I blinked and lifted my head so I could look at him. “Why isn’t the Caddy parked in it? You always leave it in the driveway.” Except for now, when it was parked in his shop to wait out the winter.
He sighed and ran his thumb along my jawline. “I always let Kallie park in the garage. I didn’t want her to have to scrape her windows in the morning. If you don’t want to leave the Hudson at my place, you can always leave it at the shop.”
I nodded slowly and moved my hands over his chest. “That’s probably best for now. I’ll think about moving it to your place when I’m ready to come with it.”
His eyes flared and those dimples dug into his cheeks. “You want to move in with me?”
It had taken a lot for me to get out of the safety of Sayer’s house. I still wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable on my own but I was getting there. “Eventually. After you have time to settle in with your baby and you and Kallie have some time to figure out what coparenting is going to look like, I want it to be an option. I want to make the decision knowing that I want to live with you because I can’t live without you, not because you make me feel safe and I know nothing bad will happen to me under your roof. I know what the right reasons are, but I’m not in a place to make choices based on them yet.”
He gave me a jerky nod and pulled me back to his chest. “My door is always open for you, honey. You can walk through it anytime and stay for as long as you like.” He chuckled and it rumbled under my cheek. “Does that mean I’m going to have to buy all new furniture again?”
I huffed out a breath and closed my eyes as his body heat started to soak into me. My limbs felt languid and all the fears and what-ifs spinning around my mind started to slow their frantic twirling. His hand smoothed over my hair and stopped to rest right above my ass as he slowly lowered us both to a supine position. “I don’t care what your furniture looks like. As long as it’s comfortable, durable enough to survive a puppy and a baby, and can be easily cleaned after you have your wicked way with me, it stays. I need you, not a designer couch and custom cabinets.”
I let out a yawn that was so loud my jaw popped. My eyes started to drift closed as he continued to pet and lightly play with my hair.
“Go to sleep. I’ve got you.” And because he did indeed have me and because we were all in, no matter what tomorrow might bring, I finally fell asleep.
“SERIOUSLY?” WHEELER HUFFED the question at the poor car-rental guy with so much venom that I was surprised the kid didn’t bolt for the back room. “All you have available is a Camry?”
I tried to stifle a laugh but a snicker escaped anyways. Wheeler glared at me in a way that if it wasn’t him, I would have found the closest place to hide and cower from him. I patted his arm reassuringly and reminded him that Loveless was a very small town and that we were lucky to get any kind of rental on such short notice. With any luck we would be in and out today, so he wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of driving the economy car for very long.
In a much quieter tone I warned him, “This is South Texas, Wheeler. There aren’t very many folks around here that look like you, so you stick out like a sore thumb. We’re trying to be unobtrusive, and if you scare everyone we run into, eventually someone is going to call the sheriff and my dad will know I’m in town and that I’m not alone.” My breath caught and I had to work words around the lump of emotion that lodged there. “He’s already keeping my mom isolated. If he knows someone might be here to help her, he’ll put her somewhere we can’t find her and punish her for making him expend the effort.”
My words tempered most of his aggravation. I knew he was riled up and on edge because he didn’t know how going back home was going to affect me. He was worried that I was going to fall apart, that I was going to end up back behind the walls I’d been hiding behind when he first found me. I wanted to reassure him that I would be okay, that everything would be fine when it was all said and done, but I couldn’t lie to him. I already felt like I was unraveling and all my loose threads were getting tugged and pulled, which was making me jumpy and uneasy.
“The Camry is fine.” His words were begrudging at best as he took the keys from the clerk and signed off on all the rental waivers. He took my hand and led me to the minuscule car lot that had a whopping five cars to choose from. All of them were basic, four-door sedans. He wouldn’t have liked any of them.
He pulled the passenger door open for me and we drove to the one and only motel in town to check into the room that I’d reserved online. The girl at the reception desk recognized me from high school and immediately launched into trying to catch up on every aspect of my life that had happened since I ran away from Loveless. She offered her condolences about Oliver and I nearly threw up all over the polished wood desk. Wheeler took over the small talk and guided me to our room with a hand on the small of my back, whispering over and over again that everything would be okay, and because he said it, I believed him. He wouldn’t lie to me either.
It took twenty minutes of him holding me and talking me down off the ledge in the dingy motel room before I could catch my breath and stop shaking.
“How do you want to play this, Poppy?” He was rubbing my back and brushing circles on the inside of my wrist with his thumb. “You can give me the address and I can go to the house. I’ll wait awhile to make sure your old man isn’t around and find a way inside to check things out.”
He was sweet to offer to take this burden on, but it was my show and I had to see it through to the end.
“You have a baby on the way. The last thing you need is to get locked up in the middle of nowhere for breaking and entering.” I exhaled a long breath and shoved my hands through my hair. “It’s Monday night, Dad will be at the church. He does marriage counseling for new couples on Monday nights, if you can believe that garbage. It consists of him telling young women to obey the men in their lives or God will punish them.” I tugged on my hair hard enough that it hurt and looked at Wheeler out of the corner of my eye. “I still have a key to the house unless they changed the locks. Once he’s gone, we should be able to walk right in.”
“What if they did change the locks?”
It was a good question, one I luckily had an answer for. “Salem used to sneak in and out of the house all the time. Dad tried to put her on a leash but she always slipped out of it. The lock on the window in our bedroom is jammed. She took a screwdriver to it so that it wouldn’t stay shut. Dad used to put a bar between the top of the window and the frame when he found out she was gone at night. I always removed it and put it back even though it meant I would spend months grounded and that my dad would be extra horrible to me when we weren’t in public.” I rested my head on his shoulder and laced my fingers through his. “He is not a good man.”
