Page 76 of The Auction
“Oh, is this your little sister? Hi, I’m Angie.” Angie was short, big ass, tits in a blue halter top, a denim skirt and cowboy boots. Her blond hair fell in perfect waves around her face and she wore make up like she knew what she was doing with it.
I didn’t know her, which meant she wasn’t local. He hadn’t been gone long enough to go to Jefferson and back, I didn’t think. Or maybe he was just that fucking smooth when he wanted to get laid.
Little sister. My eyes darted to him. “I’m not his little sister.” My voice was raw. “I’m his wife.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a joke she plays,” Creed said, dismissively. “Don’t pay attention to her. Bedroom is in the back, there’s a bathroom back there, too. I’ll bring us something to drink.”
“You got it, cowboy,” she said, batting her eyes at Creed before they turned back to me. “And honey, I hate to tell you this, but you got some luggage under those eyes. You might want to put a cold compress over them before you go to bed. Does the trick every time.”
I immediately rushed forward as if to tackle her to the ground. In my head I had visions of giving her luggage under her eyes with my fists.
But Creed must have interpreted my thoughts because he cut me off with his hands wrapped over my shoulders.
“You haven’t been drinking, have you, sis?” Creed asked, pushing me away from her and toward the steps upstairs. Moving his hand so that it was under my upperarm. “Best thing you can do is sleep it off. Angie, doll, put on some music, will you? Crank it as loud as you like.”
“Ooh, fun.”
She bounced out of the living room back toward his bedroom, and the next thing I heard was Zac Brown singing “Chicken Fried” coming through the Bose speaker in Creed’s bedroom. One of the few things Creed had brought with him into this house.
“Don’t do this,” I told him, even as he was hauling me up the steps. The way he was gripping me under the armpit, I couldn’t dislodge his hand, but I had to stop his momentum. I let my weight drop and planted my ass down on the steps, hard.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Knock it off. You’re going to separate your shoulder.”
“I don’t care. Don’t do this. I’m sorry. I screwed up. I know I did, but it wasn’t intentionally to hurt you.”
He was trying to find an angle now, under both my arms, but I wasn’t giving an inch. I braced my foot against either side of the staircase. One foot on the wall, one foot locked into the spindles along the open side of it.
He yanked me and I screamed in pain as my foot was caught. If he pulled again hard enough, I might break a bone and he’d have to take me to urgent care in town. That would ruin his plans with fucking Angie.
Except now, he was bending down and trying to grab me around the waist. I was scrambling to dodge his hold, so that when he lifted me this time my foot came loose from the spindles.
“You’re going to ruin everything. We can’t go back if you do this,” I shouted at him. I was kicking against him, against the wall, but my weight was nothing to him.
Finally, he pushed me into my bedroom at the top of the stairs. “Shut the fuck up!”
“What I did was an honest mistake. I’m a twenty-one year old virgin, for fuck’s sake. I wanted to know if any of it was real!”
“What? What was real?” he snarled, his ugly face pressed into mine.
“You. How I felt. If kissing you was different. Should be different. It wasn’t about hurting you. You do this and it’s only to hurt me. You do this and it’s over!”
“Over?” he asked. “Are you listening to anything you’re saying? There is nothing to go back to. There is nothing to be over!”
“Don’t do it,” I said, pulling on his t-shirt, even as he tried to back out of my bedroom. His hands pulled me off and held mine out to the side. He was stronger than me in every conceivable way. There was no fighting him physically and winning.
“I’m sorry, but please don’t do this. Please.”
He dropped my hands. “Stay in your room.”
“I won’t!” I screamed in his face. “I won’t fucking stay in my fucking room in my fucking house!”
He pushed against my shoulders hard enough that I had to take a step back. The music blared from downstairs so that all I could hear was twang and strings. I charged for the door, but I was too late. He was already in the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
And the sound…
I knew that sound. He was messing with the lock, so that it locked from the outside.
