Chapter 10 #2
Andie stood and Clay didn’t so much as glance at her. She walked around the table and sat right back down again. Next to him.
“So,” she said. “I’ve been trying to track you down.”
“I’ve been busy,” he said, then stuffed the last third of his hot dog into his mouth.
“Clay, I’m sorry about the gun.”
He nodded once and grunted.
“It’s unloaded now.” She swallowed hard, her chest tightening painfully at the memory of Payton waving the thirty-eight, one wrong move away from tragedy. “It’ll stay that way until I leave.”
She didn’t like it, didn’t like the thought of not having that security under her pillow, but a repeat of Payton finding it was unthinkable.
Clay watched her as he finished chewing.
“Tell me, biker girl. What the hell are you so scared of?” That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about, particularly, but she sort of owed it to him to open up.
He’d leveled with her the other night by the bay.
If she shut him down now, she suspected there was no chance of his forgiveness.
For some reason, that mattered to her.
“Is it your dad? You said he’s a drinker,” Clay prodded. “Are you running from him?”
“My dad is dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. He drank himself to death, which is exactly what he deserved. No,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I take that back. He deserved to have someone beat the hell out of him. Regularly. He deserved to live in fear…” She forced herself to meet his eyes.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask prying questions, thank God. But she could see in those brown eyes he understood what she’d just admitted to indirectly. She fidgeted and rubbed her thumbs together in a nervous circular pattern. “My ex recently got out of prison back in Illinois,” she said.
“You’re scared of him?” he asked, his head close to hers so no one could eavesdrop.
“I…guess you could say that.”
“Does he know where you are?”
“No.” He was looking for her though. Asking around. He’d asked Jonas, who’d been friends with Trevor’s brother for years. As far as she knew, though, Trevor had no clue she was in Texas.
Clay believed what Andie was telling him, and maybe that was him being stupid. But he didn’t think so. What reason did she have to lie about any of it?
“Tell me something else,” he said. “You said you have more than one hit on your police record. Besides the run-in with your scumbag ex-boyfriend, what are we talking here? Bank robberies? Mugging old ladies?”
She looked as if she wasn’t going to tell him, which wouldn’t surprise him. But he needed to understand better what kind of woman he had living downstairs from him. From Payton.
“Trespassing. And I got in a fight a couple of years ago,” Andie said quietly after several seconds. She studied the table in front of her. “I’m not proud of any of this, Clay. I want you to know that.”
“I have some unproud moments in my past,” he said. “I get that.”
“I left home when I was sixteen,” she said. “I had no friends at the time, nowhere to go, but anywhere was better than enduring another episode with my father.”
Clay became so engrossed in what she was saying that he filtered out all the people around him, felt as if they were alone. “What did he do to you, Andie?”
“Standard stuff. Beat me up.” She glanced at him nervously. “Nothing sexual if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“So you left,” he said, trying not to dwell on her piece-of-shit dad.
“I left. Spent the next few years taking whatever job I could get, living wherever I could find a place, no matter how temporary. One winter I got really sick. Flu or something. It was horrible. Lost my job because I couldn’t show up for work, and got kicked out of the place I was living.
I had nowhere to go. Didn’t care where I was as long as I could sleep.
I snuck into an old house I thought was abandoned. ”
“I take it it wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t. The owner found me and called the cops.” She ran her hands up and down her arms, even though it was hot and humid. “I didn’t even care. I just wanted to sleep. In jail, I could do that.”
Clay couldn’t help comparing his teen years to hers.
He’d been a troublemaker, a cliché rebel without a cause.
He’d left home a couple of times himself, a week here, few days there.
But looking back, it was one of the dumbest things he’d done.
He’d had a good home, a family who loved him. Unlike Andie.
“Was that the only time?” he asked, resisting the urge to touch her. Comfort her.
She shook her head. “There were two others. Same kind of deal except I wasn’t sick. Just cold.”
