TOO LATE : CHAPTER 21 – 30
Chapter 30
Again with the condescending looks. They’re the same condescending looks he used to give me when I was a kid, only this time they aren’t served up with a beating.
From his end, anyway.
They keep walking and when they’re about five feet away, I say, “You have a lovely afternoon, Paul Jackson.”
My father stops walking, waiting a few seconds before turning around. When he finally does, I see it. The recognition. He cocks his head and says, “I never told you my name.”
I shrug and then drop my cigarette to the concrete, snuffing it out with the heel of my shoe. “My bad. Guess I should have said Dad.”
There’s no second-guessing whether that’s recognition on his face now. “Asa?” He takes a step forward, but that was his second mistake.
His first was not remembering me to begin with.
I stride over to him and come down on him with both fists. The pathetic fk hits the ground before I even follow through with a full swing. I can feel one of the guy’s trying to pull me off of him. The bch is screaming in my ear, scratching at my face, trying to get me off of him.
I pvnch him again. I pvnch him for every year he left me alone. I pvnch him for every time he called my mother a whre. I pvnch him for every piece of fked up advice he ever gave me.
I keep punching him until my fists are covered in bI.ood and I can no longer see my father’s face. There’s so much bI.ood, I’m pretty sure I even mistake the concrete for his head, because that pvnch hurts the worst.
When the guy’s finally pull me off him and start dragging me toward the car, I feel the wet shit on my face. The sht my father told me is what makes the difference between men and women.
Yes, I’m talking about tears. I can feel them and I can’t stop them and I’ve never felt more powerful and more weak in my whole life.
I have no idea how I make it to the passenger seat, or who even put me here, but I’m beating the dashboard, pvnching it so hard it cracks.
Kevin is peeling out of the parking lot, I’m sure to try and beat security before they find the bI.oody mess I left at their front entry.
Jon reaches around my seat and tries to pull my arms behind me but he’s stupider than I thought if he thinks he can hold me back.
I tear my arms from his grip and start pvnching the dash again. I’ll pvnch it until my hands are numb or this sht stops coming out of my eyes.
I’m not turning into him. I’m not turning into that pathetic bstard.
I don’t want to feel this anymore.
“Somebody give me something!” I yell.
It feels like my bones are trying to tear through my skin. I pull at my hair, I pvnch the window. “I can’t breathe!”
Kevin rolls down the window but it doesn’t help.
“Give me something!” I yell again. I turn around and try to grab Jon, but he leans back and lifts his leg up like that’ll protect him from me. “Now!”
“It’s in the trunk!” Jon yells. “Christ, Kevin! Pull over so we can calm him the fuck down!”
I turn around and punch at the dash again. Several pvnches later, Jon returns to the backseat. “Give me two seconds,” he says.
He’s a fucking liar, because it’s more like ten seconds before he hands me the needle. I pull the cap off with my teeth and shove it in my arm.
I lean back in my seat.
“Go,” I say to Kevin.
I close my eyes and feel the car begin to move.
I am nothing like him.
And they are not all wh’res. Sloan is not a whre.
“She’s heroin,” I whisper. “Heroin is nice.”
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 21 – 30
Carter-POV
“What are you hungry for?” I ask her.
She wanted me to drive back, so I’ve been looking for a restaurant for the last five miles.
“I don’t care,” she says. “Anything but Greek.”
“You don’t like Greek food?”
She shrugs. “It’s okay. There’s just not a Greek restaurant until the next town and I’m hungry. If you wanted Greek, I’d have to wait too long to eat.”
I laugh. She’s so goddamn adorable. I reach over to take her hand, but receive an incoming text. I normally wouldn’t text and drive, especially with Sloan in the car, but Dalton said he’d warn me if they decided to come back early.
And sure enough, the text is from Dalton.
Dalton: Time for you to head back. Asa’s not in good shape.
Oh, sht. Did my de.ath-wish cvrse him earler?
Me: Were you guys in a car wreck?
Dalton: No. He just beat the shit out of his father and he’s having a major breakdown.
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 21 – 30
..******..
Dalton: He keeps rambling about how Sloan better be there by the time he gets back. Never seen him like this, man.
