Love, Honor & Protect- Addicted to You 2 Page 8

  “And you can’t tell me over the phone?” I ask.

  “I’d rather tell you face to face,” she says.

  I sigh, running my fingers through my hair. “Alright.”

  “Where are you?” she questions.

  It’s then that I decide to hurt her just as she’s hurt me. She deserves to feel the pain—the level of betrayal—that I do. “The Embassy Hotel in East, Peoria. Room 215.” I climb out of bed and exit the room. “I’ll leave the door unlocked.” I unlock the door.

  “Why are you at the Embassy?” she questions.

  “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Oh. Um, okay. I’ll be there in less than ten minutes. I’m leaving Walmart now,” she says.

  “Good. I will see you soon.”

  “Alright. I love you, Jeremiah.” Her voice is low.

  I swallow. “I love you, too.”

  After hanging up, I move into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water before going back into the room with the woman in my bed. I’ve forgotten her name already. She’s on her phone, but when she sees me, she looks up and smiles.

  “Everything alright?” she questions.

  “Everything’s fine.” I cross the room and climb into bed. “Did you want anything to drink?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m fine. Thank you,” she says, climbing on top of me, straddling me. “I had a lot of fun with you.”

  “You’re a fun woman,” I say, forcing a smile.

  She chuckles. “And you’re a very great lover.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So, Mr. Great Lover, what do you do for a living?” she questions.

  “I own my own advertisement company.”

  Her eyes widen. “Wow. Your parents must be very proud of you.”

  I nod. “They are.”

  She goes to ask another question, but she’s interrupted by the sound of Tabitha’s voice. She quickly climbs off me and settles onto the bed beside me, pulling the sheet up over her breasts to cover herself.

  “Who the hell just walks into someone’s hotel room?” the brunette hisses.

  The door to my room is pushed open to reveal Tabitha. Her hair is pulled up into a messy bun, she’s wearing no makeup, and she’s dressed in a pair of black and white high heels, black jeans, and a white, fitted t-shirt with a black leather jacket.

  Her eyes widen in shock as she looks from the woman beside me then to me. “Jeremiah?”

  Past

  Jeremiah

  (12)

  After we share words, hurtful and harsh on my end, and Tabitha left, leaving me alone with the woman in my bed, I take a shower, and we make our way out into the dining area of my room. It isn’t long before there’s banging at my door. “Make yourself useful and get that, will you?”

  The woman, whose name I’ve forgotten again, stares at me for a moment then gets up from her chair, dramatically turns around, and walks over to the door. “Who the hell are you?” I hear her ask.

  Suddenly, I hear her scream. “You skank bitch! Take your nasty ass back to the side corner I saw you on last week!” It’s Amber.

  “And put some damn clothes on! You look like a cheap slut!” And Brooke.

  I look up from my laptop to see the two women glaring down at me with hatred. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t need to hear the two of you defending her actions to me.” I get up from my chair and head toward the kitchen. “Now please, leave my hotel room.”

  “Oh, hell no! You’re going to listen to what we have to say you no-good, dirty, cheating ass bastard!” Brooke snaps, making her way around the table I had been sitting at to stand in front of me.

  “Brooke. Move.”

  “Jeremiah. Kiss my ass,” she spits.

  “There’s nothing left to say. She cheated, I cheated, we both cheated. End of story.”

  “From where I’m standing, you’re the only one who stepped out of your relationship.” Amber found her way beside a glaring mad Brooke. They look like they’re ready to kill me on the spot.

  “Well, from where I’m standing, it looks like we both stepped out of this relationship.” I turn around, grab the pictures from the table and hand them to Brooke.

  “Oh, my God.” I watch as both women flip through each picture, looks of shock and devastation etched on their faces.

  “Now, you see, I’m not the only no-good, dirty, cheating bastard.”

  Brooke looks up at me with blazing eyes. “You stupid, arrogant son of a bitch!” I feel the sting of her slap across my right cheek. “She didn’t cheat on you! She was almost raped!”

