Chapter Fourteen
Evelyn
“What’s going on?” I ask Cedric when he walks back into his apartment. My head is throbbing, and the room is spinning when I sit up in his bed.
“Just handling a little business,” he says.
“What business?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, probably because he doesn’t want to lie to me.
Oh shit, I think, shuddering with realization. “Lowell? Did he find me?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“He showed up here? Does he know where my mom is?” I ask in a panic.
“No, god no. Your mom is safe. I’ve got cameras all over her apartment building, and I’ll get an alert if any motion is detected.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Cedric answers. “And, ah, Lowell probably tracked you using your phone. But that’s exactly what I wanted him to do. The video you sent was just icing on the cake. There’s no way he would’ve missed the club tattoo on my back.”
“Wait, what video?” I ask in confusion.
“The video we made yesterday morning,” he responds and then stares at me as if I’m supposed to know what that is. “Seriously, Ev? How could you forget about that hot as hell video of us fucking?” he asks with a puff of laughter.
“You sent Lowell a video of us fucking?” I say in disbelief.
“It was your idea. Remember?” Cedric asks.
“No.”
“I told you about all the videos he sent of you and him together and you said, ‘let’s give him a taste of his own medicine.’ That was after you told me that he used to screw around with girls in front of you all the time and it would be nice payback.”
That is true, Lowell did make me watch him with other women, but I don’t remember Cedric and I making a video. And I only barely remember us having sex before this morning.
“You don’t remember,” Cedric says, his face falling. “How do you not remember what we did yesterday? Especially since you initiated it, waking me up by licking my stomach.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, you did. Grab your phone and you’ll see,” he says, so I reach over to the bedside table and bring up my camera app. Sure enough, the last video takes place in Cedric’s room, positioned right at the foot of the bed. And he’s already in bed when I climb back in, so I must have been the one who set up the phone to record.
“Now do you remember?” he asks.
“Oh, right, yeah, of course. It had just slipped my mind for a moment. God, I must have been exhausted.”
“What’s going on with you, Ev?” Cedric asks, grabbing either side of my face to look at me. He stares at my eyes and says, “Your pupils are dilated, and you did forget. I could see it on your face. You were pissed and didn’t remember what we did just yesterday.”
“I’m just horny after watching what we did,” I lie. “And I do remember now.”
He lets me go and then looks over at my purse hanging on the back of his doorknob and then back to me. “Did you take something? Evelyn, did you?” he demands. When I don’t respond, he jumps up and goes over, grabbing up my purse and riffling through it. Of course, it doesn’t take long for him to find the baggie.
He holds it up in the air and asks, “What the fuck are these?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
“Bullshit, Ev. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m serious, Cedric. I-I don’t know what those pills are. If I had to guess, probably a mixture of oxy and, um, ecstasy, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cedric mutters when he comes over and sits down on the bed, still holding the baggie and my purse. “How long have you been taking this sort of nasty shit?”
Jerking the bag from his hand, I tell him, “No! You do not get to judge me! You have no fucking idea how hard living with Lowell was, day and night, him using me like a sex doll whenever he wanted. No, scratch that. Some men probably treat sex dolls better. He degraded me and controlled every second of my life!”
“I’m sorry, Ev,” he mutters. “So damn sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through the last few years, and I wouldn’t want to even if I could. But that mess? You think your mom is bad off, just wait and see what happens to your kidneys and the rest of your organs if you don’t stop taking that shit.”
“I know that!” I tell him. “And this is it, what’s left in the bag. I can’t stop cold turkey, or I’ll feel like I’m dying. Believe me, I know. If Lowell really wanted to be a dick to me, he would cut me off. Just let me finish the bag, and then I’m done.”
“I don’t like it,” Cedric says.
“I don’t either. You know I never would’ve touched these kinds of pills before…before I met Lowell. When he didn’t like how I ‘was acting,’ he would feed them to me. He started doing it constantly, until I couldn’t get through the day without them.”
“Promise me, Ev. After these are gone, you’re done.”
“I promise,” I reply. The silence in the room says that neither of us quite believe my bullshit. So I try and change the subject. “What happened with Lowell?”
“He was so fucking pissed I thought his head was going to explode. Oh, and I kicked his ass,” Cedric informs me with a grin. “Felt good to hurt him like he once hurt me. And then the sheriff arrested him, and his buddies ran off.”
“So, he’s in jail?” I ask.
“He is. Hopefully for a long time. But you don’t have to worry about him finding your mother or getting to you.”
“Good. That’s good,” I agree.
Chapter Fifteen
Cedric
It only takes another few days for me to see an obvious pattern forming.
Every morning Evelyn is hot and horny, wanting nothing to eat or drink, just sex and more sex. Then, she passes out cold, not sleeping, but something even deeper for hours and hours.
And it’s not like she’s wide awake at night or anything. She sleeps from lunchtime to around sunrise before the cycle starts again.
Not to mention the fact that she doesn’t seem to recall any details about what we do in our trysts the next day, making me think that this is how she endured her time with Lowell, how she was able to let him have her body without her having to be mentally present.
It makes me angry and sad. In a way, I almost wish she had feelings for Lowell, that she loved him despite the fact that he was a dick so that she wouldn’t have had to be drugged up to endure him.
And god, now I feel like an idiot for enjoying her insatiability when it’s not even her who wants me but the effects of the pills she’s been popping. I’m no better than her jackass husband.
While Ev’s in one of her deep comas, I go through her purse and find the plastic bag that has just two yellow pills left. Even though I feel bad about snooping, I keep digging around to make sure she doesn’t have any more stashes. Thankfully, she doesn’t.
So, two more pills, one more insane morning of fucking followed by hours and hours of deep sleep, and then hopefully she’ll start getting back to normal.