Chapter Twenty-Three
What were they looking at? Charlie hurried forth, wanting to join the little sunset scene.
T.R. looked up from their makeshift desk, those wire-framed glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose.
He looked downright scholarly, despite the chunky contractor’s pencil between his teeth like a buccaneer’s saber. And then, his dimple popped as his eyes softened, gaze dipping to her banjo case. She’d pleased him.
He returned his attention to Daisy and their task, pointing to a paper.
“Twisht de compassh like … that … prrfect.” He whipped the pencil out of his mouth to mark something as she rotated a compass, and he guided her with a gentle correction.
“Look at that perfect ninety-degree arc … keep pressure on the needle—up here.” He tapped her fingers with a reminder, and she tightened her loosening hold.
“Hold the knob on the hinge. Nice, girlie…”
Charlie eased up behind them and took in the framed-in coop. Looked down to see drafting paper, a measuring triangle, a protractor, laid out neatly as he helped Daisy pick up the compass and place it down on another penciled dot, rotating it.
She’d never seen Daisy concentrating so hard. And the blueprint?
“Incredible … it’s going to be a chicken mansion,” she breathed, leaning around them to see the detailed drawing.
“Hi, Mommy!” her daughter chirped, glancing up.
Mommy? She hadn’t been mommy in a couple years now.
“T. Rex is showing me how to find the radian of an arc!”
“A what?”
The compass hopped off step in Daisy’s distraction. The pencil line went askew and skid across T.R.’s precise design.
Daisy dropped it and threw her hands over her mouth, muttering quietly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin the whole thing. Don’t be mad at me please…”
T.R. froze. Eyes flashed unreadably at Charlie, then he squatted down in front of Daisy and peeled her hands from her mouth as his brow riveted with something akin to suppressed fury. “Sweet girl, why would you think I’d be angry?”
Daisy stood silent, eyes watering, as he brushed back a blond wisp from her eyes.
Sweet girl. Charlie’s heart squeezed. That was what she always felt in her heart whenever her daughter was let down.
“But-but my dad is always mad if I make a mess, and I-I thought…”
A tick in T.R.’s jaw jumped. “What’s he do when he gets mad?”
Charlie stepped up behind Daisy and rested her hand on her daughter’s shoulder in solidarity.
“Yells,” Daisy said sheepishly. “Breaks stuff.”
His hands white-knuckled on Daisy’s. She watched him will them to relax.
Then he grinned that bright grin. “Well now, no sense in gettin’ bent out of shape over some pencil. I screw up designs all the time. That’s what erasers are for.”
Daisy’s watery blues widened up at him now. “I’ve got an eraser in my backpack!”
He nodded once and chuckled. “That’s all we need, Daze. An eraser so we can try again.”
“It’s right next to my book in the front pocket! Momma, I got the book all done for tomorrow. Mrs. Rodriguez is going to be so proud of me.”
Daisy bolted away and vanished up the path leading back to the cabin, tramping up the stairs, and through the back door of the house. T.R’s smile vanished like an iron gate slamming shut.
“How on earth did you get her to read? I know it’s a struggle for her, and I try to go slow, but she usually shuts down before we start.”
He shrugged, shook a noncommittal head as if he wasn’t able to speak yet as the proverbial elephant in the room suffocated the silence. Jason’s impact on Daisy.
She looked down at the intricate rendering rolled out across the table. Perfect angles. Layers of lines and measurements jotted neatly in the margins. A drawing sat on the next sheet over. A frontal view of an enclosed hutch, a wired-in yard, perches.
So realistic, like a photograph.
“There’s no way you did all of this over the past two hours.”
He rolled his tongue in his cheek, still tempering his anger and failing at it. “Sat up drawing it out last night,” he bit out. “Didn’t sleep well knowin’ y’all were there alone.”
A series of acronyms in caps, hyphenated, beside numerical quantities sat in a neat list on a spiral legal pad. Not a single line out of place, save Daisy’s scrawl across the page.
Charlie leaned in closer, avoiding harder the worry that lived like a virus in her stomach about Jason, brushing a finger along the perfectly complicated drawing.
“You’re a … genius,” she murmured, taking in a complex equation in crisp numerals. He glanced down at her. Face blank, eyes searching hers as if she hid an alternative meaning. “What?”
