Chapter 18

You better not pout. You better not cry. You better not scream I’m going in dry.

-Text from Krisney to Hennessy

Hennessy

I didn’t watch for him to come home. No, I was in my living room, perfecting the fold in my curtains, and not staring at the road as I waited for my neighbor and ex-lover, as well as soon to be ex-patient, to get home.

Nope, not me, Hennessy Hanes.

I snorted at that lie. Out of all the lies I told myself, the ones that came to Tate were always the worst.

That man had always done something to me, and I had no control over anything when it came to him.

So, there I sat, after finding out that the man had a child, thinking about everything that was wrong with this situation.

At least I’d found out that he didn’t have a child on the way, but one that was already born. Years ago, as a matter of fact.

There was that, I guess.

Krisney had been more than happy to share that news with me via text message.

So yes, I was angry. I was sad. And I was heartbroken. I also most certainly wasn’t waiting by the front window to get a glimpse of him.

He’d looked terrible earlier.

I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

Growling at myself and my inability to let Tate go, I threw the curtains out of my hand and started to pace the length of my living room.

And, ten minutes later when I heard the first sound of my neighbor’s truck pull down our street, I told myself not to do it.

Told myself to be strong. To go into my bedroom and possibly take a nap.

I knew it wasn’t good for me to continue doing this to myself.

But did I do anything smart like that? Hell no, I didn’t.

I went to the window and tried to surreptitiously look out at him, barely parting the curtains.

Only, he saw me.

Why?

Because he hadn’t just pulled down our street, but he’d pulled into his driveway, gotten out, and walked across the street before I’d gotten the courage to look out at him.

Now, instead of acting like I wasn’t here like I was going to do, I had to answer the door because he knew I was home.

I cursed myself for my stupidity and walked to the door, opened it, and stared at him expectantly.

“You want to go steal a dog with me?”

My brows rose at that.

“There was a dog at the house I repossessed a car from today. He or she, I’m not sure which, was skin and bones and I feel like an asshole for leaving it there.”

I thought about it for a moment.

Did I want to get into a vehicle with this man after the day I’d spent worrying about him and what I should and shouldn’t do about our semi-relationship status?

But then I got a load of Tate’s eyes, and immediately reached for my keys.

“Yeah,” I cleared my throat. “Sure.”

“If we take my bike, I might be able to get him faster than if I took the truck,” he paused. “You’ll have to hold onto the dog…shit, that won’t work.”

“We can take my car,” I offered. “I need some gas, but as long as we stop at some point for it, then I think we’ll be okay.”

He pursed his lips in thought, and I started down the steps, knowing what his answer would be before he actually voiced it.

Walking up to my car, I opened it up and slid into the driver’s seat, slamming the door closed.

Then I started it up, thankful when it didn’t do that weird little whine that it’d been doing lately.

Tate slid inside, and immediately slid the seat back as far as it would go—which admittedly wasn’t far.

I smiled and looked away, finding the sight comical.

My heart also hurt.

Having him this near me was doing something strange to my heart.

Especially now that I’d resolved myself to not having him.

It didn’t matter that he may or may not have a kid. It didn’t matter that I’d found him someone else to see for the remainder of his time needed in anger management. It also didn’t matter that I was so in love with him that it physically hurt to be sitting next to him.

What mattered was that I’d broken an ethical code. What mattered was that, with the way his life worked, I wasn’t going to be something special. He’d already told me that he wasn’t willing to change his life.

Plus, I wasn’t willing to live with only half a man who wasn’t willing to put me first.

I’d already done that—lived for another man.

My father had made sure that fairytale and reality were understood. This was the real world, where real world things happened. Sometimes you didn’t get what you wanted. Sometimes your mother died, and left you with a mad man. Sometimes, love wasn’t in the cards.

“Turn left up here, and go about two miles until you see the old truck on the right. Take the turn just after that,” Tate said, interrupting my morose thoughts.

“Okay,” I said softly.

Too softly, apparently, because he said, “Did you hear me?”

I nodded my agreement.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” he asked.

Why wasn’t I talking to him? I wasn’t not talking to him. I just didn’t know what to say at this point.

