“Oh Jesus,” I hear Maggie growl. “If I don’t get killed, I’m going to kill her.” She takes a few more steps. “Is anyone in here? Come out, come out, wherever you are.” I find myself smiling. I love that woman. I wonder if she realizes she’s as crazy as her mother is. Terry is in for it when he gets older. “Oh, look how pretty you are,” she croons, telling me that she’s found Fifi McFluffy. “Were you the one making all that racket? Did your owners forget you? It’s okay,” she murmurs, talking softly to the cat. I lean my forehead against the door, listening to my woman and deciding that if I have to use Luka’s handcuffs to do it, I’m not going to stop until she finally sees reason.
Then, Maggie lets out a scream, the sound loud and terrifying. The sound of glass breaking follows quickly behind it. I hear Fifi hissing, and I immediately get worried. When I make it to the front room, Maggie is standing in the corner, her face bleeding, a broken lamp beside her and brandishing a …very large, florescent green dildo in her hand. Fifi is standing in front of her, claws out, hair raised and hissing.
“Maggie?”
“Bryant? What are you doing here?”
“What’s going on?” I ask, Fifi hears my voice and immediately turns with her fluffy tail swooshing in the air and prances over to me. I bend down to pick her up.
Maggie slowly lowers her arm—the one holding the lime green monster. Then turns to watch me petting the cat. “Is that your evil cat-spawn?”
“Uh…not really. Are you okay, baby? You’re bleeding.” I move away from Fifi to approach her, reaching out to brush my thumb against her cut. Fifi immediately takes exception and pushes her little body between mine and Maggie’s legs.
“Your demon cat scratched— Ow!” she cries, and I look down to see that Fifi has latched onto Maggie’s ankle.
“Fifi, stop!”
“Fifi?”
“You can’t hurt Maggie. She’s ours.”
“Yours? I most definitely am not yours or the cat’s,” she snaps as I disengage Fifi from her leg.
I look at her with a frown as she puts the dildo back in a black box that is lying on the ground beside her.
“You are. You’re just fighting it. That’s why we’re here,” I argue.
“I’m here because my crazy mother wants to look at some damn cabinet that her and Jansen can have sex in. Why are you here, Bryant?”
“Uh, Maggie May, you can’t have sex in a cabinet,” I tell her, still petting the cat—mostly because I’m afraid she’ll attack Maggie again.
“That’s what I told her! But if anyone can, my mother can,” she grumbles, and I can’t argue with that at all. “Why are you here?” she asks again, her brow furrowed.
“Because I wanted the two of us to be alone for the next two weeks and make you see that we belong together without anything or anyone around to make you doubt us. The only way I could figure out how to make that happen was to bring you to the middle of nowhere and give you no choice.”
“You brought me… My mother is the one that got me to come out here,” she corrects, still confused.
“She felt like I did, so she offered to help me.”
“She offered to help… Oh God, Bryant. What have you done?” she cries, as everything finally hits her. She sprints back to the door, and I follow her—although a little slower. “Mom!” she cries.
When I get there, Ida Sue is driving away. All at once, she stops, and I hear Maggie suck in a breath. She hangs her head out the window and waves.
“You two kids have fun. Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do!” she calls out and then she settles back in the car and drives off in a cloud of dust.
Maggie turns back to me, and I can tell she’s pissed.
“You moron!” she snaps. Fifi hisses at her and I pull back, so the dang cat doesn’t try to hurt Maggie again. Then, Maggie goes outside and begins stomping down the walkway.
Well, this is starting off great…
18
Maggie
“Where are you going?” Bryant asks, catching up to me.
“I’m walking home,” I rumble, refusing to look at him—or stop walking.
“Maggie, stop. You can’t walk home,” he says, but I just shake my head.
“I can unless you have a car here that I didn’t see?”
“I… well, no, I don’t, but you can’t walk home.”
“Watch me.”
“Maggie, damn it. You’re not going anywhere,” Bryant finally says, and now he sounds pissed—which I find laughable. He doesn’t have a right to be mad.
“I am. You had no right to do this, Bryant.”
I stop walking to turn and look at him. I let him see my anger and my frustration. I don’t, however, let him see the hurt or fear that I’m also feeling. I don’t understand those two emotions enough to try and dissect them right now—especially in front of Bryant.
“Maggie, you gave me two weeks, and I want them.”
“You… I gave you those two weeks back in Mason, not in some cabin in the middle of hill country where Bum-fuc— Whose cabin is this anyway?”
“Titan and your cousin Faith’s,” he answers.
I blink. Outrage overpowers everything else. “We’re in my cousin Faith’s cabin?”
“Hers and her man’s, yeah,” he says so calmly that I just want to kill him.
“Geez, Bryant, you just got the whole family involved in kidnapping me, didn’t you?” I reach up and tap gently on his forehead. “Hello,” I mock. “Where are your brains, scarecrow?”
“Knock it off, Maggie,” he replies, pulling my hand away from his face. I notice however, he doesn’t let go of my hand.
“Knock it off? You know my family, Bryant. You know them. You just gave every last damn one of them a reason to matchmake. Do you have any idea the type of crazy you’ve rained down on our heads?” I exclaim, still not quite believing what he’s done.
“I’ve been in this family for a while, Maggie. I know what I’m doing. I wouldn’t have had to if you would even try to be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” I scoff.
“Exactly. What was up with you leaving this morning so early.”
“I had work!” I mostly lie.
“I know, and I also know when exactly you leave for work. You snuck out of the house an hour early and did it purposely, not bothering to wake me up.”
“You needed your sleep,” I explain, chewing on the corner of my lip.
“Damn, Maggie, how many more lies are you going to tell me?”
“Damn, Bryant, how could you think getting my mother involved in kidnapping me was smart?” I bark back.
“When you promised me two weeks, I get those two weeks. You don’t get to run away or hide from me, Maggie. We’re going to really try to get shit right, here. There’s too much on the line.”
“You don’t get to decide what I do or don’t do, Bryant. We’re not married anymore.”
“Like I ever tried to decide for you when we were married. I always let you make your own decisions, Maggie. Don’t start acting like I didn’t now.”