I delete the texts and then set my phone back in the cup holder. I grip the steering wheel. “Sorry, but we can’t stop and eat. Dalton says Asa had a breakdown and they’re on their way back.”
“A breakdown?” Sloan says.
“Yeah, something about his father? Apparently he beat him up at the casino.”
Sloan looks out the window. “His father is alive?”
I glance over at her. She doesn’t know about his father being charged for mvrder? I guess it makes sense that Asa wouldn’t tell her. That’s not really something you would want your girlfriend to know.
“He doesn’t know you’re with me. We don’t have to get back before them, I’m hungry,” she says.
I hate that I’m forcing her to go back home when she needs to stay the h’ll away from there. “Dalton says he’s pretty adamant that you be there. Apparently he’s in pretty bad shape.”
She sighs. “That’s not my problem. Why does Dalton know you’re with me, anyway? I don’t trust Dalton. Or Jon. Or Kevin.”
“Don’t worry. I trust Dalton with my life.” I reach over and take her hand, pulling it onto my lap. “I’ll park at my car and then come over later tonight. I think there should be some distance between you getting home and me showing up.”
She nods, but she doesn’t say anything else on the drive home. We’re both dreading the inevitable, which is coming face to face with an unstable Asa Jackson. He’s bad enough when he’s in a good mood. I don’t even want to think of how he’s going to treat Sloan tonight.
When we reach my car, I look around to make sure I don’t see anyone. I parked a couple miles from her house and then walked the rest of the way this morning.
Before I get out of the car, I pull her to me and kss her. She ksses me back with a sigh and it’s kind of sad. Like she’s tired of saying goodbye like this.
“How come it seems every time we take a step forward, we’re forced to take ten steps back?” she asks.
I push a strand of hair off her forehead. “We’ll just have to start taking bigger steps forward.”
She forces a smile and then says, “I hate that I won’t get to talk to you when you come over tonight. Or touch you.”
I kss her forehead. “Me, too,” I say. “We should have a sign we can use in place of being able to talk tonight. Something subtle that only we’ll notice.”
“Like what?”
I lift my hand and rub my thumb across my bottom lip. “That’s mine,” I tell her.
She crinkles up her nose while she tries to think of one.
“You should twirl a strand of hair around your finger,” I suggest. “I like it when you do that.”
She smiles. “Okay. If you see me doing that it means I wish I could be alone with you.” She pulls at a strand of her hair and twirls it around her finger.
I lean forward and kss her, then force myself out of her car. I wait until she drives away before texting Dalton again.
Me: Don’t let him alone with her before I get there. I’m scared of what he might do.
Dalton: Noted. Not sure what’s going on with him. He shot up, slept for ten minutes, now he’s talking incessantly.
He keeps saying he wants spaghetti and that his hair is really thick. He’s not making any sense. He even made Kevin run his hand through his hair.
Fk. He’s already unpredictable. This isn’t good.
Me: Let me know as soon as you all get back. I’ll wait an hour and then head that way.
Dalton: Good idea. BTW, he just looked at me and said you were LSD. What do you think that means?
Me: No clue.
Dalton: He said, “Carter causes the worst hallucinations and he’s hard to locate. He’s LSD.”
Me: He’s out of his mind.
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 21 – 30
Sloan-POV
My phone is ringing as soon as I walk through the front door. I glance down at the screen and see that it’s Asa.
Great.
I slide my thumb across the screen to answer it. “Hey.”
“Hey, Baby,” he says. He sounds like he just woke up, but I can tell he’s still in a car. “Are you home?”
“Yep. Just walked in the door. Are you still at the casino?”
“Nope,” he says. “On our way back.”
So I heard.
“We’re hungry. We want spaghetti, can you cook some?”
“I have a lot of homework to do. Wasn’t really planning on cooking tonight.”
He sighs and says, “Yeah, well I wasn’t really planning on craving spaghetti.”
Sounds like we have a dilemma,” I say, uninterested.
“Not to me. Make some spaghetti, Sloan. Please. I’m having kind of a bad day, here.”
I close my eyes and fall onto the couch. This is going to be a long night. I might as well make it as easy on myself as possible. “Okay. I’ll make you spaghetti. Would you like meatballs with that, dear?”
