Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
CARLIE
I put my hands up and shake my head at my brother. “I’m never going to have time for a double date with you and Ivy and me and Law. Sorry.” I turn away from where he’s sitting at my kitchen table, eating a doughnut and drinking coffee from a place I know is just down the street from Ivy’s apartment.
I’ve never been to Ivy’s apartment, but Caleb’s phone has been there a lot lately. He probably doesn’t remember that we share our locations with each other, or he would have turned it off, I’m sure. And I googled the name of the coffee shop.
“You have Fridays off,” he points out.
I keep my back toward him as I pour my protein smoothie from the blender pitcher into a tall glass. I don’t want to make it easy on him to read the things I’m not saying. “Fridays are the one day I have completely to myself, and when Law and I can spend time together without Chad calling.”
“And you don’t want to allocate any of that time to the stress you think it would be to hang out with me and Ivy,” he says. It doesn’t surprise me that my strategy didn’t work. Like the data collector that he is, Caleb has been pulling little bits of information from me every time I’m around him, and he’s successfully interpreted that information as unease over his relationship with Ivy.
“Carlie,” he says in a tone that makes me turn toward him. I try for a completely relaxed expression. “I think if you would spend more time with me and Ivy, you’d be able to get to know her and you could worry less.”
I shake my head. “I’m not worried about Ivy being a criminal. I mean, not really.” I decide to nip this right in the bud, especially because Law bringing up Xavier thanks to my investigation into Chad reminds me that everyone around me attributes my mistrust to that. And they’re not wrong to, I guess. “Plenty of people lie about who they are for things much less serious than the fact that they’re dealing drugs. She might have thousands of dollars in credit card debt that no one knows about because she’s obsessed with buying dog knickknacks.” Caleb laughs, so I have to smile. “Or she might pick her nose and you won’t find out until it’s too late.” I shrug.
“For your information,” he says, “none of those situations are something I can’t get over. She’s a life coach. I’m sure she can coach herself out of picking her nose.” He eyes me over his cup. He takes a sip and then sets it down. “Carlie, you also know better than anyone that I could date Ivy for months, years even, and she’d still be able to hide things from me. So what’s the point?”
I scowl. “There has to be a mathematical equation or something that points out that the longer you know someone, the less the likelihood of them being able to scam you is.”
He chuckles. “Probably.”
I grab my glass. Another mathematical equation I’m certain of is that the longer I stay here, the more likely it will be that Caleb talks me into going on a double date with them. Plus I have plans. Even though Chad hasn’t called me, I’m headed over to spend some time with the girls. It’s not really out of the ordinary. Even when he isn’t called out, it’s not unusual for me to go help out a little.
“Where are you going?” Caleb asks when I don’t settle at the kitchen table with him.
“Over to the house. You’re welcome to hang out here and work if you want to.” I pick up my bag by the door and rummage through to make sure I’ve got what I need if Chad does get called out while I’m over there.
Caleb sighs. “I’m not giving up, you know. I want you and Ivy to be friends.”
“We are.” I plaster on a big, reassuring smile. “You forget that I spent a week in Maui with her. Basically. I’ll see you later.” I hurry out the door before he can heap more guilt on me for this. I wish I could shake out my worry for Caleb that something’s going to go wrong. It’s one thing for me to second-guess myself in the relationships I pursue. I don’t want that to spill into my family’s life.
When I let myself in through the back door, Chad’s sitting at the kitchen table with the girls, working through the alphabet workbooks I got them. So even if he might be a murderer, at least he’s sticking to the schedule I suggested. This is what I do with the girls every morning, and it’s better for their routine if Chad does it as well when he’s home, at least most of the time. I don’t blame him for deviating every once in a while. He’s their dad, and he has to be away a lot for work. There’s nothing wrong with him choosing other activities for them to do together.
“Good morning.” I smile as I set down my bag on the counter and lean against it to drink my smoothie. “How’s the alphabet coming along, ladies?” I ask.
Zoey starts reciting the letters she knows, scrunching her nose and skipping a few. I nod encouragingly, holding back my smile at her cuteness. Scarlett rolls her eyes every time Zoey misses one, and I wonder if that’s something she got from Shelby. I’ve never seen Chad do anything sarcastic or snarky with the girls, especially when they mess up.
