Chapter Thirty-Three
“This was the best night ever.” Daisy sighed, yawning, belted into the passenger seat, her cowboy boots kicked off onto the floorboard and the remains of the hundredth cookie she’d eaten from the punch table crumbling on the dash.
“Can I play your grandma’s song again?”
“Have at it, girlie. I loved hearin’ you practice.”
T.R. wasn’t fool enough to think that being a dad was so simple.
But it sure felt wonderful to mean something to Daisy.
Watching her sparkle at school like a million dollars in her pretty dress while she danced in his hold, standing on his feet as he moved, had tugged at his heart.
That she’d thought to ask him to take her.
He didn’t want to drop Daisy off. He didn’t want to kiss his Flower Girl good night and then drive home to separate houses, separate beds, to talk into the night via cell phone or to decipher whatever text she sent so he could try to answer, when he could lie beside her and hold her like a hus—like a boyfriend—and her hold him.
His phone rang. The photo booth picture of him and Charlie glowed from the console.
“It’s your momma. Tell her all about your dance. Know how to put it on speaker?”
Daisy stopped the song and nodded, tapping the call.
“Hi, Mommy! We had so much fun! T. Rex did the limbo! He looked funny!”
T.R. grinned. “Yeah, well, I looked like somethin’. I haven’t bent like that in at least twenty years—”
“And they had this picture booth set up where we could put on accessories and we both wore crowns and he said I was just as pretty as you were in that old photo from when you won Miss Lone Star and I ate about a hundred cookies and—”
“Hey there, you’re gonna get me in trouble, Daze.” He chuckled. “It was more like, well, four or five cookies—”
“Eight cookies and some of them were shaped like horses and one looked just like Unicorn … Momma?”
A pause, then a muffled sniffle. Was there commotion in the background? Voices?
“That sounds like so much fun, sweet girl,” Charlie said in a cheery voice. Overly cheery. “I’m so glad you had a great time.”
T.R.’s nape prickled.
“Everyone thought he was my dad. They all kept saying how cool he was when he got up on stage and played guitar with the band when their guitarist had to go to the bathroom.”
Charlie forced a laugh. “I bet he was amazing, wasn’t he?”
T.R. rolled up his window, frowning, buffering some of the sound. There were definitely voices in the background. “Miss Bradford, when you’re ready.” A man’s voice spoke and the faint sound of walkie-talkie static followed.
“Charlie?” T.R. bit out, alarmed.
“Hey, Thad. Would you mind taking me off speaker?” Charlie asked, still overly cheery. And those sounded a lot like police walkie-talkies. Shit. “I have a, a something I want to ask you. A surprise, for Daisy, and we all know if she hears, it won’t be a surprise—”
He snagged the phone out of Daisy’s grip and thumbed the phone off speaker as he swerved to the shoulder, kicking up gravel, and threw his truck out of gear.
“Why’d we stop?” Daisy asked.
He lifted the phone to his ear, jaw pumping. “Talk to me, Flower Girl.”
“Daisy can’t come home right now,” poured out of her. “Please don’t bring her home yet. I’m so sorry all this baggage. I never wanted you to be sucked into this—”
“What’s wrong?” He clenched the parking brake and shoved out the truck door into the dusk, turning to point at Daisy and pasting on a grin.
“Stay put, girlie. Hear me? Just need a minute.” He crunched around the back of the truck and muttered into the speaker.
“What the hell is going on? Are you okay? Are those police?”
Fuck, he knew they were.
“Yes. There was an incident this evening and, I—”
“Baby, I’m coming to get you if you don’t be straight with me.” He began to stalk back to the driver door, noticing Daisy craning over her seat to glance out the window at him, worried.
He forced a smile on his face and held up a finger for one more minute.
“Don’t bring her here. Promise me. Thad, promise me.” He slowed, anger sizzling gunpowder through his blood.
“Jason showed up. Didn’t he?”
That bastard had … been emboldened today! By Charlie pushing back! He’d actually violated the restraining order!
“Did he put his hands on you? Charlie, fuck’s sake, tell me what’s going on. I knew I shouldn’t’a left you alone. Babe, are you hurt?”
“I’ll be okay,” she hastened, which sounded exactly like the bastard had done more than touch her. “Thad, I’m okay. I really am.”
And goddammit her placating wasn’t working because his fist was clenched so hard his nails were going to bite into his palms.
“The police are here, and because it’s university property now, so are the university police.
I need to finish giving them all a statement.
