Page 48 of Hideaway Whirlwind
The fried chicken is cold and has to be reheated by the time everyone sits down for dinner with a country-western playlist turned low on a Bluetooth speaker in the background. Though I haven’t been invited to do so, I pull out the chair beside Birdie and sit my smug ass down with Kendall on my left knee. Birdie hops up and moves to the opposite side of the table, so I stand, ready to switch sides as well. Birdie pinches her lips, moving back to her original seat on my right, all while Davis looks on with a laugh, plating up Goldie and Lily’s dinner first.
Birdie picks at her chicken while I sit, enthralled, listening to Dustin and Sydney talk over each other. I hadn’t been able to eat much with them being gone, too depressed to sit alone in my kitchen, and I eat up their every word with more excitement than I do my first and second helpings when Birdie reloads my plate. Their chatter grows louder when they move on to asking about the dogs.
“You should see them,” I say. “I swear, the puppies are already twice the size—”
Birdie elbows me hard in my side, though I’m sure it hurt her more than it did me, since she rubs her elbow afterward.
“Can we see them? Can we? Please, please, please,” the kids beg, both looking at their mama with the matching juts of their bottom lips and big, rounded eyes.
Birdie looks like she wants to stick something sharper in myside.
“Maybe in the morn—” I start to say, only to get another jab of her elbow. “Or later in the eve—for crying out loud.” I push my chair back and haul Birdie out of hers onto my right knee so she can’t do herself any more damage, only for my chair to groan under our combined weight and collapse.
I end up sprawled on the floor, having cracked the back of my head on it, sharp wooden pieces of the chair digging into my spine and ass with Kendall and Birdie atop me. While all the kids hoot and howl with laughter, bringing a foreign smile to my face, Goldie is out of her seat and helping Birdie up with a look of concern. Birdie takes a moment to double-check that Kendall is unharmed, but she doesn’t spare me a glance before she rushes down the hallway, her hand on her lower belly.
I take off like a shot after her and push my way into the hall bathroom before she can slam the door shut in my face.
“Go away,” she says, her chin quivering.
“Did you hit your head?” I turn her around, slipping my fingers into her loose hair to check for any lumps on her scalp. I don’t care about the pounding in the back of mine, but I certainly care if she hit hers.
Birdie spins and slaps my hands away. “Stop it! I’m fine. I just need a moment—”
“What about your back?” My mind turns to static when I spin her right back around, yank up her oversized maroon T-shirt that she’s cropped—one that I gave her—and check for any splinters or angry red marks.
“Stop it! Stop touching me!” Birdie twists away, which is perfect, since I need to check her front, too.
As the static intensifies, everything but the sight of Birdie dims around me. I know I’m acting crazy, but I have to check.I have to know she’s ok. I crash to my knees and yank the waistband of her leggings down to her thighs. “You didn’t bump your stomach, did you?”
“Stop—!”
“Please tell me the baby is ok.” I kiss one side of her belly, then the other, pushing the front of her T-shirt up higher, searching and hoping to feel the baby kick.
“Fucking stop touching me!” Birdie screams, the sound echoing off the walls and finally snapping me out of my panicked frenzy.
Dull sounds from outside the bathroom sharpen, and something slams against the door that whacks open against the soles of my boots. When I sit back on my heels, Birdie lurches sideways, hunched over and yanking her leggings up, tears streaming down her mottled red and white face. She hugs herself, fear plain in her features, when she climbs into the bathtub to get as far from me as possible.
I plunge headfirst back into the lake of dread. “Birdie…”
“I told you to stop!” She heaves in a breath to scream, “You didn’t stop!”
Someone shoves hard against the door again, and when I move my feet out of the way, it flies open to crash against the wall, the doorknob punching a hole in the drywall. The booming bass of the Bluetooth speaker vibrates through the floor, playing loud enough to rattle our teeth. Davis steps back, rubbing his shoulder, and Goldie leaps past me, climbing into the bathtub, crouching when Birdie slides down the tiled wall. When Goldie hugs her, Birdie drops her head forward and cries. It’s a keening sound that chills me to my bones.
Goldie turns and shouts, “Get the fuck out of my house and don’t come back, or I swear to god, Elliott, I swear—”
“Birdie…” I say, slowly rising to my feet. “I’m so sorry.”
Goldie points to the door. “Get out!”
I can’t face Davis when I leave the woman I’d sell my soul to the devil for crying in the bathtub because of me. Because I didn’t listen. Because I couldn’t keep my hands to myself. I’m not surprised when I find Layla and Russell in the living room, figuring they must have sped over as soon as Goldie told them I had shown up uninvited. My suspicion is confirmed when I spot Russell’s dually through the window, their doors left hanging open in their rush to get inside.
Layla, Kendall, Sydney, and Lily are holding hands in a circle, laughing and jumping around to the music, and it strikes me then—someone must have turned the volume up to drown out the sound of Birdie’s screams. The fried chicken comes back up, lodging in my throat as I wonder if Birdie ever employed this same tactic when she was trapped with Quincy.
Dustin, however, hovers in the kitchen, darting a look from one man to another, finally landing on me with suspicion. It’s him I go to first.
I bend low so he will hear me over the music. “Let’s go outside.”
It takes him a few heartbeats before he lifts his hand to mine, already having lost some of his trust in me, as he should after what I’ve done, even if he’s not sure of the details.
