Chapter 9
FOX
When she returns, I’ve run about twenty different scenarios in my head about what she’s going to share with me, including the news that she’s pregnant.
I could be completely wrong. She could be in a happy, healthy relationship with the father of the baby.
Or not. And Ava could be right.
Anger swells through me, just imagining that there’s a man out there who could hit her. And maybe the same man who hit her also made love to her, got her pregnant, then hit her again.
I stand up and pace the porch, clenching and unclenching my fists, trying to pull myself together before she returns.
What if she tells me she’s going back to him after she leaves here?
I won’t let her.
I rub my hands over my face and try to calm down. Now is not the time to lose it. Pull your shit together. If she’s been around an angry man, she doesn’t need to see you looking like you’re going to punch a wall.
She opens the door, balancing a tray with two pieces of pie and a dollop of whipped cream on top. She has a smudge of whipped cream on her nose. Maybe she put it there because she knows it’s so damn cute. I have an overwhelming desire to kiss it off.
“I was in a car wreck,” she says.
“Just now?”
She snorts out a laugh.
I pull a table over so she can set the tray down in front of us.
“My face,” she says. “The bruises. They’re still obvious.
I was in a car accident, and I’m still recovering, and that’s why they’re there.
The bruises, I mean. And the scar.” The words are rushed together.
“The car didn’t have airbags. It was older, so…
” She takes a breath. The rushed words and how she’s looking at me, assessing how I’m taking her words means that she could be nervous or lying.
She bends down to pick up one of the plates. “But this is what I wanted to share. The pie. I remembered I had two pieces.”
“You just remembered, huh?” I take the plate from her. “I think you were deciding whether I was worthy of sharing your pie, and that’s why there was no mention of it before.”
“You’ll never know, will you? But if that was the case, can you blame me? I can only fit so much pie in my bike basket.”
“Looks like Ned rigged it so you can fit a whole pie in there now. Maybe a couple? And plenty of whipped cream for your nose.”
She snorts, then sits and nibbles at her piece of pie.
“When Ned was here, he mentioned a secret compartment somewhere in the house,” she says. “Do you know anything about it?”
“No.”
“He wouldn’t tell me where it was.”
My phone dings, and I put my empty plate down. “Sorry. Let me just make sure everything’s okay.”
Lacy: Skye said the route from Paradise Springs to May Ranch is starting to flood. Are you home?
I stand. “Unless you want me bunking with you on our first date, I have to go.”
She stares blankly at me for a moment, and I’m almost kicking myself for calling this a date until her whole face lights up like a Christmas tree.
“Hold on!” She runs back and returns with the book.
“You probably won’t have a lot of reading time in the next couple days, but I’m done with this.
” She stands on her tiptoes, leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she says softly.