What did you tell the man that you loved that you weren’t going to have anything to do with him anymore? That you’d transferred his care to another psychologist. That you’d called a realtor to find you a house that was not only not in the vicinity of him, but was in a different town entirely?

“I’m talking to you,” I hedged. “I think I’m coming down with a cold.”

The lie felt bitter on my tongue, but I didn’t really want to talk to him, even though I knew I would have to before the night was over.

He was acting like everything hadn’t changed overnight. Like he didn’t have a child to take care of now—a dying child at that.

I’d learned more over the last couple of hours since I’d been to the diner. Krisney had done nothing but text me for the last four hours about him, and at first I’d ignored them, but my curiosity had always gotten the best of me. This time had been no different.

Although it was all just stuff she’d heard, I was fairly sure that it was true.

If it hadn’t been, the look I’d seen on his face when he’d been talking to Ariya wouldn’t have been there this morning.

It was kind of hard to hide pain like that.

“I’m sorry to hear about your child,” I told him.

He looked over at me, studying the side of my face.

“You heard.”

Not a question, a statement.

“Yes,” I said. “The diner was all abuzz about it this morning. I’d, of course, heard little bits and pieces about it earlier than today, but I’d always written it off to the town gossips having some fun. Apparently, you confirmed it today with her.”

“Hmmm,” he rumbled.

“I’m sorry that she didn’t tell you,” I continued. “I feel terrible.”

“Turn right there.” He pointed.

I did.

“I mean, if you want to talk about it, I’m always here.”

“Are you?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“Funny you should say that,” he said. “Because I got a call from another psychologist. A Dr. Joan McQuaid.”

My stomach tightened at the lightness in his tone. Almost as if he were trying to control his temper.

“Yes,” I licked my lips as I turned on my blinker and turned where he’d indicated. “About that…”

“I told you that I could handle it on my end, didn’t I?”

I worried my lip and nodded. He had told me he’d get it handled. However, I didn’t want to chance him getting in trouble. I wanted to make sure that he had it figured out, and if I were being honest…I was scared. Still was scared, as a matter of fact.

My father had shown me that, despite what was on the outside, it was the inside that counted.

And though Tate had never outwardly done anything to me, it was only a matter of time.

My head was fucked up. So fucked up.

But I’d always wanted Tate. Always wanted to see what it would be like to be near him, to be sucked into the Tate Casey stratosphere. However, I’d never once thought that it’d be as terrifying as it was.

I thought for sure that I’d be able to handle everything that came to Tate.

I was naïve.

I didn’t have a single clue. Not until I’d done some serious thinking today.

I didn’t know that being around him would make me turn into a simpering idiot that only wanted to make him happy. Something I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t do after I’d finally clawed my way out of my father’s clutches.

I didn’t know that when it came to Tate Casey, I wouldn’t care if I lost myself.

But after getting some perspective this afternoon, I knew that what I had with him, while it was fun, wouldn’t be something I could continue to do for the rest of my life—not and live with myself.

“I don’t like what I’m seeing on your face.”

I winced.

“Where do I go now?” I asked, my eyes taking in the city around me.

I’d never once been this deep into the ‘South Side’ as everyone in town called it. The preacher’s daughter wasn’t the kind of woman that went to places like that—places where drugs were plentiful, and there were men and women on the street that very obviously belonged to a gang.

“What is that?” I pointed to a man in a car.

Or at least what I thought was a man. I couldn’t quite tell. When I looked at his face, he looked like a he. But the hair and the top? Those screamed woman.

“Transvestite,” he said. “Turn right at the whore on the corner.”

I bit my lip to keep the laugh buried.

“I know you want to laugh,” he said. “The sad thing is that I was being serious.”

I knew he was, which was why I turned at the street following the woman dressed in a tight short blue jean skirt, a white wife beater that looked like it’d already been well used before she got it, paired with red hooker heels. Or at least heels that I would constitute as ‘hooker heels.’

“This is where you stop,” he pointed to where a set of tracks was already in the dirt off the side of the road. “I’ll be back in five minutes, tops. If I’m not back, you leave and tell Reed or Baylor where you left me.”

