#taphephobia | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

universitypenguin · 9 months

Text

Chapter 17

The Princess & the Lawyer

Summary: Elliot reveals what ‘Mercury’ referred to, unleashing a flood of bittersweet memories in Lloyd that lead him to re-explore the darkest parts of childhood and uncover evidence of a devastating betrayal. Meanwhile, Princess deals with the aftermath of her near death experience and grapples with doubts about the true identity of her stalker.

Masterlist

Word Count: 6,021

Warnings: Contains descriptions of child abuse, memories of being buried alive, description of taphephobia - aka, the fear of being buried alive, vivid description of a panic attack - written in a manner intended to draw the reader into the physical experience of a panic attack. Contains content related to police corruption, murder, criminal behavior, police investigations, a scene involving emergency room care, and stalking. Minor foul language. Only appropriate for 18+ readers. No minors allowed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Chapter 17

Lloyd skirted around a thicket of weeds and ducked under the branch of a towering giant hogweed, scowling at the unwelcome intruder. The disrepair of the property grated on his nerves. He added another mental note to his to-do list for tomorrow: call a weed removal service to clean up the invasive species his father had allowed to thrive in the backyard. They rounded the thicket and the beam of Elliot’s flashlight fell on the dilapidated garage. It was halfway hidden in the woods behind the house and screened from view by the untrimmed weeds.

“What are we doing here?” Lloyd asked.

“Hang on,” Elliot said.

He pulled on the garage door handle and to Lloyd’s surprise, it swung easily into the rafters. Elliot flipped a switch on an extension cord by the door to turn on the overhead lights and Lloyd stared, speechless.

“This is what ‘Mercury’ was referring to,” Elliot said.

“A Mercury Cougar… my mother’s car,” Lloyd murmured.

“Yep. Your Dad asked me to restore it last year. She turned out gorgeous. The keys are inside, if you want to take it for a spin.”

His throat felt thick as he stepped forward to inspect the bright metallic blue paint on the 1971 Mercury Cougar. He knew every inch of this car, from the cassette player his mother had installed in the dash herself, to the buttons on the radio dial, the white leather bucket seats and the fold-down rag top with squeaky hinges. He ran his hand over the glossy paint.

“It’s beautiful. You did a great job.”

“So, you remember this car? I think she must have had it before my time,” Elliot said.

“Yeah. I don’t think I was in school yet when she was driving the Mercury. She’d let me sit on her lap and pretend to drive when we drove into town. I remember she put the cassette player in the dash by herself… She was always listening to music…”

The rush of memories startled him - crystal clear and bittersweet, they grabbed him by the heartstrings and twisted, sending a painful bolt of emotion through his chest.

Elliot shuffled his feet. “Anyway, this was where Holbrook thought I’d stashed the drugs. Everyone in town knew I was working on it all last year, so it was only logical.”

His cousin cleared his throat awkwardly and reached for the flashlight he’d set on a tool chest. “Know what? I’m gonna head in for the night. See you tomorrow.”

When there was no one around as a witness, Lloyd bowed his head and let the emotions sweep through him. He waited, expecting tears, anger, something, to come out of him… but nothing came. He felt empty. Cold. Alone.

… Abandoned.

The joyful memory of riding on his mother’s lap while she drove only stirred faint echoes of anger. It mostly dragged up a raw feeling of pain, the kind he had little experience handling. The emotion burned in his belly like whiskey and he swallowed hard as his mind replayed the scenes from the past. Even decades couldn’t wash away the smell of her heavily perfumed hand lotion as it reached across time to fill his head with its musky scent. He could remember the exact shade of her nail polish - Kelly Green - and the softness of her hand stroking his hair. Even perched on her lap, he hadn’t been tall enough to see over the wheel.

Lloyd turned away. He shut the garage door and started back to the house before the thought of Elliot waiting for him made him pause. Company was the last thing he wanted right now. He was a riot of conflicting emotions, which was exactly the state of mind Dr. Blair recommended he should avoid. Odds were, Elliot was locked in a bathroom, either shooting up or smoking meth. That wasn’t a confrontation he needed to have right now so he changed directions and headed for the barn.

