Safe Love (Love Brothers #4) (8 page)
Read Safe Love (Love Brothers #4) Online
Authors: Liz Crowe
Margot had spent Thanksgiving alone at a movie, then at a
Chinese restaurant making small talk with the owners. She moved through a kind
of cloud, or fog, but one with substance that slowed down her movements and
made her groggy and tired with the effort of navigating through it. She’d not
spent much time nauseated, which was good. But ‘exhausted’ was her new reality.
It was maddening. But somehow right at the same time.
Friday was the final day of packing—clothes, bathroom
supplies and other last minute crap. Every now and then she’d stop to touch her
flat stomach and cry, then she’d get over it and move forward. It was beyond
bizarre but the concept of being a mother filled her with the sort of peace
she’d never experienced in her entire life. Father or no father, she would
manage this and her baby would have a full life—but not here—in Ann Arbor.
Her sister had been ecstatic and nonjudgmental, thank the
Lord, and had already made her an appointment with an obstetrician. One of her
best friends from school sold real estate and had located the perfect little
house, with the ideal yard, inside the same elementary school district Margot
and her friend had attended. It was all falling into place.
It had to.
There really was no other option.
She lay awake on Friday night thanks to her many naps,
staring up at the ceiling of her soon-to-be ex-home, in a state she had come to
love for a lot of reasons, but had to leave for one reason in particular. At
some point she must have dropped off, falling directly into a dream that left
her sweaty and anxious, still tasting Antony’s lips and feeling his body
against her, inside her. She got up and sipped tea, staring at old movies for
the rest of the night, determined not to allow the man anywhere near her, even
in her subconscious mind.
Saturday morning she woke with a start and winced, having
fallen dead asleep with her head propped on the couch’s arm with her neck at an
awkward, painful angle. Her phone was buzzing somewhere nearby but damned if
she could find it for a solid minute or two. “Hello?” she said, grabbing a half
empty bottle of water and gulping it down.
“Hi, um Margot?”
“Oh, hey AliceLynn. You all right?”
“Yeah. I just remembered this was your last weekend here.
So…um, I wanted to say ‘bye.”
Margot smiled and refilled the bottle. “Thanks. The movers
come on Monday. Did you guys have a nice Thanksgiving?” It hurt somewhere deep
in her chest to ask that.
“I guess. Rosie did this whole thing for my Grammie. The
guys shaved their heads. It was weird. Kinda stupid. But in an okay way.”
“Shaved their heads?” She sipped, trying to imagine Antony
shaved bald. “Why?”
“Solidarity for Grammie I think.”
“Oh. Well. That’s a nice gesture.” AliceLynn stayed quiet.
“So, do you have plans for your holiday weekend?” She sensed that the girl wanted
to keep talking.
“Yeah, there’s this party. I don’t know. I might not go.”
“What about Jason?”
“We broke up. He’s lame.”
“Oh. Well…”
“I’m not cutting myself, if that’s what you’re worried
about.” The girl’s tone grew truculent.
“That’s good, honey. I’m sorry about your boyfriend.”
“It’s all right. He was too needy. Wanted to be all… on me
all the time.”
“That’s a guy thing. They don’t ever really outgrow it.” She
winced, remembering how the girl had caught her
in flagrante
. She put a
hand on her stomach in reflex.
“I am gonna miss you. I’m not really too mad at you or
anything.”
“I’ll miss you too, AliceLynn. And thanks. Have you and your
father talked about…”
“Oh god no. He’s busy trying to get back onto Rosie’s good
side. He and my uncles made this huge scene at Grammie’s Halloween party and
all their girlfriends put ‘em in the doghouse.”
“Ah, well then….”
“I’ll let you go I guess. Take care, Margot.”
“Thanks. You too. And take care of…well, you know.”
“Yeah, I do.” The girl laughed but it wasn’t a pleasant
sound. Then she ended the call.
Margot sat for a long time, staring out the kitchen window,
pondering her god-awful timing. With a sigh, she pushed away from the counter
and found some busywork, then she went out for a light jog in the surprisingly
warm November afternoon. Luckily she’d always been a bit of a loner, so all
this time to herself didn’t really bother her—much. Other than the near nightly
dreams of him, of Antony. Of the man she would admit to herself that she loved.
Her next to last night in Kentucky was quiet, spent in the
company of a pepperoni pizza and milk—both of which she craved for the first
time in her adult life. At nine thirty she tossed the cardboard box into the
recycling bin and rinsed out her glass, that foggy, murky sensation taking hold
of her again. Figuring she might as well finish the movie she’d started, she
tucked up on the couch and immediately dozed off.
