Chapter 4

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Lynox asked Deborah as they pulled away from the Laroque residence.

“Yeah, I did, actually,” Deborah said dryly, then proceeded to scroll down her Facebook News Feed on her cell phone.

There were a few more seconds of silence before Lynox spoke again. “Then what was that?”

Deborah looked up from her phone. “What was what?” Her head wobbled on her neck; then she turned her attention back to her phone.

“That, back there.” Lynox nodded in the direction of Reo and Klarke’s home.

Deborah was confused. “What do you mean? Didn’t I look like I was enjoying myself the entire time? The Laroques are amazing. Their home is amazing, the guest list, food, entertainment . . . What was there not to enjoy? Not to mention he invited you to collaborate with him on a project.” Deborah turned to face Lynox. “Honey, this was the evening of all evenings. How could you question whether I enjoyed myself or not?” She turned her attention back to her phone, this time exiting her social media account and checking for any missed texts. “Did I miss something? Did you not enjoy yourself? You seemed to be having a splendid time as well.”

“I very much enjoyed myself,” Lynox said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I posed the question only because of the way you snatched yourself out of my arms and stormed off to the coat check. I thought maybe you and Klarke might have had some sort of disagreement or something. But when I talked to her, she was as clueless as I was.”

Deborah’s head snapped up from the cell phone as she stuffed it in her purse. Her eyes daggered into Lynox. “What do you mean, when you talked to Klarke? About what? About who? Me?” Deborah became very agitated. “You talking to another woman about me?” The mere thought of Lynox engaging in a conversation about her behind her back made her blood boil. If he wasn’t speaking about her to her mama, his mama, or a sister, she had a problem with that.

“No, nothing like that.” Lynox removed his right hand from the steering wheel and patted the air. “Calm down, honey. Calm down. It wasn’t anything like that.”

Watching Lynox’s hand fall, as if she was a child who needed hand signals to be instructed on how to behave, only teed Deborah off that much more. She felt as though he was also trying to silence her. That angered her as much as if he’d told her to shut up, like he was her superior, the boss of her, or something.

Deborah stared at his hand gesture, her anger rising more. Before she realized it, she’d slapped Lynox’s hand and shouted, “I don’t need you shushing me and telling me how to behave. And on top of that, I don’t need my husband talking about me to some other woman. That’s like relationship one-oh-one. Talking to a person of the opposite sex about issues with your spouse opens the door for the devil to go to work.” Deborah turned and looked out the passenger window, all the while mumbling under her breath. “How you gon’ talk about me with another female? You got me mixed up. You wanna know something about me? You come to me, not some other broad.” It didn’t help any that the woman he’d talked about her to was beautiful. In Deborah’s mind, that was all the more reason for Lynox to find an excuse to converse with Klarke. It only made it that much worse that he had used Deborah as an excuse.

While all those thoughts and fears were running through Deborah’s mind, Lynox’s mind was still back at Deborah slapping his hand. Now who was the one treating the other like a child?

“I’m not Tyson, Deborah,” Lynox said as calmly as he could.

This was the first time Deborah had ever done anything like that to him. He wasn’t sure if she was joking or trying to give an example of a “bossy act,” something akin to how he had patted the air with his hand. Perhaps that was her payback. Whatever it was, it didn’t sit well in his spirit, and because of that, he needed to express that to his wife so that it would never happen again.

Deborah snapped her head around. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not blind. I can see that you aren’t Tyson.”

“It means you have every right to smack your child’s hand, but I’m your husband. We don’t do that.”

Lynox was not about to try to check her when he was the one who had started it. Deborah had been scrolling down her News Feed, minding her own business, when he decided to start picking. “Negro, please.” Deborah shooed her hand and let out a harrumph. “You know darn well I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I don’t know what you meant,” Lynox said as he pulled onto the highway, heading to their house. “To be real one hundred with you, I haven’t been able to read you for the past few weeks.”

“Well, like that Facebook group you’re in says, ‘Don’t read me. Read a book.’” Deborah sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes.

Lynox squinted his eyes, in thought. He couldn’t recall ever mentioning to Deborah that he was in that group. “How did you know I was in that group? I don’t recall you being a member.” He looked over at his wife a couple of times in between keeping his eyes on the road.

Deborah kept silent, as if she hadn’t even heard a word he’d said. She felt so busted. She should have kept quiet while she was ahead.

“So what are you doing now? Trolling my Facebook information?” Lynox asked.

Again, Deborah remained silent. How could she tell her husband that right after having the baby, and not having lost all the baby fat, she’d started to feel a little insecure? She’d been the most confident and secure woman he’d known. But going from a tight size eight pre-pregnancy to not being able get a big toe in her eights at first had not been easy for Deborah. Whether she was biased or not, Lynox was one fine specimen of a gentleman. The entire atmosphere in a room shifted once he entered it. Women were drawn to him, even without knowing he was the man behind the pen that had created so many sensual novels. Learning that about him was only a plus to females. Women often wondered if Lynox was anything in bed like the wild, sexual characters he wrote about. After all, there was a saying that authors often wrote mostly about what they knew.

