Page 59 of Anything For This Love

Abby sits next to me and curls into my side. I lift my arm and wrap it around her shoulders, pulling her closer. “Everything is going to be alright. We’re going to figure this out.”

The next morning when Raven returns home, both she and Ama are surprised to see me. When I tell them what I told Abby the night before, both women begin to cry.

“You are the answer to my prayers!” Ama exalts, tears streaming down her weathered face.

“Why would you do this for me?” Raven asks shrewdly, her relief tainted by suspicion.

“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for them,” I explain, motioning to Abby and Chloe.

She sits back in her chair. “Fair enough.”

“But I have some conditions.”

She stiffens, her eyes narrowing on me.

“First, you need to go somewhere for treatment or enter an after-care program or something. I don’t know if you’re clean or if you’re still using, but that’s priority number one.”

She begrudgingly nods her agreement.

“Secondly, you are to have no contact with these people once this deal is done. Get rid of your phone, change your number… do whatever you have to do to ensure you never see or hear from them again.”

“Anything else?” She crosses her arms over her chest defiantly even while agreeing to my terms.

“Don’t come back here for at least ninety days.” Her mouth flies open, prepared to rebuke me, but I cut her off. “It should take at least that long to get you back on your feet and where you need to be. You’ve been battling this addiction for a long time, and regardless of where you’re at in recovery, you need time to work on yourself. You need to get rid of these toxic behaviors before you come around your family again.”

She huffs, looking to her mother and Abby for support, but their lot is cast firmly with me.

“Fine,” she grits out.

She seems awfully hostile for someone who just had their ass saved.

“Good,” I reply cheerfully. “Get some sleep. We’ll work out the rest of the details later.”

I attend the visit to the pediatrician’s office, and they confirm Abby’s suspicions of an ear infection and give her a prescription for an antibiotic. We give Chloe the first dose as soon as we pick up the meds from the pharmacy.

My phone pings with an incoming email, a message alerting me that the security team just arrived in town. I need to meet up with them but I don’t want to scare anyone in Abby’s family, so I drop my girls back off at their house and meet the team at their rental.

We discuss strategy and they give me some pointers on how to proceed. They will also take shifts watching Ama’s house. Abby, Chloe, and I will be staying elsewhere for the night, but we decide that someone should watch our cabin as well, just in case we’re being followed. These people most likely already know where Raven lives. I don’t want them to be sitting ducks in their home. This will offer an extra layer of protection.

Raven is quiet once she wakes up. The tension in the house is thick enough to be nearly suffocating and she knows she’s the cause. I go over the plan with her and have her set up a meeting with her goons. They try to get her to come to where they’re staying for the drop off, but I tell her absolutely not. The plan is to meet in a public place in the middle of the day. They think they’ll be meeting with Raven, but instead they’ll get six feet, three inches of solid muscle.

“Do you think we need to tell Ethan what’s going on?” Abby asks as she’s packing her suitcase. “If Mom told them she was coming home because of his accident, they may be watching him, too, or try to use him as leverage. That makes him vulnerable.”

I nod my head. “I agree. Do you think he’ll go to your grandmother’s house?” My security guys won’t be able to watch three places at once. The rest of Abby’s family needs to be in one place so the team’s attention isn’t split so many ways.

She lifts one shoulder. “Maybe. All we can do is ask.”

When Abby calls Ethan, any doubt we have about him coming over evaporates into thin air. “She didwhat?” he screeches through the phone. Abby pulls it away from her ear. “I’m coming over there,” he seethes. “What the fuck is wrong with her?”

We leave before he gets there, not wanting to witness the fight we know is about to erupt in that household. It’s not the best environment for Chloe to be in, especially not when she’s ill.

Since the cabin isn’t stocked with much in the way of supplies, we stop and grab takeout on our way there. After dinner, I light a fire in the fireplace and curl up under a blanket with Abby. Chloe has the kid’s tablet I gifted her for Christmas and is watching cartoons. Thank God for Wi-Fi. I don’t know how parents managed without it.

She falls asleep face down on the screen, leaving a slobbery face print on the glass. I carry her to the smaller of two bedrooms and lay her gently in the twin-size bed. She looks so tiny, her body taking up very little space on the mattress.

“Ready for bed?” I ask, turning to Abby.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to relax enough to get much sleep,” she admits.

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