Chapter 29
29
A very was normally pretty good under pressure. She’d had many occasions as a military wife to support other members of military families in times of crisis. But she was, admittedly, not doing so well now.
As soon as the first deputy’s car showed up at the café, Wildwood residents seemed to appear out of nowhere. Some wandering over to ask if she was okay, like Mark, who still hovered nearby despite Avery’s suggestion he go home. Now there were three cruisers in front of the café, lights blinking in the 2:00 a.m. dark. The last to show up, just minutes before, was Austin. He’d climbed from the car and spent several minutes talking to the other two deputies before starting toward her.
And, God, her nerves were already shot. She didn’t have the patience for him. All she could think about was the look on Trace’s face when he’d left. His anger so sharp, so intense, she’d been pacing with all sorts of horrible thoughts and fears and insecurities filling her head.
Austin paused his slow swagger about eight feet away. “Zane found Trace and JT.”
Avery’s footsteps stopped and her stomach seized up. Something about the way he’d phrased that made Avery cold. “JT?”
“You didn’t know it was JT who stole the van?”
“No, I didn’t see the driver.” And now Avery’s fear intensified. A fear that cut so deep, she couldn’t process it in the moment. So she slapped a Band-Aid on and asked the hardest question of her life. “Are they...” She had to force air into her lungs to speak. “Is Trace okay?”
Headlights turned onto the driveway. Avery’s gaze jumped that direction but didn’t find the Jeep Trace had taken or the truck JT had stolen. She found Ethan’s truck turning in. And her heart fell.
“Austin,” Avery said, drawing his gaze back. “Is Trace okay?”
Austin’s gaze returned to the road, where Zane’s black SUV slowed and followed Ethan’s truck. “Well, here comes Zane. I guess we’ll see.”
Her focus jumped to a third set of headlights behind the SUV and found the rental truck coming in behind Zane. All Avery’s air whooshed out in relief. A second driver meant Trace had to be okay.
She didn’t get a chance to think about anything else before Ethan and Delaney parked and her sister rushed to her, wrapping Avery tight. “Are you okay?”
Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. “I just want to make sure Trace is okay.”
As the other cars made their way to the café, Avery explained what had happened. And by the time Zane stood from the driver’s seat, Delaney and Ethan wore the same grim expression.
“He’s in the back,” Zane told the other deputies. “Put on gloves. He’s bloody. You should probably call a medic.”
“ Shit ,” Avery said under her breath, and she pulled free from Delaney to rush to the driver’s side of the van, ignoring the deputies as they moved toward Zane’s car. She put her hands on the door and looked through the window. “Trace?”
He put the car into park, turned off the engine, everything in super slow motion, then looked at her through the glass. And a chill traveled the entire length of her spine. His eyes were dark and guarded. His face smudged, and dirty.
She pulled open the door, already choking on his name. “Trace?” The light came on, and all the shadows turned red. His face, his chest, his arms—he had blood smears and drips and splatters everywhere. “Oh my God. What...? How...?”
“I’m okay,” he said, his voice low, gaze cast down and away as he climbed from the truck with the pained movement of an eighty-year-old. “What the fuck is everyone doing here?”
Sirens grew closer, and as soon as Trace moved from the truck, she saw the blood remaining on the driver’s seat and gasped. He turned and followed her gaze, which gave her a look at the mess of blood on his back. “Oh God, Trace.”
The emergency vehicles turned up the driveway.
“Who the fuck called them?” Trace muttered, then yelled at his brother. “Goddammit, Zane, get everyone out of here. This isn’t a fucking circus.”
“No, you need them,” Avery told him. “Delaney, send the ambulance over here first.”
“No.” His dark, almost feral bark shocked her quiet. He kept his eyes down. “The last thing you need is everyone watching me get patched up from a fight with the convict I hired and who tried to steal your equipment.”
His voice was low and harsh in a way that pierced her chest with a cold streak. “I’ve caused enough trouble for you for one fucking lifetime. I’m fine. Everything is superficial. I’ll go to the ER after I talk to the cops and check the equipment. Right now I’m going to put a shirt on and wash my face so I don’t look like a fucking animal.”
Avery just stood there, stunned silent as he walked past and quickly disappeared into the café. She pulled in a stuttering breath, her chest as tight as if she’d been physically hit. Her gaze focused on the seat again, and she swallowed hard. The thought of him hitting the ground with his bare skin, of how he’d gotten the bruises forming around his eye and cheekbone, the cuts on his lips, nose, chin, cheek.
Avery started to shake. Tears flooded her eyes. He’d just been in bed with her forty-five minutes ago. Safe and happy and so gentle. Her mind spiraled and tangled. Her thoughts jumped around. Things started to disconnect. Nothing made sense.
“Hey.” Delaney’s soft voice slipped into her thoughts. “You okay?”
Avery shook her head and gestured to the seat. “What?” Then to the café where he’d disappeared. “He...” Her brain chugged, chugged, chugged, but the gears wouldn’t turn. She pushed both hands into her hair and choked out, “I don’t know what’s happening.”
