“Have you already called someone to pick it up? Hell, did you grab the cocaine?”
“No, I just left it on the side of the road.”
He gasps. “Really?”
I sigh. “You’re so stupid sometimes, you know that?” I walk past him toward my bedroom.
“Wait, so is that a yes or a no?”
I look over my shoulder at him. “I have the cocaine, Viper. This isn’t my first fucking rodeo.”
I walk into my room and shut the door behind me. I need to get out of these torn-up fucking clothes and take a shower before I hit the road again.
I send a quick text to Xavier to keep him aware of my situation, and then toss the phone onto the bed. My pants are shredded on both legs, and my vest has skid marks from how far I slid on the road. “Fucking hell.” Now I am going to have to get a new one.
My body aches as I shrug it off and the rest of my clothes, tossing them into a heap on the bed with my phone. I’m getting too fucking old for this shit.
Chapter 3
Blake
Charlie falls asleep in her car seat twenty minutes into our ride back. The silence in the car leaves me little room to think of anything other than what awaits me when I get home. I am now two hours late, and I see that Craig has attempted to call me multiple times. But even though Hunter is no longer holding agun to me or my child, I still can’t bring myself to answer the phone when it rings.
He will just yell at me and call me names. He won’t be worried about me. Hell, he will be more upset that his dinner wasn’t done than the fact that his wife and child got into a car accident and then were kidnapped.
He’ll probably think I’m a liar anyway. I turn onto our street and see that all the lights are on inside the house. This means he is waiting for me to walk in the door.
Putting the car in park in the driveway, I slowly get Charlie out of her seat and carry her to the front door. Before I even have a chance to unlock the front door, Craig swings it open wide with a scowl on his face. He looks between me and our child and bites his tongue.
I walk past him to Charlie’s room and kiss her goodnight after tucking her into bed. Then, I sluggishly make my way back to the living room, where I know my hell is about to begin.
Before I even get through the living room to head toward the kitchen, he pounces. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I let out a breath. “I was in a car accident.”
He scoffs. “You don’t look like you were in an accident. You drove your car home.” He looks out the front window. “How about trying to tell me the truth this time?”
I turn around slowly to stare at him. “That is the truth, Craig. It was a guy on a motorcycle and then—” I stop mid-sentence. For some reason, I feel like I shouldn’t disclose any other information, as if I am trying to keep the biker safe from my husband. Or the law. I shouldn’t want that, though.
He fucking kidnapped me and Charlie and forced me at gunpoint to bring him where he needed to go. But he was just desperate, right? He also listened to me when I talked and looked like he was interested in what I had to say. Maybe he shouldn’t suffer for kidnapping me. Besides, he let me go, so I should just leave it alone.
Craig raises his brow. “Then what? Why did you stop?”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing. I got into an accident. The police showed up for the report, and we had to wait for EMS to get there for the guy I hit. That's all. Then I came straight home after that.”
“Well, go make me some fucking dinner. You know I don’t like to come home to no food. There is no reason that I should have to work all day in the heat and then come home to no food while you have been sitting on your fat ass all day doing nothing.”
His words sting because he knows exactly what to say to hurt me. He knows my weight is a hard button to press, and he knows the fact that I am a stay-at-home mom is another one I can’t stand him pressing. I love spending all my time with Charlie, but this is not what I wanted for my life. Craig forced me to quit my job as a nurse to take over full responsibility of our child and the house. He often tells me that the woman cares for the house, the children, and the husband. But the thing is, it should be an equal-opportunity household. It is 2024, for Christ's sake. He should help around the house and show Charlie some damn attention for once in his life.
I nod to stop the argument I can feel brewing from here and walk into the kitchen to figure out something quick I can make for dinner.
I have a package of ground beef in the fridge, and I grab a box of hamburger helper from the closet. Once the meal is complete, I plate it and bring it over to Craig, who is sitting on the couch. “Here, baby,” I coo just to appease him.
“Thanks,” he grumbles, taking the plate from me.
As I walk back to the kitchen to make myself something to eat, I hear Craig spit his food back on his plate. “This is fucking terrible, Blake! You can’t fucking do anything right, can you? Fucking worthless. Can’t be home on time. Hell, you can’t even fucking cook good enough.” He tosses the plate of food onto the floor, and our German shepherd hops down from the couch to lick the plate. “I wish I had a better fucking wife. Someone not so fucking useless.”
I watch him pull out his phone and order food from a delivery service. What the hell was the point of me making him anything if he was just going to order food anyway? “You’re not going to ask if me or your child wants anything?”
