Chapter 26
Kade
I shouldn’t have let Leah walk away without answering this morning. Now all I could think of was that conversation. She’d reached out to me for help and felt rejected? I never in a million years would’ve done that to her. Not her. Not if she’d needed me. But the pain I saw in her eyes had been as real as anything I’d ever seen. She wasn’t making this up as a taunt.
When she walked in tonight, she’d barely looked at me. So much for the truce.
My phone buzzed where it was sitting on the kitchen counter, John’s name flashing. The sound of the shower was still going, but there was no way I’d risk taking this call with her in the house. I grabbed it and headed outside. I grabbed a beer, too. Considering what I might hear, I had to be prepared.
I popped the beer and took a gulp before I called him back, walking out toward my truck.
“What do you have?” I asked.
He let out a sigh. “I heard something concerning.”
“What?” I asked. I took another gulp, waiting for details that seemed slow to come. I didn’t typically have to pull information out of John. He wasn’t this dramatic.
“I’m hearing some rumblings and just want to check in that you aren’t being mean to the princess.”
I checked the name on the phone again. Had he really asked me that?
“Huh?” It was the best response I could muster.
“I heard you’re not being nice to her,” he said, his normally gruff tone sounding way off.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not being mean to her. Where did you hear otherwise?” Did no one mind their own business anymore? They didn’t know our past or what was really going on.
“You told me to dig around. Stuff gets leaked. Occupational hazard that there might be some gossip flowing. I have to let people talk.”
“I’m not being mean to her. There were certain situations that had to be taken care of, but at no point was I out of line.” Everything I’d done had been warranted, and fuck anyone who said differently.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re sounding a little defensive. Perhaps there’s a thread of truth in those rumors?” His voice was creeping higher, almost into lecture territory.
Who the hell was this man becoming? “Don’t you break legs for a living?” Someone needed to remind him, because he’d clearly forgotten what he was.
“I’m only suggesting that you might be too hard on her and you should think about your actions.”
“Did you have any actual updates, or did you call to annoy the fuck out of me?”
“Her dog died a few months ago,” he continued. “He was a senior no one wanted that she adopted from the same shelter she volunteers at.”
Obviously I didn’t know that, not that it surprised me. It was such a Leah thing to do, or at least the Leah I’d known. She’d been constantly tending to some old or hurt furry thing she found.
“Anything beyond dogs?” I asked.
“I think she had a really rough time after she left Montana.”
“Why do you say that?” She’d moved from a house that was falling down around them to New York with a well-off stepfather. There might be rumblings of his being a bastard, but nothing was confirmed yet.
“No one who has a happy home life is excited to go to a boarding school, especially when it’s states away and hard to visit your family.”
“Boarding school?” I leaned on the back of my truck. “Why do you say she was excited to go there?” I hadn’t even known she’d gone to boarding school after she left here.
“I accessed the reports, internal and external. Hang on a second.” There was the sound of shuffling papers. “It says here, ‘We find her transition to be one of the smoothest we’ve seen. Although she doesn’t seem to have made any real friendships yet, she seems very content.’ That was from one report.”
“Obviously they’re going to say that to her parents,” I said.
“Listen to this one from internal notes. ‘Quiet and reserved, but seeming less jumpy and more relaxed as each day goes by.’ That was from one of her first teachers there.”
Less jumpy? Leah wasn’t one of those jumpy people. Never had been. If I wasn’t sure that John knew his shit, there was no way I’d believe we were talking about the same person. Although up until a couple of days ago, I hadn’t seen her cry either.
When I didn’t speak for a minute, he continued. “I’m just saying, I think she had a tough time, and I’d feel really bad if you were mean.”
Fuck. When did I become the villain in this story?
“Look, I’ll try to make sure I’m more sensitive.” I’d already been doing more than that, but I wasn’t telling him. “I want a copy of all the information you’ve gotten so far. I want to read all those reports.”
“Already being sent over.”
“Is there anything else?” I took another long swallow of beer.
“Yeah. I’m following up a lead on a warehouse the stepfather owns under a fake corporation. The setup smells to high heaven. My gut is saying this is all going to come back to him, but I don’t have anything concrete yet. I’ll be in touch soon, though.”
Dammit.
I hung up, went back into the house, and poured a whiskey. A beer wasn’t going to cut it today. I headed back out onto the porch, too afraid of what I’d say to Leah if I saw her right now.
Chuck, who had been heading over to his truck, detoured my way.
He glanced at my glass. “You’re drinking a lot lately. I’ve never seen you drink this much, and I’ve known you for a long time.”
“Well, this is my moment.” I raised my glass to him, not caring if he thought I was becoming an alcoholic. Tonight, I needed to drink.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked, fixing his hat.
“Not really.”
“We all screw up.”
“Who says I screwed up?” For someone who was complaining about my drinking, he was sure pushing me in the direction of another shot.
He leaned a shoulder against the porch post. “If you did screw up, it’s easier to apologize.”
“If I did screw up, it’s too big for an apology.” How could I fix turning my back on someone that needed me and then piling on when the world was beating them down?
“I don’t think so. She’s got a soft spot for you a mile wide. I think you can fix it.”
“Chuck, if I fucked up, this was a really bad one.” And that soft spot he imagined didn’t exist. That woman had a cement wall up between us that was at least a mile thick.
“First thing you need to do is stop digging,” he said. He nodded at me as he headed off.
He had no idea how deep this hole already was.
I was lying in bed, replaying everything in my head, from John’s call to the last time I’d spoken to Leah, and that was when it hit me. I’d been so wrapped up in my situation, I hadn’t even realized why she’d called.
I’d been walking out of the bank, the ninth one I’d tried, and finally secured enough financing to get by at an interest rate that was almost as high as my age at the time. I hadn’t had a choice, though. It had been just enough to keep everything going, and I’d been stressed to the gills. Then she’d called, her name flashing on my phone.
She’d barely said hello, her voice shaky and uneven, when I cut her off, telling her I was too busy to be bothered with whatever frivolous thing she wanted to complain about. At the time, I’d thought it had been nervous guilt over screwing me, but she hadn’t even known.
At that moment, I’d locked her out of my heart. I couldn’t handle having her in my thoughts anymore, and I’d cut her off mentally at that moment.
My chest felt tight, as if someone had a stranglehold on my throat. The craziest part of it was that all I wanted in the world right now was for her to open up to me. But she wouldn’t, and I couldn’t make her.
It was ten years too late to make that moment right, and yet I didn’t think I could go a day longer. It was only ten. She’d still be awake. If she wasn’t, she was just barely sleeping, and that didn’t count.
I got up and walked over to her room, determined to get an answer. I should leave Leah be, and yet I couldn’t.
I didn’t knock because she’d only get up and lock the door if I did, not that I blamed her at the moment.
She was in bed but wide awake, and looking as happy to see me as she had been earlier.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“I’m not talking. I’m sleeping and you need to learn to knock.” She rolled over, giving me her back.
“Leah,” I said, one last time, hoping she’d give me a minute.
“What?” she said, sounding exhausted as she rolled back so she could face me.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shut you down like that.”
There was a flitter of shock in her expression before she shuttered her emotions away again. She gave me a quick nod and then shrugged.
“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” She rolled over again, making it clear she wanted me to leave.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was a start.