Page 32 of The Auction
Creed stood there, his expression dark and something else.
Disappointed, maybe?
“I can smell it from here,” he said, like he’d been reading my mind. “That’s not diesel and you know it. Put the tank down.”
I started my rapid blinking. “It’s not? I’m sure it is. I know that when I had them filled-”
“Jules!” he barked. “Give it up. You’re not fooling anyone and why are you blinking like that?”
I put the container down and folded my arms across my chest.
“Come here,” he said.
“No.”
“Come. Here.”
He wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew that about him by now. So what, he was just going to yell at me some more? Fine, I would record that.
I was about to reach for the mini-recorder in my back pocket, when he moved. So fast for someone that big, it always startled me a little. He had his shoulder in my stomach and was lifting me up in a fireman’s hold before I could get a shout out.
“Put me down!” I was draped over his shoulder, his arm holding my upper thighs against his chest. I slapped at his back, but it didn’t faze him at all.
“You were going to ruin the tractor. On purpose!” he slapped my overall-covered ass and the recorder fell out. We both looked at it on the ground. “Then you were going to record my reaction?”
“I wasn’t!” I lied. “I didn’t know it wasn’t diesel.”
He was marching us toward the house with intent. He wasn’t going to get his gun, was he? Killing a tractor wasn’t like killing a man’s horse. It wasn’t a shooting offense, was it?
He stomped onto the porch, pushed open the front door, and carried me through the house to the couch in the living room.
He told me a few days ago he wanted to replace that couch. Something new and soft brown leather that would be way more comfortable and size appropriate for him.
I told him it was the only good memory I had of my father and he dropped the suggestion.
That was also a lie. I just wanted to always make him as uncomfortable as possible.
“Put me down!” I shouted. This time in earnest. I started wiggling against his arm bar, but he tossed me around like I weighed nothing. When I thought he was putting me on my feet, he was actually just shoving the straps of my overalls off my shoulders, then I was being thrown over his lap.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You want to be a brat,” he said. “You’re going to be treated like a brat.”
I felt the air on my bare ass a second before his hand came down on my skin.
Had he seriously just hit me? “You asshole! Let me go!”
“You were going to break the tractor.”Smack.
“The tractor we need to plant seeds.”Smack.
“You were going to put our planting season at risk.”Smack.
“For what?”Smack.
There was no point in refuting any of what he was saying because it was all true.
“Are you going to treat your new wife like this?!” I shouted back. I had tears streaming down my face, which had nothing to do with any kind of pain. Snot was running out of my nose and I was breathing and hiccuping all at the same time.
