Chapter 8
HeartBroke
Bryant
I tried to stop myself. Before I knew it, I was cupping her face with both of my hands. Her skin felt as smooth as I thought it would. I didn't want to stop touching her. "If he was really that stupid to think you weren't enough, he doesn't deserve you. Any man who is lucky enough to be in your presence should never take that for granted. Ever. They should know that being married to you is a privilege." If I could predict her reaction, I would have kissed her. Right then. Right there. With everything she had been through, I knew not to push her away, and I couldn't be sure that kissing her wouldn't do that.
Tears formed in her eyes. I was positive no one had ever said anything close to that to her. It made removing my hands that much harder because I had so many words I needed to say to her.
Several other cars had started to pull in, including Adam’s, so I released her and let her walk away. He parked close to the door and Cricket leaped out before he came to a complete stop. She was crazy.
“How was lunch?” Adam unlocked the back door and led the way inside.
I tried to keep a straight face, failing miserably.
“Did she pop off anymore random facts about animals and their sexual encounters?” He asked, laughing so loud the noise echoed as we entered the building.
I shoved his shoulder with mine. I had told Adam about the messages, after trying to decipher them on my own. Adam was convinced Amberly liked me. “Seriously, dude, don’t say anything to anybody else about those. I don’t want any of the guys here thinking any different of her.”
Both Amberly and Cricket were respected by the guys in the shop, though some of the guys still flirted. Amberly could hold her own though. I’d seen her last week bantering with one of the other mechanics. Jackson. That was his name. I think.
“I won’t say anything.” He promised as he turned on the lights to the area. We had three cars on lifts and two prepped and ready to fly through the painting booth.
I tried so fucking hard to concentrate on what I was doing, despite the fact Amberly's pain was weighing down on me. Not a single thing that had happened to her had been deserved. She was the last person I had expected to lose so much. How she was coping with it was beyond me. I ached for her. I ached to erase every ounce of anguish from her. Though she put on a front, it was easy for me to see what she was going through. Her eyes revealed so much her mouth refused to say.
I left the parking lot after work, clocking out a little earlier to meet Mac at the mall parking lot where we had agreed over the weekend.
When she pulled up in a Chevrolet Cruze, I got out of my truck. I had changed out of the shirt I wore for Skrillex, trading it in for a white t-shirt.
“Funny, I went to the police station and they said you no longer worked there. They said you quit. What kind of shit are you trying to pull?”
I sighed and stuffed my hands into my pockets to prevent myself from hitting her. I had never hit a woman in my life, but Mac made me want to incorporate a habit of it. Strictly dedicated to her, of course. “No, Mac, I don’t work there anymore.”
“Perfect. You'll be teaching Delia to lie just like you in no time. Father of the year." She gripped both of her widened hips and tilted her head to the side. "Can I ask why?"
From that angle, I could see a bald spot building its way on the top of her head where she parted her hair. Her hair was suffering through the many boxes of Wal-Mart hair dye she’d subjected it to. I think the color she used was golden blond, but it looked as though she constantly got into fights with gallons of bleach.
“You can but it doesn’t mean I’m going to answer.”
She came closer, pursing her lips together before opening her mouth again. “That’s why you don’t have me on your life insurance anymore.”
I frowned. “No. I told you why I don’t have you on it anymore.”
I didn’t even know what the point of meeting her here was. I leaned to the side, noticing her car was void of Delia. “Where’s my daughter?”
“MY daughter is at home with Ian. It’s not your time with her. Anyways, I guess I’ll give you time to get life insurance set up where ever you’re working now.”
I withdrew my hands and scrubbed them against my face. “Mac, I’m not adding you to my life insurance policy.” Was she really that stupid? I knew she had eyes as wide as a deer noticing an oncoming car, generally making her look like she was shocked and confused all the time. But...really?
Anger registered in her eyes, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. See to it that I am able to give it to Delia when something happens to you.”
I laughed and widened my eyes. “When? Is that a threat?”
She scoffed and jutted her hip out. “No. I wouldn’t waste my time trying to plot your death.”
“Ok then. Delia will receive my benefits, if I die, after she turns eighteen. Is there anything else you wanted?”
She turned on her heel and drug out a plastic bag from her backseat. She dropped it at my feet. “Here.”
I knelt down and peeked inside. Pictures. Dozens of pictures that Mac had taken from our home when she left. I could stop questioning why she had taken them, deciding it was out of spite. She never thought I’d ask for them back, and if I did, I could bet she didn’t think I’d get them. The judge ordered her to return all the pictures that belonged to me.
“Hang on.” I picked up the bag and tossed it in the passenger side of my pickup, grabbing a few items of mail that had gotten sent to my house. I handed them to her. “I’ve asked you several times to get your address changed.”
“It is changed.” She rotated the mail, checking each one. “You act like my mail always gets sent to your house.”
“All I’m asking is to contact those companies directly and make sure they’ve got your correct address.”