  I damn near break my neck to look at her. Her eyes, along with Amber’s, are filled with tears. “What did you just say?”

  “Who gave you those pictures?” Amber asks.

  I don’t look away from Brooke, who is also still staring at me. “Look, I know she’s your friend, and you want to protect her, but lying about her almost being raped is really a low blow, even for you,” I snap.

  “Where did you get these pictures? How did you get them?” Amber snaps while glaring at me.

  “Jessica gave them to me,” I finally say, turning to look at her.

  I watch her eyes widen as she turns to a just as shocked Brooke.

  “You don’t think …”

  Brooke shrugs. “I wouldn’t put it passed her. And he is the same man we saw her with the other day.”

  “Will one of you tell me what the hell you’re going on about?”

  “When did she give you these pictures?” Brooke questions.

  “Early this morning,” I say. “What does any of this have to do with Tabitha?”

  “Let me guess, instead of going to her and asking her about the pictures, you just decided to go and sleep with the first bimbo you could find. Am I right?” Brooke asks with a snarl.

  “Did you even bother to let her explain what was going on in the pictures?” Amber asks.

  I shake my head. “There was nothing left for her to say or explain. I heard all I needed to hear from those pictures.” I walk back to my chair and sit down while staring up at the two very pissed off women in front of me.

  “Oh my God! Are all men this fucking stupid?” Brooke snaps as she runs her fingers through her curls. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Do you need me to say it slowly so you can better understand what I’m telling you?” She stares at me like I’m a child being taught the difference between wrong and right.

  I glare at her. “I’d rather not hear whatever lie you’ve conjured up in the tiny little head of yours.”

  “Fuck!” she screams before throwing the pictures at me. “Look at them.”

  “I’d rather not. …”

  “Jeremiah, if you don’t look at those pictures, so help me, I will rip your dick off.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Brooke so mad during the time I’ve known her. She looks like she is about to blow any minute. So, I pick up the pictures, flipping through them. “Look closer, you jackass. Look at her face.”

  “Her face isn’t in any of the shots—”

  “Exactly! You only see what she wanted you to see,” says Brooke.

  “Tabitha?”

  “No, your best friend, Jessica.”

  “What does she have to do with any of this?” I spit.

  “She has everything to do with this, seeing as she’s the one who hired that man to rape the woman we all love and care about.” This time, it’s Amber who snaps. Her hands are clenched into fists at her side while glaring down at me.

  I shake my head and move to stand up, but Brooke pushes me back down with a strength that shocks the hell out of me. This little woman is stronger than she looks. “No, you’re going to sit there and hear what the hell we have to say.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a Taser. “Or I swear to God, I will tase you until you’re brain dead.”

  After staring at her for a moment, I sit back in my chair and fold my arms over my chest. “I’m listening.”

  Brooke looks to Amber. “Go ahea
d.”

  Amber looks at me.

  “Last week, Wednesday, to be exact, we were having lunch with Barbara at Georgie’s when I saw Jessica having lunch with that same man in those pictures.” She pulls out her phone, looks through it for a moment, and then hands it to me. It’s a picture of Jessica sitting at a table with the man Tabitha had in our bed. “Scroll over to the right. In those pictures, you can clearly see her handing him an envelope full of cash,” she continues.

  “The next day, Tabitha was nearly raped by that same man,” Brooke adds. “He has a record, Jeremiah. He’s been to prison a few times for the rapes he’s been convicted of. He’s been accused of raping over fifteen women but has only been convicted of three of them, due to lack of evidence.”

  “We believe Jessica paid him to … sexually assault Tabitha while she took pictures to make it look like she’d cheated on you,” Amber finishes, wiping away her fallen tear.

  “No, Jessica …” I numbly shake my head. “She wouldn’t do something so … sick.”