He shrugged, a dark laugh rumbling in his chest as he glanced back at the rendering. “I been called a lot of names in my life, but genius ain’t never been one of ’em.”
In spite of his self-deprecating joke, that tick to his jaw worsened, mounting anger that wouldn’t be suppressed no matter how hard she tried to deflect.
Guilt burrowed deep that she hadn’t pushed him away, that he was now invested in her life and was going to end up suffering for it and yet, how much she ached, knowing he was attaching himself to her and Daisy, wanting to protect them even if he didn’t know how, because no one could as long as the judge continued to give Jason a pass.
“What’s that equation?” she forced out through a thickening throat, inching closer to him to ease his tension.
T.R. slipped his glasses back on with his free hand and looked where she was pointing. “Findin’ the degrees of an arc. Need to measure the swing of the door in and out of the coop so no supports obstruct it.”
“This is professional work. You were the math whiz kid, weren’t you?”
He shrugged, the darkness still brewing, despite his curt words and efforts to force that smile. “Only class I aced. Charlie, we gotta talk—”
“What do these letters mean?”
His jaw pumped as his eyes bounced back and forth between hers.
“Abbreviations. Materials needed for the frame and foundation,” he gnashed out, the darkness riveting his brow as he shook his head and slouched a hand on his belt.
“It’s easier for me to jot out abbreviations and keep it simple, otherwise it gets all confusing on the page and …
Jeezus, Charlie.” He spun to her. “Who the fuck breaks shit and yells at a kid for messing up a pencil line?”
*
The darkness tethered by a thread on his tongue rumbled free as he ripped off his glasses again and dropped them atop his rendering, rubbing the corners of his eyes as if seeking composure.
Charlie stepped back, eyes wary. Dammit, he didn’t want to alarm her. He inhaled for composure. But had Daisy confessed something worse, that her daddy put his hands on her, T.R. hadn’t been sure he’d be able to contain the beast within him anymore.
“The way she just reacted, it’s what she expected. Goddammit, I wish I would have known when I met you. I wish—How do you live like this with this … anger?” he gnashed out, Charlie’s hands over her mouth as those tears glistened on her eyelids.
He paced a step. Paced back as he ripped off his Stetson and cast it on top of the glasses, reached out without thinking, opening his arms and God she fell into him. Gripped him. Held onto him as if desperate for a savior.
“Talk to me, darlin’,” he murmured into her hair as they engulfed each other in a tangle of arms. “Don’t cry, just talk to me.”
“No one has ever gone to bat for her before, except me,” Charlie breathed into his shirt. “And I’m losing the battle.”
His pounding heart thundered with desire to track down Jason and knock his teeth around his skull. With a confusing cocktail of wanting to protect these two and needing to feel the pleasure of her seeking solace in his arms, not seeing him as a wild card but trusting him as a sure bet.
“I’ll go to bat, ’kay?”
She rested her cheek to his chest as he spoke. Squeezed him.
“One day of knowin’ all this about Jason and I’m about to bust,” he growled. “Baby, tell me you got that order filed.”
“It’s done.” His heartbeat thudded like horse hooves against her ear. Lilac filled his senses as she burrowed harder into him. “They’re serving him right now.”
“Good,” T.R. crooned, willing his voice to soften for her sake, planting a kiss atop her hair. Another…
She leaned into him, her palms bracing his back as her chest rested against his, this girl needing him and boosting his ego.
His muscles jumped beneath her touch. His lips kept touching her hair.
Now her cheek. This need to feel her, be close to her.
It was sexual, yeah, but it was … more. It was a need to feel needed, to be trusted. It was addictive.
“I-I can’t get away from him, can’t get out from underneath this system, and God but I don’t know that I can do this forever because it’s breaking me.”
*
He remained silent for a beat. Birds chirped.
Then he turned her face up at him with his callused fingertips, so her chin rested on his chest, his touch gentle even if his blues glittered and his words were hungry.
“We’re gonna beat this. You ain’t broken or dead. Hear me? Something here ain’t fair, and we gotta get to the bottom of it.”
She bit her lip. It wasn’t fair. And she’d never had anyone who could help her fight.
“Tell me you understand,” he whispered, eyeing where she pinched her lip and plucking it free, brushing his thumb over it to sooth it, this tell of hers. “That we’re gonna beat this.”
