Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Tanner looked down at his hands. At the white marks where the straps had dug in. Then he held one bag out and Miles took it without touching anything else. Tanner kept the other. He didn’t know why that mattered, but it did.
“Okay,” Miles said.
Savannah gave a tired whimper and slumped more heavily against Tanner. He shifted her automatically, but the movement made his arms ache. He was shaking enough that he couldn’t hide it now.
Miles saw that too. “You want me to take her?”
The answer came out before Tanner thought about it. “No.”
Miles nodded like he’d expected that answer. “Alright.”
Tanner felt exposed all of a sudden. Too many people. Too much light. Too much chance that someone would start paying attention now the bus had gone and they were still there.
Miles must have read it on his face. “Let’s get out of here.”
They started walking toward the doors with Miles a little behind. Close enough to be there but far enough not to crowd him.
Savannah’s head lolled against Tanner’s shoulder. She had gone quiet in that wrung-out way that came after too much crying. Tanner kissed the side of her head.
Once outside, Miles led them toward a dark truck parked away from the front and Tanner slowed when he saw it. Not because he didn’t know the truck, but because getting in it made this real.
Miles stopped too, reading the hesitation at once. “You can still say no,” he said.
Tanner looked at him sharply. “And then what?”
Miles held his gaze. “Then I stay here with you until you can think clearly enough to tell me what you need.”
Tanner looked away. He was too tired to keep fighting every inch. Too wrung out. Too ashamed of the tears Savannah had cried and the way his own body still felt half-ready to run even now.
“We’re going home,” he muttered.
Miles unlocked the truck with a click. “Yeah.”
He opened the back door first and Tanner stared at the car seat already fixed there and felt something twist low in his stomach. Either Miles had kept it in there because he’d been coming around enough that it made sense, or he’d moved fast once he knew what he was walking into tonight.
Either way, the sight of it made Tanner feel worse and safer at the same time. It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did, seeing proof that Miles had already been thinking about Savannah too.
Miles waited while Tanner got Savannah settled. She roused enough to fuss when he loosened his hold, then quieted when he buckled her in and tucked the rabbit into her lap. Her eyes were already closing again before he shut the door.
Tanner stood there with one hand on the roof of the truck and realized his own hands were trembling so badly they rattled against the metal.
Miles didn’t say a word about it.
He took the second bag from Tanner only when Tanner let it go and put both in the truck bed. Then he came back around and opened the passenger door.
Tanner climbed in because his body moved. The cab smelled faintly of coffee, and Miles. Familiar enough now that it made Tanner’s throat tighten again. Miles got in on the driver’s side, shut the door, and started the engine. For a few seconds neither of them spoke.
Tanner stared through the windshield. His pulse was still too high. His skin felt too tight. The crash after his panic was starting to hit and he could feel it.
He had really packed a bag and taken Savannah to a bus station because of a letter. No, not just a letter.
Miles put the truck in gear and pulled out of the space. “We’re going home,” he said.
Something in Tanner relaxed enough that he had to turn his face toward the window. The lights from the bus station slid away behind them. He kept his eyes on the road and tried not to think beyond the next ten minutes or the next turn or the next set of lights.
Miles drove the way he always did. Nothing in the cab except the engine, the road, and Savannah’s occasional sleepy sniff from the back.
After a while Miles said, “Cody knows you’re with me.”
“And Orsen, probably,” Miles added. “Mrs. Hemsworth too.”
Tanner shut his eyes briefly. “Great.”
“Nobody’s coming over tonight.”
That made his eyes open again. “You told them that?”
“I told them I’d get you home first.”
The first wave of relief from that was followed almost immediately by suspicion. “And then what?”
“Then tonight is tonight.”
Tanner frowned. “That doesn’t answer anything.”
“It answers tonight.”
Tanner leaned his head back against the seat and stared at the dark road ahead. He was too tired to ask for more. Part of him didn’t want more yet. Anything bigger meant tomorrow, and tomorrow meant the letter was still waiting on the counter. Tanner tensed.
Miles noticed because he noticed too much. “Breathe slower.”
Tanner almost snapped at him, but somehow he didn’t.
A minute later Miles said, “You did stop.”
Tanner snorted. “Do I get a medal?”
“No.” Miles kept his eyes on the road. “You get credit for the thing you managed when it would’ve been easier not to.”
Tanner looked at him then. Miles’ hands were steady on the wheel. His face gave away little in the dark. But there was no softness there. Just the truth of what he’d said. Tanner looked away again because he didn’t know what to do with that.
By the time they turned onto his road, Savannah was fully asleep in the back.
The house came into view under the porch light Mrs. Hemsworth must have turned on after they left. Tanner stared at it as Miles pulled in.
It looked exactly the same. Except Tanner wasn’t the same man who had left two hours earlier. Or maybe he was, and that was the problem.
Miles killed the engine and neither of them moved straight away.
Tanner could feel the shaking in his hands again now that they’d stopped. He pressed them flat to his thighs, but it didn’t help. Miles glanced at him, saw it, and looked away again without comment.
“I’ll get the bags,” Miles said.
Tanner nodded because speaking felt too hard right then. He got out and opened the back door carefully. Savannah didn’t wake when he unbuckled her. She slumped into him with her rabbit under one arm. He held her close and shut the door with his hip.
Miles was already at the porch by the time Tanner reached it. The front door key felt clumsy in Tanner’s hand and he missed the lock the first time and then the second. On the third try the key slid in and turned.
The front door opened and Tanner saw the CPS letter where he’d left it, visible even from the doorway.
Tanner stopped dead, staring at it. Miles came up behind him and waited for him to move.
For one long second Tanner thought he might start shaking hard enough to drop Savannah, then Miles stepped around him.
He put the bags inside, walked into the kitchen and turned the letter face down.
“Take her up,” Miles said quietly.
Tanner carried Savannah upstairs and laid her on the bed without even trying to get her changed. He took off her shoes, loosened her coat, tucked the blanket around her, and stood there for a second with his hand on her back to make sure she stayed settled.
She sighed once and burrowed deeper into the pillow.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though she was asleep and couldn’t hear him.
When he came back downstairs, Miles was in the kitchen with the kettle filled but not switched on, as though he wasn’t sure whether Tanner would want a drink or silence or him gone.
Tanner stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gripped the banister.
The crash had hit him now, and exhaustion, shame, and fear were also still there underneath it all.
Miles looked up and watched him.
Tanner opened his mouth, not sure what to say. “My hands won’t stop shaking.”
Miles glanced down, then back up. “Sit.”
Tanner sat at the kitchen table and put both hands flat on the surface, trying to stop them from shaking. Miles switched the kettle on and moved around the kitchen, grabbing what he needed. The ordinary sound of it filled the room just enough to keep the silence from getting to Tanner.
When he put a glass of water in front of Tanner instead of coffee, he looked at it, then at him.
“Drink first,” Miles said.
Miles sat opposite after Tanner had taken a few swallows. Tonight, for the first time since opening the letter, Tanner was back in his own kitchen with Savannah upstairs asleep in her bed and Miles across from him. Strong and steady and just what Tanner needed, even if he didn’t want to admit it.