“Whatever. Oh, I’m taking Delia out of town for a couple of weeks.”
“When?”
“Next month.”
I calmed myself before addressing what she’d said. “You can’t do that. You have to give me written notice thirty days beforehand.”
“I can do that and I will. What are you going to do? Take me back to court?”
I shook my head and walked away from her. She was always doing this shit to me. As soon as I got into my truck, she went back to her car, peeling out of the parking lot. I turned the key and felt the vibration of my cell phone against my hip.
I think I’ve got something.
Lucas’ text flashed across my screen and I held my breath, hoping to God it wasn’t a fluke.
Lucas Camden lived in a dark, wooded area, his driveway equaling that of a very confusing maze. His home sat on top of a hill that overlooked a pond overrun by snapping turtles. I’d come to his place a few times, after my separation from Mac, to fish. The tranquility soothed my aching heart. He had talked some sort of sense into me, reasoning that Mac hadn’t been the person I married. He even disclosed information about her that left my heart broke and my stomach collapsing with sickness. According to him, Mac had been caught, on more than one occasion, trying to get a few of my coworkers in bed. Her infidelity even reached out to the president of the softball organization.
Now, I wondered why I had spent so much time and energy getting over her when she'd never been worth one tear.
“Hey, man.” Lucas opened his door, the burning wood from his fireplace infiltrating my senses.
I shook his hand and seated myself on his brown, leather sofa. “What did you find?” I wasted no time interrogating him.
He picked up a manila folder from his coffee table and handed it to me.
I scanned over the papers, realizing it was the documentation of an arrest I’d made on the very day the anonymous call came in that I had drugs in my squad car. “What’s this?” The name on the ticket was Sadie Wilcox.
“That is the ticket you wrote Sadie Wilcox. You also hauled her into the county jail that day for a warrant for unpaid tickets.” He pointed to the papers rather forcefully, nearly knocking them out of my grasp.
“What does this prove?”
Lucas grinned. Like the damn Cheshire cat, which meant he knew something I didn’t. My brain wasn’t processing the significance of Sadie’s arrest to the day I was let go. The drugs could have been planted at any point.
“It proves,” Lucas flipped his television on, “that Sadie Wilcox is behind what happened that day.”
I shook my head, regretting wasting my time. Lucas was the type of cop who looked for meaning in things that were never there. I assumed this was another one of his stunts to prove my innocence. It gutted him, almost as much as it had gutted me, when I had been told to walk away from my position.
I had found zero evidence of any foul play the day I’d borrowed the documents from all the tickets I’d written and arrests I made. I hadn’t given another thought to Sadie Wilcox being the culprit behind my demise. That’s because there’d been a couple other tickets written that day. “Wait, she wasn’t the only one I wrote a ticket for. I wrote a couple more tickets after that.” I snapped my fingers, digging into my memories to pull out the names of the other two.
Lucas pressed a button on his remote, his television flashing with footage from inside my squad car. He fast forwarded through the footage, though the pace was still slow enough to see what was going on. He paused it once Sadie’s face came into view. Still holding the remote, he pointed to the screen. “You did write two other tickets and even made another arrest that day, but Sadie is the only one who sat in the passenger seat of your car while you got back out to inspect a blown tail light. You made her sit inside while you did that and once you ran her license plate, you arrested her and sat her in the back seat.” He shrugged with nonchalance, as though I would piece together what he was getting at.
I was more than confused and Lucas read it, sighing with irritation. He pushed play again, this time making sure the tape played at a slow-as-snail’s pace. You could see Sadie’s movement as she bent down. It was mere seconds and anyone could write it off as though she had scratched at her leg or readjusted her shoe. When she came up she pulled both lips in and started looking around. Without proof of anything, you could tell she had done something she wasn’t supposed to be doing. Still, it wasn’t a sure sign of anything.
“What makes you so sure that Sadie did this? And, why would she do this? I don’t even know the woman.”
Lucas switched the screen to a local news channel, taking the tape from his VCR. He chugged down a gulp from the beer he’d been holding since I arrived. “I found documentation that the drugs were found underneath the floor mat on the passenger side of your vehicle.”
I was growing impatient. “Get to the point.”
“Do you not remember that day?”
“Not really.” That day had become a huge blur once the chief mentioned drugs. As days passed, my memory of that day faded.
Lucas downed another sizable dose of his beer and sat adjacent to me on his love seat. He bent over, his forearms resting on his thighs. “There was a vehicle inspection that day. It was right after the other tickets and arrests you made and before Sadie’s.” He took the folder from me and flipped through it, pulling out a sheet of paper. He held it up.
Sure enough, in bright green letters, was the word ‘passed’ on the inspection of my vehicle. My name and car number were written in black ink at the top of the paper.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I whispered the words with absolute hatred. Who was Sadie Wilcox and why the hell would she plant drugs in my car? “Have you showed this to anyone else?”
“Not yet.”