Chapter 26 Trust
Trust
Tinker ended the call without leaving a voicemail. He tried texting Abby again but the warning under the message said she had do-not-disturb on. She was avoiding him, and he didn’t know why.
They’d talked Sunday after she’d gone home and again Monday night like they had almost every night for the past few weeks. But he hadn’t heard from her since their good morning texts on Tuesday.
He slumped in his chair. Fuck. Was this payback from when he’d ghosted her? He immediately dismissed the thought. Abby wasn’t that kind of woman. She’d have told him to get fucked if she didn’t want anything to do with him. He thought about calling the school, but that felt kind of stalkerish.
Maybe Angie could track her phone. He shook his head and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Fucking hell. What was wrong with him?
Graham appeared at his desk and leaned against the edge. “You good?”
Tinker sat up in his chair. “Yeah. Why?”
“You look a little stressed. Everything good for the party on Saturday?”
Tinker tossed his phone onto the pile of papers next to his keyboard. “Yeah, we’re set. I’ve sent everyone their assignments. We’re doing a walk-through Friday after lunch when the event coordinator is setting up and again on Saturday before the party starts.”
“Sounds good. I’ll drop in at some point on Saturday and do a check-in. I’m meeting with another potential client in that area,” Graham said.
Tinker cocked an eyebrow. “Checking up on me?”
Graham smirked. “I check up on everyone. Even Paige. Besides, I want to see what a hundred and fifty grand birthday party looks like.”
“Holy shit, are you serious?”
“Half of that is our fee. Fucking kid’s birthday party.” Graham shook his head. “Paige quoted him the price thinking he’d balk. Guy didn’t even blink.”
Tinker frowned. “We sure this guy’s legit?”
“Yeah. Paige had Angie run him. He married old Charleston money. It’s not his, but he likes to throw it around like it is. He’s not doing anything illegal. Immoral is another story, but the wife’s prenup covers that.”
“Damn,” Tinker said.
“That’s not our problem. Unless she wants to hire us to get proof of his infidelity.” Graham clapped him on the shoulder. “Let me or Paige know if you need anything.”
Tinker nodded once. “Will do.”
He looked at his phone again, but it was as blank and silent as it had been five minutes ago. Fuuuccckkk. He should head down to the gym or the garage. But he knew neither working out nor tinkering on the vehicles would distract him.
Maybe Angie could hack her phone and see if Abby blocked him.
He glanced across the room toward Angie’s corner.
Jayne, their armorer, was leaning back in a chair in her large workspace, feet kicked up on the edge of her desk.
Angie was making a show of ignoring him.
If there were ever two people who needed to get over themselves and bang, it was those two.
Fuck it. He needed to pull up his Underoos and confront her in person. If she was blowing him off, and not in the good way, he wanted to know. He deserved to know.
Yeah, he was a fucking hypocrite. He grabbed his keys and headed for the hall. He didn’t care.
Tinker knocked harder and glanced at Abby’s car in the driveway. Unless they’d decided to go for a walk around the block, they were home. He braced against the door frame and waited. He’d wait all night if he had to.
He straightened when the door opened.
Abby stared, bleary-eyed, from the half-open door. “Tinker? What are you doing here?”
She looked like crap. Wrapped in a blanket with her hair piled on top of her head, her face was pale with dark circles under her eyes.
Hell, she looked like she’d lost weight in the last few days.
Tinker hesitated, maybe now wasn’t a good time.
On the other hand, if he let it fester, he’d get more pissed and then say something that would make him a dick.
Fuck it. If she was done with him, timing wasn’t going to matter. He pushed in and closed the door behind him.
“What the hell, Tinker?” She pulled the blanket tighter around her.
“Why are you ignoring my calls?”
Abby stared at him like he’d grown two additional heads. “Are you serious right now?”
“Yeah, Abby, I’m serious. We fucked and a day later you ghost me. I’d like to know why.” He shrugged out of his jacket and threw it on the bench by the door.
She stared at the jacket, stared at him, and walked away mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like for fuck’s sake.
He followed her into the kitchen and watched her fill up an electric kettle and set it on its base. She turned and adjusted the blanket again. “I’ve been taking care of two sick kids since Tuesday afternoon. I didn’t think I needed to take care of a third.”
