Chapter 19
I think it would be great if Walmart added an upper level observation deck.
— Pepper to Atlas
ATLAS
I was almost terrified to hear what she was about to say.
After the week I’d had…
“ So I got home—to the hotel—today, and a bellhop that I know really well from the night shift stopped me. He pulled me to the side and said that he’d overheard a conversation today between the manager and a police officer.”
I waited, knowing this had to do with Sage now.
“ So he told me that the officer explained that one of the manager’s employees was distributing drugs from their room.” She stirred her spaghetti around on her plate, looking frustrated and lost. “ So I went up to my room and cleaned out my stuff. I took everything, and then quit on the spot.”
My brows rose.
“ I’ll be moving into the apartment above the bakery,” she finally looked up and stared at Garrett . “ That’s where you come in. I think I might need you to use your dog to see that she didn’t already plant the evidence.”
“ What ?” I asked. “ How do you know she’s going to do that? Maybe all she wanted you to do was quit and move out, just like you just did.”
Thinking the best of people was an ingrained habit of mine.
From a really young age I’d started lying to myself about people’s intentions. If I hadn’t, I’d have gotten my feelings hurt.
I was a weird kid.
I’d always had this feeling that people were judging me.
And , from an adult’s perspective, they probably were.
But making myself always go with the best case scenario was a habit that I couldn’t break.
Not even when it came to Sage , who had started showing her true colors.
“ Listen , Carter .” Pepper dropped her fork. “ When I tell you that I have experience with this, I need you to listen to me. She’s done this before. She almost got me kicked out of college, and nearly had three years of my schooling wiped, because of almost this very same scenario. Trust me when I say, this is very real.”
“ I can have Boss run over the stuff in your car. It should be fairly easy since you’ve already got it all with you,” Garrett offered.
I rubbed my hands down my face.
“ I was hoping that was the case.” She sighed. “ I didn’t touch anything, though. Like , everything that I grabbed, I put in the boxes. I didn’t go through anything, if that makes sense. So if she did hide it in my stuff, it won’t have my fingerprints on it.”
“ I think I get what you’re trying to say,” Garrett said. “ But if she was smart, she would’ve wiped it clean if she planted it.”
“ Do you want to do it now?” Garrett asked, finishing off the rest of his plate.
“ More !” Forest ordered.
“ I’m done if you want to give him mine,” Pepper offered.
I glanced from my son’s messy face—it was even in his hair somehow—to Pepper’s barely touched plate. “ You didn’t eat much.”
“ It’s hard to eat when you have a psychopath dogging your every step,” she grumbled. “ Maybe I should just move home.”
Panic hit me, and before I could stop myself, I was standing up and catching her hand. “ You’re not going anywhere.”
She laughed, her voice shaky. “ It’s funny. I stayed here because of my mom. Her words kept replaying in my brain. I tried. God , did I try. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe I should save myself the heartache and head back. Hell , maybe it would be better to just keep on moving. Alaska’s her least favorite place because it’s too cold. She’d never follow me there.”
The thought of her two hours away, let alone days away, sent another round of panic through me.
“ Stay here,” I suggested. “ You can sleep in the guest bedroom.”
The way I said guest bedroom made me sound like I didn’t want her in mine, even to my own ears.
She snorted. “ I’m not staying here, Atlas . I have a place at my brother’s house that I could easily move into. But until I can help Maven replace me and not leave her in the lurch, I’ll stay at the apartment above Pie Hard .”
Desperation tinged my words when I said, “ I’m on the SWAT team.”
If I could just keep her close, I could convince her to stay. I knew it.
“ Yeah …” Pepper drawled. “ I know that.”
“ I get called out a lot,” I continued. “ My family is here, but Forest likes you a lot. Actually , out of all of us, I think you might be his favorite. Stay here. If I get called out, you’ll be here. You can be my live-in babysitter. I’ll pay you. Hell , we can even write out a list of expectations, or an employee handbook. I can be a respectable boss who will also provide a buffer between you and Sage .”