It was a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop himself.

In the barn he checked on the sick calf and gave Jane a bag of oats. His mind mechanically ran through tomorrow’s to-do list, as if on autopilot. He needed to call the gravel company about repairing the washed out road and coordinate the pick up of the sick calf with April. He’d have to help her load up Jane, along with what remained of the fresh hay. The horse would board with her for a few days before her new owner came down from Coeur D’Alene on Wednesday. Then he needed to contact a weed removal service about the Giant Hogweed in the backyard and… take his cousin to rehab.

Lloyd sighed, rubbing his eyes. Yeah. He needed to do that more than any of the rest of the final chores. April had asked him to help Elliot. He had, but the job wasn’t finished yet. The decision settled his nerves, and he moved down the aisle, ready to initiate the confrontation.

Then, a chill ran down his spine.

He hadn’t realized where he was standing. He was in the middle of the barn, equidistant from the back exit and the front doors, in the center of the aisle facing the east wall. Straight ahead was the half open door of the tack room. Goosebumps raised on his arms and crawled up the back of his neck as the chill wrapped around his lungs and spread into his heart. He dragged his gaze away, but it was too late.

It was cold. It was so very, very cold.

His hands were shaking.

He watched the shaking spread to his forearms and felt it rattle through his chest. His muscles clenched and shuddered. He grit his teeth against the wave of dizziness and reached out to brace himself on the wall, but missed. Numbness came after the cold. He recognized the fumbling reaction and knew it meant he’d entered the phase where his sense of spatial awareness disappeared. Fighting for breath, Lloyd panted. He had the presence of mind to drop to his knees as the room tilted, and then he was down on his hands and knees, trembling.

He tried to move but it was as if the force of gravity had quadrupled. Lloyd groaned. It came out like a whine. He needed to get out of here. Pressure built in his chest, discomfort and then a sharp pain. It ripped through his sternum and sliced into his back, climbing up his neck. This feeling was why he’d thought he was having a heart attack when the first panic attack struck him in the middle of the night, when he was alone in his cell in France.

His muscles were rigid as the attack rocketed through him. When it eased, they went limp and Lloyd slumped to the ground. There was no point in trying to move - he’d been through enough episodes like this to know. His head was swimming, his throat hurt, and nausea roiled his stomach. Gradually, the symptoms eased, and he was able to sit up with his back to the wall. The position had him facing the tack room door.

The events that had occurred inside the tack room were known only to three individuals. One of them was dead and of the two who remained alive, Lloyd was the sole person at liberty to speak. Joe was the one who was dead and Dr. Blair was bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, and Lloyd… He was constrained by the same intangible force that had kept him muzzled for over thirty years. In therapy, Dr. Blair had resorted to hypnosis to help him shed the gag that choked him. The treatment helped. Afterwards he’d been able to talk about it, at least in his therapy sessions, but never anywhere else. Never to anyone else.

He’d painstakingly translated the ugly memories into words and then repeated those words, over and over, until he could recite them as if reading from a script. He’d written them down and burned the pages. Dr. Blair’s approach was to expose him to the memories until he could dominate them, instead of the other way around. Lloyd hated it, but it worked. The boiling temper that had been his constant companion all his adult life eased to a simmer. A few months later, the panic attacks stopped. Except for flare-ups brought on by acute stress - which only seemed to happen at night - they’d disappeared.

He hadn’t been naïve enough to think that years of therapy could overcome the effect of being confronted with the physical reality of the tack room. That was why he’d tried his best to avoid this place all week until his inability to grieve had drawn him to it.

What if he went inside? Would it help?

Just the thought of it made his guts twist with the urge to vomit. He could go inside, Lloyd told himself. His father was dead. Joe was dead, and maybe going into the room as an adult would give him some sense of victory.

Victory? He doubted that was possible. Maybe closure was a better word. You would probably use a word like closure to describe what he was hoping to achieve. He didn’t know if he believed in closure. For people like you it seemed to work, but people like him held onto things, especially negative things.

