Quickly and vehemently.
She made me smile. God, I love that woman.
“Hello,” I hear Maggie call again.
My heart picks up in my chest, beating so hard I can physically feel it. It’s almost time. I have no idea how Maggie is going to react, but I’m hoping this will work. Maggie and I love each other, and it’s way past time we began building that into something more.
I just need her to cooperate.
I listen as her footsteps move tentatively in the front room.
“Magnolia! I’m just going to start the car up and turn it around in case there are any murdering rabbits in there!” Ida Sue calls out and it’s all I can do to stop myself from laughing. My mother-in-law is a nut.
“Oh Jesus,” I hear Maggie growl. “If I don’t get killed, I’m going to kill her.” She takes a few more steps. “Is anyone in here? Come out, come out, wherever you are.” I find myself smiling. I love that woman. I wonder if she realizes she’s as crazy as her mother is. Terry is in for it when he gets older. “Oh, look how pretty you are,” she croons, telling me that she’s found Fifi McFluffy. “Were you the one making all that racket? Did your owners forget you? It’s okay,” she murmurs, talking softly to the cat. I lean my forehead against the door, listening to my woman and deciding that if I have to use Luka’s handcuffs to do it, I’m not going to stop until she finally sees reason.
Then, Maggie lets out a scream, the sound loud and terrifying. The sound of glass breaking follows quickly behind it. I hear Fifi hissing, and I immediately get worried. When I make it to the front room, Maggie is standing in the corner, her face bleeding, a broken lamp beside her and brandishing a …very large, florescent green dildo in her hand. Fifi is standing in front of her, claws out, hair raised and hissing.
“Maggie?”
“Bryant? What are you doing here?”
“What’s going on?” I ask, Fifi hears my voice and immediately turns with her fluffy tail swooshing in the air and prances over to me. I bend down to pick her up.
Maggie slowly lowers her arm—the one holding the lime green monster. Then turns to watch me petting the cat. “Is that your evil cat-spawn?”
“Uh…not really. Are you okay, baby? You’re bleeding.” I move away from Fifi to approach her, reaching out to brush my thumb against her cut. Fifi immediately takes exception and pushes her little body between mine and Maggie’s legs.
“Your demon cat scratched— Ow!” she cries, and I look down to see that Fifi has latched onto Maggie’s ankle.
“Fifi, stop!”
“Fifi?”
“You can’t hurt Maggie. She’s ours.”
“Yours? I most definitely am not yours or the cat’s,” she snaps as I disengage Fifi from her leg.
I look at her with a frown as she puts the dildo back in a black box that is lying on the ground beside her.
“You are. You’re just fighting it. That’s why we’re here,” I argue.
“I’m here because my crazy mother wants to look at some damn cabinet that her and Jansen can have sex in. Why are you here, Bryant?”
“Uh, Maggie May, you can’t have sex in a cabinet,” I tell her, still petting the cat—mostly because I’m afraid she’ll attack Maggie again.
“That’s what I told her! But if anyone can, my mother can,” she grumbles, and I can’t argue with that at all. “Why are you here?” she asks again, her brow furrowed.
“Because I wanted the two of us to be alone for the next two weeks and make you see that we belong together without anything or anyone around to make you doubt us. The only way I could figure out how to make that happen was to bring you to the middle of nowhere and give you no choice.”
“You brought me… My mother is the one that got me to come out here,” she corrects, still confused.
“She felt like I did, so she offered to help me.”
“She offered to help… Oh God, Bryant. What have you done?” she cries, as everything finally hits her. She sprints back to the door, and I follow her—although a little slower. “Mom!” she cries.
When I get there, Ida Sue is driving away. All at once, she stops, and I hear Maggie suck in a breath. She hangs her head out the window and waves.
“You two kids have fun. Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do!” she calls out and then she settles back in the car and drives off in a cloud of dust.
Maggie turns back to me, and I can tell she’s pissed.
“You moron!” she snaps. Fifi hisses at her and I pull back, so the dang cat doesn’t try to hurt Maggie again. Then, Maggie goes outside and begins stomping down the walkway.