Chapter 27
Andi
Once when I was little, some kids and I were sliding across the gym floor in our socks, trying to see who could get closest to the wall. I got a running start, slid, and slid, and…slammed into that damn wall so hard the wind was knocked out of me. Falling on my butt didn’t bother me, but not being able to suck in my next breath was terrifying.
I feel like that now. Life is going on like normal all around me, with nobody noticing I’m in serious danger.
I’m gripping the back of one of the office chairs hard, just to stay upright. “How long have you felt like this?”
Kevin glances at my white knuckles, then back up to my face. “Andi, sit down before you fall down.” His voice isn’t so desperate now, but he’s definitely not my gentle lover at this moment.
Maybe this is where he loses his mask. Maybe this is where I learn my hesitation was warranted.
He moves around the other chair and drops into it. Doesn’t take his eyes off me, but…doesn’t make any kind of aggressive or threatening move. His hands aren’t even clenched.
After a second I perch on the edge of the seat across from him. “How long?” I’m stalling, trying to gauge risk.
He actually rolls those damn brown eyes.
It’s like he’s aged twenty years. Become sad and weary, a different person, and I can’t begin to predict what this stranger will do or say.
“I’ve been mad for about five minutes, I guess. I’ve been worried ever since you told me you were pregnant.”
The whole damn time. He’s been worrying about something the whole time too. “Why didn’t you say something?”
He barks out a laugh so harsh it has to hurt his throat. “What could I have said that wouldn’t have spooked you?”
Fair.
I nod. I still don’t know whether there’s danger here, but it’s time for me to come clean. “The idea of starting a relationship has always been unthinkable for me. More so now that I’m pregnant.”
“Why?” His voice is taut but I think that’s vulnerability in his eyes.
“Gram drilled it into me that I’d be better off staying single. Because of family stuff. And then I started working here right out of college, and I…don’t get to see many happy endings here.” I fish my phone out of my pocket and pull up my photos. Find one of Gram with my mom and my sister, Lola, and pass it over to him. Our fingers don’t brush when he takes it.
His eyebrows go up and he whistles. “This is your Gram?”
“Yeah, with my mom.”
“They’re almost as pretty as you are.”
Okay, so, even when terribly upset, he’s sweet. No name-calling, no nasty accusations… He’s giving me space. Asking reasonable questions and actually listening to my answers.
What was I thinking, wasting all this time not trusting him?
It actually feels good to be talking with him about this. Brings relief, lightness. There’s nothing remotely threatening in his voice or his manner or his posture…
So now my job is to heal any pain my mistrust has caused him.
“This little girl you?”
I shake my head. “My older sister. I wasn’t born yet.”
He hands over the phone, looks back up at me, and I know my truth telling has only just begun. “So when you found out you were having our baby, you didn’t think that might be a good time to share your fears? Since I was about to become a daddy?”
I can see how it looks like that from his perspective, but he still doesn’t get it. And he won’t, until I tell him the whole story. I sigh. “I was just starting to consider the possibility of more with you when I found out I was pregnant. And the risk ramped way up.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” He sounds detached but I know he’s not. Not really. My Kevin—the one who touches my belly with reverence and makes sure I have whatever I need and that he does everything possible to make things good for me—is anything but detached.
He’s going to hate this. But I have to tell him, if we’re to have any chance of my fears and my caution making sense to him. “The risk seemed huge to me because of my family history. Remember I mentioned that my grandpa and my father were not good guys?”
He nods.
“Well, they both started being worse guys when their wives were pregnant. It’s often that way in abusive relationships—the violence often ramps up around pregnancy.”
He’s clenching his jaw again. He looks past me and mutters, “I’m going to need some addresses. I’ve got some asses to kick.”
“You can’t, Kev.” I push up from my chair and walk to the filing cabinet behind my desk. I feel his eyes on me as I find the folder I’m looking for, and the specific clipping from the Charlotte newspaper. I bring it back to where he’s sitting and hold it out to him. “Gram’s ex probably died years ago. But my…father is dead too.”
Kev looks like he doesn’t want to take it. Like he’s sorry he asked. Like he knows this is going to change things, somehow. But he takes it from my hand and begins to read.
There’s a picture of my mom and Lola at the top. I settle back in my seat and watch Kevin’s eyes move over that and then on to the text of the article I know by heart. The article that tells how Anthony Zoeller pushed his way into his estranged wife’s house and shot her to death, after shooting their older daughter, aged four, as she tried to escape to the neighbor’s. How he then turned the gun on himself.
And how two hours later a crime scene tech found the baby everyone had thought was missing. She was still strapped in her baby carrier, under the kitchen sink behind the trash can. The tech found her when the little girl managed to spit out her pacifier and let out a hungry wail.
Police speculated that the baby was only alive because of her mother’s quick, desperate thinking—that otherwise baby Andrea too would have been killed by the monster who wiped out the rest of her family. Of his family.
The article ends with a statement that the baby would be sent to live with out-of-town family.
Kevin’s hand drops and the clipping flutters to the floor. He curls forward, pressing his fingers into his eyes.
I watch warily as his lips begin to move. Takes me a minute to realize he’s praying. The Hail Mary, I think, but I’m not sure. Gram didn’t raise me to pray. Pretty sure she’d decided there was no god a Salazar woman could place her faith in.
Kevin moves. Uncurls from that chair and comes to me, kneeling on the floor in front of me and sliding his arms between me and the back of my chair, gathering me in, his broad shoulders sheltering me, his head in my lap.
“Andi, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, his voice broken.