Lloyd inhaled sharply through his nose, huffing the alfalfa scented air in an effort to calm his racing heart. Having a high level of self-awareness was a major downside of prolonged therapy. He hated knowing what was wrong with him, but being unable - though, perhaps ‘unwilling’ would be a better adjective - to change. Whatever it was, inability or unwillingness, he couldn’t embrace ideas like closure. He needed the hatred and rage foraged inside of this barn because it had built a nuclear reactor inside of him that powered his every waking moment and kept him alive. That reactor was still alive inside of him, there was just a better containment system for its toxic fumes.

None of his justifications made much sense, and he knew it. But he also knew the unhealthy coping mechanisms worked, and that was why he couldn’t let them go. He held onto the irrational belief that if he let go of the hatred, he’d turn into dust, like Lot’s wife. She glanced back at Sodom and Gomorrah and had become a pillar of salt. He imagined himself in a direct inversion of that tale - if he didn’t look back, then he too, would crumble.

Lloyd used the wall to help him climb to his feet. His chest heaved with effort. The half open door taunted him. He’d already gone inside once, on his first day here, in the middle of a sunny morning, to gather up Jane’s tack. He hadn’t stepped foot in it since and had even gone as far as avoiding looking at the room. This wasn’t a good time for this showdown. It was dark, and that was a problem. Acknowledging that fear made him feel like a child, but it was too strong of a compulsion to ignore.

Lloyd moved toward the opening, feeling as if he was being sucked into a black hole. The rational part of his brain screamed at him to turn around, but something more powerful than rationality drew him forward. He stared into the dark until his eyes adjusted. There, mounted on the wall, was the bull whip his father had beaten him with. You’d think he’d be covered in scars, but that wasn’t how Joe used the whip. He’d tied Lloyd’s hands to the upper saddle rack and shoved a bandana into his mouth so no one in the house would hear.

There was a slim chance that Ingrid or Josephine would be bold enough to come down to the barn if they heard the noise.

Joe never whipped the girls - just Lloyd. When he was strung up, his father would unfurl the whip and double it over. He swung it like a billy club and stuck Lloyd in the back. He held the thin part of the whip that would have broken the skin by coiling it around his fingers. Then he’d use the thick part to cover his son in bruises. The bruises were deep because his father was a strong man with bouts of temper like a hurricane. Lloyd could take almost any beating without a sound by the time he was five. That’s probably why Joe had to think up a worse punishment. Lloyd couldn’t remember a time before the worse punishment, so he figured he must have adapted at an even earlier age than his memories could reach.

Without needing to turn on the lights to find his way, Lloyd stepped into the tack room. His feet took him to the far corner behind the lower rung of saddle racks. It was too dark to see his hand in front of his face on this side of the room, but regardless, his fingers immediately found the latch. He raised the lever and opened the small trap door. His heart was racing as the scrape of the hinge triggered an unexpected rush of adrenaline.

He was nine years old all over again. His back burned, his legs stung, and blood dripped down his temple. Of course, he didn’t cry - that would only make things worse.

The stoicism had stayed with him, a permanent feature of his personality. There was no undoing it - the abuse had carved it too deep. Even now he couldn’t offer a genuine reaction to his most intense emotions if his life depended on it. Intense emotions, except for anger, which was a different matter altogether, had an unusual effect on him. When those feelings came, he felt as if he were shoved into another room where they couldn’t reach. They still existed, but weren’t a part of him. That mental space was like Schrödinger’s box - there was something there, something brewing; it was neither real nor unreal, because he was inside the box and everything else was outside. He liked that frame of mind. It could last for hours sometimes. Lloyd wished it was permanent, because it felt blissful, like the mindset people aimed for when they were meditating.

At present, he couldn’t draw up the stoicism or enter that calm, peaceful mindset that usually protected him in moments like this. He felt panic swarming up, but even so, he just couldn’t stop. He raised the trap door and found the lip of the cover underneath. It moved like a pocket door and slid out of the way. He pushed it into the recessed compartment under the floorboards to reveal the box.

The box was cut into the floor. It was approximately the size of a coffin, but deeper than a typical coffin would be. Its thick oak boards were double wide and sealed with linseed oil. Lloyd swung his feet down, one, then the other. He tried to stand up and his knees buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the box and realized he was panting.

