Don't Let Go(26)

“Hey, beautiful,” Patrick said as I reached his side.
“Do you have someone working for you named Wallace?” I asked.
Patrick’s eyebrows raised just a fraction. “Um—yeah. David Wallace?”
“Lives in Copper Falls?”
The eyebrows lowered to a frown. “No, none of my men do. But I think a couple of them have ex-wives around here. Why?”
“Does he have a son named Mark?” I asked, feeling very much like a prosecutor and yet unable to stop shooting off the questions.
Patrick turned to face me fully. “I have no idea, Jules. We don’t sit around comparing photos. What’s going on?”
“My daughter wants to have sex with a boy named Mark and said his dad works with you,” I blurted out, realizing somewhere in the places where logic lived that I wasn’t anywhere close.
The eyebrows shot back up and he cleared his throat. “Oh. Well, I guess he probably does then.” When I continued to stare at him, he gave me a questioning look. “Sorry?”
There was a pen lying on the bar, and I picked it up and started clicking it. “So what’s this guy like?”
Patrick narrowed his eyes. “Babe, I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this, but what does his dad have to do with it?”
“They learn it from somewhere.”
He chuckled and winked randomly at the woman behind the bar as she handed him a to-go box of something that smelled wonderful. “They learn it from somewhere? Because he couldn’t just be a normal horny teenage boy, right?” He squeezed my hand and took the pen I was furiously clicking, setting it back down. “Come on, Jules.”
“Well, look what he sees,” I said, refusing to be placated. “Y’all pick up women wherever you land. If he sees him screwing around all the time—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Patrick said, the jovial expression leaving his face. “Despite what you obviously think of me and my guys, we aren’t traveling f*ck magnets.”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“Oh, I think you meant it exactly like that,” he said, pushing off the bar with a fired-up coldness I’d never seen before. “Let me tell you something. We have a job to do. We work hard, eat crap food, sleep in cheap motels, and move on to the next job. What my guys do on their few off hours is not my business, and what their kids may do damn well isn’t.”
“Patrick—”
“Look in your own house before you start pointing fingers, Jules,” he said, turning to leave. “I didn’t screw around with you all by myself.”
“What?” I exclaimed, a little louder than I intended. “I wasn’t talking about you.”
“I am. Maybe your kid is the one watching.”
At that, he left. I watched his back as he wound his way around the tables and pushed the front door open.
“Want something, hon?” the bartender lady asked me, pulling my attention back.
I blinked and held my hands against my stomach, feeling the stab to the gut that Patrick had just left there.
“Um, can I get two more margaritas on the rocks to that table?” I asked, pointing to where Ruthie sat looking irritated and Hayden stood hovering like a hawk.
I made my way back, feeling heavy and wrong and stupid. Was Becca paying closer attention to my actions rather than my words? She knew what we were doing, she’d said it out loud. The one time in my life that I’d allowed myself outside my own rule book was with Patrick, and that’s when she decides to pay attention?
Ruthie just met my gaze with that universal silent communication all best friends have. She saw Patrick leave, she saw my face, my deflated composure. She knew how I felt. That was enough while we had an audience. Hayden, on the other hand, was still up on level four somewhere.
“Your boyfriend leave?” he said, a twitch to his jaw telling me that the word bothered him.
I knew that even after our years apart he still cared about me. He’d always loved me more than I did him, and as unfair as that was, I’d married him anyway. Back then, I was damaged goods. Mourning the loss of a child that no one but Ruthie ever spoke of with me, and still carrying a torch for the love of my life. A love that had left me to mourn alone. To worry about him, cry for him, curse him, and sometimes hate him. It took Hayden two years to win me over completely, and although I never felt that all-consuming passion again, I assumed that was my fate.
He was cute and witty and smart and could always make me laugh when laughing didn’t come naturally to me anymore. Hayden found me in my darkest place and showed me the light again. That was enough. His controlling nature and lack of an off switch when he drank made it not enough.
I ignored his question and palmed my glass, sucking up what was left of my margarita and watching the dance floor. I needed the cold and the tangy citrus to cool my blood.
“I have the right to know what’s going on with her, Jules,” Hayden said, leaning into my line of vision.
As an upbeat country song filled the room, I met his eyes. “Let’s dance.”
He backed up a step. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said, hearing Ruthie snicker to my right. I grabbed his hand. “Let’s see if we still remember how to do this.”
“What are you doing?” I heard him say behind me as I pulled him along.
I wheeled around to face him. “Trying to let off a little steam, Hayden. Trying not to be my mother.” The burn hit the backs of my eyes and I blinked back the impending flood. “She went to Ruthie with this. Instead of me,” I said, trying to control the quiver that laced my words.