“But she told me he put his hands on her too.”
Aunt Faye’s face crumples as my heart pounds. “She told you and you didn’t say anything to me, Kenny?”
“Faye…I…I didn’t wanna add to the drama and confusion.”
“But she told you and you didn’t do anything—didn’t say anything?” she chokes out. “You’re wrong, Kenny. You are dead wrong.”
Deep lines mar the space between Blake’s eyebrows. “Again—these were allegations with no evidence. Did she show you pictures, Kenny? Scars? Shit, a bruise?”
I think my heart might beat right out of my chest.
“Evidence? Pictures?” I croak. “You keep talking like you didn’t have a front-row seat to the evidence. You saw the evidence on me before anybody else ever did! You looked me right in my black eyes last New Year’s Eve when you picked us up off the side of some random street in New York after I tried to get away from him!”
That night is burned into my psyche with all the other nights and days where I ducked, dodged and ran from a man who said he loved me.
Blake blinks at me with a contrived, downtrodden expression that makes me feel dirty. “I don’t recall that night, Lovie. If I saw anything like that, I would’ve bought you a plane ticket home because no woman deserves that type of treatment.”
“You’re a liar!” I yell.
Aunt Faye jumps up and shuffles behind my chair, pulling me back. “Lovie…let me and Ken handle this.”
She reaches down, wrapping her hand around mine. It’s clenched so tight that my nails dig deep into my palm, and all I hear is Rich asking me if I’m gonna use it.
“Calm down,” Aunt Faye murmurs, squeezing my fist.
The air between us is so thick that it hurts to inhale, but I gasp anyway, swallowing it with a choke.
“Is that true, Blake?” she asks. “Did you know?”
I chase his dark eyes, but he won’t look at me. Instead, he looks at Aunt Faye’s hand covering mine, then over atUncle Kenny, who watches us with flared nostrils. He lookseverywherebut at me.
“She asked you a question,” I grit out.
“I didn’t know,” he replies.
I push up, making Uncle Kenny’s glass of tea slosh back and forth, and Aunt Faye pulls me back down, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
“He’s a liar.” I gasp. “He’s been at our apartment and saw the aftermath of what hisclientdoes when he gets mad at me. He sat in silence with AJ all the way back to our apartment on New Year’s Eve while I cleaned up my bloody face in his backseat.”
Hestillwon’t look at me.
“It’s funny how after that New Year’s Eve, AJ started hitting me in all the places people can’t see—my chest…my stomach…my ribs. You advised your client not to hit me in my face anymore, didn’t you?”
“Jesus…” Aunt Faye mutters, tightening her hold on me. “Oh, Jesus.”
Blake clears his throat, tugging his goatee. “That’s just an assumption—not a fact.”
“Did you tell him not to hit me in my face anymore, Blake?”
“I’ve never had any conversations with AJ about his mistreatment of you—only about the exorbitant spending you two were doing.”
“You lying piece of?—”
“AJ wants to work through this despite my reservations, Lovie,” he mutters. “He wants to spend his whole bye week down here until he gets a handle on this.”
I shake my head. “He needs to leave. I don’t want him. I don’t want anything with him or that life anymore.”
“Now I can agree with you on that. Hedoesneed to leave. I told him how stupid of a decision this is. His career is in jeopardy, yet he’s wasting an entire bye week trying to rekindle atoxic relationship. He needs to be back in Jersey like yesterday. This is all stupid, but my pay depends on his success. So if he wants his number one girl back, then my job is to help him get her back.”
