Page 36 of Justice for JoElla

“Wow. You’re pissy in the morning. Anyway, I’ve got to go to Landon’s to shower and change. I don’t have any clothes with me because I had no idea I’d be staying the night.”

There was a sneer on her lips. “Because it never crossed your mind?”

Brandon lay there and wondered if there was any point to any of it. She seemed determined to keep him off balance and drive him crazy by pulling him in and pushing him away. Was that what she’d done to her ex-husband and he’d taken all he could take?Now I’m justifying abuse based on her behavior, he scolded himself but, damn, she was insistent on being difficult. Life had gotten so hard for him that it seemed a shame to spend even another second of it fussing and struggling with someone. “You know, I think I made a huge mistake.” He expected some smart comment, but she was silent, and he made up his mind he wouldn’t say a word. Instead, he just got up, went to the bathroom, then started pulling his clothes on, but JoElla still stayed put and watched him the whole time.

When he was finished dressing, he told himself,Okay, I’m done here. Without a word, he headed to the front door and let himself out. At the car, he turned and looked back at the apartment, hoping against hope that she’d be there, peeking out the window at him, but she wasn’t, so he just got in the car and headed back to Landon’s.

Jerrica was feeding the baby when he stepped into the kitchen. “Hey! Good morning.”

“Yeah. Good morning to me.” Brandon stopped and chucked Sim under the chin, then made his way to the hallway.

“You okay?” Jerrica called out.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess.”

“That sounds very decisive.”

Maybe she’d be of some help. At least he could ask. “Okay. So first of all, I’m sorry I just left you guys wondering what the hell was going on last night. I won’t make that mistake again, because it was pretty rude.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jerrica said, never looking at him as she spooned more gooey-looking pear stuff into Sim’s mouth.

“I need to talk to you. It’s about this woman I met.”

“The one you slept with last night.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Don’t you think you should talk to your brother instead of me?”

“No. I need to talk to a woman, and I sure can’t talk to my mother. And Liella… No. That would be a mistake.”

Jerrica nodded. “Agreed.”

“I asked her out and we went out. And I thought dinner went really well. And when we got back to her apartment, she basically asked me to come in and have sex with her, and I’m really attracted to her. Or at least I was. Anyway, I thought everything was fine. Did some stuff with her that she’d never done before, and she seemed happy.”

“Please, don’t tell me?”

“No. I’m not going to. But then this morning, she hit me.”

That brought Jerrica’s eyes straight to his. “Shewhat?”

“She hit me. Apparently touching her startled her. I mean, my god, she was snoring like I’ve never heard a woman snore before, and when I touched her, she rammed the knuckle of her middle finger into the side of my head. And then she apologized.”

“Well, okay. That’s something.”

“Yeah, but from there, it was like she did everything she could to push me away. I mean, she’s been married to an abusive man, then lost her job because she was having sex with her work partner, and?”

“Oh my god, it’s JoEllaTompkins, isn’t it?”

Brandon could feel his eyebrows rocket upward. “You know her?”

“Know her? I remember when all that stuff went down. It was a mess. I was at work when the kid was killed. Matter of fact, I was the nurse who did the intake on her gunshot wound.”

“Wait. She was shot?” She’d conveniently left out that part.

“Yeah. That’s why that asshole Margolis returned fire. The gang bangers shot at both of them, and she returned fire, but they hit her in the arm. Upper arm. She was incapacitated, so that’s when her partner, who’s now the police chief, stepped in. He managed to hold them off long enough to drag her out of the building and get some help.”

“Were her wounds serious?”

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