Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(42)

“Good things, I hope?”

“I think they’re very good things. I have a boyfriend.”

“Excuse?”

“Badger. You know—I’ve told you about him. You’ve seen his picture.”

“Badger. One of the bikers, yes?”

“Yes, one of the bikers. He’s been my friend for as long as I’ve known Shannon. Now we’re more. It’s a good thing, Papa. He makes me happy.”

“You have a boyfriend in Missouri? This seems rash, Adrienne. Why get serious with someone for such a short time? You’re too young to tie yourself down to someone so far away.”

Her stomach and her heart flipped places, and she felt a little dizzy, but she pressed on. “That’s the other part of my news. He won’t be far away. I got a job today. I’m going to stay here. Move here.”

The silence on the line stretched until she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Papa? Please say something.”

“No, dove. You come home now. Enough with this absurdity. Time to come home and start your life.

The life you worked so hard for. The life that your maman wanted for you. Enough. I’ll book your flight.”

“I drove here, Papa, remember? And I’m not leaving. This is where my life starts.”

Her father was a preternaturally calm man. He did not yell. He did not get excited. When they went back to his hometown in Jamaica and he fell smoothly into a patois that Adrienne barely understood, he became much more animated. But her father, the man she knew, was a stereotypically tweedy academic who smoked a pipe, thought big thoughts and spoke big words, and did not ruffle. So when he shouted, “NO!

YOU COME HOME NOW!” Adrienne jumped and almost dropped her phone.

“This is an offense! You dishonor your mother! Adrienne Marie Celeste Renard, you will leave for home at once! Tonight! This is not a request!”

“No, Papa.” Her voice shook, but she said it.

Another long silence. Then, his voice quiet and strained, he said the worst thing he could ever say to her. “If you are not home in two days, then you do not have a home here any longer.”

And the line went dead.

Adrienne sat hard on the floor in the middle of her nearly-empty, borrowed suite and stared at the words “Call Ended” on her screen. She stared until her phone went to sleep. And then she wept.



oOo



She’d stopped crying but was still sitting on the floor when Badger came in some time later. He’d stopped knocking within a few days of her taking the suite, and he had spent almost every night with her since their first night together.

She looked up when he came in. When he saw her sitting on the floor, her phone still in her hands, his expression shifted swiftly from tired but happy to deeply concerned.

“Babe?” He sat down next to her and tucked her under his arm, against his chest. Drawing comfort from his touch, she nestled into his embrace and felt tears rising.

He kissed her head, then laid his cheek where his lips had been. “Adrienne, what’s wrong?”

She sighed heavily, using the breath to relax her throat and calm her tears. “I got a job today.”

“What? Where?” He shifted and looked down at her.

“At Fosse’s Finds. Just weekday afternoons and every other Saturday. But it’ll help keep me away from the money my mom left me. There’s not that much left after Columbia, anyway. I should keep it for something big.”

Happiness and worry played tug-of-war with his face. “So you’re staying, then? But that makes you sad?”

“No, it makes me happy. I want to stay. I want to be here, with you. But…I talked to my dad. I told him about us. And that I was staying. He’s really mad. He…he…” She couldn’t say it out loud.

When she felt Badger’s hand sliding gently over her neck and jaw, his thumb lifting her chin, she closed her eyes and tried to let his touch calm her. “What did he say, babe? You can tell me.”

“That if I don’t go home right now, I won’t have a home at all.” Saying the words out loud made them real in a way they had not yet been, and she could no longer hold back her tears. She began to sob, and Badger held her tightly again and let her. Then, after she’d run out of tears, he helped her up and led her to bed.

They still didn’t have a bed they could share, but they both liked the little nest they’d made. A bed was going to have to happen at some point, but now, as Badger laid her down and took care of her, she was glad that all they had was this bundle of blankets and pillows on the floor. A safe place, from which she could not fall.

He pulled her boots off and her socks, and then slipped the bracelets off her wrists and rings off her hands. She watched him, feeling cared for. Her heart still hurt, but Badger made her feel safe nonetheless.

His hands moved to the waist of her little flowered skirt, and he paused. “I’m not trying to start something, babe. Just getting you comfortable.”

But she wanted more than comfort—or she wanted more comfort—and when she lifted her hips to let him pull her skirt off, she flexed and shimmied a little. Her skirt still at her knees, he looked up, into her eyes.

“Please,” she whispered.

He was still for a few seconds, simply looking at her. Then he nodded and stood, pulling her skirt with him. He stripped to his skin before joining her among their blankets. She liked that he’d gotten naked before she was, and she liked that he no longer hesitated before baring his chest, or flinched at all when she touched it—as she did now, putting her hand over his heart.