Fumbled (Playbook #2)(77)

The door slamming shut causes me to jump. I move to go after him, but before I can, I hear tires screeching. When I get outside, all I see is TK’s Range Rover speeding down the street.



* * *



? ? ?

I CALL BRYNN when I go back inside, asking if I can come in a little later and early tomorrow.

Brynn being Brynn—meaning she’s the shit—says yes.

Then I plant my butt in front of the TV and don’t watch it.

This angry, unable-to-control-his-emotions TK is new to me.

When we were teenagers, it didn’t matter what happened, TK never lost his temper. Not ever. He was always the rational one who’d calm me down when I’d been pushed too far. Now I’ve seen him snap a few times, and as much as I try to fit the pieces together to try to understand how he’s angrier now, nothing makes sense.

And I don’t stop thinking about it until I hear a car door close almost two hours later.

TK comes inside, his hair all over the place like his hands haven’t stopped running through it.

“Hey.” I walk to him, my steps hesitant.

“Hey.” He closes the distance between us and wraps me in his big arms. “Sorry I left like that.”

“It’s fine.” I release a breath I wasn’t even aware I was holding. “Are you okay?” I ask after the thumping of his heartbeat starts to slow beneath my ear.

“I should be asking you that.” He steps back but keeps his hands around my waist.

“I’m used to your mom being the worst to me.” I smile, trying to lighten the mood.

It doesn’t work.

“I’m so sorry she brought that shit to you.” He looks so guilty . . . so sad. His normally bright eyes are dull and glassed over with unshed tears.

“Not your fault, so don’t apologize.” I grab the bottom of his shirt and invoke as much feeling as I can behind the words.

He closes his eyes and sucks his lips into his mouth, his fingers flinching at my sides, but he doesn’t say anything.

So I do.

“I didn’t text you, how’d you know to come home?”

“Donny.”

Now it’s me who’s growling. “Well, maybe if he kept his big mouth shut and didn’t give her my address, he wouldn’t have had to send a distress signal your way.”

TK finally cracks a smile.

“He does have a big-ass mouth.”

“I’ve only met him once and I know that to be fact.”

“My mom drives him nuts.” He tells me what I don’t find to be surprising. “I think he wanted there to be fireworks.”

“Tell him next time he wants fireworks, I’ll drive up to Wyoming and buy him some. But if he ever sends your mom on an ambush mission to my house again, I’ll light them after I shove them where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Now that doesn’t get another smile.

It gets laughter.

Body-bent, perfect-teeth-baring, eye-crinkling laughter.

And it makes my toes curl and my heart explode.

“Wanna have a quickie before I have to get Ace from school?” I ask once his laughter starts to die down.

He doesn’t answer.

Instead, his hands go back to my waist and he lifts me up and throws me over his shoulder before running down my hall and tossing me on the bed.

I don’t get my coffee or my bath before work.

But I do get a shower.

With TK.

So even though I leave the house with the ache more noticeable between my thighs, I do it admitting I’d happily spend the rest of my life with it never going away.

I also do it smiling.

Until I open my garage and see the same bouquet of flowers from my front porch in the alley behind my house.

Only this time it’s bigger.

And beside it is a cut-up Moore jersey. The bottom half of the jersey’s missing and the edges are black and charred from where it was burned.

I know the smart thing to do is to run back inside, tell TK, and then call the cops.

Hell.

I’m sure jumping in my car and running over it would be a better idea than walking straight to the flowers and searching for the card.

It’s not hard to find.

The sender made sure it was sticking out of the flowers and encased in a bright, you-can’t-miss-me envelope.

I’ll give it to them. This note is much more efficient and effective. And they did it in two words: Dump him.





Thirty-three




“Whoever the fuck is doing this knows who you are.” TK takes an angry gulp of his root beer—which, to be fair, I’d also be angry drinking, because root beer is gross—and glares at everyone in the general vicinity of his barstool.

As if all the poor customers at HERS had pitched in for the flowers.

I throw the towel I was using to wipe off the bar in a bucket and plant both of my fists on my hips. I’ve tried to be nice, to let him have his feelings, but he’s driving me crazy.

I usually love when TK is off on Tuesdays, but he disappeared into the alley yesterday after I told him about the flowers. When he came back, he glued himself to me and he’s been driving me crazy since.

“They know me? You think?” I don’t bother hiding the sarcasm in my tone and TK’s eyes narrow even further. “Did them having my address and name give you that idea?”