The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(23)

God, I wished I was in some of my black stone-washed with one of the embroidered jackets I’d scored in a vintage shop in Nashville that weren’t exactly a song instead. Outside my cowboy boots, they were the most expensive items of apparel I’d ever purchased.

But they were hot.

Okay, so maybe I was minutely vain.

“You’re losing weight,” he declared heatedly.

“What?” I asked, taken off guard at his change of subject.

“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.

Oh shit.

He caught on like he was in my mind.

“When, Addie?” he pressed.

“Last night. But I’m not a breakfast kind of girl,” I retorted.

This was a lie.

I was a food kind of girl, in all its dizzying varieties.

And he was right, I was losing weight.

My kid was cute and pudgy.

But I’d once had curves that were now angles.

“And lunch?” he pushed.

“I have a salad waiting for me. And if you’d stop delaying me, I could get to the break room and eat it.”

“A salad,” he said like he’d say, “A sausage casing of shit.”

“It’s healthy!” I yelled.

“When’s the last time you had a decent meal?”

“Who cares?”

“Jesus, Adeline!” he exploded then tipped his beard into his neck to get back in my face and shouted, “I do!”

“I’m eating, Toby!” I shouted back.

“Not enough!” he bellowed.

“I can take care of myself!” I shrieked.

“Not good enough!” he roared.

“How dare you!” I screeched so loud it was a wonder the shop windows around us didn’t implode.

“You good with me and everyone who cares about you watching you waste away?” he asked cuttingly.

“I’m not wasting away, Tobias, for God’s sake, stop being dramatic,” I snapped.

His head jerked back.

Then he stepped back.

After that, he bit out, “Right.”

His face had closed down, which concerned me far more than the fury that had been there but a moment before.

“Toby—” I started conciliatorily.

“Be at your house Sunday, noon. Put up your lights and drop the beer and wine but I’m out for dinner.”

Oh God.

That was not good.

I took a step toward him. “Tobe—”

He took a step back and I stopped talking.

“Later, Addie.”

And with that, he prowled back down the sidewalk toward the garage with that long-limbed, loose, male grace that was so beautiful to watch.

“What just happened?” I whispered after him, rooted to the spot.

I was fuckin’ you, it’d be my business.

“Oh God, what just happened?” I repeated.

Toby crossed the street to the next block and kept walking.

I came to the realization I was standing on the sidewalk and looked across and just down toward Matlock Mart.

A gaggle of people were busy carrying bags and pushing carts to the side parking lot in a way I knew, the instant before my head turned that direction, they’d been standing outside the doors of the store watching Toby and me.

“Shit,” I hissed, looked side to side, and when it was clear, jaywalked across the street.

In the end, I had to down my salad so fast, I had indigestion for an hour.

And most of the edges of the leaves were brown, so that probably didn’t help.

I was fuckin’ you, it’d be my business, drove through my head, oh . . . I don’t know, about seven hundred times in the four hours left of my shift, so it was a wonder my drawer was only two dollars off.

When my shift was over, I got my son, I went home, and I did the drill trying to think about the fact Iz and Johnny were looking after Brooks the next afternoon because I had a Saturday shift and the daycare was only open in the mornings on Saturdays. And there was a good chance that Iz and/or Johnny would have heard about that fight before tomorrow afternoon and I had to figure out how I was going to handle it if they had.

I did not think about that.

I thought about the fact I really had to talk out what had gone down with Toby and I could not call my sister. I could not call Deanna (mostly because I was scared of what she might say). I definitely couldn’t call Margot. I hadn’t really made any good friends in Matlock yet so there was no one there to hash stuff out with. And no one in Chattanooga knew who Toby was.

So I was alone.

And although Dapper Dan stuck close like he sensed I was uneasy, and I could tell him, he wouldn’t be much help and not just because he was canine and couldn’t speak English, but because it was dawning on me that Tobe had not gotten that dog for my infant son.

He’d gotten that dog to protect me (and my infant son).

At the end of the night, after I’d only made three cards when I needed to make about fifty, I lay in bed, stared at the dark ceiling and realized I knew three things.

One, Deanna thought Toby was into me, and Deanna was rarely wrong.

Two, no man cared that much about the state of play in the life of his brother’s fiancée’s sister. Tobe had confronted me pissed off, he’d admitted he hadn’t slept since he’d learned things were rough for me, and he lost his mind at the thought I wasn’t eating.