  “Come on, Jeremiah! You aren’t that fucking stupid and blind that you can’t see the truth!” screams Brooke.

  “Didn’t you notice how different she’s been acting lately?” Amber points out.

  Now that I think about it, she had been acting differently lately. She hasn’t been eating, she’s been having nightmares, and she’s always finding an excuse to leave the house. She hasn’t been herself all week. No. What they’re saying can’t be true. It can’t be. Jessica isn’t capable of something so horrible. Is she?

  “She said she was stressed from work and just needed some time off.”

  “And of course, you believed her. Men,” Brooke says with much distaste.

  I look up at Amber. I’m pleading with her, with my eyes, to tell me that all of this is a lie. That all of this is just their way of trying to fix our relationship, but the longer I stare into her eyes, the harder it becomes for me to breathe. “No.” I stumble to my feet, blindly searching for something to lean against. The couch being the nearest to me, I lean against it to help keep myself upright.

  “We found her that day curled up in the corner of your room with him unconscious on the floor. She was covered in bruises. One look at her, and we knew what had happened.” Amber starts up again. “So, we took her to the hospital. She said he didn’t rape her, but we wanted to be sure. They did a rape kit and gave her two prescriptions for pain and to help her sleep then sent her home.”

  “Wh-why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t she tell me?” I choked at the end. “I never would have—”

  “Cheated on her?” Brooke says in a breathless anger.

  “She didn’t know how to tell you. She felt dirty and ashamed after what happened,” Amber responds to my earlier question. “She was trying to deal with it on her own. She didn’t want you to look at her differently.”

  “But we’d finally convinced her to tell you,” Brooke says. “That’s why she’d come here today. She was going to tell you everything.”

  I lift my head to look Amber in her eyes. “She won’t pick up for me if I call. Will you call her?” I ask.

  “The hell she will,” Brooke snaps.

  “Amber, please. I need to talk to her. I need to know how she’s doing.” I take a step toward her. “I know I fucked up royally. I was wrong, I know that, but I need to talk to her and tell her how sorry I am. Please.”

  Please say yes to me.

  Please say yes.

  “Fuck no! You should have thought about that before you stuck your dick in some cheap hoe off the street,” Brooke shouts. “Why, Jeremiah? Why didn’t you just go to her first? Why?” she angrily demands.

  I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. I can’t even think straight enough to form a complete sentence. One word seems to have found a home at the front of my mind. Rape. Rape. Rape. Someone had tried to rape the woman I love. The woman who I thought had stepped out on me. The woman who walked in on me in bed with another woman and still told me she loved me before walking out of my life.

  My Tabitha.

  “Maybe now she can find someone who won’t act on their emotions before coming to her first.” Brooke’s words are like ice picks in my heart. “Stay away from her. She doesn’t want or need to see you again.”

  I watch them cross the room and close the door behind themselves.

  I see red. Pure anger shoots through me, and I grab a pillow from one of the couches and rip it open. Cotton explodes everywhere, and I do the same to the next, and the next, until there are no more to tear into. She’s fucking gone! Fucking gone, gone, gone, gone!

  Soon, someone is screaming my name. “Jer! Jer! Jer!” Remy’s voice pleads for me to stop, but I don’t. I grab the nearest object and send it crashing into the wall and to the floor. I want to kill her. I want to kill him. I want to make them pay for what they did to her. I want to slam my own head into the fucking wall for hurting her, for not going to her first, and for reacting first.

  I turn to Remy, who slowly approaches me. I grab him by his jacket. “I fucked up, man! I fucked up bad, and now, she’s gone!”

  He grabs me by the shoulders. “Jer, you have to stop destroying the room.”

  “He almost raped her, Remy.” My voice cracks at the end. The despair hits me hard, and I want to die right here, right now. I try to push back the tears that threaten to reveal themselves to my closest friend, but I can’t. My heart feels like it’s about to explode, and the tears fall at the same time my knees give out under me. Remy catches me and sinks to the floor with me. I try to lift myself but can’t. “He almost raped Tabitha.”

