Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
HOW MANY PEOPLE know your last boyfriend hit you?
Bailey’s heart raced as she stared at Dawson in the shadowed lawn off the porch. How could he have figured out her secret?
Already she could hear her dad getting out of his car in the front yard. Hazel barked like crazy while Dad shushed her.
“My father—” she stammered. “He’ll come this way to go inside.” She pointed at the door behind her, her movements awkward and wooden. “Please.” She swallowed a lump of panic. “Don’t say anything.”
Dawson’s jaw went rigid. With anger? Disappointment? She couldn’t tell. But something in his expression indicated he didn’t much care to keep her secret. He nodded stiffly.
“How did you know?” she whispered, her ears attuned to the sound of her father’s uneven gait. He’d been injured in Afghanistan when she was in grade school, retiring from the military with a lot of honors but—as her mom put it—more ghosts than medals.
“I’ve seen the signs before when a friend went through it.” Dawson didn’t bother lowering his voice. “With you, though, it was only a guess.”
A guess she’d just confirmed.
Heart sinking, she cursed herself for being so easy to read. Although how could this boy who hardly knew her figure her out so fast? Before she could worry that one to bits, her father called to her.
“Bailey?” His uneven footsteps slowed for a second before picking up pace again. Hazel beat him around the corner, tail wagging, a fluorescent orange ball in her mouth. “You out here?”
He must have heard their voices.
“Yes, Dad. My friend Dawson is here.” She kept her eyes on him, hoping he was as good as his word.
Didn’t he owe her his silence after tricking her?
“Do I know a Dawson?” Dad asked as he limped around the corner. His prosthetic had never fit him well, but he had gotten tired of having it adjusted.
Mom said that was because he liked to punish himself. But it occurred to Bailey now that most of what she knew about her father had been filtered through Mom. And how reliable was that information?
“No.” She took the damp ball from Hazel’s mouth and tossed it across the yard, sending a furry torpedo hurtling into the woods after it. “He’s new to Mrs. Hasting’s house.”
Everyone in town knew the pizza-shop owners took in a lot of fosters. Mr. Hasting had been on the town council with Mom.
“Welcome to Heartache, Dawson.” Her dad was still built like a marine with his square shoulders and heavy arms, and when he reached to shake hands with Dawson, she hoped he wouldn’t flex too much muscle. “Cole McCord.”
“Nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for your service.”
Bailey watched her father’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
But the “First In, Last Out” ball cap he wore must have been what had given him away.
Still, she couldn’t remember any of her other friends ever commenting on her father’s veteran status, no matter that half his clothes bore some version of the eagle, globe and anchor.
“You’re welcome, son. Although all the thanks in the world doesn’t take away the fact that Bailey’s not allowed to have male company unchaperoned.”
Oh God.
“Dad.” She spoke on top of Dawson, who’d already blurted something about being there only a minute. “He rode his bike over a minute ago and we didn’t go inside.”
Her father was already squinting into the screened porch, though, his attention now on something else.
“What the hell are all those bags?”
She tensed. As if she hadn’t been tense enough to start with. She stuffed the toe of her gym shoes into the patchy grass.
“Um. Mom was here. She brought groceries.”
“You did not let her in that house.” Her father glared at her.
Bad enough to bully Dawson, but he wasn’t going to bully her, too, damn it.
“I helped her unload the bags from her car, and then I put them on the porch so my favorite granola did not sit outside on the ground where Hazel could sneak it into the bushes to eat.” She folded her arms around an ache in her heart that hurt 24/7, missing the mother she remembered all the more.
Mom had been good at standing up to Dad.
But then, she’d also lied and cheated on him.
Her heart softened a little as Hazel returned with the ball, nudging her hand insistently to throw it again. Dawson took it from the dog without a word, throwing it for her and making a new friend.
“Fine.” Dad headed up the steps. “You and your friend can visit while I put away the groceries. But it is a school night.”
“I saw some beef jerky in there.” Bailey wished he’d at least be civil to her mother again. No matter who was wrong, it sucked that she was caught in the middle.
“I’ll buy my own damn groceries,” he grumbled. “These are all for you.”
“There’s beer, too,” she couldn’t resist adding, winking at Dawson behind her father’s back until she remembered that Dawson wasn’t happy with her, either.
