Love At Peace (Hometown Heartstrings #3)

Chapter 9

Heather

H e’s never done anything wrong?

I stared at the rebellious teenager, knowing how far from the truth that comment was.

David was no angel. He wasn’t a good-hearted man. He wasn’t even half of a decent person. No one could claim to be “good” when they did the kinds of things he did to me. Anyone capable of inflicting that brand of mental warfare on another was inherently very bad.

The fact that Nevaeh spoke in David’s defense proved that she was with him. I hadn’t just heard it as a rumor. It wasn’t just secondhand information that I’d obtained as gossip. The proof of Nevaeh and David being a couple was demonstrated, right here before my eyes. There was no way to argue that this young woman was with my ex based on the extent that she would defend his supposed honor.

It wasn’t a delusion.

She really believed that David could do no wrong, and I knew exactly how she would come to such a conclusion.

He’d gotten to her. He’d conned her and duped her into believing anything he said. Some people were just born with the power of persuasion. David had honed in on that skill to be a master of it.

And you fell for it.

I stared at her, hit with an overwhelming sense of pity. I pitied myself in that same regard. I had once been in her shoes. Before I strategized and found the courage to leave David and run out of Chicago, I was his victim.

He used to tell me the nonsense that made me think I had to believe him and that he was always right. He used to fill my head with the lies that would convince me that he knew better and I had to be wrong and incorrect.

I resisted the flood of memories from taking over me again. Just thinking of all the crap he’d spewed to make me stay had me tense. All the times he’d told me that I was being “too emotional” or that I was “overreacting and being irrational.” Then the instances when those didn’t work as well and he’d sedate me and keep me locked at home until I’d be obedient again.

Every day I spent away from him helped me to get over the trauma of being in his presence. I’d never forget it, and I didn’t wish that kind of mental hell and torture on anyone.

Not even my worst enemy.

Looking at Nevaeh right now, I realized that she really wasn’t my worst enemy.

That teenager was merely lost and deluded—easy prey for a mastermind narcissist like David.

“What the hell do you mean it’s not any of my bus—”

Once more, Marty held up a hand to cut off Roarke from shouting at her. He wasn’t yelling at her, per se, but his voice continued to raise throughout the interaction. Gavin backed him up, holding on to his coat sleeve as if he could physically restrain him.

“Now isn’t the time to be discussing who’s with who,” Marty told Roarke, arching one brow as if that facial expression could emphasize that he needed to listen. “We need to speak about Eric James and the condition he was just found in.”

Nevaeh lifted her chin higher, not fading that cocky expression one bit.

For that, alone, I wanted to slap some sense into her. This was my cousin we were talking about. My family member—the only one I had left.

“I don’t have any business with Eric,” Nevaeh insisted.

“But you can say if David was meeting with him here?” Marty asked.

I watched, with the rest of us down here, as she pressed her lips tightly together.

“I’m not saying nothing about anything.”

Roarke growled, stepping to the side to get around Marty. “Nevaeh, Marty’s not someone you can just blow off, dammit! We found someone wounded down here, and if you know anything about that—”

“I don’t!” she shouted, fisting her hands and leaning forward as if that would carry her reply any louder or faster. “I don’t know anything about Eric or anyone else hanging around here. All I know is my boyfriend hasn’t done anything wrong—”

“Wrong.” My lips tingled with how hard I pushed them closed. The retort popped out of my mouth anyway, blurted out into the air like a quiet mutter. “Wrong,” I repeated louder. “You are wrong ,” I told her, keeping my voice as steady as possible as I lifted my face until I could glare back at her fully and directly.

Nevaeh smiled a cruel expression of smugness. She could think she was right, she could let herself get carried away with the thought that she was the expert here, but she had no clue how much more time I’d lost in the horror named David.

“I’m wrong?” she asked sassily. “About my boyfriend?”

“He’s not—” I shook my head, unequipped to summarize how David wasn’t a boyfriend in any sense of that word. He didn’t know how to be a boyfriend. He only knew how to control and make a woman feel like a victim in his sphere. “He’s not a boyfriend, Nevaeh. You can’t let—”

“I can’t?” she shot back. “I can’t what, Heather? And on that note, who the hell are you to try to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

“That’s the spirit.”

She narrowed her eyes, cringing like I was talking nonsense.

“Use that on him . Try to tell him that he can’t tell you what you can do.”

“Oh, screw this bullshit. David’s not the bad guy in any of this.” She huffed. “He’s not involved with anything bad.”

“No?” I tried to tamp down the frustration at seeing it happen with another woman. I hated to witness how he was always brainwashing her.

“No, you idiot. He loves me. And I can swear on it that he’s not involved in anything with Eric falling or—”

“Who said he fell?” Marty asked. “You?” He raised his brow. “You want to commit to that statement?”