Pepper opened her mouth, then closed it.
“ So we won’t…” she started, but then stopped. “ What about…”
Us .
What about us.
She hadn’t said it, but I knew what she was asking.
“ No ,” I said what I thought she wanted to hear.
The moment I did, though, her face fell. Her eyes went completely blank, and I knew I’d fucked up.
“ Okay . Purely professional relationship.” She nodded and swallowed hard, her face serene.
And , because I was who I was, I had to fuck it up some more.
“ My son is a priority right now,” I said. “ I have to put him first.”
She nodded, her shoulders drooping even more.
And I inwardly winced because I could practically hear her thoughts whirling: Your son is the priority, not me. Noted .
“ Sage won’t just leave me alone,” she warned. “ If she sees that I’m living here, working for you, it won’t matter that we have a platonic relationship, she’ll overreact, like she always does.”
Again with that inward wince.
“ I’ll do what I have to do,” I said carefully.
“ I’ll help you for a little while,” she said softly, pushing her plate toward me. “ I’m not sure if you want to give this to him since I ate off of it. But I’m gonna run to the bathroom before I head outside with Garrett . I don’t want to bring anything unclean in here.”
She got up without another word and slunk off.
If she’d been a dog, her tail would’ve been tucked underneath her back legs.
I wanted to shoot myself in the face.
Fuck .
I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
“ You just totally cock blocked yourself,” Garrett muttered as Pepper slid into the bathroom and closed the door.
“ I didn’t mean to,” I admitted, “but I wanted her to stay. By any means necessary.”
Garrett got up, cut up the pieces of spaghetti on Pepper’s barely touched plate, then dumped the whole thing onto Forest’s plate. “ There you go, buddy.”
“ Tanks .” Forest patted Garrett’s arm with a spaghetti hand.
Garrett didn’t seem to notice the spaghetti as he twisted to look fully at me.
“ How are you going to get her out of the friend zone, though?” he asked. “ It’s obvious you have feelings for her. After what you just did…”
Yeah , I’d really shot myself in my own foot, hadn’t I ?
“ I’ll figure it out.” I left it at that.
He grumbled something underneath his breath. “ Fix it, dummy.”
I gritted my teeth, forcibly stopping myself from saying ‘fuck you’ in front of my son.
That would be perfect. Teach him curse words so when we went in front of the judge, the court-appointed lawyer for Forest could tell the judge all about Forest’s new vocabulary.
“ I’m gonna go grab Boss ,” he said. “ Try not to break her heart anymore while I’m gone.”
I gritted my teeth.
He was out the door just as Forest said, “ Done !”
“ You have a pretty good vocabulary for a two-year-old,” I said to my kid. “ At least your mama did something right.”
I picked him up and lugged him, arms outstretched so he didn’t get spaghetti all over my clothes—and failing miserably because Forest thought it was the funniest thing in the world to touch his hands to me as we moved—to my bathroom.
I had a sunken shower that also acted as a bathtub.
I turned the water on while I let Forest explore.
“ Can you get naked, son?” I asked him.
He could.
And he was standing there, arms outstretched overhead, showing me his accomplishment in less time than it took me to undress.
“ Good job,” I said as I gestured to the shower. “ You want to hop in here?”
He did.
Exactly that.
He hopped all the way to the shower, his butt in the air.
A soft laugh had me looking over my shoulder to the woman who was standing there, watching with a small smile on her face.
“ Hey ,” I said. “ Didn’t see you there.”
“ You seem to have more entertaining things right in front of you,” she mused. “ I’m headed outside. I’m guessing Garrett went to get Boss ?”
“ You’d guess right,” I said. “ I’ll be out as soon as I’m done here.”
“ Don’t bother.” She pushed off the door frame. “ I’ll be back when I’m ready.”
Then she was gone, and I inwardly cursed myself again.
Stupid , stupid, stupid.
