Page 67 of Stay Away from Him

If I didn’t do as he said, Thomas would kill me.

And I believed him.

Chapter 16

Someone in the crowd must have called the police, because soon after Lawrence and Toby pulled Thomas off Carter’s limp body, sirens filled the air. An ambulance arrived first, paramedics running out to help Carter—and then the cops arrived. Two cruisers, then a third, their red and blue lights spinning, lighting up the trees, the leaf-covered grass, the glassy surface of the lake in the encroaching dark.

“You know these men?” an officer asked Melissa.

“My ex-husband,” she said. “And my…my—”

She wasn’t sure what to call Thomas. Her boyfriend? Fiancé? She hadn’t gotten around to saying yes to his proposal.

“Your boyfriend beat up your ex-husband, do I have that right?”

She nodded. Bradley still clung to her, his head against her shoulder.

“Is Daddy going to die?”

“No, sweetheart,” Melissa whispered, although she couldn’t say that for sure. She was the one who yelledYou’re killing him!when Thomas was delivering blow after blow to Carter’s face. And Carter still hadn’t moved. She craned to see around the cop’s legs, get aview of his body. The paramedics were putting him on a stretcher, the kind that held the head and kept a patient from moving their neck. Would they have been bothering with that if he was dead?

She looked back up at the cop questioning her. “Is he…is he going to be—”

“He’s conscious,” the cop said. “And he answered their questions. Knows his name, the president, the year. He’s hazy. But responsive.”

Melissa breathed out. Carter was a terrible husband, a terrible father, and she was furious with him for following her. Stalking her. But he didn’t deserve to die.

More importantly, though, she didn’t want Thomas to be guilty of manslaughter for killing him. She’d done so much work reconciling herself to Thomas’s past, the accusations that were made against him for his wife’s disappearance and death. So much work convincing herself that he wasn’t a murderer. After all that, after she came a split second away from agreeing to marry him—he couldn’t become a real murderer now.

Melissa scanned around, trying to find him in the growing dark of evening, then spotted him by the trees at the water’s edge, with one of the other police officers. Thomas had his back turned to the officer, and cuffs were going on his wrists.

“You’re arresting him?” she asked the cop by her.

“This is a pretty serious assault, miss,” he said. “Felonyassault. We’ll have to take him to county, for processing.”

“County?”

“Ramsey County Correctional Facility.”

Melissa was numb. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Can he get bailed out?”

“After he’s arraigned,” the cop said. “A judge has to set the bail amount. It being the weekend, might be a day or two. He’ll probably spend the weekend in jail, at least.”

A cry rang out on the air. At the trees, the cop was walking Thomas to the cruiser. Thomas’s head hung down, shamed. Nearby, Rhiannon’s face was crumpled up in tears—it must have been her who let out the loud sob, breaking down inside to see her father taken away. Close to her, Kendall looked completely numb, her eyes wide and blank, gnawing on a bent knuckle like an anxious little girl. Something swelled in Melissa, and she nearly burst into tears herself, thinking of these poor girls and everything they’d been through. First, they lost their mother. Now this.

And it was all Melissa’s fault. If she hadn’t come into their lives, into their father’s life, none of this would have happened.

Amelia came toward Melissa through the dark. “We have to leave,” she said. “We need to get the kids out of here.”

Melissa nodded, pulled herself together.

“I still need to finish taking your statement,” the cop said. He looked to Amelia. “Yours too.”

Amelia pulled Melissa by the elbow. “You have her address,” Amelia said to the cop. “You can finish your report later.”

She gathered the girls, and Lawrence and Toby, and together they walked back to the house in darkness, not talking. Back at the house, the leftover food was still on the table.

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