“She’s got nowhere to go,” Creed pointed out.

“She’s got a brain and legs that work, she can find somewhere to go,” I returned.

Creed’s arm curled tight around me and he pulled me up and partially over his body so we were face to face.

“You see it as easy but your Daddy’s got a long reach,” he reminded me but I shook my head.

“I told you what they were fighting about tonight, Creed. He’s got another new woman and he isn’t even trying to hide her. He won’t miss the stepmonster if she went. He’d just replace her. She’s willing to do anything to keep her position and that’s just crazy.”

“Seems that way to you, baby, but it isn’t. It’s bigger than that, what he’s doin’ to her, for years, f**kin’ with her head.” His arm gave me a squeeze. “I get you, how she went about worming her way into his life. That was not cool but the punishment isn’t worth the crime. I remember her, way back then, before she connived her way in and he dragged her down. She was somethin’. Now she’s broken. All she knows is the life she has with him. She has no skills, hasn’t worked in over a decade. She’s got a great house, a great car, great clothes, status in town and your Daddy’s a powerful man. We can look from where we are and say without a doubt the devil she doesn’t know is better than the devil she knows. She’s buried so deep under all that shit, no way she’ll see it that way.”

I hated to admit it but Creed was right so I didn’t admit it and just settled, cheek to his chest again.

Creed’s hand started stroking my back again.

Then he asked, his voice cautious, “Your father still freaking you out?”

I knew what he was asking.

Daddy’s behavior had long since stopped freaking me out but he was different lately. Weird. Wired. His eyes bright in a way I didn’t like.

I’d seen it before, for years it had been happening although not frequent. The change. Him being more energetic than usual, happy. Now, it was happening a lot more and sometimes, when he wasn’t that way, he seemed agitated, strung out.

He would also have lots of phone conversations that were on the hush-hush, hidden. He’d jump if you entered a room he was in and he was talking on the phone and he did it like he was guilty or something.

He wasn’t like that. Ever. He had swagger. He didn’t care what people thought about him, the way he acted, what he said. He didn’t hide anything.

Now, he was and the fights with the stepmonster were far more frequent. They never went away but those two had settled into a routine animosity. It was usually only when he came home drunk or she found out he was cheating on her when things got ugly.

It was happening all the time these days.

“Yeah,” I told Creed.

“Wide berth, beautiful,” Creed advised.

I nodded, cheek sliding against his chest.

I could do that. I’d been doing it for years. I could do it for a few more months.

“You know,” I told his chest, “you’ve had this bed since you were a little kid. You should get a bigger bed.”

“I will, in a few months, when we’re gone and I’m buyin’ one for the both of us.”

See?

There it was. Creed making me feel better.

I smiled into his chest.

“Soon,” I began, “we’ll have to open the windows. We lay like this, we’ll hear the crickets. We meet at the lake, we’ll hear the frogs.”

His hand stopped stroking and his arm curled around me as he murmured, “Yeah.”

“Soon after that, no more sneaking. No more driving an hour and a half to have dinner. Just you and me, a big bed, a new puppy then Kara and Brand and a big happy family.”

His arm tightened, he pulled me up and over him so we were face to face again and he repeated a quiet, “Yeah.”

His face was illuminated only by the moonlight but I could still see the hair had fallen over his forehead. I lifted a hand to shift it away and for once, since he was lying on his back, it stayed where I put it.

That almost made me smile but what I had to say made certain I didn’t.

“I have to go back.”

“I know.”

I sighed and felt Creed do the same before both Creed’s arms stole around me. He rolled me so he was mostly on top and he kissed me, slow and sweet.

He was good at good-bye kisses. Great. Fantastic. I’d had a lot of them.

Too many.

I’d be glad when the day came that I got them few and far between.

With clear reluctance, Creed rolled us both out of his bed then he waited until I put my jacket on. We walked, silent, hand in hand out of his house and through the woods to my back gate.

There, as always, he stopped me, turned into me and, as always lately, he bent low, framing my face with his hands and he kissed me light and sweet.

A different kind of good-bye kiss, not as good but just as precious.

“See you tomorrow, Creed,” I whispered.

“Tomorrow, baby,” he whispered back.

I grinned up at him but I knew it was fake.

So did Creed.

But still, with no choice, he let me go and, with no choice, I went.

A few more months.

Just a few.

Then Creed and I would be free.

Chapter Twenty-One

Tomatoes, Toe-mah-toes

Present day, six days later…

Creed lay on his stomach, hand shoved under the pillows, leg cocked, face turned toward me, eyes closed.

He was still sleeping.

I was on my knees in the bed beside him, watching.

The covers were pulled up to his waist. I knew what lay under them was na**d but as I looked that way, all I saw was our lake, our pier and my name in flowers painted on his back.

Lifting a hand, starting between his shoulder blades and trailing a fingertip lightly down his spine, when I got there, I traced my name backwards, starting with the “e”. I knew he came awake at my first touch but I took my time, studying the tat, my finger’s movements. As I finished the “S”, my finger slid across the top of his ass and down, taking the covers with me.

I felt my vagina spasm as I exposed his fine, sculpted behind and my eyes drifted back up his back, his tat to his eyes, seeing their startling blue on me. He hadn’t moved, just his eyes had shifted to me and the look in them made my gut pitch.

God, how could he make lying there on his stomach hot?

I didn’t know. He just did.

That was Creed.

“Hey,” I whispered.

“Hey,” he whispered back then moved, swiftly.