Chapter 5 #2
“She’s right.” I came up behind him and put a hand on his elbow. “You can’t blame this entirely on Leo. I was there too.”
“Please.” He cringed. “Don’t say another word about . . . that. Ever.”
“Sorry.” I fought a smile.
Dad’s shoulders slumped and he turned, pulling me into his arms. “You deserve only the best.”
“That’s why I have you.”
He held me tighter, dropping his cheek to my head. “I still want to chop his dick off.”
“Eww.” I giggled. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“I understand why you didn’t.” He let me go, but put his hands on my shoulders, holding me in place. “After the kidnapping—”
“I’m starving.” I stepped out of his hold, retreating down the hallway for the kitchen.
The kidnapping wasn’t something I wanted to discuss, tonight or any night. I thought of it daily, but considering it used to be hourly, we were moving in the right direction. Avoiding it was working and that was exactly what I’d continue to do.
The cheeseburgers from Stockyard’s were cold, but I took mine out anyway and brought it to the dining room. Mom and Dad weren’t far behind me with their own burgers. Any further discussion of Leo died as we dove in, eating in silence. I was about done with my meal when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it.” Dad shoved his last bite in his mouth, then got up for the door.
“It’s late,” Mom said. “I wonder who it is.”
I shrugged. “Maybe a neighbor?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, you motherfucker?” Dad’s voice bellowed through the house.
Mom’s eyes went wide.
My heart stopped.
Not a neighbor.
We both knew who the motherfucker was.
“Oh, shit.” I shoved out of my chair and hurried to the entryway, Mom right behind me.
I got there in time to see Dad’s fist connect with Leo’s cheek.
“Dad! No!”
Leo grunted and took a step back, but he didn’t so much as lose his balance.
“Dale!” Mom gasped.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Dad commanded, his finger pointing to the street.
“Stop.” I shoved past him, putting myself between the men.
Leo had a hand on his jaw, rubbing where Dad had hit him, but there was no anger or retribution in his eyes. We all knew he’d deserved that punch.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Came to talk to you.”
“Fine.” I reached past Dad for the coat hook and pulled off my parka, then I shrugged it on.
“Cassandra,” Dad warned.
I ignored him and pulled the door closed behind me.
“Let’s go.” I strode past Leo and down the driveway, not waiting for him as I hit the sidewalk and marched onward.
“Are you warm enough?” Leo asked, falling into step beside me with his long strides.
“Yep,” I clipped, walking faster. Warm? I was burning. “What do you want?”
“You caught me by surprise at the bar.”
“No kidding.” My breath billowed in a white cloud as I spoke, streaming past my shoulder.
“We don’t have to walk.”
“I walk every night,” I said. “Or I did in Missoula.”
“Alone?”
“No. One of my roommates always came with me.” And now that I was home, Mom or Dad would gladly volunteer.
Leo’s warning from months ago that the Warriors might come for revenge had stuck and I rarely went anywhere alone. That, and I’d been kidnapped by those bastards, so his warning hadn’t really been necessary, had it?
“When did you come to town?” he asked.
“We got in this morning. My parents came to Missoula to help me pack my things.” All of my belongings from the house where I’d lived with my grad school friends were in the garage. My parents had come for Christmas and stayed through New Year’s to help me pack.
Leo didn’t respond, just kept pace.
“Was this all you wanted? To ask me questions?” I asked, risking a glance up at his profile.
It was a bright moon tonight and the light from the winter sky seemed to highlight every perfection on his face.
The high cheekbones. The soft lips. The slight bump on the bridge of his nose where it had probably been broken once.
“No.” He looked down at me and there it was. That urge to hug him again.
What the hell? That really, really needed to stop. “Then what do you want?”
“I’m moving.”
“Oh.” My feet stuttered a bit, and though I wasn’t going to fall, Leo’s hand was there, taking my arm to make sure I didn’t crash. “I’m good.”
He let me go in a snap.
“You’re moving?”
“Yeah. I just don’t want you to worry that we’ll run into each other. Few weeks, I’ll be gone.”
