Oh no.
He did not just call me a bitch.
This man, who was clearly the parent of a goddamned monster, did not just call Gear a hoodlum and me a bitch.
“Did you just call me a bitch?” I was still whispering.
“Isn’t that your lingo?” he asked sarcastically.
I pulled in breath.
Then I wrapped one hand tight around the edge of the door in an effort to force some of my anger into my fingers rather than releasing it by tossing my hot coffee in his face.
Once I’d done that, I spoke.
“I advise you to call the sheriff and tell him you were mistaken,” I said quietly.
He stared at me.
That was, he did before he grinned an unattractive grin.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because the bunch of kids you’re fired up to protect attempted to rape my sixteen-year-old girl. She came home with a swollen cheek, a fat lip, a bloody nose, her clothes and hair filled with dirt. And no underwear.”
I watched his face pale.
“Yes,” I whispered. “She did. I still have the clothes. I also have pictures. But I remember exactly what she looked like. I remember exactly how she felt when she was weeping in my arms on the bathroom floor. So now I see something interesting. I see your bunch of kids didn’t share that, did they?”
“I—” he started.
He’d said enough.
So I didn’t let him say any more.
I kept going.
“She said they’re at ASU. If they’re at ASU, then they’re hoping for a bright future. That future won’t be so bright, the sheriff gets here, finds out they tried to rape her. Three boys, three, beat her up and tried to rape her. The sheriff finds out about that, he sees the pictures I took, takes one look at her face, sees how small she is…dainty…I give him my girl’s clothes, that future gets a lot dimmer.”
He was now not pale.
He was ashen.
“So, you have a choice,” I informed him. “You can call the sheriff, call him off and accept the painful but swift and quiet punishment that West and Locke dealt last night. Or you can push this, and your boys will be behind bars right alongside West and Locke, but attempted rape with assault is worse than just assault. Especially when there’s no purpose behind it, no motivation a jury would understand, like a father seeing his daughter bleeding and dirty on a bathroom floor. And then their punishment will be far more painful, but it won’t be quiet, it won’t be swift.” I leaned in. “It’ll be very public, and it’ll be very, very long. Because, you see, after they get out once they serve their time, for the rest of their lives, they won’t only have a record, they’ll also be on a certain registry. And they will not ever escape that.”
He stared at me and didn’t move or speak.
When this lasted awhile, I offered, “Do you not know the number for the sheriff? I’m happy to get the Yellow Pages.”
His eyes flashed behind me, he paled even further, and then suddenly the door was no longer in my grip because it was being pulled wider.
I turned my head and saw Buck’s bloody t-shirt. Then they moved up, and I saw Buck’s angry face.
“You got a choice, Conley,” Buck growled. “And three seconds to make it. What’s it gonna be?”
The man, clearly called Conley, opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
“You can’t run around beating up kids,” he stated with more face-saving bravado than courage.
Buck stepped back, pulling me with him with his arm around my waist, and he slammed the door.
I stared at the door but couldn’t do that for very long because Buck curled me into him.
I tipped my head back, and my eyes caught his. He had one arm around me, and the other hand came up so he could run the backs of his raw, bloody knuckles along my jaw.
“Thanks, baby,” he whispered.
“Take your hands off me,” I whispered back, and his head twitched.
“Come again?”
“I said,” I pushed away from his arm and it fell, as did his hand, “take your hands off me.”
His eyes narrowed. “What the—?”
He didn’t finish because I shifted around him and marched to the steps to the landing.
I then marched to his bedroom.
I closed the door and kept marching to his bathroom. I closed that door too.
There, I slammed my coffee cup down on the vanity, bent over, opened the door under the sink and grabbed the cosmetics case I’d stowed down there.
The door flew open, Buck stormed in and stopped, scowling at me.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you?”
I didn’t pause in what I was doing. I had one of the vanity drawers open, the one with my makeup in it, such as it was. It was mostly dregs I was eking the last bits out of since I hadn’t been able to afford makeup in months, and I was shoving it into the bag.