Can you take her back to the farm? Heart just got home and said you can bring her there.
I just, with the broken glass, I don’t want her walking in here because I c-can’t clean it up until they take pictures and I don’t want her to see our little bubble like this … tainted…”
Broken glass? His mind saw red.
“If there’s one hair out of place on my woman’s head,” he growled. “Jason’s losing a goddamned hand and to hell with the consequences—”
“Don’t say that,” she begged. “Thad, can I trust you? I need to know Daisy’s in good hands. I need you to be the man that Jason isn’t.”
The plea slowed him in his tracks.
God, to satisfy that crunching of bone with his fist would do much to ease his fury.
That rat bastard had gotten away with years of bullshit.
A haze of fury muffled his ears like cotton.
Words were still pouring out of her mouth, but he couldn’t process them.
Charlie had been at her ex’s mercy, alone.
He hadn’t been there to protect her, but he got her point.
He needed to be a pillar, not a tornado and that guilt, that he hadn’t been honest with her, stabbed at him now.
“I got the girl and I’ll do what you’re askin’, but I’m coming back for you.”
“You don’t have to do that. Just maybe, stall for another half hour? You don’t deserve to be pulled into this—”
“And you’re not gonna argue. Christ, Charlie, don’t you realize you don’t have to do this alone?
Pack some bags. Neither of you goin’ back there.
You belong out at my cabin. If you need to go back and forth to the greenhouse to work, I’m comin’ with you.
Simple as that. Charlie, I’m … worried for you. ” His voice cracked, and he cleared it.
“Miss Bradford?” the officer in the background said.
“Will you put Daisy on the phone?” she asked. “I don’t want her to fret.”
Jaw pumping, he bit out an affirmative and climbed back into the truck. Daisy’s face looked worried as he put it back on speaker and pugged the cord back in.
“Hey, Daisy Maisy—” Her nickname, cheerful and chipper.
He saw her tricks now for what they were: the undue burden of having to always compensate for a violent, unpredictable father.
“T. Rex is going to take you back to the farm tonight to see Auntie Heart. Won’t that be fun?”
Daisy smiled tentatively up at him. “Yeah, but why?”
Charlie cleared her throat, imbuing it with false lightness. “Oh, I had a little accident here, and there’s some broken glass. I need to clean it up, but then guess what? T. Rex wants us to come stay there.”
“Like a sleepover?” Daisy asked, subdued.
“Exactly. And just think, Unicorn and Pumpkin will be there when you wake up.”
“We’re bringin’ the dog too,” T.R. added, forcing his words to come out even and not shaking with blood lust. “He’ll be a happy pup lyin’ in front of the hearth. What d’you think, baby girl?”
That earned a smile from the girl.
“And we can listen to your grams singing this story again too?” she asked.
He nodded, and despite the helpless anger manifesting a monster in his chest, an ounce of relief doused his gut, too, that they’d be safe within his walls, within the farm, where they had security cams mounted to catch trespassers and his and Ty’s reckoning to answer to if Jason dared to be stupid enough to try.
“Okay,” Daisy said, biting her lips just like her mother did when she was uncertain but wanted to say something anyway. “Are you okay?”
The one simple question broke T.R.’s heart.
Because in that one question, it meant Daisy remembered seeing her mother when she wasn’t okay.
Had Daisy ever bore witness to Jason’s antics?
Did she know the depth of her mother’s pain and the source of her mother’s strength that had given her the pride to straighten her tiara and face the world alone?
“Oh, sweet girl, I’m just fine. And I’m packing s’mores for his firepit. It’ll be fun.”
Fun. Masking the truth with lies. Eating the shame so that Daisy wouldn’t have to taste the rancidness. Charlie had been doing it so long, it was a knee-jerk habit.
He ended the call. Set up the recording again to play the book, his grams’s warbling vocals and ukelele strumming.
Anything to distract as he put the truck in drive.
Whipped around in the road to head toward the farm, needing those boxing gloves Tyler had taunted him with, when Daisy took off her belt, scooted to the middle seat, and put on the middle belt.
She leaned quietly against T.R.’s arm, no longer the chatter bug she’d been moments ago recalling the evening in her pretty dress and corsage. “Momma always sounds like that when my dad is mean to her.”
Sweet girl. Whether Charlie knew it or not, she wasn’t hiding anything from the girl.
Like that, his anger morphed into an unbearable ache to take her pain away. He wrapped an arm around her. Cupped her head to his side and dropped a kiss to her head. What could he say?
“I got you,” he croaked.