Page 50 of What She Deserves
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Rashad knocked twice and then barged into Alex’s office without waiting for an answer. His friend looked up from the computer with a surprised expression.
“You have a minute?” Rashad asked.
“Sure.”
Rashad shut the door. “He’s started again.” He tossed the opened envelope on the desk.
Alex read the front and then leaned back in his chair. “He used your old name.”
“Yeah. Asshole.”
“What does he want?”
“To make my life hell, what else? I should have never reached out to him.” He rubbed the back of his neck, aching from the amount of tension he’d been carrying with no relief since last night.
After Heather’s death, he reached out to his father at the George Beto Unit, a men’s maximum-security prison in Texas. At first he thought his father might have changed, but within months he freed Rashad of the notion that he had been rehabilitated. Rashad cut off all contact, and the envelope yesterday was the first time he’d heard from him since then.
“He’s your father. It’s not surprising that at some point you would reach out to him. Why did he contact you again?”
“He sent me what I asked for. Pictures of my mother. Pictures of me from when I was a kid. Remember how he refused to give them to me? I started to doubt he even had them, but he had them all along, son of a bitch.” Bitter anger consumed him and spilled over into his voice. He hadn’t felt this way in a long time and hated that the old feelings had re-emerged.
Alex opened the envelope and removed some of the photos and flipped through them. As Rashad watched, his stomach tightened with tension and nausea roiled in his stomach. He wished he didn’t have any connection to Chester Reddick.
Last night when he left Layla and her friends, he’d gone back to the condo, opened the package and flipped through the photos. All sorts of emotions—anger, nostalgia, sadness—overwhelmed him, and more than anything he’d wanted to spill his guts to Layla. How many times had he told himself that he wouldn't, couldn't allow himself to need anyone? Not even Layla. He’d needed her last night—needed to tell her how much he was hurting and tell her the truth about his father so she could help him carry this burden he didn’t want to bear, but he couldn’t—because he’d lied to her. He had told her his parents were dead, but they weren’t.
When she came home, he’d pretended to be asleep, and this morning he left early before she woke up.
“In the letter he said I didn’t deserve them since I was the reason he was in prison in the first place, but he sent them anyway to prove that he wasn’t the bad person I thought he was. A good will gesture. Then he asked for money again.”
“Dios, I’m sorry, Rashad.” Alex’s hazel eyes filled with sympathy. He knew all about Chester Reddick and the pain he’d caused not only to Rashad, but to a large number of women.
“At least I have the pictures I wanted.” That was the silver lining.
Thirteen-year-old Rashad had been the one to find the bloodied clothes tucked away in the garage, as well as a pair of earrings that matched the description of a woman he’d seen missing on the news. He’d already suspected that his father was up to no good on the nights he left him home alone, and seeing those items convinced him to call the police.
When his father had been arrested, Rashad had been removed from the home, and the entire house was off limits because it was considered a crime scene. Years later, Rashad realized he had no photos of himself as a kid, and that need to connect to the past niggled at the back of his mind for a long time. When he contacted his father in prison, he’d asked about any photos he still had, and he’d tagged on a request about his mother—Ernestine Reddick.
“Layla saw the package and asked me about the name on the envelope. I think I put her off, but I’m not sure.” Rashad paced the floor, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, annoyed by the constant tension there.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”
“The truth? That my father was a serial rapist who killed his last victim, and the only reason I’m here is because he raped my mother? That the name Rashad Greene is one I cobbled together after I turned eighteen so I wouldn’t have any connection to a monster? I’m sure she would have taken that very well.”
Alex sighed and stuffed the pictures back in the envelope. “You told me you’re in love with her, and she’s practically living at your condo these days. Don’t you think it’s time you tell her everything?”
Rashad rested his butt against the credenza and laughed. “Yeah, that’s so easy to do.”
Alex stood. “Aren’t you the one who told me I should tell Sherry the truth about me and Heather? Now is the time to take your own advice.”
“Your situation was different, Alex. Sherry had to get used to the idea of you and Heather, but there’s no way Layla is going to be okay with this. I told her my parents were dead, meanwhile my mother is alive and well in Huntsville, Alabama and probably doesn’t want to have anything to do with me, and my father is in a maximum-security prison for brutalizing more than twenty women over the span of a decade. How do you think she’s going to look at me, when she comes from a pristine family of lawyers and politicians? You think she’ll jump at the chance to be with a man whose background is so dirty? She won’t want the stink on her.” His jaw and throat tightened at the thought of Layla’s scorn. There were so many other men out there without his baggage that he couldn’t fathom her wanting to remain in his life and plan a future with him when she learned the truth.
“You know her better than I do, but I’ve never seen you behave this way about anyone else. You used to laugh at the idea of The One, and I think Layla is your One. You need to secure this relationship before she finds out you lied and everything blows up in your face.”
“I need more time.”
“For what? To come up with more lies? Whether you tell her now or tell her later, the result will be the same. You’re putting off the inevitable.”