“I can’t send her back with him again.” She squeezed shut her eyes. “Next weekend is her weekend with him before the school year starts, and she’s begging me not to go.”
“She ain’t going back.” His hand held her nape, jostling her for emphasis. “Hear me?”
“I’m … scared.” The admission finally leaked from her lips. “Scared you’ll get hurt. Scared of falling for someone so good and honest, scared of trusting when all trusting ever did was get me into troubl—”
“I’m your trouble.” His lips pressed to hers, as if quelling any further comment.
He cupped her head, his fingers knotting in her hair as a cry left her lips, and before she could think twice, she was grasping his hair, his nape, clenching hard and reaching up to his offering.
So starved for this. She inhaled. Fisted his T-shirt and pulled him closer.
He groaned as if she’d poured rain on the desert, his boots straddling her Birks as he staggered her backward.
Tipped her head, improving his angle. And then his tongue swept hers.
Faint taste of ice cream, a touch of coffee.
Never a single hint of whiskey on the tongue that had traced her navel and whispered sweet nothings against her earlobe and worshiped her lips.
She leaned into the sensation, releasing his shirt and scoring his scalp, knocking his Stetson off completely.
His growl, like a starved man finally nourished, rumbled in his throat as his fingers clenched her hair tighter.
She sank into his expert kiss as his palms spanned her back, sliding beneath her overalls onto the rise of her rear, holding her flush.
He fisted the edge of her shirt as he murmured against her lips, “When do I get to be inside this body again?”
She laughed against his mouth. “Is that all guys ever think about?”
“Yes.” He chuckled, nipping at her. “Hardwired to.”
Her smile softened when the wistfulness set in. She’d seen the evidence of that all over the internet, and the reminder was sobering.
“Hey,” he breathed, tipping his eyes to see hers, as the sound of vehicles climbing the gravel road rumbled in the distance. “Not every guy lets it rule them, though. Not every guy knows how to love, Flower Girl.”
“And you do?” she whispered, picking at his shirt still sweaty from the day.
“I wanna try.” Voice so hoarse. “I don’t want the past to define us. I want roots. I want a, a reason for ’em.”
He wanted a family he could fight for, because he’d never had a family that had fought for him. And for some reason, he saw a chance in her—
“There’s a whole bunch a guys here!” Daisy crowed as the back door slammed open.
The vehicles were rumbling to a stop by the house.
He grinned but didn’t let her jump apart this time.
“Band practice,” he said, waggling his brow and planting a rough smacker to her lips. “C’mon. Show us what Miss Lone Star’s got.”
Thad’s hand slipped free and laced with hers instead, tugging her forward at the boisterous sound of truck doors and laughter and tramping inside, hauling her behind him as he led her up the path past the firepit.
“Hey, Jack! Out back!” Thad shouted.
Nerves skittered through her! What if she sucked?
His bassist pushed through the door. “Yo, T.R.!” he bellowed, tossing a pack of meat onto the picnic table.
“What’ll it be this time? Smokin’ or grillin’?” Thaddeus said as they climbed the stairs, butterflies swirling at the vortex of energy suddenly engulfing them, as the sound of more kids thudding within the belly of the house, as another guy—his drummer Bo?—pushed out the back door, too.
“Grillin’ man. Fire it up. Here’s those dogs your little girl asked for.” He tossed down hot dogs too.
His little girl?
Thad pulled her up next to him and slung his arm around her, like he wanted to show her off.
“Flower Girl, officially meet Jack Daniels—real name—and Bonifacio Hernández,” he said with flourish.
“Or Bo, as we call him.” The drummer smiled, nodding hello, drumsticks protruding from his rear jeans pocket as he set a case of Pbr on the table next to the meat.
Jack noticed her now too.
Dark eyes widening, a grin split his lips. “Looks like you already got somethin’ smokin’ here anyhow, T.R.”
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay—”
“Such as those banjo strings.” Jack’s eyes flashed to Thad’s. “’Bout time T.R. got to you. This mean we can enter the awards?”
They all turned to look at her, all hopes hinged on her.
“I was thinkin’ she could do the Friday gig with us to get her feet wet before the Saturday awards.”
“Are they, uh, televised?” Charlie asked when Daisy pushed out the back door, face full of excitement.
“What d’you say? Play with us?” Thad said as Jack pointed to Charlie’s banjo case.
Daisy’s eyes widened. “You play music, Momma?”