Page 57 of Waiting For A Girl Like You (Haven House #4)

“No!” CeCe launched herself at him, clawing and fighting as if he were the enemy. “Leave him alone!”

Tobias thundered into the room. Off balance and catching his shoulder on the doorframe, he screamed like an insane person. “Don’t touch her!”

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Easily pulling CeCe off him, Charlie dropped her as gently as he could on the bed. “Someone better start talking.”

“What’s wrong with us?” Toby’s face turned purple as he continued to scream, the veins in his neck straining against the flesh. “How could you do this to her?”

CeCe resumed her position into a ball, the wailing coming from her lips feeling like a knife to the skull. “I didn’t do anything,” Charlie yelled, not quite sure if he was telling the truth. “Now start fucking talking.”

His reflexes were off. Charlie didn’t know what in the hell was wrong with him, but he didn’t react in time, and Toby's fist struck his cheek with enough force that he went flying into CeCe’s small computer desk.

Before he could clear his head, Toby was hauling him up by his shirt.

His son had always been a big kid, but the older he got and the more his looks carried weight in the world, the more Toby began to pay attention.

Working out was part of his regular day now, and not only had it toned his muscles, but it had also provided the boy with a newfound strength.

Charlie found himself flying again, smacking into a polished wooden wall on the opposite side of the cabin. When his body hit with a sickening thud, it knocked some of his brain awake, and he held up his arms to block the next blow.

“Don’t talk about her that way.” Spit flung from Toby’s lips, his eyes wild as he lost himself to another one of his raging episodes. “Don’t you ever talk about Taylor that way.”

Brandy materialized in the doorway, a sleek black mini-dress hugging her curves. Tossing her strawberry-blonde braid over one shoulder, she cooed, “Yeah—don’t talk about me like that.”

“Brandy,” CeCe sobbed, “help me.”

CeCe had always looked up to Bryan Carroll’s daughter, and in the beginning, when Charlie thought the Carrolls were decent people, he’d encouraged their friendship.

But after that night at the poker tables—after he lost their home in a single round of luck—he’d reversed course, wanting his daughter to have nothing to do with any of them.

“Oh, no, CeCe. That’s not right, and the last time I checked, you weren’t an idiot,” Brandy admonished, wagging her finger in disapproval. “What did we say? People with the name Brandy don’t become famous. We’re using my middle name. I’m Taylor now. T-A-Y-L-O-R.”

“I’m sorry.” CeCe cried harder. “I just forgot.”

Charlie opened his mouth to call Brandy something off the long list of derogatory names he kept in his head to use on her, but Toby slammed his fist into his face before he could get anything out.

“What the fuck, Tobias.” Charlie spat out a string of saliva and blood. “Stop and talk to me.”

Toby burst into tears, choking on his sobs as he went over to hold his sister. “You did this to us.”

Lifting a hand, Charlie wiped his mouth, wincing at the pain in his swollen knuckles. With a confused frown, he extended his fingers to examine them. Blood. Dried and caked on his skin, streaks of blood littered his hands.

No.

No, he wouldn’t.

He couldn’t.

Once upon a time, perhaps, but he had changed. He wasn’t a monster anymore. He wasn’t that man. Sure, he drank and did a few lines every now and then, but not like before. Never like before.

Racking his brain, Charlie tried to think back to the last thing he could remember. The bar. He had been drinking at the bar when Bryan appeared with his goons in tow and sat uninvited to discuss the kids and the villa. The asshole had thought he could talk him out of getting his brothers involved.

He had held firm and wasn’t about to let Bryan strong-arm him. Not again. What could he do? Kill him? Bryan was ballsy, but not that ballsy. Everyone on the damn island knew him and knew he and Charlie had a tenuous relationship.

So, with one parting smartass comment, Charlie had left Bryan at the bar to take a piss, and the bastard was gone by the time he returned, having ordered a fresh round for him to finish on his own .

After that…

Charlie frowned at his kids cowering on the bed.

After that, things got confusing. He didn’t even finish his drink before the liquor hit like a tidal wave.

One of the goons Bryan had brought must have stayed behind because when he’d nearly fallen off his stool, it had been that ugly motherfucker who helped him leave.

Charlie knew the guy’s face but not his name, and he didn’t think it mattered.

He was a lackey there to serve, and that’s what he did when he dropped him off at his sailboat docked at Crown Bay.

There was a vague recollection of Tobias being onboard when he arrived, claiming he was leaving to meet Brandy for dinner at her place.

They were going to discuss plans to visit Florida, with Brandy wanting to see Haven House and meet the family.

For whatever reason, an unnatural rush of anger had struck at the idea, but beyond that, Charlie had nothing. There was no memory, only darkness.

While Toby consoled his sister, Charlie glared at Brandy— Taylor —sneering down at him. “What did he do?”

Brandy batted her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Bryan had given him something. At the bar, he must have slipped something into his drink. Charlie broke eye contact with Brandy to stare in bewilderment at his hands. “What did he do to me?”

CeCe gagged, completely overtaken by her hysterical tears, and with Toby distracted as he whispered to her, Brandy bent down to speak directly in Charlie’s face. “If you would’ve just fallen off the boat and drowned, this would have been easier.”

Charlie’s head snapped so he could speak to this evil bitch face-to-face. “What did you say?”

“Daddy always gives me what I want, and I want them.”

This level of anger hadn’t filled him in years, if ever.

The entire world always wanted him to give up everything he had.

It wanted to rob and steal away what was rightfully his.

Toby wasn’t lost. He believed in his boy.

Those odd behaviors took life experience and age to iron out, and while Charlie would admit he might be kidding himself, he had to hold on to the fact that a change might be possible.

