Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tyler jumped in his truck to follow them to the police station.
…wouldn’t’a done any different if it meant protecting you.
Farther down the hill, Charlie could see lights coming on in the wranglers’ and farmhands’ barracks.
Shaking, she went back inside. Where was she supposed to go?
Daisy would wonder why they were leaving to return to the farmhouse, and yet, she needed space too.
Space to understand everything that had happened tonight, because why had she not seen the signs?
How had she let Thad swoop past her defenses, all charm and charisma, blinding her to the truth?
And his tears? So innocent. So misleading and yet, so unapologetically himself, and in that moment, she’d wanted to blurt out that she loved him, scold the police for arresting the wrong man.
She swiped at her cheeks and eyes, and began moving through the cabin, picking up random things Daisy had left out—one boot, the other missing, the crayons on the coffee table, Artex’s bed, Charlie’s banjo case and stacks of books she’d been reviewing for her fall syllabus filling a row of built-ins, making the room look loved and lived in, her cardigan over the couch arm.
On her knees, she looked under the sofa for the other boot but pulled out the sock that had been missing from the wash this morning.
Behind the bathroom door, she looked for the boot but found only a wadded towel that had slipped from the single towel hook currently holding three towels.
She unhooked the toiletry bag and stuffed the toothbrushes from the holder on the whiskey barrel back into it.
Collected her moisturizer and nail polish and conditioner and serums cluttering up the barrel and, honestly, he didn’t have room for any of this here anyway.
This cabin had been built as a getaway, not a family home.
It only had the loft for goodness’ sake.
They’d made Daisy a bed on the couch each night, knowing this wasn’t perfect, and yet, knowing it wouldn’t be permanent.
She moved to the back door, glancing onto the porch for the boot—
Another vehicle was crunching up the gravel in the distance. Charlie slowed, then took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes and peering out at who might be approaching along the ridge at—she pulled out her phone—Twelve-thirty at night?
Her phone rang. Heart?
A moment later, Tyler’s old blue farm truck came to a halt in front of the house and Heart climbed down, her dear friend, her phone to her ear.
Heart looked up at her. Tapped off the phone and began walking.
“Hey.” Charlie tried to smile.
Heart opened her arms as she hopped up the porch stairs, wrapping her in an embrace. And the tears undammed. A sob tore up her throat.
“Oh, honey,” Heart crooned, and the two simply stood, rocked, as she clenched her friend and Heart rubbed her back. “Tyler threw on a T-shirt and peeled out of here when he saw the police on the security cam. Are you okay?”
She pulled away and went inside, busying herself in the kitchen, looking under the stools for Daisy’s boot.
Felt Heart watching her and hated that their first time seeing each other after almost three weeks was of Charlie, broken and crying, like it so often had been over the years.
The boot wasn’t in the kitchen, either. Where the hell was it?
After only a few days of living here, they’d apparently gotten comfortable.
Maybe it was upstairs.
“I’m fine,” she bit out.
She wasn’t fine. She was twisted in knots.
“Charlie, I’ve known you for years. And I know you’re not fine. But I know this past week, you started to seem like you might be someday.”
She wanted to scream at everyone to leave her alone. She hated the shame that washed over her at the handprint on her face. Hated that sick feeling Jason always stoked within her returned tonight.
Trouble.
Had she missed the mark on Thad? Had he gotten her in the worst sort of trouble? Had he embroiled her back into the same situation she’d once worked so hard to escape?
No, her heart whispered, but her brain had watched him snap.
He’d, time and again, proven himself to be better, to obliterate her expectations in the best way. So why did he have to go and confuse everything now?
“Jason showed up tonight. Drunk. He attacked me.”
“Jeezus, Char,” Heart breathed. “Does Ty know?”
She shook her head. “Not sure what Thad’s told him or not.”
“How would T. Rex know? Did he see it?”
She couldn’t go into the details, knowing Daisy was just over the railing in the loft, because what if she woke up?
She didn’t want to relive them just yet.
Wished Thad was here to be her pillar like he had two nights before when he’d crashed his lips to hers and wrecked his way through her front door with her in his arms, and carried her to her room to give them both the release they’d needed—
She shoved back out onto the porch as Heart followed. The door hinged shut and, in the porch light, she pulled her hair over her face.
The handprint. Gone for the most part, but a shadowy bruise forming in its place.
