Chapter 20 #4
Lorraine glared mutinously, but her lawyer said meekly, “Yes, Your Honor. I apologize for my client’s behavior—
“Save it,” the judge snapped. “Count yourself lucky I didn’t throw your client into jail for contempt.”
The gavel cracked down, and Madison jumped. The bailiff said something. Reno turned and smiled at him.
Madison and Hank both sat frozen in their chairs.
Hank put his hand, palm down, on the table between them. He didn’t reach for her. He let her work through what had to be a flood of overwhelming emotions at her own speed.
After a moment she put her hand on top of his. And then he breathed for what seemed like the first time since Lorraine had lost her temper.
Hank stood up to get Madison out of there, and Reno said quietly, “Let the other side clear out first.”
Right.
They gave it a couple of minutes, and Reno offered under his breath to go out first and make sure the coast was clear, but Hank replied grimly, “I’ll do it. You stay with Madi.”
She was his daughter. His full responsibility, now. And the first order of business was protecting her from her mother.
He made it almost to the lobby before Lorraine ambushed him.
She gripped his forearm with claw-like strength, hissing under her breath so only he would hear. He smelled her shampoo and underneath it the faint rot of a body abused for far too long by far too many poisons.
“You ruined me, Hank. You ruined my life, and then you ruined me. You turned me into this. This is your fault.”
There was no judge, no audience, for this attack. This dagger was meant solely for him and meant to draw blood.
He didn’t argue, since it only enraged her more if he defended himself. He didn’t say anything.
He stood there—hands at his sides, feet stuck to the floor, the way an animal stood trapped in a chute with nowhere to go—and let her attack him one last time. He endured her rage and accusations until she finished.
She glared at him, waiting for excuses he refused to give her. She would leave if he waited her out. He always had been able to outlast her—
Without warning, A big, warm hand touched his shoulder blades.
Reno. Not a push. Just there. Silently having his back.
Lorraine glared at Reno. Glared at Hank one last time. Then she turned and stormed off toward the elevators. She stepped into one and the doors closed.
Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, he would never have to lay eyes on her again.
“Let’s go home, Hank,” Reno said, very quietly. “Let’s get your girl and go.”
Hank turned. Madison was at the end of the hall by the water fountain, watching him. Thank God she couldn’t hear Loraine’s venom from there.
He held his arms out and she walked to him, not stopping until she walked right into his embrace.
Reno drove them home. Hank sat in the truck’s front passenger seat, and Madison sat behind him with her bus-trip backpack at her feet. She refused to go anywhere without it. She even took it to the bathroom when she showered. The straps were fraying where she’d been picking at them.
She hadn’t said a word since the ruling.
Hank believed not every silence needed talking through, and his daughter, apparently, was of the same opinion.
About halfway back to Cobbler Cove, she finally said, “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I live with you forever? I mean, until I go away to college? But then can I come back for holidays and vacations and stuff at your house?”
“Sweetheart, my house is now your house. Your forever home. You can stay there the rest of your life and never leave, and that’ll be fine with me.”
She nodded, and kept nodding longer than she needed to. “Okay,” she said. And then, after a pause, “Okay.”
The bleeding wound under his ribs—the old one Lorraine had opened up—didn’t close on the drive home. Not that he expected it to. She always had known how to aim for an artery. A big one.
Maybe Lorraine was right and he had ruined her. But she’d ruined him, too.
He’d spent the past few years traveling with the rodeo, telling himself he was looking for something to fill the emptiness inside him.
But after today’s bitter reminder of why he’d left Lorraine, he had to admit the truth.
He hadn’t been looking for anything at all.
He’d been running away from the black void inside him.
He had no idea how to even look into that dark place in his heart, let alone fix it.
Thing was, he had a daughter to raise, now. He had to be whole and present, trusting and loving, for his daughter. For Madison’s sake, he had to find a way to be okay.
He just wished he remembered what okay felt like.