Unlike in Singapore, there was no smooth hardwood floor to assure him everything was okay. You weren’t here, just a room away, where all he’d have to do was cross a threshold to reach the comfort of your presence.

Instead, it was hot and the tack room was stuffy.

The box was double walled, so no one could hear him scream. Joe had always shoved him in the box after beating him. Spans of time in the box varied, but he’d recalled that he’d spent three days in it once. When he was younger, he’d tried everything to get out, expending every ounce of his energy until he was exhausted. That changed as he grew older. By the time he’d gone to kindergarten, not pre-school, there was no pre-school in these parts in those days - he’d known how to handle the box. He knew to lie still and count his breaths. To cry silently, because when he was silent, Joe would let him out faster.

Lloyd’s vision blurred. It was still too dark to see, but he felt around, searching the floor. This was where he’d hidden the pouch of rocks and arrowheads he and Ingrid collected in the woods. He remembered stashing them in here the summer after he’d passed five-foot four and had officially outgrown the box. When he couldn’t find them, he considered using the light on his phone, but decided against it. This place wasn’t meant to be seen. He could feel Joe’s ghost breathing down his neck as he ran his hands over the floorboards.

There was no leather pouch in the right upper corner, where he remembered putting it. On the chance he was mistaken, Lloyd reached into the far side of the box. His hand brushed something metal and he felt around its contours and realized it was a square metal container… no, rectangular. It was about the size of a tackle box.

Had Joe re-purposed the torture chamber as a hiding spot for drugs? It would be just like him…

Lloyd climbed out of the recessed grave and slid the lid closed, then shut the trap door. He carried the box into an empty stall and turned on the overhead light.

It was a tool box. He recognized it by its unusual teal color - his mother had kept it in the trunk of her Toyota, a vehicle Joe had bought her after the Mercury broke down. He pried open the rusted lock with his pocket knife and found a leather pouch in the top tray. Lloyd unlaced the leather ties and found the polished treasures of his childhood. They were nearly in perfect condition, if a little dusty. He rubbed one on his shirt and held it up to the light, admiring the shiny chunk of obsidian. It was a rock he’d spent hours polishing. He sorted through the pouch and recognized several pieces. A jasper stone, smokey quartz, an agate nodule, and the prize of the collection - trio of star garnets.

Lloyd lifted the tray and found a pile of cassettes. On top of them was a blank envelope, which he opened to find a couple wallet-size photographs. The first was of a little girl with pale blonde hair. She was missing both of her front teeth. He’d been the one to persuade her to tie a piece of floss around the second front tooth and fasten the other end to a doorknob. He’d even helped her slam the door to remove that final stubborn baby tooth. Josie had screamed and bled and rightfully blamed him for the painful ordeal for the next three weeks. The second photo was of a girl with sable hair. She had high cheekbones, dense eyebrows, and a full mouth. Ingrid bore such a strong resemblance to their father that it was almost hard to look at her. His eyes misted, and he felt a spasm in his chest. Anger rose as grief sliced through his soul.

They’d vanished. There had been no warning to allow him a chance to prepare for the blow. It had wrecked him. He could still remember the agony and confusion in the following days. He hadn’t known what to do with himself in the time between their disappearance and Joe’s return. At first, he’d figured they’d come back. Then it clicked - she’d really done it. His mother had snatched his sisters and taken off and they had left him behind. That moment of comprehension was when the grief set in and overpowered the anger.

He couldn’t tolerate staying in the big empty house alone, so he’d packed a backpack and headed into the woods. The following days were filled with denial. He’d pretended he was a wild boy who lived in the forest and didn’t have a family and that his sole connection with the big ranch house in the clearing was that sometimes he’d watch the people who lived there. He told himself he was only sad because the family who occupied the house was on vacation in California and he missed watching them.

He’d loved them.

He’d loved his mother, even with her psychotic episodes, because she’d loved him. The memory of riding on her lap in the Mercury proved it. Despite her erratic moods and the uncontrollable outbursts that had scared him, there’d been a level of awareness, even as a child, that she couldn’t control those things. He’d loved his sisters, too. He’d loved them more than anything in the world. If they were still alive, he still loved them.

