Everything I Left Unsaid(2)

“I’m sorry.” I wedged my hand back into the cushions to see if anything else had slid in there. Money. Money would be nice. “This isn’t Megan.”

Aha! I pulled out three quarters and a nickel.

The guy sighed. The kind of sigh I was terribly used to. The put-out sigh. The angry sigh. The this is your fault sigh.

And I had this visceral reaction, screwed into the marrow of my bones over the last five years, to do everything in my power and some things incredibly outside of my power to appease the anger behind that sigh. To make it all okay.

But those days were officially over.

Sorry, Dylan. No one sighs like that at me. Not anymore. Not ever.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and lifted my thumb to turn it off, but his voice stopped me just before I disconnected the call.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I got no reason to treat you like that. Is Megan there?”

“No.” Okay, I was pulled back in by an apology. Because apologies were nice and they were rare. And this guy sounded sincerely worried. Megan might be his wife. Or girlfriend. His daughter. “She moved out a few days ago. She must have left the phone behind.”

His chuckle was deep and very masculine, and it made me think that I haven’t heard many guys laughing in my life. And that was too bad. It was a nice sound.

“She must have,” he agreed. “Have you moved into the trailer?”

My protective instincts were new and fragile but they were working, and they rose on shaky legs to stop the unthinking answer that came to my lips.

I don’t know this man. I don’t know him at all.

“Just cleaning it,” I said. “I don’t live here.”

“I hope that’s not as bad a job as it sounds.”

“No. It’s fine. Megan must have kept it real clean.” I rolled my eyes at myself.

“What’s your name?”

This is a man. Not a boy. Not a guy. But a man. His voice had a low quality, a rumble and a rasp, like maybe he hadn’t done a lot of talking today. Or maybe he didn’t talk much at all. Or he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day—which shouldn’t sound so good. But it did. He had an accent—something Southern. And despite his apologies he sounded…rough.

Something weird was happening to my heartbeat.

“You know mine,” he said.

I nearly closed my eyes as that dark tone sent chills across my back like a cool breeze.

“Dylan,” I said. “It said your name on the phone.”

“Right. Well, I guess you don’t have to—”

“Layla.” The name came out of nowhere. Layla was my cousin, a wild girl I’d only met once but a name I’d heard over and over again in Mom’s warnings and stories of forbearance. “You don’t want to end up like Layla, do you?”

Which was hilarious, because last I’d heard Layla was an extremely popular makeup artist in Hollywood and happy.

So, Mom’s horror stories had worked, and no, I didn’t end up at all like Layla.

But in this new life…maybe I’d endeavor to be more like Layla.

Layla had been bold. And confident. Embarrassingly sexy to utterly staid and uptight me. Annie McKay.

“Are you okay?” Dylan asked, pulling me away from thoughts of my cousin.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“People don’t end up in the Flowered Manor Trailer Park and Camp Ground because everything’s going great in their lives.”

“Tell me about it,” I laughed. The relief of sitting still, letting go of some of that fear I lived with, and the…weirdness of this call made me giddy. I felt like a stone kicked downhill. Rolling faster and faster toward something.

This run-down trailer park had the market cornered on last-ditch efforts. Everything and everyone from Kevin to the morning glories out front seemed to be holding on with a white-knuckled intensity.

“You know the brochure did promise modern amenities, but I haven’t caught sight of the spa,” I joked. “And weedy watering holes don’t count.”

There was silence after my words. And I knew silence as well as I knew sighs. The variations, the cold undertones. The hot overtones.

The razor-edged silence that came before You got a smart mouth, girl.

The heavy echoing silence that came before a backhand.

Stupid joke. It was a stupid joke. I am made of stupid jokes.

“You just can’t trust advertising anymore, can you?” he asked.

“Especially when it’s on a bathroom wall in a truck stop.”

We both laughed, and this was officially more fun than I’d had in years.

“Are you safe?” he asked.

The question with its implied concern bit into me, sweeping away my laughter like someone taking his arm over a dinner table, sending plates crashing to the floor. Tears burned in my eyes.

No one had worried about me. Not in a very long time.

“Layla?”

“Yes.” My voice was gruff and thick. “I’m safe.”

“You sure?”

I got the sense that if I told him no, that I felt threatened or scared, he would do something about it. Arrive at that metal door to help me.

The temptation to trust him was not insignificant.

But that was not the point of having run so far.