Well, fuck. That stung. He didn’t think he was being childish by asking what the hell was going on. Wasn’t everyone always telling him he needed to communicate more? Damn it, he was communicating.
“You couldn’t have sent me a text letting me know that?”
Abby wiped her forehead with the edge of the blanket.
“Tinker, I have been thrown up on twice. I have one clingy kid that would barely let me pee by myself without throwing a fit and another kid pretending like they didn’t need me at all.
So no, my first thought between tag-teaming bouts of vomiting and diarrhea was not to let you know I couldn’t talk. ”
Now he felt like an ass. But it didn’t explain her complete lack of communication. She could have texted him at least once to let him know the kids were sick.
“So it has nothing to do with me ghosting you before?”
She looked at him like he’d sprouted a third head. Hell, maybe he had. He was so far out of his depth he might as well have been in the middle of the ocean.
“No, it has nothing to do with you ghosting me before. I’ve been knee-deep in sick kids for the last… I don’t even know what day it is.”
“Thursday,” he said.
“That’s it? It feels longer than that.”
The kettle clicked off, and she turned back to it.
Well, he was a dumbass. “Do you need anything? Food? Meds?”
She shook her head as she opened the cabinet.
He looked at the opposite counter and saw a few papers. But what caught his eye was the picture. His booking photo. There was no mistaking that it was him.
He picked up the papers. It was his arrest record.
“Where did you get this?”
Abby glanced over her shoulder and froze, the cabinet door half open. She slowly closed it. “It was sent to me.”
“By who?” And how the fuck had that person gotten a copy. His record was expunged.
“If I had to guess from the note that came with it, Olivia’s aunt.” She wouldn’t look at him, her gaze fixed on the mug and tea bag she was dunking.
Tinker shuffled through the sheets, seeing the short note on the last page. “Is this why you weren’t answering my calls?”
She frowned. “I just told you the kids have been sick for the last two days.”
“So this has nothing to do with it?” He gestured with the pages.
She grabbed the edges of the blanket and crossed her arms. “Honestly? I haven’t had time to think about it.”
He tossed the papers on the counter, crossed his arms, and leaned against the opposite counter. “What’s there to think about? Whether I’m a threat? Whether you want to keep seeing me?”
She wiped her forehead with the blanket. “How to approach you about it, for one, Tinker. What was I supposed to do? Call you and say, ‘hey, tell me about that time you went to jail for aggravated assault’?”
Abby gestured with the blanket. “And again, when was I supposed to do that in the last two days? Sorry, I’ve been so busy getting thrown up on. And let’s be honest here—this is something you should have told me way before now.”
She was judging him without knowing the full story, just like he knew she would. Like everyone before her had. He shouldn’t blame her, but he did. She should know him. Know this one thing wasn’t who he was.
Maybe she had a point, he should have told her before now, but it was hard to see it through the hurt. Anger. He needed—wanted—to be angry at her, because being angry was easier than being whatever the hell this was.
He shrugged, going for nonchalant. “Well, now you know. What else is there?”
“Why?” she asked softly.
That gave him pause. “What?”
“Why did you do it?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. There was no short answer to that question. It’d be better if she just told him to fuck off. Easier.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“Yes, it does.” She wiped her forehead with the blanket again.
“Why?”
“Why does it matter?” she asked.
“Yeah, why does it matter why I did it? I put a guy in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. What does it matter why?”
“Because I’m not a person who thinks in black or white, Tinker. Because I have to believe there’s a reason you beat a guy so severely he’s in a wheelchair because otherwise, I don’t know what to do.”
“Do you trust me?” It really all came down to that one question.
“I want to,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” he said.
“It’s not a yes or no question. It’d be really fucking stupid to blindly trust a guy I’ve only known for six weeks, especially when there are two young kids in the mix.”
He tried to interrupt, but she talked over him.
“Trust is earned, Tinker, not given out like alms in front of a church. And it’s a two-way street. You want it? You need to give it, and you obviously don’t trust me fully, otherwise you’d have started this conversation explaining instead of ‘what the fucking?’”
She spun and vomited into the sink.
What the fuck were alms?