There was a piece of paper at the bottom of the envelope. Lloyd fished it out and recognized the tri-fold pattern of a letter. It had a small piece of tape holding it shut and when he turned it over, he found his name written on the back in a looping scrawl. The handwriting was instantly familiar, though he hadn’t seen it in thirty years. The handwriting revealed the identity of the person who’d left the cassettes, preserved his rock collection, and chosen this tool box to store them in.

His mother hadn’t left him without a word. She’d left him what appeared to be the entirety of her cassette collection, a few pictures of his sisters, and she’d written him a letter.

By themselves, the items were innocuous enough but placing them in his torture chamber… that was an arrow to the heart. It was proof that she’d known what Joe was doing to him. He’d often wondered if she had a clue about what he was going through in the barn, but until now he couldn’t be sure. There was a part of him that questioned if it was possible for her not to know, but he’d always given her the benefit of the doubt. Now, there was no benefit left to give.

His mother had known Joe buried him alive under the floorboards of the barn. She’d known that he was down there, breathing in the thick, humid scent of earth that still reverberated through his nightmares today. Lloyd could forgive her for allowing the beatings. Hers were just as frequent, if not more so, than his. But the fact that she’d known about the box…

He crushed the letter into a ball.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

An emergency room doctor who looked as if he’d witnessed enough history to make textbooks jealous, splinted your wrist. You accepted his referral to an outpatient clinic and promised to schedule a follow up next week. Detective Diskant was in the waiting room with Zach. He took your statements and asked lots of questions you didn’t know the answers to.

By the time Zach unlocked the door of Lloyd’s townhouse, you felt like a zombie. The combination of adrenaline crash and pain medication was a potent one. Landon showed up with a duffle bag for his boss and they both grilled you on the finer details of Aiden’s text messages for two more hours. You tried your best to be helpful, but it was useless. They were clearly questioning whether Aiden was behind the messages and the other incidents. While you saw their point, you couldn’t think of an alternative suspect. You agreed with Zach that you should reach out to Mr. LeDoux in the morning and that you would work from home one Monday.

Lloyd was due back Tuesday. That would be a hard conversation and you weren’t looking forward to hurting his feelings, but you’d made your choices and still considered your actions to be in his best interest. Landon left at midnight and you checked that the downstairs guest room had fresh sheets and stocked the bathroom with towels before going upstairs.

Ten minutes later you were in the shower, crying.

It was so unfair. You’d only dated Aiden for a few weeks. Why would he do this? Did his bruised ego really demand such disproportionate retribution? What if he wasn’t your stalker? Who else could it be? The last two questions nagged at you, especially considering your recent confrontation with him. He’d had you alone, and he’d been free to harm you, just like the text messages threatened. The exchange with Aiden had been belligerent, but not overtly threatening. Maybe it wasn’t him.

In its overwhelmed state, your mind couldn’t tolerate that version of reality. With so much uncertainty already hanging in the air, the one fact you’d come to terms with was the identity of the threat. Knowing Aiden was your stalker helped you understand his motivations and respond accordingly. If it wasn’t him, then what? What options did you have to fight a shadow?

Your mind swung briefly to the Nguyen case, and the missing identity of Julia’s “sister.” Her identity was even more shadowy than your stalker’s and that was another question you needed to tackle. First thing tomorrow, you promised yourself. Right after you and Zach called Mr. LeDoux. The thought of calling him made your stomach pitch. Tears came even harder as your imagination took flight, bringing up questions and asking you to consider possibilities you didn’t want to think about. What if you’d accused Aiden prematurely? What if he was innocent? Then, you cried because of how miserable crying made you feel, and because of the whole horrible, rotten situation you were in, and because you were scared that it wasn’t Aiden who was stalking you after all.

You finished showering and were in the middle of your skincare routine when your phone rang. Lloyd’s name flashed on the caller ID. Sobs were still shaking your shoulders, which caused you to watch the phone ring for a moment. You worried about his reaction if you answered in this state, but he’d been so busy that he hadn’t called much this week and you needed to hear his voice. Swallowing back your tears, you answered.

“H-h-hello?”

