Page 12 of Demitrius

“Yes. I was just coming to ask you if you’d watch over the boys tonight. I have plans.” He asked her what her plans were, a little too harshly he realized when she looked at him with a cocked brow. “Knox asked me to go to dinner with him tonight. He said he was tired of being hit on when—”

“No. I forbid it.” She took a step back, her smile wavering just a little. “He’s too handsy with the women he goes out with, and you’re not to go out with him. That’s final.”

He knew he was messing things up with her, but he couldn’t keep his mouth from flapping. Instead of shutting up, he went on to tell her the other things that he knew of his brother and made up a few too. He didn’t want her going out with anyone. But him.

“I’ll go with him if he wants a date.” Mandy laughed, and he didn’t care for that either. There was something very badly wrong with him today. “In fact, while under my roof, you’ll not date at all. I’m going to be putting my foot down on that. And anything else to do with men that come sniffing around.”

The slap to his face stung. Not only that, but he could taste a bit of blood in his mouth from her hitting him. As she turned on her heel and walked away from him, the fool that he’d suddenly become went after her, dragging her around so that she faced him. This time, when she hit him, Demi felt the air whoosh out of him and his head bang against something hard. Then nothing.

When he woke up, Demi tried to sit up, but his brother Locke pushed him back down, telling him to stay put. That was when he noticed that there were medics around him and the bright lights of an ambulance. He asked him what happened.

“Mandy called me to tell me that she had just knocked the shit out of you and that I might want to call an ambulance. So I called them first and then came here. What did you do to piss her off?” He asked him why he thought it was his fault. “Because she’s sobbing with my wife right now about you being a neanderthal bastard that thinks he can control her life. So again, little brother, what did you do to have her pop you in the nose with her forehead and walk away?”

“She said she loved me.” Locke said that any fool could see that. “Well, I didn’t. She told me that she loved me, and I only like her. I think. I don’t know what I feel for her now that she’s hurt me. Why would you do that to someone you love?”

“Plenty of reasons that I can think of right off the top of my head. She also said that she wasn’t to see men while living under your roof. Please tell me you didn’t say that to her.” Demi said he might well have. “You’re an idiot. Why would you say…did you actually tell her that you didn’t love her but liked her? Are you insane? Everyone around the two of you can see that you love each other.”

He thought about what his brother said to him as the medics were telling him he needed stitchesin the back of his head. Didn’t sound to him like he was loved. As he was being helped up off the ground, he asked where Mandy was.

“Last I heard, she was moving back into her rental. She said she wasn’t going to be living with someone like you, and she thought that she stood a better chance of being normal without you in her life. You did a number on her, Demi. She’s about as pissed off as I’ve ever seen a woman.” He said he wasn’t all that happy either. “Yeah, I got that too. But she’s crying and you’re not. At least not now. You gotta fix this, Demi. She could be your everything.”

“I figured that out already. I’m a fool.” He said he was only a fool if he didn’t fix this with her. “I don’t even know how to begin. I’ve already pissed her off enough that she’s moving out of the safeness of my home to someplace a known would be killer knows where she lives.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. But if she quits working for the women, you’re going to have a whole lot of new hurts on your pretty body.” He got into the ambulance and was being taken to the hospital when he thought of something else.

The boys were going to be pissed off too when they found out that he’d hurt their aunt. It wouldn’t matter to them that he’d been in the hospital; they had told him not to hurt her, and he had. And he felt terrible about it.

By the time he’d gotten to the hospital, his head was hurting, and so was his pride. He’d just, in one afternoon pissed off three of the most wonderful people in the world with his mouth. Once he was able to make a call, he called Mandy to tell her he was sorry.

“Are you all right?” He said that he was but had a headache. “Good. You deserve it. The things you said to me? I can’t believe that I even wanted to speak to you right now. You hurt my heart.”

“I don’t know why I said those things to you. I’m profoundly sorry. As I said, I don’t know why I said those things. I’ve been thinking about how I feel about you, and I got angry when you said you were going out with my brother. I didn’t care for that at all.” She told him no shit. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry. Will you come here and sit with me? I just want to talk to you for a little bit. Bring the boys.”

“They’re unpacking their things. They’re not at all happy with me either. We’ve moved back into our little house. It was that or I murder you in your sleep. To think that I actually told you that I loved you.” He asked her if she still did. “Of course. You can’t just turn that shit off and on. But I’m pissed off at you for treating me like…I don’t know what, but I won’t have you treating me that way again.”

“I won’t. You have my word on that. I was stupid and foolish for even thinking things like I did.” She asked him what he was thinking. “That I was going to lose the best thing that has ever happened to me. I think I’m about as deeply in love with you as I’ve ever been with anyone before.”

“I love you too.” He wanted to bask in that idea of being in love, but they were taking him to have his head examined. He had a feeling that they were going to need more than an MRI machine to see what was wrong with him.

~*~

Carrie looked at her mom. She’d been doing so much better at the facility than she’d been doing with her at home. Just finding out that she’d been mistreated by the nurse she’d hired hurt her soul, but she was getting the kind of care that she needed now, and so was Carrie.

“Carrie, where are you?” Today was turning out to be a good day for a visit. She mostly knew who she was, and for that, she was grateful. Her mom was in the end stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia caused by a stroke that had limited some blood to her brain. “I need to go home and get dinner started, and I can’t get out of this chair.”

“That’s so you don’t fall again. See? You busted up your knee the other day when you tried to walk to the lounge.” This place had it all. From memory care units to specialized places where her mom could feel comfortable while she was out and about. “Tell me what you had for lunch today? I missed coming to eat with you.”

“I don’t know. They called it fish, but it looked like a hamburger to me.” It had been spaghetti with a slice of garlic toast. “For dessert, I had me a banana. I’ve not had one of them in a long time. Putthat on the list for when we go shopping again.”

The ‘banana’ hadn’t been fruit at all but a slice of cake with pink icing on it. It was one of the other residents’ birthday, and the entire ward got to celebrate it with her. Not that she understood any more than her mom did, but it was nice of the staff to make sure every milestone was celebrated. She would be ever so thankful to the Ericksons for what they’d given her in the way of a job and a place to live where her mom was safe.

She’d met the Ericksons when she’d been a grocery store clerk. She’d been ringing out people when one of the men came through her line. Getting him to purchase a winning scratch-off card was easy, and it had come back on her, too. Five grand. And since he’d not needed the money, he’d made sure that she had it. The money was stashed away in an account that her family couldn’t get to right now, and she was banking every penny she could while working for them, too.

“When are we leaving here? I need to get home and watch my shows.” There was no way that she’d be able to keep her mom safe if she were to leave here, so Carrie changed the subject. Asking her about the dog that came around all the time. “He’s so sweet, Carrie. Like he knows that he’s loved or something. I want to get me a dog for home. When are we going home today? I need to watch my shows, you know.”

“They’ve been on already, Mom. You and I watched them together.” She hated lying to her, but it was easier than telling her that she didn’t watch daytime television and that they’d been in the lounge when someone else had them on. “I have to be going soon, Mom. Want me to take you back to the rec center?”

“I want to go home. Damn it, why can’t I go home?” She told her that Allen was looking for her. “Oh. He’ll hurt me bad, won’t he? They all hurt me bad, Carrie. Why would they hurt their poor old mother like that?”

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