I looked around the bedroom she’d led me to.
Her parents’.
They had two beds in here.
“They slept in different beds?” I found myself asking.
She looked at the beds and nodded. “My dad thrashed in his sleep. He gave my mom a black eye once, so they decided to get separate beds. It worked for them, I guess. I always thought it was weird, too.”
I shook my head and walked to the dresser where her father’s duty belt sat.
I touched the tip of the handcuffs and said, “Do you want me to tackle this room? You can tackle another one?”
She looked at the room, then shrugged. “I need to go to the store and get boxes. That was my task for today. Take my dad’s truck out for boxes.”
I looked at her. “Then let’s do it.”
***
I wasn’t sure what it was, but I couldn’t go to sleep, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Avery.
We’d driven to the store in her dad’s truck.
Well, I had. She’d sat in the passenger seat, looking sick to her stomach.
When we’d come back out to the truck, she’d look determined, as if she was going to drive and there wasn’t anything that could talk her out of it.
So I’d handed her the keys.
She’d unlocked the door, gotten inside, started it up, and sat there for ten whole minutes while never once making a move.
From that moment, I made a decision.
I wasn’t going to say a word. I was going to sit there and stay quiet for as long as it took.
And it took an entire two hours for her to work up the courage.
By the time we arrived back at her house, it’d been three since we’d left, and I still had a few things that I needed to do before things closed up shop that day.
I’d intended to invite Avery along, but she’d looked so lost and confused that I didn’t.
Instead, I helped her bring all the boxes inside, ones that I’d bought against her protests, and pulled her in for a hard hug.
She hadn’t wrapped her hands around me, and that was for the best.
I was already holding on by a thread.
After leaving, I’d done my errands and had gone back by Avery’s place on my way home, but her little car had been absent from her driveway.
Then I’d gone home and spent the rest of the evening working out in my home gym. Dax had joined me, and we’d lost track of time talking about the SWAT calls that we’d had throughout the week.
It was only when he’d gone home that my thoughts had once again returned to Avery.
Even now, an hour and a half after going to bed, they were still on Avery.
What she was doing. Whether she’d packed her parents’ things. Whether she was even awake.
Pretty much, I forced myself to stay in my bed and not go out and find her.
And the next morning when the urge to go see her hit me, I fought that back, too.
Nothing good would come out of pursuing Avery Flynn.
Nothing.
Chapter 7
Sometimes I need you to flat out tell me that you like me. Because my anxiety flat out tells me that you don’t.
-Avery’s secret thoughts
Derek
I was able to fight myself for two whole days.
Two entire days of inner turmoil that only slowed to a dull roar when I pulled into Avery’s house two nights later, determined to get over this little infatuation I had with her and help her pack her things.
I was a little later than I’d intended because I’d had a safe delivered today. One that cost a whack and took up half of my guestroom.
But at least now I didn’t have guns lying over every square inch of my living room.
Pulling over to the curb in front of her house, I got out and locked the truck with the buttons inside and not the key fob. Which meant when Avery came barreling out of the house as if she had seen a ghost, heading straight for her car, she didn’t see me until she was nearly smacking right into my chest.
“Avery,” I said, holding her tight. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Baby.
I hadn’t meant for that to come out, but the moment it did I wished I could take it back.
Avery was beyond hearing what I was saying, though.
She was thrashing to get out of my arms and crying now.
“Avery, honey. Stop,” I ordered, wrapping my arms around her tight. “Avery, what’s wrong?”
She froze, her eyes opening wide, and stared into my eyes as if she was just now realizing whose arms she was in.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again now that I had her attention.
She swallowed hard.
“That day,” she said. “I’d fallen at school. Fucking Rachel, the girl who doesn’t have a nice bone in her body, had tripped me. I’d fallen and hit my head on the bleachers on the way out of the pep rally. It’d started bleeding, and I threw up my lunch all over Rachel’s shoes as she feigned sorrow for ‘accidentally tripping me.’”
I didn’t know where she was going with this, but now that she was talking, I wasn’t going to interrupt her or urge her to talk faster.
“It was Monday. August sixth. Three years ago.” She looked lost. “The school called my dad and my mom, but neither one of them answered. Neither one of them answered for a whole two hours. I wasn’t sure what was going on since they were both off that day, but I ended up driving myself to the hospital to get stitches. It wasn’t until an hour later when they were finishing up my forehead that my mom finally came in looking frazzled. My dad didn’t make it at all. He came in that night around eight looking happy and upbeat. Until he saw my forehead. My mother tore into him that night after I went to bed. About how ‘it was her day’ or whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.”
She pressed her forehead against my chest.
“I found a receipt today,” she continued. “Actually, a lot of receipts. One bearing that date.”
She pulled away then, leading me back into the house.
“They all are for a place in Waco,” she continued. “They have my dad’s name on them, so I know that they’re his. Fancy restaurants. Jewelry stores. Gas station receipts that coincide with him driving down to Waco from here.”
The picture in question was of her father in all black with a girl in all white. They were pressed close, showing without words needing to be said that they obviously cared for each other.
“My parents never throw anything away,” she continued. “I have receipts from all the way back in the 1990s in their office that they shared. So I got to looking, and my mom has receipts of her own in her closet. And a picture of a man that I also saw at her funeral.”
I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly what was about to be said here.
“You think they were cheating?” I guessed.
She sat down on her mother’s bed and looked down at her hands.
“I don’t think it’s cheating if the other spouse does it, too,” she said softly. “I think they had an open relationship.”