Ethan passed, squeezing Delaney’s shoulder with a murmured “I’m gonna check the equipment.”
Avery crossed her arms tight and followed. She held her breath as Ethan fought with the doors. Finally saying, “They opened fine earlier.”
“The equipment probably just shifted.”
Avery’s stomach dropped.
Fifty feet away, two cops flanked JT and pulled him from the back of Zane’s SUV. The sight of him made Avery pull in a sharp breath. His face looked even worse than Trace’s. One eye bloody and swollen shut, lips cut and puffy, cuts everywhere, blood everywhere. Trace may not have given JT that black eye and that cut lip in the picture she’d seen, but he most definitely had given him everything that was fresh tonight. And the amount of damage stunned her.
Trace had done that.
Her Trace had done that . With his own hands.
She shook her head, overwhelmed by the severity. By the sheer brutality.
Avery tightened her arms, suddenly so cold. Feeling so small. So weak. So fragile—emotionally and physically. The way she used to feel around her father.
The cops sat JT on a gurney, and the EMTs started working on him.
“You take that one.” Trace’s voice startled Avery, and she turned her head back so fast, she lost her balance and stumbled a little.
Delaney grabbed her arm to steady her and gave her a concerned stare. “Avery?”
“Just lost my balance,” she muttered.
“Trace,” Austin said, coming around the end of the truck. “We’re going to need a statement.”
“Yeah, just a minute.”
He helped Ethan unblock the doors, and each man pulled one door open, exposing all her gorgeous equipment, equipment that she’d painstakingly chosen, paid her last dollar for, and needed installed immediately to open the café on time, thrown in the back of the truck like a mishmash of garage sale leftovers.
Avery covered her mouth, stifling a sob.
“Fuck.” Trace bit out the word and put his hands on his hips. And while he was staring at the mess in the back of the truck, blood was seeping through his T-shirt.
“Not too bad...” she heard Ethan say, but his voice faded in and out. “Everything looks intact...”
But she couldn’t follow the conversation as blood created a dot-and-blotch pattern on Trace’s back. Her head went light. A ring started low in her ears and built as her vision dimmed.
“Whoa, Avery?” Delaney’s voice brought Avery back when she was halfway to the ground. With Delaney’s help, Avery caught herself before she fainted and straightened.
Trace turned, his frown so dark, his face so bruised, so cut, she saw a whole different man there. “Avery?”
He closed the distance with his brow pulled tight. Her gaze caught on his hand rising to her face, his fingers in a gentle curl, the way they were when he cupped her face. But she caught the sight of his knuckles, raw and red and still bleeding.
Avery saw her father’s knuckles from all his drunken brawls, the knuckles he’d raised to her and Delaney and Chloe so many times. And she flinched and shrank away.
Trace’s hand froze. His gaze dropped to his hand and held. And something happened behind his eyes. Something she didn’t recognize.
He dropped his hand, and the combination of resignation and pain on his face tore at Avery’s heart. “I...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”
“No. It’s okay.” He nodded. And when his head finally lifted, he looked like an empty shell. “It’s...right. It’s the way it should be.”
She shook her head. “What?”
He put his hands at his hips again and kept his focus on the ground. “I’ll call a buddy of mine who lives nearby. He just had a job fall through. I’ll have him come and finish up.”
She stepped out of Delaney’s hold with a new lick of fear and pain twining inside her. “What?”
“The only way you’re going to save any face on this, the only way your business is going to survive for your opening, is if I walk away and you tell everyone you fired me.” He met her gaze, but it was in a guarded, distant, businesslike way. “I’ll call my friend, have him over here in the morning. He’s good, and he’s got a crew. I’ll work out the payment with him. He’ll have you up and running in two days. You’ll make your opening.”
An icy shaft speared her right down the middle. “You’re walking away from me?”
“Avery,” Delaney’s voice interjected softly. “You need to think about your business right now. I think Trace has a smart idea.”
“Fuck smart ideas,” she said, but she said it to Trace, not to Delaney. “You promised you’d have this ready for my opening day.”
Even as she said it, she realized how stupid she’d been to believe another damn promise. When would she learn?
He remained cool and distant. “It will be ready for your?—”
“No, you promised.” She closed the distance between them and jabbed his chest. “ You promised me, Trace.”
“If I stay and finish this job,” he said deliberately, “you won’t have a business to open.”
Avery wanted to scream that she’d rather have him than the business. But she’d been here before. She’d tried to tell David she’d rather have a husband who was gone as much as he was gone than to end their marriage. And look where that had gotten her.
She couldn’t force Trace to love her now any more than she’d been able to force David to fall back in love with her then. And she couldn’t even force Trace to let her love him . She’d held on to David six years too long. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“I’m not going to keep you where you don’t want to be.” She pushed the words out, but she was breaking inside. “So if you don’t want to be here, go. But I’ll find my own way to finish the job. Tell your friend to find other work.”
To keep herself from watching another man she loved walk out of her life—she was two for two, quite a record—Avery turned and walked away first.