“Oh, shut up. Just get out of here, all of you. David has never done anything wrong.” She laughed once, airily. “He’s got no record. Nothing. He’s a good—”

“Liar,” I finished for her. “He’s a good liar. That’s it.”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She would never listen to a thing I’d say. He had already gotten too far into her head.

“I know that my cousin wound up down here wounded.” I stepped closer, no longer in the mood to stand back and out of the way behind Gavin and Roarke.

Staying on the downlow was my goal, but not like this. If she knew anything about what happened to Eric, she had to tell Marty. If she was aware of anything David could have done to Eric, she had to speak up about it.

“And I’ll be damned if you try to act ignorant and protect David because you’re so deluded to think he cares about you. Not that he loves you. Just the bare minimum of him giving a shit about you at all.”

“He does love me,” she argued. “Not that you would know anything about that.”

I shook off the hit of her trying to needle me like that. “Tell us what he did to Eric.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

I gritted my teeth, fed up with her bullshit. Because I knew that she was motivated to be “obedient” to David and do as he’d told her, likely to never discuss what he had planned, I felt pushed to make her snap out of it even more.

“You don’t need to protect him.”

“You can cut this shit out of thinking you have any right to tell me what to do.” She turned to leave.

“Nevaeh,” Marty said, “wait.”

She shot him a dirty smirk, appearing just like the brat Roarke accused her of being. “No. I don’t owe you anything. I don’t know anything. And I’m not saying anything.”

“David doesn’t deserve your loyalty,” I told her before she could go.

“You don’t either.” She shook her head, taking the steps to walk up and away from us down here.

“What about me?” Roarke asked, raising his voice even louder. “All these times I’ve tried to help you, and I don’t deserve some damn answers?”

“No. None of you deserve anything from me. I’ve been looking out for myself all my life.” She stabbed a finger at her chest again, even madder. “Me. It’s just been me . No one has given a shit about me until I met David.”

I opened my mouth, trying not to repeat the hard truth she didn’t want to hear. But I couldn’t keep it in. “He doesn’t—”

She pointed at me. “Shut up. He does. David does care.”

“He cares enough to knock you up, I guess.”

Her mouth hung down as her eyes opened wide.

“What?” Roarke spun to furrow his brow at me for a brief second before he turned back to her. “ What ?”

“How dare you say that!” Nevaeh said between clenched teeth.

I shrugged, unafraid of making her mad. She had no right to think she could hide answers about why Eric was lying on the floor like that. “I’m guessing it’s David’s kid?”

“Are you insinuating that I’m some kind of a slut that sleeps around?” she screeched with fury blazing in her eyes.

“Is this true?” Roarke asked, still lagging one step behind.

“No,” Nevaeh said at the same time that I replied, “Yes.”

“You’re making this up,” she accused.

I unlocked my phone and showed her the picture I took of the test that I’d found. “No, I’m not.”

Arguing about whether or not she was pregnant, and if David was the father, wasn’t a critical task that had to be accomplished right now. Eric was my priority. That and making sure that I didn’t encounter David face-to-face.

“That could be anyone’s.”

I shook my head at her. “No. It was yours that you left at the café.”

“What, are you spying on me or something?” she demanded. “Following me and spying on me because you can’t stand that I’ve replaced you?”

Replaced me? Yeah, right.

“Nevaeh, is this true?” Roarke demanded.

She didn’t reply. She didn’t even look at him, locking her livid gaze on me. “How dare you. How dare you. You have to snoop into my life and take a picture of something private that you’ve got no right to even see—”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have left the damn test right there in plain sight,” I retorted. “If you were so damn worried about anyone seeing that test, the least you could’ve done was throw it away.” That was just common sense!

“You bitch! Why couldn’t you just mind your own damn business?”

I slitted my eyes, wondering in what alternative universe she thought she could say that to me. “Let me get this straight,” I said, stepping closer and trying to bottle in all my anger. “You’re pissed that I saw something that you left out, and that’s me not minding my own business?”

Little did she know that I hadn’t betrayed this truth to anyone. I hadn’t shared this news with Roarke, despite wanting to so badly.

“Yeah. Fuck off, Heather.”

“No.” I pointed at her, wishing I could zap her with a barb. “ You are the one who doesn’t know how to mind your own business. You are the one who is trespassing. Like when you helped yourself to my laptop. Ring a bell, brat ?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she argued, lowering her gaze off to the side and toward the floor.

“Bullshit.” I dared her to tell me otherwise. “That’s bullshit, Nevaeh.”

“Oh, yeah? Prove it.” She held her hands up, as if taunting me to come at her and fight.