Why had I said the words like that?
I watched, a small smile on my face, as Forest spun around in the sunken shower, creating a small whirlpool.
I helped him wash the spaghetti off his face, arms, and hair.
I even helped him brush his teeth.
When we were done, and I had him wrapped up in a towel, I headed back to his room and got him ready for bed.
I had no clue what a normal bedtime was—all of the Carter kids were a little bit of everywhere—so I was just guessing.
“ What time do you usually go to bed, bud?” I asked him.
“ Never .”
I chuckled as I zipped up the footie pajamas, idly thinking that he’d have to have a new size soon.
Two years old and 2T didn’t necessarily mean the same thing, apparently.
“ How about we wind down, then maybe think about going to bed?” I asked him.
I reached for him again, and I was glad to notice that the hesitancy that’d been there at the hospital was no longer there.
He came easily, then rested his head on my shoulder.
The front door opened and closed, and I headed out to the living room to find her standing there, looking lost.
“ There wasn’t anything there,” she breathed a sigh of relief.
“ I suggest tailing her tomorrow,” Garrett came inside with Boss . “ She won’t know that Pepper quit. She’ll still try to plant it. If she’s going to.”
“ That’s if she was actually going to plant something,” I pointed out.
Pepper shot me an annoyed look. “ She’s got something up her sleeve.”
“ That’s not what I meant,” I said. “ I’m more pointing out that maybe she just wanted you to uproot your life like you did. Maybe it was never about planting anything. It was just about making you think she was going to.”
Pepper crossed her arms over her chest. “ I think that I would know more about my sister’s actions than you.”
I sighed. “ I’ll have my dad made aware of the possibility.”
“ I’ll take Boss in and hang around the precinct tomorrow,” Garrett offered.
“ Maybe you should go hang out at the hotel,” I suggested. “ If she shows up, then you can be like, ‘ Oh , hey!’ and then Boss will be able to note it if she has it.”
“ I can do that,” he said. “ I’ll talk to the hotel manager, too. After I talk to Dad .”
“ Good ,” I looked over at Pepper , who was watching the two of us with confusion.
“ What ?” I asked her.
“ I just…” she shrugged. “ I guess I never expected you to do this. I figured you’d just brush it off. It sounds like you’re actually going to try to catch her.”
“ Sage didn’t hoodwink us all,” Garrett said. “ Anyone that’s willing to write a book for money about the worst time in their life seems like maybe they’re trying too hard to make themselves a victim.”
With that, Garrett left.
“ She’s writing a book?” Pepper asked in shock.
I groaned. “ Actually , that’s news to me, too.”
“ She’s disgusting,” she said. “ I just…”
She trailed off as I started to rock my kid back and forth.
I could feel his head getting heavier and heavier on my shoulder.
She studied me for a long second before heading to the door that’d just quietly shut behind Garrett .
“ Here , use this,” she said as she pulled the white rocking chair off the porch and dragged it straight to the room that I was using for Forest .
Just as she’d crossed over the threshold into the room, my phone went off, causing me to curse.
“ What is it?” she asked worriedly, stopping with the chair half in, half out of the bedroom.
I glanced at the readout on my phone and stretched my neck.
“ SWAT call.” I sighed. “ You ready to start right now?”
She licked her lips, then nodded. “ I , uh, need to know the code to the alarm. So I can set it. Sage …”
I walked her over to the alarm panel and showed it to her, giving her all the codes she would need.
“ Thanks ,” she said. “ I’ll get him to bed.”
I hated myself for the distance she’d put between us.
This distance felt different than the distance we’d had before, when I’d been on Sage’s side and not Pepper’s .
“ Go ,” Pepper ordered when I continued to stand there.
I kissed Forest on the head, then handed him over.
When I was gone and had nothing left to do but think about my actions over the last week—hell, year if I admitted it to myself— I wondered idly if anyone had ever put Pepper first.
I certainly couldn’t put her above my son… but I could put her above everyone else.