Women at book events had tried Deborah before. She had attended many, not only as the supporting wife, but as his editor and agent. Even with her sitting there right by his side, some tricks had had no problem leaving on the signing table a pair of lace red thongs, a fetish one of his main characters had. Deborah had always remained calm and professional, knowing that the women were mocking the book and that Lynox had to play along with it in order to please his fans. Besides that, Deborah had never felt intimidated. She herself was a beauty, and she had always made sure she was dressed her best whenever she was next to her man. That was when she’d been a for real size eight, one that Lynox was used to wrapping his arms around, and not the woman who was stuffing all her extra skin into a size eight. Nowadays, with all the excess meat and flab rolling out of the top of her jeans, she could hardly hide her envy of some of the pop bottle figures that approached Lynox’s table.

There was one little hot number in particular who had shown up at a book signing last month.

“Hi. I’m Montea. We’re Facebook friends,” she’d said, her hot tamale–red lipstick matching her formfitting red dress and her cleavage hanging out.

It was at that moment that something had been triggered in Deborah’s mind. If Lynox was “friends” with women like this on Facebook, and they were local, she couldn’t help but wonder if something more than innocent Facebook posts were being exchanged. That night, after Lynox was sound asleep in bed, calling hogs, Deborah had quietly got out the bed, undetected, and had gone to their home office, located in the basement. Instead of making her way over to her own desk, she’d gone to Lynox’s. She stood over his computer; its screen was black. She wiggled the mouse around, but nothing happened. Next, she hit a random button on the keyboard, which brought his computer to life.

With much anxiety, Deborah sat down and began checking out any open programs on Lynox’s screen. Just as she had suspected, he had at least three apps open. She’d been on top of him about making sure he completely signed off the Internet because it was causing them to go over their monthly data usage. Clearly, she had not gotten through to him. And it was a good thing too. With his apps already open and logged into, she didn’t have to spend numerous hours trying to figure out passwords.

“There is a God, indeed,” Deborah mumbled under her breath. That declaration alone had put a thought in Deborah’s mind . . . a scripture and a thought. The Word said that God would not allow her to be ignorant of Satan’s devices. That meant that if she believed God’s word, then she wouldn’t need to worry or go looking for any wrongdoing being done to her, that it would fall right into her lap . . . almost from heaven. Well, as far as she was concerned, she hadn’t really gone looking. She’d simply clicked a button or two, and—bam—there it was, right there in her lap. She’d take this as a sign from God that something was going on that she needed to know about.

It was midnight when Deborah first got on the computer. Her heart beat fast from the fear of her husband catching her on his computer. That didn’t stop her, though. Her adrenaline pumped as she invaded his virtual privacy. It was almost five o’clock in the morning the next time she looked at the time on the computer. Time had gotten away from her quick, fast, and in a hurry, and she still hadn’t really found anything concrete that would lead her to believe Lynox was up to no good. There were quite a few flirtatious in-box messages Lynox had received from several women. Lynox had replied to them, and Deborah felt, out of respect for his marriage, he should have simply deleted them without acknowledging them. He’d received messages such as You are so freaking hot, or Your smile is so beautiful. I can only imagine what tricks you can do with those lips. Lynox had replied with a simple Thank you, but Deborah felt that was two words too many. To her, he was creating dialogue, because it took two to tango.

She searched for another hour before she heard Lynox above her, moving about. She didn’t want him to come down and see her on his computer. The early morning hours were when his creativity was at its peak, so she knew it would be only a matter of time before his feet came padding down the steps. Again, in the past hour she’d found nothing truly suspect, but she’d taken notes and created a file folder with things she had found, something she’d learned from a book she’d read titled A Woman’s Revenge, written by three Christian fiction authors.

But what she hadn’t learned from the book was how to react when cold busted for being a snooper. And as she rode in the passenger seat on the way home from the Laroques’, it was safe to say that she’d been cold busted.

“You’ve been following my footprints on Facebook,” Lynox told Deborah as they drove down the highway. “You know what groups I’m in and everything.”

Deborah didn’t say a word. She simply held her head up, as if she had every right to know his virtual whereabouts.

“Do you know the pages I like? My friends?”

And the profile pictures of other women you like, Deborah thought in her head and kept it there. Being insecure truly wasn’t a characteristic that she wanted to broadcast, as if she was proud of it.

“Have you trolled my Facebook friends’ pages as well?” Lynox didn’t sound any too pleased.

Again, Deborah remained silent. But for Lynox, that was all she wrote. Her silence was as good as a confession to him. He smelled something, and if it was roses, they were roses that had been left in stagnant water and now had a stench about them. He had to nip these flowers in the bud and throw them out.