“No doubt trying to butter me up before I hear from her attorney,” he groused through the screen as he leaned over to pick up the bags. He jostled them both to one arm, reached inside and pulled out a six-pack. He dropped it in the industrial-size trash, and a few of the cans hissed open.
“Should we help him?” Dawson watched Cole’s awkward movements as he edged around furniture. This time, Dawson did lower his voice so only she could hear.
“Not unless you want your head bitten off for suggesting he can’t handle it himself.” She’d learned that at the tender age of ten when she’d wanted to attach the straps on his prosthetic for him.
He’d yelled at her so hard she’d cried the rest of the afternoon.
That was one of many times her mother had tried to explain to her about the “ghosts” that had come home with her father after his last tour of duty.
There’d been a lot of years since then, but her father had never sought help for the temper, the bitterness or the nightmares that sometimes woke the whole house.
“Guess I’ll pass.” Dawson shrugged out of his hoodie and handed it to her. “You should put this on. It’s getting cold.”
She wanted to refuse. Still miffed about the way he’d tricked her into revealing the truth about her relationship with J.D., she had a retort at the ready. But he simply lowered it to her shoulders like a shawl.
Surrounding her in warmth and boy scent. Not sweat, either. Something good-smelling.
“Can we sit on the swings next door?” he asked, squatting down to greet Hazel’s triumphant return.
The dog eyed Dawson sidelong and refused to give him the ball back even though she kept nudging his knee with her head. The flirt.
“Sure.” She didn’t want her father to overhear this.
Tromping through the wet grass, she held on to the sweatshirt to make sure it didn’t fall off her shoulders. Then again, maybe she was trying to burrow deeper in it.
When they reached the old swing set that had belonged to the family that used to live there, Dawson wiped off one of the plastic seats with his palm and indicated she sit before lowering himself into the other.
Thoughtful.
“Why haven’t you told anyone?” he asked as he wrestled the ball from Hazel and threw it again.
Nearby another dog barked from someone else’s backyard. She could see into her kitchen through the back window. Her father had removed his marines cap and was working to unload the groceries.
Alone.
“Because it’s over. Done.” She kept telling herself that, anyway.
“How is it over when you’re still ditching school to avoid him? He still scares you.” He leaned forward, one shoulder pressed to the chain.
“He caught me off guard today.” Seeing him had triggered a sick feeling in her gut. “I didn’t know until I saw him that he’d gotten out of jail. Or juvenile detention. Or wherever he’s been.”
Digging her toe through the clumpy old sand beneath her seat, she felt stupid for letting herself crush on Dawson even a little bit.
Hadn’t she known from the start that her past with J.D.
made her a loser? A stronger girl—like Megan—would not have put up with being talked down to. Being shoved around.
Worse.
“But now he’s free to walk around town.” He reached for the chain on her swing, bringing her closer. So close her denim-clad knee brushed his. “You can’t afford to hide the truth anymore.”
A million thoughts tumbled through her mind. Like how Dawson had guessed the truth in the first place. Why he’d cared enough to come over and talk to her about it. What he thought of her.
But all of it got overridden by that touch of their knees. By his hand so close to hers on the swing chain. A finger’s width apart, maybe. Her heart pounded wildly.
“Everyone will think I’m a coward for not standing up to him.” Which she supposed was true.
Hazel returned, running around them in circles before lying down nearby to gnaw on the orange ball.
“If you out him for the bastard he is, Bailey, everyone is going to see you’ve got plenty of spine.” Even as the words were kind, his voice was hard.
His eyes took on a steely challenge.
She pulled her swing chain from his grip and let the seat straighten itself out again, her feet whirling in the moonlight for a moment before she righted herself.
“I still don’t understand how you could tell.”
“The Hastings’ house is my fifth foster home. I’ve been around other kids who’ve been hurt by people they trusted. I know what that looks like.”
“There are no bruises.” She slanted a glance his way.
He shook his head. “I’ve survived the foster system this long by being able to read people. And I can spot fear and betrayal almost as fast as I can spot an abuser.”
She hated to imagine how he’d come by that kind of knowledge.
“Someone hurt a friend of yours?”