Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Well, at least you set your alarm, there is that,” Zarek said as he trudged into my house behind me, petting Harley along the way.
“What are you talking about?”
“You look like shit. I thought your big plan was to take time off and protect your woman. Where is she? And if she’s not here, why aren’t you where she is?”
“Apparently, we’re at a ‘stand-still.’ Her words, not mine.” I went over to the fridge and pulled out my third beer for the day, and it was only four o’clock. “Want one?” I asked Zarek.
“No. Too easy to go down that path.” He peered into my recycling bin and saw the empty beer bottles. “I’m thinking you don’t need a beer, either,” he said as he took it out of my hand and put it back into the refrigerator. “Let’s go to your backyard and throw the ball for Harley.”
I shrugged. Why not?
Zarek reached into the fridge and pulled out two sports drinks, handed one to me, and then I followed him out my back door, carefully setting the alarm.
Harley was jumping up and down when he realized it was playtime. Zarek threw the tennis ball a good long ways. “So, explain what a ‘stand-still’ means.”
“I confessed about the set-up that I pulled with Lindsay.”
Zarek looked me up and down. He took in my ratty Army t-shirt and unwashed jeans. “You’re not limping, so I’m assuming she didn’t castrate you, so there is that.”
“Yeah, we got past that part. Then she asked me why I did it.”
“Did you tell her that you were an ignorant asshole who can’t recognize a miracle when he has it in the palm of his hand?”
Harley dropped the tennis ball at my feet. I patted her head, and then threw the ball farther than Zarek had, not that I was keeping track.
“I told her I didn’t know why.”
“Then what happened?”
“We made love.”
“You are one lucky son of a bitch,” Zarek said as he shook his head.
“For a little bit. Then I had to tell her that Sid had planted the copperheads. I had to come totally clean about Sid’s threats, and that she and her family were in danger. She went ballistic. She told me how we couldn’t be together with me keeping so many things from her. My childhood, the reason I pulled out of the wedding, and the fact that Sid was gunning for me.”
Harley came back, happy as hell, dropping the ball at my feet. I nudged it over to Zarek. He picked it up and threw it out for her to chase. They kept that up for another ten or fifteen minutes. I knew my friend, he was waiting me out.
Finally, it worked. “I told her about my first memory with my real mom and dad. It wasn’t pretty.”
“I can’t imagine it was,” he muttered.
“I hated telling her that.”
“The dredging it up?” Zarek asked.
“No, just contaminating her with that filth. I never wanted that part of my life to touch her.”
Zarek knelt down on the grass and started petting Harley on her stomach. She was in ecstasy. “Do you really think that? Really?”
“Well sure.”
“Think about that. If anyone else said that. Or, spin it around and if it was Fallon thinking that way about her biological parents, would you see it as filth?”
I rubbed the back of my neck, but the muscles were like granite. “I get your point.”
“Do you?”
I shut my eyes. I remembered how Fallon looked at me after I got done telling her about my first memory. The warmth and compassion. The way we’d made love. Scratch that, the way she had made love to me. It had been precious.
“Was she happier that you’d shared? I know I would give my left nut if Chloe would open up to me. I mean really fucking open up to me, so we could clear the smoke and see each other for who we are.”
“Yeah, she was happier,” I admitted. “But that was three days ago. She left in the morning, telling me that until I could tell her more… Tell her everything, that we couldn’t move forward.”
“And meanwhile Sid has her in his sights. You’ve got to be freaked.”
“I’ve been watching their house every night. Ace Alarm Systems will be installing their alarm next week. Bob insisted on paying.”
Zarek snorted. “How much did they quote him?”
“A quarter of the actual cost. I picked up the rest,” I admitted.
“Did you come clean with her parents about why the need for security?”
“Yeah, Fallon and I explained about the notes, but we didn’t tell them about the copperheads.”
“What did they think about this guy being your biological dad?” Zarek asked.
“Bob’s not firing on all cylinders because of the chemo, and Fallon’s mom was relieved and happy that I was taking care of things. Neither one of them asked anything too deep as to why Dad was in prison, or why he was targeting me and mine.”
