Before you—”
The door to the room to the right of Justin's opened and a woman dressed in a sharp red business suit stepped out. She made eye contact with Sherise and smiled.
Sherise turned to Justin. “Shouldn't we do this inside?”
Justin looked at the woman, who gave them another glance as she passed by. He sighed, stepping aside as Sherise stepped in.
“I brought you this.” She offered him a duffel bag with a few of his things.
He took the bag as he closed the door behind her.
“Sherise, what part of ‘I need time' do you not understand?”
Realizing that he intended to keep her in the foyer, she walked past him into the room. Looking around, she could see he'd been working. Papers were everywhere. They'd better not be separation papers.
“The part where I don't get to see my husband so we can work out our problems.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed as he placed the bag next to her.
“Please get off of there,” he said.
Ignoring him, she unzipped the bag and reached in. She pulled out his iPad and turned it on.
“I wanted to show you something,” she said, going straight to the app she was looking for. Pictures.
She turned the iPad around so he could see one picture of their wedding, then another.
“Stop it,” he said. “You think showing me a wedding slideshow is going to—”
The next picture was of Cady. He was holding her and she was looking up at him with an adoring worshipping expression on her face. The next was of her smiling into the camera showing her only two teeth. There was drool running down her chin as she was trying to reach for the camera to snatch it away.
Justin smiled.
“I see your nose there,” she said.
The next one was of Cady sleeping on her back in her crib.
“Remember how your mother said you used to always slip one hand under your back like that when you slept?”
“Stop it.” He grabbed the iPad from her and tossed it on the bed. “This is underhanded of you, Sherise.”
“I'm just trying to tell you, I didn't spend all this time wondering if Cady was yours and just hoping for the best.”
“It doesn't change what you did,” he said.
“Nothing will change what I did,” she said. “Or what you did. But I'm willing to move past it and try to work this out. Why aren't you?”
“I didn't say I wasn't.” His voice was low and deep as if he was trying very hard to control his temper. “I just said I need time. Do you understand what the fuck happened here?”
“I do,” she said. “I cheated on you because I was an insecure woman who thought she was stronger than she actually was. I never thought I needed to fight temptation because I knew I loved my husband. I think you did the same.
“I know what I did was worse,” Sherise continued. “If that's what you're looking for me to say. I wasn't part of a targeted seduction, and when I cheated, you weren't denying me sex. We weren't having problems.”
“I don't want to compare whose cheating was worse.” Justin sat down on the bed next to her. “Sherise, I just . . . Fuck, I don't know. I'm so fucking angry at you and myself, and every time I think that Cady could have not been mine, I just can't even think straight.”
She reached over and placed her hand gently on his shoulder as he lowered his head.
“So much has gone wrong, baby.” Her voice was tender, soft, and seductive. She hadn't come here to go home empty-handed. “I lost my fire because I wasn't working. You lost interest in me because I lost my fire.”
“Trying to have this baby,” he added. “We've been forcing this. Going about it all wrong. I don't know how this happened. I never went looking for her.”
“She was looking for you.” Her hand went to his head. “Baby, I understand that you were weak. Can you understand that I was, too? I'm weaker than you.”
He leaned away, but Sherise didn't stop running her fingers gently over his head. He didn't resist anymore.
“This is fucked up,” he said. “You want to act like we just had a bad fight, but that's not what this is. This is our marriage and it's completely fucked up.”
“That's not true.” She slid closer to him on the bed. “Baby, I—”
“Stop calling me that,” he said quickly.
She paused for a second. “It's going to take a lot of work and time to get us right again, but we are not fucked up. You, Cady, and me are a family. We all love each other. We all need each other.”
He nodded and she leaned in to gently kiss his neck.
“Can you think of a life without me in it?” she whispered. “Can you think of a life seeing Cady every other weekend? Can you think of sleeping in a bed I will never be in with you? Because I can't, Justin. I refuse to believe that's even possible.”

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