He was smoking something if he thought I was going to leave him here, but I would call Reed if I needed to. I had his number from back in high school when he and Krisney had been an item. I’d also heard that he hadn’t changed his number since then, which was why I still had it.

Though, that information was gathered from Krisney when she told me she drunk dialed him one night and he’d actually answered.

Before I could tell him that, though, he bailed out of the car and disappeared through the woods.

I bit my lip and watched him go, wondering if I ever had a life with Tate, if that was what I would have to look forward to. Him saving dogs. Repossessing cars and getting shot at—though I’d heard that from Krisney and not Tate. I was only assuming that Tate was having to deal with that.

I worried my lip as I thought about what that would feel like—having to worry about that day in and day out.

What would I do if one day Tate was hurt, possibly even killed?

I could tell you that I’d feel pain. Even now, thinking about him being hurt even when I knew I needed to distance myself from him…well, it scared the living shit out of me how much I cared.

Before I could get too deep into these thoughts, though, the window of my car was knocked on, dragging my thoughts away from Tate.

“Uhhh,” I said as I cranked down the window slightly. “Yes?”

“You’re pulled over on my property,” he said. “Can I help you?”

I shook my head. “I’m lost. Trying to get myself situated,” I said, pointing at my GPS.

It wasn’t even on, dammit.

“Where are you wanting to go?”

I studied the slightly tall man. And I say the term ‘man’ loosely. He was a man, yes, but he was also very young. So young, in fact, that I wasn’t quite sure why he was out here this close to dark this close to the street where hookers and drug dealers were openly doing shady stuff on the street.

“I’m going to go home,” I said, touching the button on my GPS that would turn it on. “Just trying to get the darned thing to turn on. It’s finicky sometimes.”

He grunted.

“Names Colman.”

I smiled at Colman and hoped it conveyed my words that I was about to say. “Well, it was nice meeting you, and thank you for the offer of help.”

I started to roll up my window, but he put his hand on the top to keep it from rolling the rest of the way up.

“You haven’t seen a man, have you?

I shook my head, my heart suddenly pounding.

Colman shifted and his shirt rode up, allowing me to see the gun that was on his hip.

That was when my heart started to race double time.

Why would he have a gun? That was illegal for a kid his age—and he really was a kid. His beard wasn’t even all the way grown in yet. He still had patches on his cheeks that he was obviously trying to fill in, as well as two larger circles underneath his jaw.

He, in all honestly, looked ridiculous.

Like a mini wanna-be gangster.

“No,” I shook my head, hoping that my smile came off as apologetic. “Thank you.”

I rolled the window up the rest of the way, put the car into park, and hoped that the man would walk away.

But he didn’t.

No, the bastard went to his motorcycle that had somehow appeared at the end of the driveway without me noticing, and then followed me out.

The moment I got to the main road, he turned around.

The minute he was out of sight, I pulled over in the gas station and wondered what in the hell I was supposed to do now.

Should I call Reed or Baylor like he’d asked?

Shit, shit, shit.

I pulled out my phone, bit my lip, and started to sift through my contacts in search of Reed’s name.

The moment I got to it, a hard knock sounded at my window, causing me to scream.

The scream abruptly cut off the moment that I realized that the man wasn’t Colman, but Tate.

“Tate!” I cried out, unlocking the doors.

He opened the back door, and that was when I saw the ball of fur bundled in his jacket in his arms.

He placed the ball of fur on the seat and closed the door, then opened the passenger side door before folding himself inside.

“You scared the shit out of me,” I accused him.

He grinned.

Tate was sweaty; his gray shirt that he’d been wearing underneath the light jacket was soaked through, and he was breathing slightly heavier than he normally did.

“Did you run all the way here?” I questioned.

He nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

The look he gave me was one that clearly relayed his thoughts to my question.

I laughed nervously.

“I seriously thought I was going to have to make some dramatic rescue…maybe offer my body in exchange for yours,” I teased.

His eyes went wired. “You would not ever offer that up in exchange for anything that had to do with me, you understand?”

I cleared my suddenly dry throat.