But Brandy didn’t want that. She was always single-minded in her actions, never taking no for an answer. If she had an idea in her head, she wouldn’t let it go, and she wanted Tobias to be dark and twisted, a sadistically sick bastard to do her bidding.

“Both of them.”

What she was saying finally penetrated his brain.

CeCe.

The bitch wanted CeCe, too.

The cabin was cramped, but Charlie needed only a heartbeat to gauge the distance. He clamped a hand around Brandy’s ankle and yanked— hard.

She came crashing to the ground with a scream, her head cracking on the floor as she hit. The sound only fueled his anger, and he craved to hear her cry out in pain again.

“They’re my kids. My family.” He hauled her beneath him, trapping her. One hand crushed her jaw so tightly he half-expected it to snap. “You and your father can’t have them. They’re mi—”

It was over when CeCe’s scream pierced the air. Charlie would readily admit he didn’t know a whole lot of things, but he knew that sound. His little girl’s scream wasn’t over what he was doing to Brandy, but because she was scared.

Her brother. His demon. It was here.

And it wanted Charlie’s blood.

He laid there and took it. Every hit. Every strike.

Charlie took on his son’s demon and its wrath.

Ripped off Brandy, he was tossed onto his back while Tobias pummeled him.

Hit after hit, he waited it out, knowing it would end soon.

This was something Toby needed, and Charlie had been the punching bag plenty of times before.

“He tried to kill me!” Brandy screeched as she scrambled out of the way. “He wants me dead because he doesn’t want us to be together.”

One feeding the darkness in the other. That’s all Brandy and Tobias were to each other. Like called to like, and the pair were twin flames in their depravity.

Yet Charlie still thought he could save his son. He shouted Toby’s name. Pleading with him to see what he was doing and to stop and ask himself why. “Bryan drugged me. You know I would never hurt you two.”

“Yes, you would. ”

The hits continued to rain down on him, the world blinking in and out. CeCe sat unmoving on the bed, cradling her favorite teddy bear to her chest. She shouldn’t see this. She should be safe in her bed at Haven House. SiSi should have raised her. What a fool he had been.

Tobias sat on his chest, the endless beating gaining new steam as the boy grunted with every slam of his fist. Charlie’s head whipped back and forth, and he thought he might be drowning from the blood gathering in his throat and mouth.

“Stop, Toby,” CeCe’s small voice pleaded. “That’s enough.”

Brandy hovered above them, her sick smile slicing across her face in the dim light. “It’ll never be enough. Not until he’s gone.”

With a roar, Tobias flipped him to his front, and so badly beaten, Charlie had no strength to rise.

Not that he could with a six-foot teenager on his back.

There was shuffling as if Tobias searched for something at CeCe’s computer desk.

He tried to lift his head, but all he could see was the cabin doorway and the narrow hall leading to his bedroom.

Two people were standing there. Two sets of bare feet.

A woman and a child. Waiting. They looked as if they were waiting for something to happen.

The cold cord was the first thing he felt. The second was CeCe’s wail of denial, piercing his heart with the truest aim. She fell to the floor, rushing over to him on her hands and knees.

“Don’t, Toby.” CeCe’s beautiful face filled Charlie’s vision, blocking the bare feet of the woman and child in the hall. “Please don’t. We can leave. We’re old enough.”

“But you’ll never be free of him.” Brandy crouched next to CeCe, the fevered glee in her eyes full of crazed malice. “You can leave him, but he’ll always turn up. A bum with no one. He’ll be a thorn in your side forever, CeCe.”

The cord pulled tight, silencing any protest Charlie might have. CeCe screamed once more, but it was no use. When she tried to shove at her brother, Brandy was there, seizing his little girl by the hair on the back of her head.

“Watch.” Brandy shoved CeCe forward and directly into Charlie’s face. “You love him so much. You need to be the one to look him in the eyes when he goes.”

And that was it.

A simple thing, really .

His life.

Not that long, but long enough for him to realize that the pain would never end. It would forever be his burden. A haunting past that left no room for anything else.

It was better this way, maybe. As the pinpricks of light popped in and out of his vision, Charlie thought that perhaps it was better this way.

CeCe was smart. She would escape and live a full life.

He had to believe that. Ben would find her and bring her home.

He would bring her home to Haven House, where she could live out her days in the one place she belonged.

“Toby, please,” CeCe begged as the darkness beckoned. “For me. Don’t do this for me.”

There was hesitation. Charlie got one ragged breath in when the cord’s pressure went lax.

But all it took for it to go tight again was for Brandy to want it. “For me, Toby. Get rid of him for me .”

Whoever was out in the hall was coming closer to watch. He could see them clearly now—a woman and a little girl. The woman was shrouded in darkness, with a pulsing red heartbeat at her center, the weight of her sins a constant companion for all eternity.

And the other—the little girl as bright as the sun—sang for him. Louder and louder until he could focus on nothing but her voice. His end would come at the hands of his son while his youngest daughter screamed for his life, but his oldest child… she would be the one to sing him to sleep.

He would leave this world as he lived in it, with nothing to show and no one to mourn him. Yet, that didn’t matter. Because in the end, Charlie Fairweather remembered everything.

You are my sunshine…

Viv and her baby blue eyes on their wedding day.

My only sunshine…

Ben and Trevor. His safe harbor when he was young, his enemies as they grew old.

You make me happy…

Rebecca aiming her sly smile at him from behind the bar of the Blue 42.

When skies are gray …

Those four damn women. Laughing on the patio while children played in the yard.

You’ll never know, dear…

Toby and CeCe squealing in delight when he brought them to the island. A family. They had been a real family that day.

How much I love you…

And his Livy. His beautiful Livy walking with him along the bayou at Haven House. Forever young and forever his to love.

Please don’t take my sunshine away.