“He lost it. He’s been arrested.”
“Wait, T. Rex has been arrested?” Heart grabbed her face and turned her cheek, grimacing with disgust. “He did this to you?”
“No, Jason did. And Thad just … snapped. He attacked him and…” He’d let go the moment she’d spoken to him.
At the time, his actions, although frightening, had been valiant.
“He loves you.”
“He…” Charlie looked out over the silhouette of the escarpment where she’d time and again fantasized about winters by the fireplace, looking out on frost or a rare snow.
“Lied to me. He’s been convicted of domestic assault, Heart.
And he might have defended me tonight, but I saw what he’s capable of, and if he’s done that to a woman before—”
“He hasn’t been convicted of that,” Heart argued.
“Yeah, he has, I heard the police talking about his priors. Something up in New York a long time ago, and I’m so confused, Heart, because he just, he didn’t seem like that at all.
He buys Daisy corsages and turns her books into songs and puts her art on the fridge, and did you know, he built her a whole chicken coop out back so she could keep Pumpkin?
He bought her a, a—” Her voice shook and she sniffled through the tears, whispering, “A horse. Because she loves unicorns. How can a man be so sweet, and have hurt a woman in the past? I just … my brain is telling me to walk away but my heart is…”
Heart fell silent. Charlie was still holding the boot.
“Wait. New York?” Heart huffed a laugh, even though it was clear she didn’t think anything was actually funny. “His sister …” Heart’s amber eyes flitted up to hers. “Charlie, didn’t you know?”
Charlie shook her head harder now. Know what? God, couldn’t anyone be straight with her? “What about his sister?”
Faith had mentioned that too. His cousins had mentioned it.
“The sis who lost to you in Miss Lone Star, remember?”
“Charity McClintock?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Heart nodded.
Charity had gone on to launch an illustrious modeling career with her agent boyfriend.
“Her ex-boyfriend was a real piece of work. Coerced her into an eating disorder, stepped out on her all the time. Ty better explain it.”
She pulled out her phone and tapped her boyfriend’s number. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Tyler said, noise and footfalls echoing, and Heart smiled, fidgeted with her ring finger, where a ring now sat.
An engagement? They must have worked through their struggles if Tyler had managed to clip her adventurous friend’s wings.
“Total BS. I can’t talk long. They want to book him, but this is clear as glass defense of loved one, and the police are pulling city surveillance footage—”
“Charlie’s here, babe. And she needs to hear about Charity.”
Could Charlie handle the sordid details, whatever they might be? “It’s none of my business—”
“If there’s any part of you that loves him, you should make it your business.”
She silenced at Tyler’s low-key scolding through the phone.
“Charity was with a guy like Jason. She called Thaddeus years ago, panicked. Without a penny to his name, he drove all the way across the country to help her pack and leave with him, except her ex, her agent, came home and flew off the handle. So Thad protected her.”
“T. Rex was homeless, Charlie,” Heart said. “He slept in his truck most nights, busked for gas money in each city just so he could get to her—”
“And put his fist through the bastard’s jaw,” Ty interrupted Heart. “Then collected his sis and started driving her home. He was arrested before he crossed the state line on assault charges.”
The conviction had nothing to do with a girlfriend or partner?
He defended his sister. Like he defended me…
“Couldn’t you help him?” Charlie croaked.
“Ty isn’t licensed to practice in New York,” Heart said. “Only in Massachusetts where his alma mater is.”
“I couldn’t represent him. Thaddeus got a public defender who did fuck all for him and pleaded him out instead.
He served all his months. Couldn’t get a job after that.
That conviction followed him everywhere.
Got fired repeatedly when he lied to get on a payroll and the employers eventually found out.
He’d never lower himself to ask me for help.
Thought he was using me. But he finally begged me for a job. ”
“Between that and his parents kicking him out because they didn’t realize he had a learning disability, he didn’t have anything left to live for,” Heart said.
Silence except for the occasional sounds of the precinct in the background. My God, to be in such despair to have lost the desire to live … she sucked in, but the ragged sound shimmied in her throat.
Tyler was the first to speak, his voice thick. “Our gramps left my farm in a bad way. But since hiring T.R. as foreman, he’s helped me turn it around. His parents threw him out. I took him in. He’d take no handout. Said he’d swing a hammer, do grunt labor, anything, to earn his keep.”