CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After they answered all the questions the police had for them and they were finally cleared to leave, Stuart couldn’t get Tabby away from that house fast enough. He grabbed her and her overnight bag, put them in his Porsche, and took off.
But those neighbors in that neighborhood most people would regard as the bottom of the barrel, were looking out for Tabitha that night.
But the further they got away from her house, the more emotional Tabby seemed to become. By the expression on her face, he could tell what was getting to her. “You aren’t running away, Tabby.”
She was surprised he guessed what she was thinking about. “It feels like it though.”
“You’re leaving your home until we find out if those boys will be released anytime soon. That’s all you’re doing. Once that’s all settled, then you’ll be able to go back home. But you aren’t going back there until it’s settled.”
He wasn’t sure if she agreed with him. He glanced at her as he drove. “You do understand that. Don’t you?”
She nodded. She understood it. But what she didn’t understand was why did he care. She looked at him. “Why did you come back?” she asked him.
It was a question that had plagued him too. But he wasn’t going to lie to her. “I sensed something was wrong and I couldn’t shake it. So I had to make sure that my instinct was wrong. I had to make sure you were still okay.”
“Your instinct was right. I wasn’t okay.”
He exhaled. “No you wasn’t okay.” He looked at her. “Unfortunately baby.” He took her hand and held it.
Stuart didn’t know why he took her hand, or why he used such an obvious term of endearment, but he didn’t take it back either. And he didn’t release her hand. He was all-in with this girl. He didn’t know why, but he was all-in.
But only until he got her settled, was what he told himself.
Tabby heard him call her baby, and she saw the way he was holding her hand, but she was certain it was just because he felt bad for her.
Nothing more than that. At least, she wasn’t going to let herself think it was anything more than that.
She had enough going on. Falling for some businessman who didn’t even live in Larkin, only to end up with her heart broken, wasn’t going to be another thing she had to deal with.
“I need to call somebody to replace that broken window,” she said.
“I already spoke with the chief. He’s ordered a glass company to come out there tonight and take care of it. To protect his crime scene, was his excuse. But it’ll protect your home as well.”
Tabby leaned her head back. “My house is now a crime scene. I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe those boys would do that to me. They were always so nice and friendly to me.”
“Until your boyfriend showed up in a Porsche.”
Tabby looked at him. “My boyfriend?
Stuart realized he hadn’t given any context. He wasn’t sure if it was an accidental slip, or a purposeful one. But it was a definite slip. “I meant to say,” he said, “until the man they perceived was your boyfriend showed up.”
Tabby heard his clarification, but she wasn’t sure if she believed it.
Was the reason he was so helpful to her because he liked her?
Could it be as simple as that? He didn’t come across to her as a man starved for female affection.
Not a man who looked like him. Or was he one of those guys that had to have a woman in every town he visited, and she was the one he wanted it this town?
She didn’t know. And in the moment, she didn’t care. She was still too shaken by what her own neighbors tried to do to her to even try to care about anything else.
Stuart was shaken by his slip of the tongue. Why did he say such a thing? Didn’t she say she had a boyfriend and she caught him in bed with another woman? She claimed she didn’t want him anymore, but that was what they all claimed. “Are you going to let your boyfriend know what happened?”
Tabby looked at him again. “My boyfriend?” What was with him and that word all of a sudden? “What boyfriend?”
“The one you told me about. You said you caught that girl in bed with him.”
“And I told you I left him that same day. What I look like staying with a cheater? I hate that junk and before we even hooked up I told him I hated it. But he did it anyway. Which is what all these men do anyway. I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t want one either.”
She said that bluntly enough, Stuart thought.
Which should have given him solace. The last thing he wanted was some young lady looking for more from him than he was willing to give to anybody, let alone somebody he’d just met.
But it didn’t bring him solace at all. In an odd way, he felt a bit disappointed. Which mystified him.
“Why did you come back?” She asked this question again, but this time she didn’t look at him.
“I told you why.”
“You told me you had a feeling something was wrong.” Then she looked at him. “You didn’t tell me why you acted on that feeling.”
Stuart turned a corner. “I’m amazed at how little this town has changed.”
“Stuart, why?” She felt a need to know.
“I have no idea why I went back,” he finally said to her. “I went back. I don’t know why.”
She could live with that answer. It sounded raw and honest to her. “Thank you,” she said heartfelt. “I don’t know what would have happened to me if you didn’t come back. I’ll never forget that.”
“That’s what you said about that tip.”
She managed to smile. “And I never forgot that too.”
The sincerity he saw in her eyes was what got him every time. “I thank God I was able to get there in time, Tabby.”
She nodded. “Me too,” she said with furrowed eyebrows, and she said it in a way that endeared her to him even more.
Then she thought about something. “Wasn’t you supposed to meet a realtor?”
“Yes. But I canceled while the cops were questioning you,” he said.
But that answer, for some reason, touched her even more than the fact that he came back to her house. That answer only made her keep taking peeps at him. After what Darius did to her, she was ready to close the book on men. She was ready to live her life alone for the rest of her life.
But then she met a man like Stuart. A man who at first didn’t want to help her seemingly at all, but did so anyway.
And now seemed actually willing to help her.
Why else would he take charge of her safety like he was doing?
He could have turned her over to the cops and took off.
But he didn’t. That fact, and the fact that he cancelled the very appointment he came all the way to Ohio to handle, his mother’s property, loomed large to her.
And the fact that he, consciously or not, referred to himself as her boyfriend loomed even larger.
Not that he meant it. He couldn’t have meant it.
But because he said it and didn’t immediately correct himself was what still lingered with her.
Because that was different. She was accustomed to men who couldn’t wait to run away from commitment of any degree, rather than volunteer for it.
But Stuart took it upon himself to come back to her.
That was the difference. That was a welcomed change.
And that was why she stopped asking him questions because she knew it was all good, but it was also all temporary.
This man would soon leave Larkin and go on with his life.
He’d forget her face first, and then her name.
He would soon forget all about her. So she stopped sweating the small stuff and just enjoyed his goodness while she could.
But when he took her to the best motel in a town that had no hotels, and checked them into a room together, his goodness took on an entirely different meaning.