Chapter 9
The week after the school board meeting should have been the best of our lives.
We won.
Madison kept her diploma.
The GoFundMe hit seventy-five thousand dollars.
Linda filed the defamation lawsuit against Brandon.
My parents came over for dinner.
Actual dinner.
In our tiny apartment.
My dad fixed the leaky faucet in the bathroom.
My mom brought groceries and held Lila for three hours straight, crying the whole time about how much she'd missed.
Noah started his new job at his uncle's garage.
He was up at five every morning, home by six every night, and every paycheck went straight into our joint account.
We even started looking at bigger apartments.
On the good side of town.
With two actual bedrooms and a balcony and a dishwasher.
For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to believe that maybe... just maybe... we were going to be okay.
But Brandon wasn't done.
He never would be.
It started with small things.
Strange cars parked outside our apartment building at night.
Hang-up calls at three a.m.
A rock through our kitchen window one Tuesday evening.
The police said there was nothing they could do.
No proof.
No witnesses.
Just random vandalism.
Then the real stuff started.
Noah was walking to his truck after work one night when three guys jumped him in the garage parking lot.
They beat him bad.
Broke his left wrist.
Two black eyes.
Three cracked ribs.
They didn't take his wallet.
Didn't take his phone.
Didn't say a word.
They just hit him.
Again and again.
And right before they left, one of them whispered in his ear:
“Tell the Brooks family the bill isn't paid yet.”
We found Noah curled on the asphalt, bleeding, by a customer who came back for his forgotten keys.
The emergency room was a nightmare.
Noah kept apologizing.
Over and over.
“I'm sorry. I should have fought back. I should have—”
“Stop.” Madison held his good hand. “Just stop. This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault.”
The police came to take a report.
They asked if Noah had any enemies.
If he owed anyone money.
If there were gang affiliations.
We told them about Brandon.
About the threats.
About the defamation lawsuit.
They nodded.
Wrote it all down.
Said they'd look into it.
But I saw the way they looked at us.
Same way everyone looked at us eighteen years ago.
Like we were trash.
Like we'd probably brought it on ourselves.
Linda came to the hospital.
She was furious.
“This is intimidation. Witness tampering. Aggravated assault. We'll add all of it to the complaint. I'll get a restraining order. I'll—”
“Linda.” I stopped her. “Brandon doesn't care about restraining orders. He doesn't care about lawsuits. He doesn't care about anything except destroying us because we wouldn't let him use us for money. Papers aren't gonna stop him. We need something real.”
That night, sitting in the hospital waiting room while Noah slept off the pain medication, I made a decision.
I couldn't keep letting the people I loved get hurt.
Not anymore.
I waited until Madison was asleep in the chair beside Noah's bed.
Then I stepped outside.
Called the only person I knew who could help.
Brandon answered on the second ring.
“Rebecca. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Meet me. Tomorrow. Noon. At the old park on Oak Street. The one we used to go to.”
He laughed.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I'm ready to make a deal.”
Silence.
Then his voice dropped.
“What kind of deal?”
“The kind you wanted. The interviews. The book. The money. All of it. But we do it my way. And you leave Noah alone. You leave all of us alone. Permanently.”
I could hear him smiling through the phone.
“Now you're talking. Noon tomorrow. Oak Street Park. Don't be late. And don't bring anyone. No sister. No boyfriend. No daughter. Just you and me. Like old times.”
He hung up.
I slid down the wall of the hospital corridor.
Cried into my hands.
I knew what I was doing was dangerous.
I knew I was walking into a trap.
But what choice did I have?
Brandon would keep hurting us.
He'd hurt Noah worse next time.
He'd go after Madison.
He'd go after Lila.
I had to end it.
One way or another.
The next day, I put on the only nice clothes I had.
Stuck a small can of pepper spray in my purse—something I'd bought years ago and never had the courage to use.
Drove to Oak Street Park.
It was exactly as I remembered.
The old oak tree in the center.
The rotting picnic tables.
The swing set where Brandon had pushed me when we were sixteen and stupid and in love.
He was already there.
Leaning against the tree.
Wearing the same shirt he'd had on the day he showed up at our apartment.
“You came alone,” he said, pushing off the tree.
“Just like you asked.”
We walked to a picnic table.
Sat across from each other.
“So.” Brandon smiled. “What's the deal, Rebecca? You finally ready to play ball?”
“I'll do the interviews,” I said. “Madison will do one. Just one. On our terms. We pick the network. We pick the questions. We get final edit. And the money gets split three ways. Equal. Madison, Lila, and me. You get nothing.”
Brandon's smile vanished.
“Nothing? After everything I've done to make this happen?”
“You haven't done anything but lie and threaten and hurt people. You get nothing. And in exchange... we drop the lawsuit. We don't press charges for what happened to Noah. We sign a nondisclosure agreement. We never speak about you in public again. You get to disappear back into whatever hole you crawled out of. And we get our lives back.”
Brandon stared at me.
Then he laughed.
A loud, barking, horrible sound.
“You think I'm gonna agree to that? You think I went through all this trouble just to walk away with nothing? I want my cut, Rebecca. My name on the book. My face on the TV. And I want it now.”
He stood up.
Leaned across the table.
“Or maybe I'll just take what I'm owed. You know... that boyfriend of Madison's is lucky those guys didn't kill him. Next time, I might tell them not to stop at broken bones. Next time, maybe they pay a little visit to the apartment in the middle of the night. While the baby's sleeping.”
That was it.
I snapped.
I pulled the pepper spray from my purse.
Unleashed it directly into his face.
Brandon screamed.
Fell backward off the bench.
Clutched his eyes.
“You BITCH! I'll KILL YOU!”
I stood over him.
Pepper spray still in my hand.
“You listen to me, Brandon Hayes. You come near my family one more time. You so much as drive past our apartment. You look at Noah wrong. You breathe in Madison's direction. You even think about Lila... and next time, it won't be pepper spray. It'll be a bullet. And I won't miss. Do you understand me?”
He was still screaming.
Rolling on the grass.
I didn't wait around.
I turned and walked to my car.
Drove away.
My hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold the wheel.
I'd threatened to kill a man.
The father of my child.
And I meant every word.
When I got back to the hospital, Noah was awake.
Madison was sitting on the edge of his bed, feeding him Jell-O.
They both looked up when I walked in.
“Where were you?” Madison asked.
“Just... taking a drive. Clearing my head.”
Noah studied my face.
He knew.
Somehow, he knew.
He didn't say anything in front of Madison.
But later, when she stepped out to call Linda, he reached for my hand.
“You talked to him, didn't you?”
I nodded.
Told him everything.
The meeting.
The pepper spray.
The threat.
Noah squeezed my hand.
“You shouldn't have had to do that alone.”
“I know. But I did what I had to do. He won't bother us again. I made sure of it.”
I was wrong.
Brandon wasn't the kind of man who learned lessons.
He was the kind who escalated.
May you like
Three days later, he did the unforgivable.
He went after Lila.
