Page 101 of Free to Run
I start screaming, “No!” at the top of my lungs. I’m banging on the glass. “Father! Get your fucking ass back to the phone and get me out of this mess! God damn you! No!”
The guards are on me before I can raise my hands against the glass again, wrestling my arms back into shackles. I struggle, earning me time in the box.
After I’m moved into solitary confinement, I’m left alone, contemplating on how I can get out of this mess to get to Keene.
He’s mine. Always. They’re all mine.
40
Keene
“Tell me you’re kidding right now, Keene. Tell me this is all some awful nightmare that I’m going to wake up from and you didn’t cause my sister to leave because you’re too much of a pansy-ass wimp to admit you had a problem.” Cassidy lumbers to her feet and is leaning forward on her desk. Her petite body is so dwarfed by the children she’s almost carried to term, I’m wondering silently if she’s as round as she is tall.
“Tell me you didn’t trust your woman enough the night you gave her Mama’s diamond necklace, the night you finally told her you were in love with her, to tell her the truth of what had been going on the last two months,” she continues brutally.
“Cassidy, love.” Caleb steps in to save me, and she turns her anger on him.
“I have never been disappointed in two of the three men I love as much as I am right now. While a lot of what was building in Ali had to do withthis family”—she stresses the last two words, putting me and Caleb on the outside—“the spy games you two played were the straw that broke her back. She fell in love with you, Keene!” she screams. “And you didn’t prepare her for a scene like that? You didn’t let her know it would all be fake? You didn’t trust the woman you loved enough?”
Cassidy turns away from me and stares out the window. Her next question is worse than a slap. “Did you like it?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Having another woman…multiple women? Is that something my sister needs to worry about should she ever take you back?” Her voice is sad.
“No! Fuck no! Cassidy, how can you ask me that?” Fury propels me from the chair I’m sitting in.
“How can you not expect me to protect her the way she always tried to protect me?” she whispers. “Even from you.”
I feel that punch straight through to my heart. Jesus.
“She knew you weren’t happy about my having the twins, and she stood in front of you for me. Even when I didn’t ask her to. She took a verbal beating from me in this very room. I made her apologize to you, and for what? For you to break her heart? To break this family apart? I have to ask myself why. Should I have protected her better? Should I have listened better?” My sister’s voice is filled with tears.
I’m frozen. I never expected this kind of attack. When I lay awake last night, thinking of every possible scenario, this wasn’t anywhere in my thoughts, earning my sister’s doubt in the kind of man I am.
“Pixie, Keene’s not like that. You know that.” Caleb tries to touch her, but she shrugs him off. His shock is palpable.
“Right now, I can’t have either of you near me. I love both of you, but I can’t have you near me. Keene, this was yours, to share all the details.” She turns fully away from the window, and I can see the tears flowing freely. Caleb sucks in a breath. “But Caleb, you could have told me something to have warned Ali. You watched what was happening. I could have called her. And now, she’s gone.” Cassidy’s tears shift into sobs. Caleb steps forward, but again, she stops him. “No. I need to be alone. Please go, both of you. I have a lot of work to do since Ali’s…please, just go.” Her voice holds a note of finality.
I make my way over to the office door and fling it open. The sound of it hitting the wall is like a gunshot. I leave Caleb with the chance to make up with his very pregnant wife.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I make my way to the first floor when I hear a quiet voice behind me. “Charlie called me and Jared last night.”
Quickly, I spin to see Corinna standing there, holding a kitchen knife in one hand and a mallet in the other. Not your average baking tools. “Corinna—” I start.
“We lost her—Ilost her because of your damned ego. Do you think I can forget that so quickly?” Her aim is true. It was because of my ego that Alison is lost.
Gone.
“Do you think this is what I wanted?” I hiss out. “I was trying to spare her.”
“Her or yourself, Keene? Because the Ali I know could’ve handled honesty. What she can’t handle is believing she’s a worthless game,” Corinna hisses right back.
“From the first night you met her, that’s what you treated her like—a game. She wanted to be so much more to you. She was so excited yesterday morning. Something wonderful happened the night before where she finally got the chance to tell you how she felt, and it wasn’t a game anymore. She felt she had all of you, Keene.” Corinna pauses. “But it was just another game, wasn’t it?” Her arms drop to her sides. “It’s time to grow up and stop playing games. The people you do it to don’t deserve it.”
Corinna begins to make her way back down the hall toward the kitchen. I find my voice. “She was never a game, Corinna. Not one minute with her was a game,” I call down to her. “I was just figuring out how to let her in.”
She doesn’t turn around as she calls back, “Then maybe it’s a good thing she’s gone if that’s what she got when she finally got in there.”
