“I sure hope so.”
Better add condoms to the shopping list.
“You sleeping in here again tonight?” she whispered.
“I want that if you do.”
“Of course I do. But people are going to catch on soon.”
“So let them. I don’t care. Do you?”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Abilene?”
“I don’t know if I care or not. It’s just that . . . We agreed this can’t be anything serious, is all. I wouldn’t know what to tell people, if they asked.” She didn’t sound fretful, merely puzzled. “What would you tell them?”
He considered it. Imagined Christine grilling him over morning coffee. “I think I’d probably say that you and I are getting close. Leave it at that.”
“Oh.” A pause. “That’s nice. I like that.”
“And it’s true, right?” He turned back to his side, pulling the length of her body to his, splaying his fingers along her back, possessive.
“Yeah. It’s true. This is as close as I’ve gotten to anybody in a long time.”
Close as you were with Ware? James Ware was cut from a similar cloth as Casey’s brother—he was like Vince with no sense of humor, and it was tough to imagine such men letting women turn them soft. But of course Vince had managed it with Kim. They’d been together for months, and weathered some pretty ugly stuff between the casino chaos and living with Vince and Casey’s mom, yet Casey didn’t see any cracks forming between them. So maybe Ware was capable of it, too. Though he preferred to imagine the man had never treated Abilene as he could. That no man had ever lain with her just this way, talked this way.
Such a fucking goner.
Abilene squeezed his hand, then let it go, rolling away. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where you off to?” He studied her naked body before it was swallowed up by her shirt and pajamas, memorizing the soft swells of her breasts, belly, butt, calves.
“Bathroom.” She smiled at him as she smoothed her hair, then slipped out of the room.
Casey stared up at the beams ribbing the sloped ceiling, then shut his eyes. Breathed it all in. Felt the cool air on his chest, the warm covers around his waist and legs.
A thought struck him with such ferocious clarity, he got chills.
Please, don’t let me go crazy.
A few months ago he’d walked through his life with that same prayer running on a loop in the back of his head, but his reasons for wishing it had been selfish. He hadn’t wanted to be pitied, hadn’t wanted to be dependent, hadn’t wanted to lose his mind before he could enjoy the money he’d made, and more recently, before he had a chance to see the bar succeed. Now it felt different. It had begun feeling different ever since he’d kissed this woman, hadn’t it? What else could explain his sudden, impulsive urge on that very same night, the one that’d finally had him ordering the genetic testing kit?
Don’t let me go crazy. Don’t take my life away when I’ve only just started making something worthwhile of it.
Don’t make me have to leave her.
He sighed, eyes opening as the water ran in the next room. She’d be back in a minute. His to hold through the night. His, for now.
His, for as long as karma decided he deserved it.
Chapter 14
At two minutes to four the next afternoon, Abilene strained for sounds—the slam of a truck door outside, of knocking, voices rising.
This room was nearly as far as you could get from the front lot, and the window was shut. Didn’t stop her imagination, though. A hundred times she could swear she’d caught a doorbell; talking or shouting or the sounds of a fight. All figments. The only actual noises were the occasional creak of the old house, the tick and whir of the heat coming on at odd intervals.
Four o’clock was the time she’d given James for their face-to-face meeting, and likely his first encounter with his daughter, provided things went well.
Mercy was downstairs, being looked after by Christine. Casey had offered to be in the room with Abilene when everything went down, but of course she’d declined. There was too much to be unpacked that she never wanted him to know about her. Too much at stake in the truths she’d omitted, the assumptions she’d let him make about her—
She sat up straight at the sounds of activity beyond her room. Real ones. Voices, then the heavy thumps of two sets of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs.
She watched the door, heart clenched and pounding, temples throbbing, palms damp. Even as she hoped it would never open, every second that elapsed before it did lasted an hour.
Muffled words were exchanged outside the room, and then one set of steps faded back down the stairs.
“Come on,” she murmured, staring at the knob, daring it to twist. “Come on, come—”
A knock.
“Yeah,” she called.
The door swung in, and there he was.
James seemed shorter than she remembered, though perhaps that was merely a side effect of all her time spent around Vince and Duncan. He looked a little older, too, and she supposed prison must do that to a man. He was still handsome in his intimidating, fierce way, but weariness had etched fine lines across his brow and shadowed his blue eyes.
Mercy’s eyes. Darker than her own. Moodier.
He kept his gaze on her as he shut the door, expression guarded. His lips were set, as were his shoulders. He looked like a man entering a ring with a spook-prone horse, exuding an aura of forced calm.
She’d brought a chair up from the kitchen and set it facing the bed. The noise of it scraping on the floor as he took a seat felt so loud she flinched.
“Abilene,” he said evenly, planting his elbows on his thighs. She knew not to expect a cordial Thanks for agreeing to meet me or the like. Despite his psychotic move on Wednesday night, turning up and creeping around, she owed him whatever he was after—another apology, assurances, proof she had things under control. And she did have most of it under control, she thought. Beneath the jitters, she felt strong. She felt ready for this.
“You look good,” James said. He didn’t mean she looked pretty—he meant that she looked healthy. That she looked clean.
“I feel good. Just a little sleep deprived.”
“Where’s the baby?”
“She’s asleep. Someone’s with her.”
“Tell me I get to see her.”
She nodded. “Unless this all goes real badly, yeah, you’ll get to see her.”
That softened his jaw. And that jaw was coated in dark stubble—unusual for James, a man who rose each morning at the same hour, rarely drank, and never smoked, who thrived on routine and shaved daily. She remembered another time when she’d driven him to forsake his regimens and lose his focus. She remembered all the power she’d felt, seeing the strongest, hardest man she’d yet met reduced to a nervous wreck. Oddly, it made her curious to watch him when he held his daughter for the first time. Would that moment change him, soften him, as his worry and care for her had, once upon a time last winter?
“I know you must be impatient,” she said. “But let’s talk first. We both must have more things to say than we did on the phone.”
A silent, mirthless little laugh curled his lips. “Yeah, I’ve got things to say.”
She nodded to tell him to go ahead.
“You want to know why I needed to see you so goddamn badly?” he asked. “Why I’m so fucking angry? It’s because I’m scared to death.”
“I know. But the baby’s fine. And I’m a good mother, believe it or not.”
“You gotta understand, Abilene, you don’t want me to see you both, and my mind goes right back to that shithole I found you in.”