My heart twisted. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Because no matter what plans I made, no matter how often I told myself that we didn’t need him, a part of me had hoped that he’d come around. Not for me, but for his daughter’s sake.
A part of me had hoped that when the questions about her father came, years from now, I wouldn’t have to tell her that I’d made a bad choice.
“Okay.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and kept walking.
And Leo stayed with me, step for step, as we weaved through the blocks of my neighborhood. There were still Christmas lights up around the neighborhood, brightening the sidewalks and making the night seem cheerier than it was.
Finally, when my nose was cold and my lips stiff from the chill, he spoke. “What is, uh . . . your plan?”
“Find a place to rent. That’s the priority right now. I love my parents, but I won’t live with them and subject them to a newborn’s schedule.”
“I figured you’d stay here. Have some help.”
“No. I’m an adult and can stand on my own two feet.” Sure, maybe I looked like I belonged on an episode of 16 and Pregnant, but I was a grown woman and could do this on my own.
He nodded. “Got it.”
“I have a job lined up as a transcriptionist. It’s freelance so I can have a flexible schedule after the baby is born.”
He nodded again.
“Why did you ask me a question when you don’t want to know the answer?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
“It’s a girl.”
This time, his footsteps faltered but I didn’t reach for his arm. He could steady himself.
“You probably didn’t care about that either.”
His jaw clenched and his eyes stayed forward, my parents’ house getting closer every second. His truck, older than I would have expected, was parked in the driveway. “Didn’t expect your dad to hit me.”
“He loves me. And you deserved it.”
Leo didn’t argue.
“So you came here to tell me you’re moving. Anything else?”
“Are you okay? Healthy, I mean. You and . . . you know.”
“The baby,” I finished for him. He couldn’t even say it. That fear was so pungent it chased away the cold, fresh crisp in the air. “Are you asking because you care or because you think you should ask?”
“I care.”
I stopped walking.
Leo took another step but, when he realized I wasn’t moving, spun back.
“You care?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t understand you.” I threw up my hands.
He tipped his head to the sky, his breath like a plume of smoke. When he faced me again, there was raw honesty in his expression. “I don’t want to be a father.”
“But you are.” I motioned to my belly, stretching the midsection of my coat. “There’s no undoing this. I’m not ready to be a mother but what we want isn’t part of the equation anymore. It’s not about you or me. It’s about her.”
His shoulders fell. “Fair enough.”
“You’re the most confusing man in the world. You want me to leave, I leave. You want me to keep this quiet, I do. But you keep coming here to find me. What do you want, Leo? What?”
“I don’t know.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t fucking know.”
Yes, he did. I saw it now, just like the fear. I saw the truth. “You don’t want to walk away.”
“What?”
God, why hadn’t I recognized this months ago? I was glad that I hadn’t because otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back to Missoula and finished my thesis. I wouldn’t have earned my degree.
But it was right there, written all over his handsome face.
He didn’t want to walk away.
“You keep showing up at my door. Why? So that I’ll tell you to go? So you can push me away? You could have let me walk away at Stockyard’s. You could have moved away without another word. Instead, you came here to tell me about it.”
“I just wanted you to know that you could stay. I’ll go.” He scowled. “You can stay and you won’t have to worry about me bumping into you or something.”
Scarlett could have delivered that message. But the same day I’d come back to Clifton Forge, he’d decided to deliver it himself. “Okay. Then move. Disappear. Do whatever you want. We don’t need you.”
We didn’t need him.
That statement was brimming with so much truth that it spilled onto the frozen sidewalk and crept across the cracks, soaking Leo’s boots.
We didn’t need him.
“But we’ll have you,” I whispered. “If you want this, we will have you.”
All he had to do was choose to be a part of this child’s life.
“I’m moving,” he repeated.
“So you keep on saying.” I took a step past him and walked toward my house.
Leo didn’t follow.
I left him standing there with my words to consider. I was done playing this game. The baby was coming in two months.
It was time for him to figure out what he wanted.