He sighed and ran his thumb along my jawline. “I always let Kallie park in the garage. I didn’t want her to have to scrape her windows in the morning. If you don’t want to leave the Hudson at my place, you can always leave it at the shop.”
I nodded slowly and moved my hands over his chest. “That’s probably best for now. I’ll think about moving it to your place when I’m ready to come with it.”
His eyes flared and those dimples dug into his cheeks. “You want to move in with me?”
It had taken a lot for me to get out of the safety of Sayer’s house. I still wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable on my own but I was getting there. “Eventually. After you have time to settle in with your baby and you and Kallie have some time to figure out what coparenting is going to look like, I want it to be an option. I want to make the decision knowing that I want to live with you because I can’t live without you, not because you make me feel safe and I know nothing bad will happen to me under your roof. I know what the right reasons are, but I’m not in a place to make choices based on them yet.”
He gave me a jerky nod and pulled me back to his chest. “My door is always open for you, honey. You can walk through it anytime and stay for as long as you like.” He chuckled and it rumbled under my cheek. “Does that mean I’m going to have to buy all new furniture again?”
I huffed out a breath and closed my eyes as his body heat started to soak into me. My limbs felt languid and all the fears and what-ifs spinning around my mind started to slow their frantic twirling. His hand smoothed over my hair and stopped to rest right above my ass as he slowly lowered us both to a supine position. “I don’t care what your furniture looks like. As long as it’s comfortable, durable enough to survive a puppy and a baby, and can be easily cleaned after you have your wicked way with me, it stays. I need you, not a designer couch and custom cabinets.”
I let out a yawn that was so loud my jaw popped. My eyes started to drift closed as he continued to pet and lightly play with my hair.
“Go to sleep. I’ve got you.” And because he did indeed have me and because we were all in, no matter what tomorrow might bring, I finally fell asleep.
“SERIOUSLY?” WHEELER HUFFED the question at the poor car-rental guy with so much venom that I was surprised the kid didn’t bolt for the back room. “All you have available is a Camry?”
I tried to stifle a laugh but a snicker escaped anyways. Wheeler glared at me in a way that if it wasn’t him, I would have found the closest place to hide and cower from him. I patted his arm reassuringly and reminded him that Loveless was a very small town and that we were lucky to get any kind of rental on such short notice. With any luck we would be in and out today, so he wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of driving the economy car for very long.
In a much quieter tone I warned him, “This is South Texas, Wheeler. There aren’t very many folks around here that look like you, so you stick out like a sore thumb. We’re trying to be unobtrusive, and if you scare everyone we run into, eventually someone is going to call the sheriff and my dad will know I’m in town and that I’m not alone.” My breath caught and I had to work words around the lump of emotion that lodged there. “He’s already keeping my mom isolated. If he knows someone might be here to help her, he’ll put her somewhere we can’t find her and punish her for making him expend the effort.”
My words tempered most of his aggravation. I knew he was riled up and on edge because he didn’t know how going back home was going to affect me. He was worried that I was going to fall apart, that I was going to end up back behind the walls I’d been hiding behind when he first found me. I wanted to reassure him that I would be okay, that everything would be fine when it was all said and done, but I couldn’t lie to him. I already felt like I was unraveling and all my loose threads were getting tugged and pulled, which was making me jumpy and uneasy.
“The Camry is fine.” His words were begrudging at best as he took the keys from the clerk and signed off on all the rental waivers. He took my hand and led me to the minuscule car lot that had a whopping five cars to choose from. All of them were basic, four-door sedans. He wouldn’t have liked any of them.
He pulled the passenger door open for me and we drove to the one and only motel in town to check into the room that I’d reserved online. The girl at the reception desk recognized me from high school and immediately launched into trying to catch up on every aspect of my life that had happened since I ran away from Loveless. She offered her condolences about Oliver and I nearly threw up all over the polished wood desk. Wheeler took over the small talk and guided me to our room with a hand on the small of my back, whispering over and over again that everything would be okay, and because he said it, I believed him. He wouldn’t lie to me either.
It took twenty minutes of him holding me and talking me down off the ledge in the dingy motel room before I could catch my breath and stop shaking.
“How do you want to play this, Poppy?” He was rubbing my back and brushing circles on the inside of my wrist with his thumb. “You can give me the address and I can go to the house. I’ll wait awhile to make sure your old man isn’t around and find a way inside to check things out.”
He was sweet to offer to take this burden on, but it was my show and I had to see it through to the end.
“You have a baby on the way. The last thing you need is to get locked up in the middle of nowhere for breaking and entering.” I exhaled a long breath and shoved my hands through my hair. “It’s Monday night, Dad will be at the church. He does marriage counseling for new couples on Monday nights, if you can believe that garbage. It consists of him telling young women to obey the men in their lives or God will punish them.” I tugged on my hair hard enough that it hurt and looked at Wheeler out of the corner of my eye. “I still have a key to the house unless they changed the locks. Once he’s gone, we should be able to walk right in.”
“What if they did change the locks?”
It was a good question, one I luckily had an answer for. “Salem used to sneak in and out of the house all the time. Dad tried to put her on a leash but she always slipped out of it. The lock on the window in our bedroom is jammed. She took a screwdriver to it so that it wouldn’t stay shut. Dad used to put a bar between the top of the window and the frame when he found out she was gone at night. I always removed it and put it back even though it meant I would spend months grounded and that my dad would be extra horrible to me when we weren’t in public.” I rested my head on his shoulder and laced my fingers through his. “He is not a good man.”