“These were after you turned eighteen?”
She nodded. “I’m not the same person anymore, Clay. My life… I’ve changed my life. Even though I still move around, it’s by choice now. Not because I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“And the fight you mentioned?”
“A guy in a bar wouldn’t leave me alone. I punched him.”
“You fought a guy?”
“Technically, no. Only one punch. He pressed charges. Ever since Trevor, I take defending myself seriously.”
“I understand that.”
“But the gun is unloaded.”
He nodded slowly. “I’ve heard too many tragic stories about kids—”
“You can check it every night if it will make you feel better.”
A deep-seated need to protect her evoked images of him keeping her safe. In his arms. In his bed. “That won’t be necessary.”
He hoped. Was he making a mistake to trust her again? On the same issue? Maybe he’d check once or twice after all…
It was a big deal for her to reveal to him everything she had. That was unquestionable. His gut told him he could believe she would keep the weapon unloaded. Unfortunately, he didn’t often trust his gut.
“Daddy!”
Clay looked up to see Payton and Macey making their way back to the table.
Payton walked slowly, carrying her sugar conglomeration as carefully as if it were a bowl of boiling water she didn’t want to spill.
A self-satisfied grin split her face in two.
Macey held Lyle the Bear between her elbow and torso and carried another plate.
“Are you really going to eat that thing, girly?” Clay asked, his stomach turning.
Payton walked around the table to him and burrowed her way onto the bench between him and Andie.
“If you get a tummy ache, just remember it’s Miss Macey’s fault,” Andie said.
“I won’t get a tummy ache,” Payton said, sitting up straight and surveying her treat.
“You got another one?” Clay asked Macey in awe.
Macey laughed. “It’s a present for Derek.”
“Didn’t realize he liked junk food so much.”
“He doesn’t. It’s kind of an ongoing joke between us. I’m sure someone else at the station will end up eating it. Back soon.”
Payton finally stuck the end of the bar in her mouth and took a dainty bite. “Yummy.”
Clay shook his head, smiling. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Pay.”
Andie stood and extricated herself from the picnic bench. She picked up her paper plate of half-eaten dinner to throw away and grabbed Clay’s as well.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” she said. “I usually wouldn’t.” She carried them to a nearby trash can and returned to the table.
“We need to pick up that bike for you,” Clay said, holding the stick for Payton while she nibbled like an enthusiastic mouse.
“Anytime. I have tomorrow off.”
“I do too.”
“Tomorrow is my birthday party!” Payton hollered, craning her neck to see Andie’s face.
“No way! You’re turning four already?” Andie said, once again surprising him.
Payton nodded, chewing, and then turned to Clay. “Can Miss Andie come to my party, Daddy? Please?”
“Andie probably has other things to do,” he told his daughter, sputtering, searching his brain for a graceful way out of this.
“Do you, Miss Andie? Can you come?”
“I’d love to,” Andie said, looking amused at his obvious discomfort, “but only if your dad says it’s okay.”
Those big brown eyes were one hell of a weapon. When Payton pegged him with them, he struggled. He could imagine how having Andie as a guest at their family dinner would go over, especially with his dad.
“My mommy can’t come,” Payton told Andie somberly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Andie said.
“Okay,” Clay said, aware that his buttons were being pushed, however unintentionally, but unable to deny this one little thing for his daughter’s special day. “If Miss Andie wants to come, she can come.”
“Yay!” Payton clapped her chocolate-covered hands and made a bigger mess, causing him and Andie to laugh.
“Five o’clock, on the beach in front of the Shell Shack. We’re having a cookout. Bring a lawn chair or blanket to sit on.”
“Got it. And the bike?”
“My sister’s taking Payton to a matinee tomorrow. We could do it then.”
They settled on a time, and Andie went off to find Macey. Clay listened to his daughter’s chatter and prayed, yet again, he hadn’t just done something he’d regret.