“How’d you get out of there without being seen?”

He looked offended that I’d even ask.

I tried to think of something else to say.

“Where did you learn all that sneaky shit?” I whispered fiercely. “And how the hell did you get out of those woods two miles down the road?”

Okay, so maybe I couldn’t get off the subject. So sue me.

I’d been freaking out. If Colman hadn’t been following me, I would’ve stayed right where I was, waiting for him to get back.

“The military, honey,” he answered, looking back at the dog that’d just laid limply on the back seat. “Learned a lot of shit there. How to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, and the ability to sleep anywhere. How to shoot the nose off of a terrorist at a hundred yards with my pistol…”

I winced, but latched onto the sleeping thing out of desperation.

I did not want to talk about him killing terrorists, and I did not want to think about the way I was feeling knowing that he was okay, safe and sound, in the seat beside me.

“I’ve always wanted to learn how to fall asleep fast like they do in the military.” I tried to make conversation. “How did you learn how to do that?”

He started to chuckle. The chuckle made my toes curl. I felt those dark swirls of his laugh deep in my gut—a heat that made my womb clench with need.

“You want to know for real?” he teased.

I nodded.

This was a safe topic. One that seriously couldn’t go wrong, right?

Wrong.

But it didn’t start bad.

It started easy enough.

“Well, you get up at 0430 on your first day of boot camp…” he started. “Then you run six miles…maybe more. Depends on how your CO feels that day. Then follow that up with several hundred push-ups…and not those ones that girls do. Real ones. Ones that are perfect, or you’ll do a couple hundred more. Then, when you’re done with that, you do the same amount of jumping jacks, squats, shit like that.”

My brows rose at hearing all that.

“Then you get to eat. Get some shit done after lunch. Possibly run two more miles,” he continued. “Then you do a hike that can range from ten to twenty miles in full gear.”

“How much does your gear weigh?” I interrupted him.

He shrugged. “Eighty pounds or so.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He looked at me, saw the surprise on my face, then promptly laughed in it.

“Wish I was,” he said. “But that’s not even half of it. And that was every day of boot camp, no joking.”

I shook my head. There would be no way in hell I’d make it through that. Hell, I couldn’t even tell you the last time I’d run a mile, let alone six. Twice, at that.

“By the time your head hits the bed that first day, you’re out. And when you get up, still tired from the day before, there’s no way not to go to sleep that fast any more. You’re exhausted times two. It only gets easier from there,” he finished.

I laughed incredulously. “I tried to run a mile a few weeks ago when I first got the office set up. I got about a quarter of a lap around the track and stopped. I don’t think running is for me. Or the military.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “Most women can’t hack it.”

I felt my back stiffen.

“You going to leave anytime soon?” he asked, not aware of what his comment has done to me.

I put the car into drive and slowly nosed my way into the intersection, and accelerated out of the South Side.

“Once we get back onto Main Street, I want you to go to the vet clinic on the right,” he said. “I’ll run him in there, and then we can be on our way.”

I didn’t reply.

My mind was elsewhere.

When I was twelve, my father told me that girls couldn’t play baseball because it was a man’s sport.

When I was thirteen, my father told me that I had to learn how to do ‘women things’ so I could make some man a good wife someday.

When I was fourteen, he told me that I needed to slim down because men didn’t like fat women.

When I was sixteen, my father told me to dress conservatively because girls that dressed like sluts were asking for men to treat them as such.

And that wasn’t even the half of it.

I could probably recite hundreds of edicts that my father had spouted off during a conversation we’d had, and none of them were good.

In fact, I would venture to say that all of them were bad, and that the majority of them were about how women were the inferior race.

“Here’s the turn,” Tate, the asshole, said.

I gritted my teeth and pulled into the parking lot, pulling up to the first spot that was nearest to the door.

“Be right back,” he said, pushing the door open and getting out.

I waited for him to get the dog, and walk into the building before I backed out of the parking spot and headed home.

Fuck him.

Doing this—making sure he was taken care of and out of my life—was for the best. I couldn’t live with another man that was exactly like the man that had made my younger years unbearable.

I just couldn’t.