“I would love meatballs. We want meatballs, right, guys?”
I hear a couple of the guys in the car mutter, “Sure.”
I kick my legs up on the arm of the couch and put the phone on speaker, resting it on my chest. “Why are you having a bad day?”
It’s quiet for a minute, and then Asa says, “Have I ever told you about my father, Sloan?”
“No.”
He sighs. “Exactly. There’s nothing to tell.”
Jesus. What in the h’ll did that man do to him? I rub my fingers against my temples. “When will you be back?”
Asa doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “Is Carter there?”
I immediately sit up on the couch. Blame the paranoia, but my voice grows a little weaker. I try to hide it when I say, “No, Asa. He’s with you.”
There’s a short pause. “No, Sloan. He isn’t.”
The phone grows even quieter, and when I look down at it, I realize he hung up. I press the phone to my forehead. What does he know?
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 21 – 30
***
An hour later, they all walk through the front door. I’m not finished with the spaghetti yet because I had to go to the store to get the dmn noodles.
Asa walks into the kitchen, and I gasp when I look up at him. His shirt is covered in blood and his fist is almost unrecognizable. I immediately rush to the first aid kit in the pantry. “Come here,” I tell him, directing him to the sink.
I run water over his hand, trying to find where the blood is coming from, but it seems like it’s coming from everywhere.
His whole fist looks like raw flesh. My stomach turns, but I force myself to finish cleaning it so I can bandage it up and not have to look at it.
“What in the h’ll did you do, Asa?”
He winces and looks down at his hand. Then he shrugs. “Not enough.”
I put ointment all over his hand and then wrap it, but that’s hardly going to help. He probably needs stitches. Several stitches.
I feel his hand clamp tightly around mine, and my eyes dart up to his.
“Where’s your ring?”
Sht.
“On the dresser. I didn’t want to get it dirty while I cooked.”
He stands up and yanks my arm, pulling me toward the stairs. I can feel the pull all the way up to my neck. “Asa, stop!”
He doesn’t let go of me, and when he drags me behind him, through the living room, Dalton stands up. “Asa,” he says.
Asa still doesn’t stop. I have to run just to keep up with him as he takes the stairs two at a time, so I don’t fall down.
He swings the bedroom door open and grabs my ring off the dresser, pulling my left hand up between us. “You keep your ring on your hand. That’s why I bought it for you, so people would know they can’t mess with you.”
He slaps my hand on the dresser and then opens the top drawer, holding my hand down flat with his.
“What are you doing?” I ask, fearing the answer. He opens the second drawer and rifles through it.
“Helping you remember never to take it off,” he says, grabbing a tube and slamming the dresser drawer shut. My eyes land on the bottle of super glue in his hand.
The h’ll he is.
I try to yank my hand back, but he uses even more force to hold down my wrist. He pulls the cap off the super glue and starts squirting it on my finger, spreading it under my ring.
The tears begin stinging at my eyes. I’ve never seen him like this and I don’t want to push things even more. I stop fighting and stand as still as I can, aside from my heart racing in my chest.
Carter isn’t here and I’m honestly too scared to fight back right now because I’m not sure that any of those guys downstairs would come to my defense.
Asa tosses the super glue on the dresser and lifts my hand, then blows on it to dry the glue. He stares at me the whole time he’s blowing on my finger. His eyes are black. Huge and black and terrifying.
“You finished?” I whisper. “I don’t want to overcook your spaghetti.”
He blows on my hand for a few more seconds and then leans in and ksses my palm. “All done. Now you won’t forget.”
He’s ¢razy. I think I’ve always known he wasn’t a great person, but I had no idea how crazy he was until looking at his eyes just now.
READ ALSO : HIGH SCHOOL MOM
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 21 – 30
*******************
TO BE CONTINUED
NOTE: Searching for any story? Just go to google browser or any search engine, then type the title of the story with ‘thingscouplesdo’ for example. (Farida episode 1 thingscouplesdo).
Always check this site to read wonderful stories, you will like them all. Please, tell your friends who like reading about this site. We shall be posting lovely stories on this site everyday.
Thingscouplesdo