A buzzing in her dream jumped over into her conscious state,
sending her tumbling to the floor in a tangle of blanket. She crawled over to
the box where she’d left the phone and stared at the number, trying to make
sense of it.
“Margot?” AliceLynn’s voice hit her ears, sending her into
high alert at its tone. “You there?”
“Hey, um, yeah I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“I need your help. Can you come?”
She rubbed her eyes and turned off the television so she
could focus. “Where?”
AliceLynn gave her an address, which she plugged into her
phone’s GPS, noting that it appeared to be in the middle of a splotch of green,
indicating a large park. The girl’s frantic sounding voice echoed in her ears.
“Hurry. Please.”
She screeched into a parking spot and jumped out, panic
filling her chest at the sight of the flashing blue lights at the other end of
the lot. AliceLynn was standing in the middle of a circle of cops, wrapped in a
blanket. Blood dripped from a huge scrape on her left cheek. Terrified, Margot
shoved in between two of the uniforms without thinking about anything other
than the girl’s teary, marred face.
“Excuse me,” she said, moving in to take AliceLynn in her
arms. A group of boys were huddled off to one side, looking guilty. “What is
going on here?”
One of the cops stepped forward. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but have
we met?”
Margot frowned at him. “No, what difference does that make?”
AliceLynn sniffled and pointed to the cop. “Sorry. This is
Mark. He’s my daddy’s friend from high school.”
“Oh, okay. So, Mark what’s going on here?”
The man frowned.
“It’s fine, you can tell her,” AliceLynn said under her
breath.
“Well, there was an illicit gathering here, at the park.
Some of the boys were doping the drinks, according to AliceLynn. She called
them on it and they got…ugly with her.”
Margot held the girl tighter. “It’s fine. I had my…um…”
“AliceLynn pulled a knife of them,” Mark said. “Cut one of
‘em on the arm. And then she ran.”
“It’s when I got this,” she said, touching her bloody face.
“I fell.”
“I told you to call your daddy,” Mark the cop said. “I don’t
know this person, no offense intended ma’am.”
Margot dropped her arm from around AliceLynn’s shoulders.
“Well, I’m a friend of the family.” A strange kind of emotion was filling her
head now. One she didn’t like. “Why did you call me, AliceLynn?” The girl kept
her gaze down on her shoes.
“You said I should call you if I needed anything.”
“Yes, but this is something your father…anyway, we’ll deal
with it. Can we take her home?”
“Daddy’s not at home. He’s at Rosie’s,” AliceLynn said with
a certain tone in her voice that lit a match to Margot’s fury.
“Okay, I’ll meet you there. You should ride with them.” She
pointed to the cops. The girl’s jaw dropped.
“AliceLynn, your father needs to know where you were, what
you were doing and with whom.” She indicated the gaggle of delinquents with a
jerk of her chin. “I’m not going to shield you from confronting him, honey. But
I will stand with you when you do it.” Whirling and heading for her car before
she said something really awful, Margot climbed behind the wheel and followed
the cop car a few miles to a tidy little white clapboard house on a street
lined with similar ones with a ‘for sale’ sign on the lawn. Rosalee Norris’
house, she surmised, pulling up to the curb and steeling herself for the
looming confrontation.
She met Antony and Rosie at the door, but this time when she
gave her little ‘it’s not my job to shield you or my place to come between you’
spiel, AliceLynn let it fly loud and clear and in front of Rosalee just where
Margot’s ‘place’ was—in Antony’s bed. Antony lurched forward and grabbed his
daughter’s arm. Margot clapped a hand over her mouth and started backing away.
Then Rosie fainted.
And everything changed.
Authors’ note: If you have read “Love Garage” and wish to
read a “hidden ending” for this companion novella,
just click here
. It’s
highly recommended that you read “Love Garage” first, to get the full story of
how all this works out in order to fully appreciate the ending of “Safe Love.”
Get the full story!
Happy Reading!
Liz
Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger, brewery marketing
expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and
graduate of the University of Louisville currently living in Ann Arbor. She has
decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a
three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking
fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans
and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens
After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her
latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very
much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries,
on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic
locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh
voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex
storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight,
frustrate and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
Don’t ever ask her for anything “like a Budweiser” or risk
bodily injury.
The Love Brothers Series:
Coming soon….
Family Love
The Stewart Realty Series:
Coming soon….
Net Worth
The Black Jack Gentlemen Series:
Coming soon….
Hat Trick
The Turkish Delights Series:
Stand Alone Novels:
Coming soon….
Vegas Miracle
Lady Balls
It’s Not Me. It’s You.