  He digs his fingers into my shoulder. “I know. The girls just filled me in.” He shakes his head. “Jer, man, I’m so sorry,” he says with wild, pained eyes.

  “I have to get her back, Rem. I don’t care what I have to do or how long it takes, but I have to get her back.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I must make things right again. I don’t care if I need to get down on my hands and knees and grovel. I will do whatever it takes to make her mine.”

  He nods.

  “But first, … I want Jessica and her friend’s heads on a stick.”

  The rage I feel, and the pain that comes with having lost Tabitha because of Jessica and my own stupidity, is indescribable. I picture her heart-shaped face, dark-brown eyes, and thin lips twisted in shock as I put a bullet through her skull.

  I must have been smiling while images of her death flashed through my mind because Remy stares at me for a moment. “I guess from that sinister smile of yours, you have some crazy idea of how to make that happen,” he says as he stands up, helping me to my feet in the process. “I want in.”

  “It is in no way legal what I have in mind. It will require you to break more than just a few laws,” I warn him.

  “I said I’m in, Jer,” he growls. “Tabitha is family. No one messes with family and gets away with it. No one.”

  “Alright, but first, I need to make a few calls.”

  Past

  Tabitha

  (13)

  The days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months. I’ve been avoiding Jeremiah and his family for the last three months, keeping to myself as often as possible. Every time I talk to anyone or see them, I am only reminded of what happened, and I hate seeing the looks of pity on their faces when they look at me. The only people I talk to are Amber, Barbara, Brooke, Melissa, and Jacob. Anytime I want to see the kids, Amber brings them over so I don’t have to see Jeremiah.

  The first time she brought them over, Melissa asked me why we weren’t together anymore, and I nearly lost it, but I kept myself together. I just told her that we had some things to figure out before we could move forward with our lives. I keep in touch with my parents but not as much as I used to. Neither of them will stop talking about how much Jeremiah hurt me or how much my father wants to kill him. But that doesn’t stop Jeremiah.

  He calls and stops by every chance he gets, even afte
r everyone has threatened him to stay away from me. Sometimes, I want to answer his calls and the door to let him in, but I can’t. Every time I hear his voice or see a photo of him, the pain he caused me, the burning heartache, the images of him in bed with that woman, flash through my mind. I’ve never been so hurt in my life. He hurt me more than anyone has ever hurt me before. Walking into that room caused such a sharp pain in my chest that I was almost knocked on my ass.

  “Tabitha?”

  I look up to see Amber standing over me. “Hey.”

  “What are you doing sitting out here alone?” she questions, taking a seat on the porch beside me.

  “I needed to get some fresh air. I’ve been stuck up in that place for way too long.”

  “Do you really think this was a good idea?” she questions, taking my hand. “I ask because the police, nor Jeremiah, have caught the man or woman who tried to kill you.”

  I shrug and turn to meet her gaze. “I’m not sure, but I do know that if I stayed in that house any longer, I was going to lose my mind.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Besides, I’m really not worried about them anymore. I’ve not had anything bad happen since then.”

  “That’s good, but you can’t be too careful, Tabitha. Look, I know you want nothing to do with Jeremiah right now, but you should let him have Sammy, Brody, or Danny guard your house to keep you safe,” she says.

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t want to be babysat, nor do I want to give Jeremiah a reason to come around more than he already does now.”

  “Will you at least let him know that you’re alright? He’s worried sick about you, honey,” she says, caressing my hand. “He asks about you every single day.”

  “Amber—”

  “I know he hurt you, and believe me, I don’t expect you to forgive him for what he did, but he needs to hear your voice. He needs to know that you’re alright—safe.” She gently squeezes my hand. “Despite everything, I know you miss him.”

  I take a big breath.

  “Of course, I miss him. I love him; he’s the love of my life, but I don’t know if I’m ready to talk to him right now.”