“Great job, Zo.” I clap when she’s done. “Don’t you think that’s great, Scarlett? I bet she almost knows as many letters as you did when you were her age. Isn’t that cool?”
Scarlett, thankfully, catches that I praised her as well, and her eyes brighten. “You’re so smart, Zoey!” she exclaims. Zoey beams, and Chad grins.
“What’s up?” he asks, leaning his elbows on the table as he watches the girls continue.
“Thought I’d come over to help out. Your call-outs have been thin this week, and I want to earn my money.”
He laughs. “Sounds good. You know you earn your money just by being available, right?”
I wave him off. “Yeah, yeah. But still. I want to be helpful.” I will the heat to leave my face. It’s not a lie. I do want to be helpful, especially in protecting the girls. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think Chad would hurt them. If something happened between him and Shelby that resulted in foul play of some kind, I find it unlikely he’d snap with Scarlett and Zoey. Still, I can’t get a case off my mind that I dug into a few years ago. With police closing in on him, a father that had killed his wife killed himself and his two boys. I would hate myself if I let anything happen to the girls just because I wanted to trust Chad amid all the suspicious stuff piling up. Just because Law trusts him.
I try to keep my face neutral as that thought sinks through me and makes my stomach twist. Chad is Law’s friend, and me believing he’s a murderer can’t be good on our relationship.
But I can’t just let it go, can I? Not with everything adding up like it is.
“We thought we’d go get lunch and take it to the park to eat,” Chad says. “You’re welcome to come along, of course.”
I nod. “Sounds fabulous. I’m in.”
The girls cheer at this news, which makes me feel better. At least they like me enough to want me around even when they have Chad.
Chad’s on his best behavior while I’m with the girls, of course, so spying on him this way isn’t really going to work. I hang out at the house with them for a while longer after we get back, but I mostly just straighten up stuff for when the housekeeper comes in the morning. I head back to my house when he doesn’t get called out and take up an advantageous spot on my porch, using a pair of binoculars I bought a couple days ago to watch them through the big windows in the kitchen area and the sliding door in the family room. Maybe buying binoculars is weird, but it’s more weird in a cool hobby type of way, not in a creeper way. The items Amazon is suggesting now to go with my binoculars are things like bird identification books and hiking supplies, not rope and duct tape. Besides, I could just as easily be proving that Chad didn’t do anything to Shelby. And that’s good.
From what I can tell, Chad is playing a game at the kitchen table with the girls. I furrow my eyebrows. Does Chad somehow know that I’m on to him and he’s putting on the father-of-the-year act? Or was he like this before? The problem is that I’ve only known desperate-for-help Chad and now calm Chad because I’ve helped ease the burden he was carrying with being a single parent in a demanding job. I have no idea if he was this kind of dad before Shelby left.
Before she disappeared, I correct myself.
“Are you seriously doing the Peeping Tom thing?”
I startle at the sound of Law’s voice, fumbling the binoculars and dropping them on the ground in front of me. I glare at him. “You scared me.”
His shoulders are shaking with laughter. “I wasn’t even quiet when I came through the gate and walked up.”
I pick up the binoculars, sit on them, and eye him with an innocent expression. “I was just checking on the girls.” Which is totally true. My motives for spying on Chad are altruistic.
“Mmmmkay.” He steps up on the porch and settles next to me on the couch, putting an arm over the back of it. He plays with the ends of my hair, running his fingers through it, and I almost relax into him. But because he didn’t say anything about my binoculars and the spying, I pull them out from under me and take a peek into the rooms again.
Except Law sighs when I do. The same slightly irritated one I heard him use when we were talking about this a couple days ago. I ignore the sigh. It looks like Chad is making some mac and cheese. I swing the binoculars over to find the girls sitting together on the couch, watching a movie.
“Carlie?”
I drop the binoculars down, feeling twice as guilty at the concerned look on his face. “I just?—”
He holds up a hand. “I understand why everything looks suspicious to you. You’re not wrong about how it looks.”
I tense. “But?”
“I’m worried. I’m worried that you’re so invested in the worst-case scenario.” He looks away from me as he says this, and that’s kind of endearing. He didn’t want to say it, but he did because he cares about me.
“I just have to make sure the girls are safe.” But I tuck the binoculars away. Law knows Chad—or at least he thinks he does. He can’t see this from my perspective, and I don’t blame him for being concerned about me because of it.
