Page 4 of His Gentle Omega
I doubted Edward would return tonight, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I was getting Lucas out of this pretty dungeon now. I would just leave whatever vehicle I took at the bus station. None of the cars parked in our four-car garage were in my name. I had no doubt if I took off in one of them it wouldn’t be long before I would be pulled over for auto theft. I’d be in cuffs and Lucas would be snatched away from me.
Hopefully the meager money I had saved would get us a bus ticket far enough out of Dallas that I could call my long estranged brother, Asher. If he couldn’t come get us, maybe he would at least be able to buy us a ticket for the rest of the journey.
Lucas’s dark head appeared, his blue eyes watery with tears. He rushed at me, and I had to brace myself when his thin arms hugged my legs tightly. Stroking his baby soft hair, I whispered, “I’m okay, I’m okay.”
It was a lie because I was about as far from okay as I had ever been, but he needed me to assure him. If that meant lying to my son, then I would lie.
His little body shook against me, and I didn’t know which one of us was trembling the hardest.
I had tried my best to shield Lucas from most of it. But as he’d gotten bigger it had been harder. He wasn’t a baby anymore. He understood things that he heard. He saw things, no matter how hard I tried to hide them. I would not let the monster that Edward had turned into hurt our son.
“Shh,” whispering, because it was all that my ravaged throat could produce for sound, I tried to calm his tears. “Help Maria pack some of your things in your backpack. We can’t take too much so just what you can’t live without. You need clothes more than toys.” Tilting his chin up with a finger, I gazed into eyes identical to mine. “Things can be replaced. Just the important stuff.”
He nodded solemnly, understanding as much as any six-year-old could. Maybe a bit more. I had tried my hardest to instill in him that things weren’t important. Things were just objects that could be replaced or lived without.
Maria ran a hand down his back in a comforting caress. “Come Mijo, let’s get your things. It will be better this way, you’ll see. Your daddy will take good care of you. He’ll keep you safe.”
Albert had vanished while I’d been busy getting Lucas out of his hiding spot, and I prayed he hadn’t heard Edward returning. It might be cowardly, running off in the dead of the night, but it beat the ugly scene I knew would happen if Edward returned.
Edward might not want me or Lucas, but he wasn’t about to let us leave without a fight. We were like toys he had grown tired of, yet he wouldn’t let anyone else play with what was his. Especially Lucas. He might not have wanted Lucas, but he knew there was no way he would be able to explain Lucas’s absence to his father. And Edward’s father held the purse strings. The man might turn a blind eye to his son’s flaws, but he had always been a doting grandfather.
Edward would put up a fight and I honestly didn’t know if I had the strength left to get us safely away if he returned. If I could shift, we’d have a chance, but my tiger was silent, not even a niggling from him. My tiger had been silent for so long, I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I had felt him beneath my skin. Since I had been able to shift. It had beenbefore Lucas was born. My tiger had abandoned me, just like I had abandoned everyone and everything I had ever cared about.
Karma was a bitch.
Albert returned at the same time I made my way back from my bedroom with my own duffle bag. Even though I’d only tossed a couple of changes of clothes in it, my toiletries, and some pictures I wanted of Lucas, the thing felt like it weighed a hundred pounds in my hands.
I had taken a few minutes to clean my face, wincing at the damage the bathroom mirror had reflected. Changing into a clean shirt had left me gasping, the skin along my left side already starting to turn purple with bruising. Took a few precious minutes to take pictures of my face and ribs, sending the photos to my email address. This time I didn’t bother to delete them from my phone like I normally would.
Albert grabbed my hand, pressing something cold into it. Running a finger along what it was, I recognized a key on a ring. “Take her. She’ll get you where you need to go. You’ve kept her in tip top shape for us.”
He was talking about their old red Ford truck, that he lovingly called Trixie. The thing was fifty years old, but he was right. I’d kept her in great running condition for them.
I had missed getting my hands dirty under a hood, and after he had taken it to a place that had charged him a ridiculous amount of money for a shoddy oil change, I had made sure to do all the maintenance on her. Of course, I’d had to do it when Edward wasn’t home, since him seeing me doing anything I loved would put him in amood. And no one wanted Edward in a mood.
“I can’t take your truck,” I tried to press the key back into his hand, but he shoved it back at me with surprising strength. Or maybe I was just that weak right now.
“You can and you will.” His tone told me not to argue. “The missus and me, we love you both like our own. We only stayed on because we were worried about you both. Needed to help you the best way we could.”
And he had helped me, something I would be forever grateful to him for.
“Now here,” he pushed a white envelope against my chest, “it’s not much, but it’s something. It will help get you someplace safe. And I’ve written up a bill of sale for Trixie. She’s yours, free and clear.”
“But–”
“No buts,” Albert wrestled the envelope into the side pocket of my duffle against any of the protests I was trying to mouth. “You take Master Lucas, and you go. You get someplace safe. Master Edward–” he hesitated, shaking his head full of white hair, “he’s not a good man.”
“Neither am I.” I swallowed against the regret that threatened to choke me.
He gave me a long, hard look. “You’re one of the best men I’ve ever met. You just need to remember that. But this isn’t a good place for you or the boy anymore.”
Maria stood with one hand on Lucas’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. Tears glistened in her brown eyes, and she gave me a wobbly smile. “We packed just enough. Clothes and a few things he thought he couldn’t live without.”
Lucas stood up straight, and it nearly broke my heart to see my baby putting on a brave front through his tears. His blue eyes looked too big in his pale face, his dark hair flopping over his forehead.
He had on a pair of pajamas covered in Dalmatian dogs, his sneakers that lit up when he walked, and a light jacket. It wasJune, but we’d had endless storms the last few days, bringing a slight chill to the night air. He had his Tigger backpack in one hand and his ragged, stuffed bunny tucked under one of his arms. The fur had once been soft and white, but now was a dull gray. He’d had it since before he was born, and I knew Lucas wouldn’t leave Mr. Rabbit behind.
“I need Mr. Rabbit, Daddy,” he pleaded, “and my green egg book. And my monster book.”