We stay like that for a while, just holding each other, me curled over him, until he speaks again, voice still soft but firmer now. “You were a miracle baby. You’re a miracle. And this baby is our miracle. And I won’t let anybody hurt either one of you.”
I start to cry when he presses a kiss to my belly.
***
Kevin
I am barely holding it together. Everything inside me is raging, quaking with fury and despair and sadness for Andi and her mom and that precious little girl who was her sister. I want to burn down the whole world. Bring her monster dad back to life so I can kill him again, over and over, once for every time he hurt or scared Andi’s mom and sister. And then I’ll kill him a hundred more times for stealing them from Andi and her Gram.
No wonder I’ve been picking up such mixed signals. No wonder Andi was afraid to trust me. I’m the father of that vulnerable little person growing inside her. No freaking wonder.
She’s the strongest person I’ve ever known.
She sits quietly, letting me hold her, pretending not to notice that I am silently falling to pieces. She just runs her fingers through my hair and lets me hold on.
But when I promise to protect her—a foolish, foolish promise no one can be sure they can keep—a single tear drips onto my cheek. And then another, and another. And then I’m rising, scooping her up in my arms, and resettling with her on my lap, and now we’re really holding each other.
“How can I help you feel safe around me?” I whisper, kissing the little saltwater trails on her face.
Her eyes are full of more than tears as she gazes back at me and gives a little I-don’t-know shrug. I feel like I would do any thing for her when she looks at me like that. Leap tall buildings, stop bullets…
“What about… What about a safe word? If I ever start to freak you out, you can say a safe word and I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and ask you what you need. And you can tell me to stop talking, or leave you alone for a while, or…whatever you need.”
She wipes tears off my face and manages a soft, sweet, broken smile. “Perfect.”
Her cheek is velvet under my thumb. “Choose a word then. Pick one we wouldn’t use in everyday life.”
She shakes her head with a little laugh. “I don’t know…lemur. Our safe word is ‘lemur.’”
“Good one. At least until Lil Bit gets old enough for us to take her to a zoo.”
“Then we’ll call it ‘the L-word.’” She takes hold of my shoulders and pushes herself to standing. Moves to the other chair and sits down there, distracting me from another L-word I want to say to her.
She crosses her legs, folds her hands in her lap, and looks me over. There’s new warmth in her gaze. She’s looked at me this way before, kind of, but there’s something softer, more comfortable, in it now. Trust. I think it’s finally trust. “Had you thought about what you’d say to your family if I did go home with you? How you’d explain your pregnant best friend? In a way you’d have to awkwardly revise later?”
Pretty sure I’m blushing. “I was hoping we could figure that out together.”
She nods. “I wanted to believe you’re the good guy you’ve always been to me, Kev.” She shakes her head. “It was a war zone in my head. ‘Trust this sweet man’ versus ‘No! Danger! Danger!’ I just…couldn’t make up my mind. My Gram was smart, and from what I’ve heard, my mom was too. And yet two terrible guys managed to fool those two smart, beautiful women into falling in love with them. It’s not like those guys would have shown who they really were on their first few dates. How could I be sure I wasn’t being fooled too?”
The time I’d spent worrying over her mixed signals suddenly doesn’t seem like much, now that I know the context. I can’t even imagine how a child could grow up able to deal with that history, much less have to suddenly face becoming a mom in a whole new untried relationship.
I shift in my chair. “Yeah, I can understand that.” Pause. “Anything else you need to tell me, though?”
She actually laughs. A real laugh that makes me smile too. “How about—I’m starving? What do you want to do for dinner tonight?”
Some inside still-worried part of me relaxes. She doesn’t want time away from me.
I feel like celebrating what seems like a leap forward for us. “Tonight…I think we need a break from cooking. Wanna go out to the roadhouse?”
She tips her head, then nods. “Yeah. I think their barbecue chicken might be just what I need. But I have a couple more hours of work to do here.”
It’s almost five already. No way should she put off eating for hours if she’s already hungry. “How about I go get carryout? I’ll see if any of the kids need homework help after we eat.”
“Sounds good. I’ll walk you out. I accidentally left my phone in my car.”
Out in the lobby, Andi stops at the desk and tells Pattie I’ll be coming back in a bit with food.
Pattie looks us over, clearly trying to decide what we were doing in Andi’s office all that time, but she just says, “Okay. Y’all got any Thanksgiving plans?”
Andi pauses at the door. “Kevin’s going home to Nebraska. I’ll be here in case of emergency.”
Darn. Still a “no” on the trip. Okay, then. Time for me to show I’m a big boy and not a controlling, whiny, demanding asshole.
“You should go with him.” Pattie gives Andi a stern look. “Maybe if you disappear for a few days, your stalker will finally give up and leave us alone.”
Well, that stings. “Dang, Pattie, that’s harsh. I’m not a stalker.”
Pattie looks at me oddly and frowns. “What?”
“I mean, calling me a stalker is a little rude.” Criminy, is that me standing up for myself?
Her eyebrows shoot up and her gaze moves to Andi, who has me by the wrist and is urging me toward the door. And Pattie says, “Oh, honey, no, I’m not talking about you. I mean the asshole who’s been sending the anonymous threats.”
My brain stutters, freezes, and then bursts into flame. Andi, who I just asked if she has any more secrets, seems to have neglected to mention that someone has been sending her threats.
“Salazar…” The word comes out a growl as I swing around to look at her.
She gives my wrist a hard tug and we’re through the door, and just as I’m about to start yelling, she says, “Mahoney, there’s a lemur you need to see in the parking lot.”