No Perfect Hero(48)

“Can’t imagine.”

I really can’t.

Because if a woman like Hay let down her defenses and blunted her thorns enough to let me in, what happened with Eddy McFuck was tragic.

I can’t even picture fucking up like that.

Not the way this douchebag did her.

“How about the crib notes?” She's scrubbing a paper towel over the plate till it shines. “He’s sorry, can he come visit, he just wants to rescue me from this horrible little place and...make things right. Idiot.”

I frown. “How'd he even get the address here?”

“Oh, get this,” she bites off with a bitterly sardonic smile. “He works at my bank. Weren’t we so exciting? A bank loan associate and an insurance adjuster.”

“For reality TV, you’d be the starving but glamorous artist. He’d be the loan shark.” My brows furrow, a sense of unease eating at me. “Wait. He looked at your debit card transactions to find out where you were?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fucking illegal, Hay. I don’t care if he works at the bank and has access. Just because he can look doesn’t mean he’s allowed. That’s stalking, and the prick should be reported.”

She throws me that hard, hurting smile, the one that makes me want to hold her together before she breaks. “How much would you charge to haul him off, Mr. Bounty Hunter?”

“For you?” I bump her arm with my elbow and start on the next plate. “Free. Got a summer special on dumbass cheaters.”

“So generous.” There’s an amused crack in her voice, and she subsides, falling quiet as we work through a few more dishes, before she murmurs, “And sorry for earlier. I was just surprised, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“About...what you do, I mean. I don’t know. I’d been trying to guess. Figured all this weird stuff like private investigator, undercover cop, maybe even covert ops or CIA. You said you were a Ranger.” She shrugs one shoulder. “Bounty hunter’s a little less dashing and noble. It caught me off guard.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I’m plenty dashing, and I can pull off noble in a pinch.”

She laughs, soft and startled, shaking her head. “It’s just, you know, you think about it, and you think about Dog the Bounty Hunter and all this trash TV stuff that makes it look scuzzy. When really, you’re doing a good thing. You’re finding people trying to escape the law, making a little less work for police by bringing in the bad guys.” She lifts her head, looking up at me with clear, warm green eyes. “So. You know. Sorry if I made you think I was freaked out or anything.”

“I think it’d take more than one bounty hunter to freak you out, Haley.”

Her lips twitch up at the corners. “That almost sounds like a compliment.”

“Might’ve just been.” Chuckling, I plunge my hands in for a handful of forks and knives. “C’mon. Let’s finish this up so you can put Tara to bed.”

She just hums a soft sound. Acquiescence.

And I wonder what the hell I’m doing again, acting like I’m in any way part of this odd little family.





9





I Don't Dance (Haley)





I don’t know why I haven’t ripped this letter into pieces.

Ripped it up, set it on fire, then flushed the ashes down the toilet.

I sit on the couch, reading over the crumpled pages again in the rising morning light. Tara’s still asleep, all the shuttling back and forth between here and Wilma’s is wearing her out.

Poor baby. She keeps trying to keep my hours to have more time with me.

I feel guilty, but I’ve got to look at this as making a paycheck, keeping a roof over both our heads and a full fridge, even if Wilma's got us covered on the rent. I have to pretend I'm a responsible adult until it’s time for her to go home to Marie and John.

Part of me knows, if I really wanted to, I could go with her.

My sister wouldn’t be awful about me staying for a while, but...

There’d be something between us. Something hard and ugly and wrong, and I’d feel like a failure, and she wouldn’t mean to judge me, but she would.

I love my sister, but life around our dad broke us in different ways. We both prefer to keep our problems as ours and nobody else’s. Hating to rely on anyone, completely self-contained.

But I’d like to think I’d help someone who needs it. Marie’s more of an 'every woman for herself' kind of person.

I can’t even be angry at her for that or think there’s anything wrong with it. Not when we learned to hide, to be small, to be silent at such a young age while Dad had his drunken fits. Not when sometimes it was so terrifying all there was to do was run and not look back.

Not even for the sister you were leaving behind and just hoping she found her own way out.

That’s been our relationship for our whole adult lives.

We hope for each other, but we never reach for each other. We’re so used to feeling unsteady, unstable, that we’re terrified reaching out for someone else will just tip us back down into the dark.

Is that the real reason I won’t respond to Eddy?

Because I’m afraid of reaching out and getting dragged into a nightmare again, not being able to pull myself back out?