My friend stood back up and threw the ball again.
“What does Fallon think about you spending the night outside the house?”
“She keeps calling me and telling me to go home, which I don’t. But then we’ll usually talk for an hour or more.”
“So at least the lines of communication are open. Good job.”
I dug my knuckles into the back of my neck. “Not so good of a job. Zarek, I still haven’t figured out what panicked the hell out of me and made me want to get out of my wedding. I mean, one minute it couldn’t come fast enough, and the next minute I wanted Fallon far away from me. I needed her as far away from me as possible.”
“Hmmm,” he rumbled.
I gave him a sharp look. “What.”
“Your wording is odd, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re not saying things like, I couldn’t stand the idea of marriage. You’re saying I needed to get Fallon far away from me. Of course, if you felt like that, you could have just left her at the altar. That would have taken care of it.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s like you did the worst thing imaginable to get her to hate you. To grind your relationship into the dust. To make sure she would get as far away from you as possible. Why would you do that?”
“Have you not been fucking listening,” I yelled. “I don’t fucking know!”
“Maybe a beer is in order.”
Dammit, I hated running late. I hated it. I mean, I could afford to miss my plane. The meeting wasn’t for two more days, but I wanted to get into Chicago early so I could take Vanessa and Eddie out to dinner that night.
I’d gotten to the Knoxville McGhee Tyson Airport with an hour to spare, but parking was going to fuck me over. They’d admitted me into the parking lot, but damned if I could find a parking spot, so I was going to have play the game of following people around who looked like they were getting into their cars to leave. I hated this game.
Ah-ha!
I finally saw a family that looked promising. I stopped my car, flipped on my blinker, and waited. I saw the gray van behind me, waiting. Idiot should go around me, but whatever. It took the family a bit to get their stuff loaded and back out, but finally I had my spot.
I grabbed my briefcase and got my light carry-on out of the backseat so I could haul my ass to the terminal. It sucked that I was still limping a little, but what can you do?
I took a picture of my stall number with my cell phone, so I could find it when I came home. I started toward the parking lot exit so I could cross to the terminal. I looked up. It looked like it might rain.
It better not .
I did my hair for tonight’s dinner, and I didn’t want to show up looking like a poodle. Just hold off until I’m at the ticket counter , I begged the sky gods. My phone rang and I looked at the number.
I heard tires squeal behind me.
Oh shit!
I turned, hoping I wasn’t going to see a wreck.
It was the gray van. Barrelling straight toward me.
My breath hitched.
I stumbled back and my right leg wobbled as I dropped my suitcase.
The van kept coming. Too fast.
Then—impact.
Not metal. Muscle.
A solid weight slammed me into the trunk of a car, knocking the air from my lungs. The world spun as I slipped down and my shoulder and hip crashed into asphalt.
I screamed.
I looked up and saw the taillights of the gray van as it crashed through the security arm of the tollbooth.
“Lady, they tried to kill you,” a kid who had to be in high school, maybe college, shouted at me. He sounded even shakier than I felt.
“You saved my life,” I whispered.
“They tried to kill her,” he shouted out. I saw that we were gathering a crowd.
I tried to get up, but my shoulder and hip were killing me, along with my ankle.
“Don’t get up,” a woman said as she knelt beside me. “Wait for the paramedics.”
“No, I’m fine. I just need my phone.”
I pushed up off the pavement, but my arm wasn’t working right. It better not be broken, or I’m going to be royally pissed off.
“Miss, you really need to stay still and wait for the paramedics,” the woman said.
“And the police,” the young man inserted. “They tried to kill you!” he said for like the fortieth time.
“Can you find my cell phone?” I begged the teen.
“Sure thing.”
I turned to the woman who looked to be about my age. “Can you help me sit up?”
“I’m in nursing school. You need to stay right where you are until you’re examined.” She was very kind, but she was pissing me off. Michael’s bio dad had just tried to kill me, and I wanted to call Michael. Now there was something to go on, unlike the notes and the snakes. There would be video of this.
The man would be going down!
The kid came back and handed me my shattered cell phone and I burst into tears.