“Princess?” The sound of his silky baritone eased the painful tension in your shoulders.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“What’s wrong?” Lloyd asked.

“I… uh… I’m watching Marley & Me.”

Silence. “You refuse to watch that movie because you know the dog dies in the end. What’s really going on?”

“I had a fight with my sister,” you lied.

“About what?”

“A lot of things… we just sort of… got into it.”

“Are you okay?” Lloyd asked.

“I’ll be fine. How are you? How’s the ranch?”

“I sold the last of the cattle, but I’ve got a sick calf in the barn. And two days ago, this evil bitch tried to kill me.”

You giggled. “Was the evil bitch an actual bitch?”.

“She was a blonde.”

“You pissed off a golden retriever?”

“Think bigger. She was a Charolais heifer with the longest horns I’ve seen on that breed. My father clearly wasn’t trimming their horns these past few years. Of all the chores to miss…”

“What did she do? Try to trample you?”

“I had a plan to get her into the trailer, she had a plan to resist, and then seized an opportunity to try and gore me.”

“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds awful. What happened?”

“I roped her.”

Your eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“It seems some skills come back under pressure. I haven’t roped anything since I was eighteen.”

“Lloyd, were you a cowboy?”

He laughed. “Every ranch kid is a cowboy, honey. It’s not that remarkable.”

“Well, I think it’s remarkable. Can I see your cowboy skills sometime?”

“If it would cheer you up, I’d give you an in-person tutorial.”

You perked up. “Will you bring your lasso home? I can think of all kinds of uses for it…”

Lloyd wasn’t amused. “I don’t think you realize what a lasso is made out of. It’s meant for animal hide, it would shred your skin.”

“What about chaps? Spurs?”

“It’s too hot for chaps in August, and if you need spurs, get rid of the horse.”

“Seriously? You’d just get rid of the horse?”

“That was my father’s philosophy. He liked his horses like he liked his people - well trained.”

You didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Lloyd, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Not really. My cousin got into some trouble, and I helped him out of a jam. He’s here with me now and… Joe’s funeral is tomorrow. I don’t think I’m going to go.”

“What kind of trouble is your cousin in? Is there anything I can do?”

“No. I took care of it. We aren’t close or anything. He’s my father’s sister’s kid; she died, and he grew up in foster care. The only place I ever saw him was at school.”

“That’s so… sad.”

He chuckled. “That sums up my week. I spent Friday hunting down the last of the cattle and ended up hip deep in a mud puddle.”

“How did that happen?”

“I was chasing a cow. She figured out that the only place she could go, where I couldn’t - at least not on horseback - was a giant mud puddle.”

“Did you rope her, too?”

“Yes. And don’t ask me how I got her out, because it’s a four hour window of time I deeply want to forget.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, fighting back laughter.

“On a totally different subject, I’m bringing home 800 pounds of beef…”

“Lloyd!”

“After what she put me through, I’m damn sure going to eat her.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s called the food chain, baby.”

“I’m not eating any beef you serve me for the next two years,” you said.

Lloyd snickered. “Hippie.”

“You’re really going native on me aren’t you?”

He laughed, but it sounded tired.

“Have you been sleeping well?” you asked.

“I can’t sleep. I miss you.”

Tears filled your eyes, then spilled over. You sniffled.

“Princess? Are you there?”

“Yeah…” your voice came out as a half sob.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I’m sorry. I just… I’m not having a great day and the last thing I want to do is dump it all on you. You’re already handling so much.”

“Don’t worry about me. Tell me what’s going on.”

You stared at the splint on your wrist, and thought about what could’ve happened if Zach hadn’t been with you tonight. You thought of your confrontation with Aiden and the photo left on your car on Friday night. Lloyd would get on a plane if he knew what was going on and because of you, he’d miss the chance to attend his father’s funeral tomorrow. While you understood his hesitation about going, you wanted him to at least have the opportunity to go. If there was even a tiny possibility that putting his father in the ground would help him lay his demons to rest, you needed him to have it.

“Princess?” Lloyd asked.

You took a deep breath. “I’m having some problems with… Aiden. He’s… um… you know, this isn’t a conversation we should have over the phone. When you get back, I’ll tell you everything, okay?”