“Do you feel safe?” Law asks.
I blink. I’ve never even considered my own safety. Except maybe when I was hiding in the tub. “Chad’s never done anything to make me think he’s unstable,” I have to admit.
“That’s not a yes,” Law points out ruefully, and all I can do is shrug. He studies me a moment longer but doesn’t push things further, even though his eyes are full of things he wants to say but doesn’t. “Ivy wants me to convince you to go on a double date,” he says, changing the subject and going back to fingering my hair.
“Caleb already tried.” I itch to use the binoculars again, but I don’t want to disappoint Law.
“It might be good for you,” Law says.
“I see that Ivy coached both you and Caleb on what to say.” I turn away from trying to see across the yards into the window and back to Law.
“It might be fun.”
“It will be stressful. I’ll be worried about how I’m acting the whole time. If I’m giving off bad vibes, if Ivy thinks I hate her, if my brother’s mad that I’m worried about him getting so deep so quickly with her.” I sigh, and my gaze goes back to the window. If Chad’s poisoning them at dinner, I’ve missed him messing with the food anyway.
I shake my head. If Chad did something to Shelby, it was very likely a crime of passion, not a premeditated thing. Maybe he told himself that what he did to Shelby was for their sakes somehow. If he does something to harm the girls, it will be because he snaps.
I resist the urge to grab the binoculars again to make sure that neither of the girls is throwing some kind of tantrum about the food.
“That does sound stressful,” Law says, bringing my attention back to him. “I won’t push it if you don’t want to.” He curls his finger around a strand of hair lying over my shoulder.
“Thanks.” I finally lean back into his arm, and he kisses the top of my head. “Are you worried about them?” I ask.
“Um …”
I turn to look up at him. “Law?”
He still doesn’t say anything, and I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t want to stress me out, or he doesn’t want to feed into my worries if he admits some of his own.
“It’s just that Ivy is your best friend, and you haven’t once tried to convince me that she’s great and she loves Caleb so I should get on board, or something.”
He sighs. “I’m worried about Ivy’s past.” My eyes widen, and he hurries on. “Just her past relationships,” he says. “She dated … someone … pretty seriously for a couple years. She didn’t want to end it, but she did, because she felt like he wasn’t ever going to take it to the next level. So her going from that to telling me she’s in love with Caleb in a matter of days is kind of scary for me.” He holds up a hand as I open my mouth. “ But I also trust her. Ivy knows her own mind. I can’t imagine her ever getting swept up into something.”
My response doesn’t change, despite his caveat. “Ivy said she loves him?” I’m falling for Law, for sure. The patient way he’s dealt with everything between us, the way he’s (kind of) supported me with this thing with Chad and how he hasn’t dismissed me outright. I’ve known him for twice as long, but I can’t say that I love him.
I’m not ready to go there yet.
It makes me question what I’m afraid to find out about him. I keep telling myself I know that he’s not going to blindside me. I’ve googled more than I want to admit. Between his mom and his football career, his life is almost an open book. He could be hiding things; I know that. So how much am I really letting that affect us?
“Carlie?” Law asks gently. “Can I try something that Ivy does with me?”
I tilt my head, forcing a smile. “Sure.”
“What negative thoughts are dancing through there right now?” he asks, tapping my forehead gently with his finger.
The first step in believing what I keep telling myself is being honest with Law right now. “That I’m not letting myself trust you enough to fall in love.”
“And how is that serving you?” He’s so sincere that I push away the frustration in me that it’s not doing any good.
“It’s protecting me.” I screw up my lips apologetically.
He smiles, brushing the side of my cheek. “And that’s okay.” He pulls me closer to him, kissing me.
I lean into his chest, wrapping my arms around his neck. Law has this gentleness to the way he handles me that makes warmth seep into every piece of me, enveloping me in gratitude that I found him. And yet the electricity zipping through me makes me forget how important keeping an eye on the girls is. Law’s hands press gently into my back, bringing me closer.
“Law,” I whisper, pulling a few inches away from him. “I really, really like you.”
He smiles, and his lips are so irresistible. I can’t help leaning back into him again.
“I really, really like you,” he says when we pull away again.
I can do this. I can fall in love with someone totally amazing and get the life I thought I was building with Xavier—only better.