“What are you doing?” Deborah asked Lynox as he slowed down and began changing lanes. He went all the way from the far left lane to the far right one. A sound, what Deborah would call a road fart when she was a kid, let her know that they were pulling over to the berm. The tires rolling across the uneven pavement made a funny sound. “Why are you stopping on this dark highway for an eighteen-wheeler to come smash us to bits and pieces, leaving our kids without a mother or a father?”

“Stop it,” Lynox said after putting the car in park. “Don’t play with me, Deborah. Something is going on, and we are going to stay parked right here until you tell me what it is.” The mere thought that Deborah was snooping around in his affairs made Lynox furious inside, and he felt hurt. Mistrust was not something he wanted as a part of their marriage. “One minute it sounds like you are trying to accuse me of wanting to get with Klarke, a woman I hardly know, and the next minute I’m cheating with women on Facebook.”

“I didn’t say anything about you cheating with women on Facebook,” Deborah answered in her own defense.

“You might not have said it, but actions speak louder than words. First, you mention a group I’m in, which you would have no idea about unless you were digging around, specifically trying to figure out my activity. The only reason why you’d be digging around is that you suspected something. Then, when I ask you about it, you don’t say anything. So if you have something on your mind, I’ma need you to say something.” And with that said, Lynox paused, waiting for Deborah to reply.

Deborah bit her tongue. She felt silly and stupid all rolled into one big flour tortilla. Why was she overreacting? What had started all of this in the first place? What had been so serious that she and her husband were getting into it, instead of having a peaceful drive home after attending such a well put together event? Why was she allowing voices in her head to feed her negative thoughts and words, which ultimately influenced her behavior? This mistrust thing, especially, was a beast and was quite draining.

“So you’re not going to talk?” Lynox asked. “This is some bull,” he said, facing forward and placing his hands on the steering wheel. “You are acting real crazy right about now. And you know I don’t do crazy.” He put the car in drive. “You know for a fact that I got rid of one crazy broad in my past, so if you don’t think I’ll do it again, you’ve got another think coming.”

Lynox was not prepared for the slap that Deborah planted on his cheek, nor did he see it coming.

“Darn it, Deborah!” Lynox balled his fist out of instinct. Veins popped out on his head. He gritted his teeth. The shaking and the visible tension in his hand made it look as though he was battling with an entity to keep it from forcing him to strike his wife. Tears of anger formed in Lynox’s eyes as he shook his head at Deborah.

Deborah sat stunned, in shock and in fear. She couldn’t believe that she had struck her husband. That was domestic violence. She didn’t condone a man hitting a woman or a woman hitting a man. She had never imagined in a million years that she’d be involved in an abusive relationship, let alone that she would be the abuser. She honestly couldn’t blame Lynox if he hit her back, and that was exactly where her fear lay. But even with fear being so prevalent, she was still angry. Why did he have to bring up past relationships, especially right now? She was already feeling inferior to other women.

Deborah’s eyes danced back and forth as she noted the anger in her husband’s eyes and the anger his balled fist symbolized. A part of her wanted to brace for the impact, but she didn’t. Deborah knew the man she had married. She knew the things he was capable of, and hitting a woman was not one of them.

Too bad for Lynox that he was just finding out exactly who it was he had married and what she was capable of doing. This was not the same woman he’d met a few years ago. That woman was bold, direct, and confident, yet never arrogant or offensive. She loved the Lord, and if she messed up, her spirit grieved as much as she grieved the Holy Spirit, and she’d do everything in her power to make it right. But now this woman next to him was becoming more and more unrecognizable by the second, so where was the God in her, which Lynox had once recognized?

Lynox didn’t attend church nearly as much as Deborah. He relied on that scripture that said something about the wife being sanctified for the husband. So he left the majority of the whole “seeking God” thing and the fellowshipping in the house of the Lord to his wife. Well, it looked like that was no longer going to work for them. Deborah was barely able to stay sanctified herself. They didn’t need money and they didn’t need material things to have a strong and thriving marriage, but they definitely needed God. And if Lynox couldn’t find Him in his wife, then he supposed it was time that he go seek God for himself.

Lynox was grateful in this moment that his wife had been covering him in prayer, because that was the only thing that had kept him from losing control. But he honestly didn’t know how long the strength would last. He needed to refuel after tonight’s incident, so he made up his mind that he was going to be the first one through the church doors come morning.

He needed to have a little talk with Jesus. Up until now, church had been something he had engaged in whenever he woke up on Sunday morning and felt like going. His walk with Christ would no longer be like a stroll in the park; it would no longer be walking hand in hand on the bright, sunny days only. It had been fairly easy to give God praise when things were going well, but the real test for Lynox would be whether or not he could continue to praise and walk with God when it was raining and things weren’t looking so bright. In this case, it wasn’t about a little drizzle or a heavy rain that was passing by. A storm was brewing, which was evident by the sound of the roaring thunder. But just wait until the lightning struck.