Page 7 of A Love So Wrong
Chapter 4
Checking his speed on the truck's dashboard, Gideon glanced at the time to the speedometer's right. They were making good time. They should be pulling back into their driveway at just about midnight.
"So, what did I tell ya?" Henry said with a laugh before succumbing to a fit of wet sounding coughs.
Gideon made a mental note to make some tea for him when they got back into the house.
"It's like driving a stick of butter on a hot skillet," Gideon sighed with satisfaction as he rubbed his grip back and forth over the pristine leather steering wheel.
Henry barked out a laugh. "That it is, and it better be too for as much as it cost me."
Splurging for a new rig a few months back, Henry had bought a top of the line Volvo VNL with an impressive seventy-seven-inch cab, decked out with all the trimmings. The pearlescent blue truck was the envy of all Henry's trucking friends giving him plenty to brag about on poker night at the Get out of Dodge motorist bar located at the edge of town.
Normally, Gideon only ran local routes using the company's truck, but early that morning, Henry had knocked on his room door and asked him to help him pull a run to Springfield, Missouri, and back. He had told Gideon he wanted to give him a chance to try out his new baby and to give him a taste of driving realluxuryfor a change, but Gideon knew as he laughed with his dad that it was something more. Gideon could see the tired lines framing the older man's eyes and overall slowness to his movements. Henry was tired, too tired, possibly to even make the run. Without a second thought, Gideon had thrown on his clothes and sent Jade a text explaining where he was going, knowing she was still asleep buried under her covers at the dark hour.
"So, I guess this is as good a time as any to confess something," Henry began slowly. "I brought you out here with me for a couple of reasons today."
Frowning, Gideon didn’t take his eyes from the dark highway as he waited.
"Well one, I brought you with me 'cause I was dog ass tired. I just couldn't seem to shake off the fatigue this morning and thought it might be best for a little backup," Henry coughed out a jovial laugh, but Gideon could tell the man was stalling.
"And…" Gideon prodded when the pause between the man's next sentence seemed to drag on forever. "What else?"
Henry didn't say anything for a second, he just shifted in his seat. "Well…" he began slowly, his deep voice rising in a suspiciously light tone as he hedged on answering. "Sandra told me last night that Jade asked her if it would be alright to…you know…go on a date tonight."
Gideon felt his blood simply stop, and his hands go cold. Blinking at the dark road ahead of him, Gideon turned and shot Henry a deadly look, praying that the man was just tossing out some sort of sick joke. But the resigned look on Henry's face told Gideon he was serious.
"See, this is why I didn't want to tell you," Henry complained. "You're already getting mad."
Gideon's body felt like cement while his insides churned with nausea and fire. It was a miracle he was keeping the truck in between the lines.
"You’re damn right I’m mad!" he growled as bile rose in his throat. Thoughts of Jade walking off into the night with some boy tore through his stomach like rusty knives. "You purposely brought me on this run so I wouldn't be there, didn't you?!" he accused.
"No, now listen," Henry shook his head and cleared his throat. "It just happened to work out perfectly, like I said before, I was tired and…"
Tired his ass.
"And," Gideon interrupted angrily. "Mom told you to take me out of town with you on a twelve-hour fucking trip so I won't be around when a goddamn high schoolboy," he spat the word like a curse, "comes to take Jade out to God knows where, to do God knows what," he hissed.
Multiple images tried to form in his mind, but each one was rejected, like an automatic response of his immune system. Scenarios of Jade sitting in some kid's car, or laughing together in a movie, or kissing him, or him kissing her, all of them too much to bear. All of them expunged before Gideon's mind could fully grasp them, and his sanity could be threatened any further. Gideon could feel his hands begin to shake.
"Gideon," Henry groaned, scrubbing his forehead with one hand. "You had to know Jade was going to want to go out on a date one day," he tried to reason. "Hell, she is so pretty. I’m not sure why she isn't harassed all the time for dates, to be honest."
A black tide of anger was washing over the cold helpless feeling in his gut, and Gideon welcomed it. The warmth of the anger began to charge his nerves, working down to his toes and through to his jittery fingers, calming him in its wake until he was left unearthly still.
"Because I have made sure every male in a thirty-mile radius knows who the fuck I am," he said in a dangerously quiet tone as he smoothly took the exit onto the connecting highway.
Either oblivious to his son's growing rage or deciding to ignore it, Henry nodded. "Yeah, you did do a good job of that, didn’t you," he groaned. "Hell, I can still see that Darnell kid's terrified face as you dragged him by the back of the neck through town with a line of curious people on your tail as you stopped in front of his house and shouted for his daddy to come out of the house. I was so scared that man would have you put in jail, I was sure a few years of my life was taken off me that day."
"Yeah, but you didn't try stopping me because you knew what that little shit was trying to do," Gideon's voice was dark and low.
"Yeah…yeah, I did," Henry sighed and stared out into the darkness of the passenger window. "I knew then that it was probably best I let you handle it…because I would have just got my shotgun to make my point."
When Jade had come home from school one day in her sophomore year with a worried tear-streaked face, the first year after Gideon graduated, leaving her on her own, Gideon had grilled her for what felt like an hour until she finally confessed that a senior at her school had been harassing her. The kid had caught her by herself on the way from school a couple of times, talking to her inappropriately, making sexual suggestions, and started calling her names when she refused or ignored him. Gideon did not hesitate. He left the house immediately and found that boy. He had told him in no uncertain terms just what he would do to the kid if he ever came near his sister again before marching him down the main street of Stardust Cove, past the courthouse and the police station to the nice big house his daddy owned. After calling his dad out of the house, Gideon repeated those exact words to the shocked and livid man standing on the porch. The crowd of people had unknowingly aided him that day. Each one would remember that moment and tell others until every citizen of Stardust Cove knew that Jade Lattimore was off-limits.
Obviously, however, there was one piece of shit that didn't get the goddamn memo.
"But this time isn't like that," Henry gently reminded him, pulling Gideon from his murderous thoughts. "Sandra texted me, saying she met the boy earlier this evening and he was nice."