“Zach would be more than glad to rearrange Aiden’s face, if you asked him to. He’s been itching to do it since he met the kid.”

Your laugh was watery. “Hey. I could totally do it myself. Landon and Jake gave me a self defense lesson.”

“Because of Aiden? Why? What did he do?”

“He’s probably harassing me. Zach found out today and confronted me about it. By the way, he’s staying in your guest room tonight.”

Lloyd grunted. “Good, and you didn’t answer the question. How is he harassing you? When did it happen? Does Jake know? Nevermind, of course he does. He was probably your first call.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought I could handle things and it turns out I was wrong.”

“I’ll be home by Tuesday afternoon, maybe sooner,” he said.

A day and a half. You could make it that long.

“You know, this is the longest we’ve ever been apart,” Lloyd said.

You blinked. “It is?”

“Yeah. Since we started working together, we’ve never been apart for more than five days in a row.”

“What about when I had the flu? I was out for a whole week.”

“I brought you soup and medicine that Friday night.”

The memory made you smile. You hadn’t been working for him for very long and opening the door to a scowling Lloyd had been quite the surprise. He’d carried a pharmacy bag under one arm and a carry out container from his favorite restaurant in the other. The soup was vegetable noodle, with extra broth.

“I remember it now. Did you know you’re an amazing friend, Lloyd?”

“It was probably weird of me to show up out of the blue, but I had to do something. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I couldn’t cope if I lost you.”

The pain in his voice worried you. He was hurting and you wished you could stop it. Tears filled your eyes again.

“Do you need me to come out there?”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’ve tied up all the loose ends.”

The catch in his voice made you frown. “Lloyd, what happened?”

“I had to take care of a few things with the less than legal side of my father’s business. He wasn’t just a rancher and I had to motivate some local thugs to… move to a different scene.”

“Ah. I see. Should I find a lawyer in the area, or do you have someone on retainer? I’m only asking in case your methods attract the wrong attention.”

He grunted. “Local law enforcement is a bit tied up at the moment, but just in case, there’s bail money in the safe. The passcode is 917889 - if you can’t remember it, tell Jake it’s my three favorite Super Bowls in order. He’ll understand.”

You rolled your eyes. “I tend to forget they play the Super Bowl on a yearly basis.”

“I can help you out with that. We’ll watch my favorites together when I get back.”

“Can I take an Ambien first?”

He laughed, and the line fell quiet. You wondered if you should tell him exactly what was going on, but figured plenty of people knew already. You’d filed the official complaint with the police and Detective Diskant was putting more resources into the case tomorrow. Besides, in thirty-six hours, Lloyd would be home.

“Lloyd? I’m glad you called. It’s nice to hear your voice.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I am, I just need some sleep.”

“Don’t work too hard,” he said.

“You’re the one who spent the last week playing cowboy. How’s your back feeling?”

“I’d rather not say because it would make me feel old.”

You giggled. “If it helps, I’d be out of commission within an hour if I tried that kind of work.”

“Princess, you don’t like your shoes getting dirty in the rain. You’d shrivel up and die at the amount of dirt and mud out here. Especially if you saw the amount of it I’ve tracked into the house.”

“I can imagine it, and it’s not pleasant. But if you need me, I’d be there in an instant. You know that, right?”

“It goes both ways. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

His words were spoken so tenderly that a lump the size of a golf ball swelled in your throat.

“I know.”

“Shit, I made you cry again.”

You wiped your face, laughing. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess, but I wanted to talk to you.”

“You never told me what Aiden did. Did he call you? Show up at the office? Your apartment?”

“It’s not important. Zach is downstairs and I’m safe. We can talk more tomorrow, just come home safe.”

“Alright. Sleep tight, Princess. I’ll be home soon,” Lloyd said.

Your heart fluttered. There was a wealth of affection in his voice that wrapped around your heart, and though it wasn’t spoken, his words held more love than any explicit confession could convey.

“Goodnight. I love you.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Next - Part XVIII

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Masterlist

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Taglist:

@denisemarieangelina

@before-we-get-started

@buckysteveloki-me

@patzammit

@badassbaker