“Thanks.” Tabitha practically skipped over to Wyatt.
Seeing him after work was a nice surprise, and she stood on her toes to give him a kiss when she got to him. “This was sweet of you.”
“You need a car.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “I’m heading over to Kennedy’s place tomorrow and paying for you to get it back.”
“No, I’m doing it. I have the money, Wyatt.” She walked around to the other side of the car. “I’m just being stingy.”
“What’s mine is yours.” Wyatt got into the driver’s side and then unlocked her door. “You need to start getting used to it.”
“I’m working on it.” She got in and pulled the door closed. She tossed her purse on the floor next to his hat and then buckled her seat belt. “How’s work tonight?”
“Slow.” Wyatt started the car and backed up. “Too slow. Never a good sign. When it gets this slow, that means something’s ’bout to go down.”
“Yeah? What’s that? Cop superstition?”
“Just makes me nervous. If something’s too good to be true, it usually is.” Wyatt always drove really fast, and Tabitha noticed the police cruiser exacerbated the problem. He tore out of the parking lot as he said, “I need to get back. I don’t like my dad out in the field by himself. He’s supposed to stay behind his desk doing sheriff things and leave the grunt work to us deputies.”
“He ain’t ever stayed behind that desk.” Tabitha laughed. “Ask anyone in Garnet who broke a law in the past decade.”
“I know.” Wyatt sighed. “Stubborn bastard.”
Tabitha gave him a knowing look. “You love him.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
With Wyatt driving, they got to Tabitha’s road really fast. “Oh, stop here,” she said when he turned down it. “I’ll walk.”
“At eleven at night?” Wyatt gave her a look. “No.”
“It’s not that far. I’ll be fine.”
“Tabitha, no, I can drive you to the door.”
“But, you can’t—”
Wyatt slammed on the brakes so hard Tabitha was suddenly glad she took the time to put her belt on. She put her hands on the dashboard and looked at him in shock.
“You haven’t told her yet?” Wyatt barked, his light eyes wide in fury.
“I said I needed a few days!”
“Tonight. Now.” Wyatt gestured to the road. “I’ll drive to your house, and we’ll both go in there and tell her before I go back to work.”
“No,” Tabitha said with determination. “I’m not ready.”
Wyatt threw the car into park, which Tabitha knew was a bad sign. Then he leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. “Tab, I have tried to be understanding.”
“No, you haven’t,” she argued. “It’s been
three days
since Chicago. I’m not like you. I can’t just shout it at my family and expect them to get over it. I need a little time. You have to see that about me and understand it. Please. I’m begging you not to turn this into an issue.”
“It’s an issue,” Wyatt assured her with a glare. “A huge fucking issue. If you don’t let me go in there and tell her, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” She laughed in disbelief. “What are you going to do, divorce me? You asked me to marry you rashly, and I agreed because I want to be with you. I’m just pleading for some time to handle my mother. That’s it, and then we can go and live in whatever house you wanna live in and—”
Wyatt ran a hand through his hair and dropped his head back against the seat. “Tabitha, I love you, but you have to know you’ve got a few things you have to find a way to deal with. Being totally codependent is one of them.”
“Hello!” She laughed again. “You ain’t perfect, Wyatt. You have the worst temper and—”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to marry me then!”
“I didn’t say that. I’m saying that no one’s perfect. I love you for who you are. Why can’t you do the same for me? I’m trying.”
“Just get out, then.” Wyatt gestured to the door. “You wanna walk in the dark for a half mile, fine, do it. I’m sick of trying to help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. You know, my father’s right. You
are
your mother, and I’m the only blind asshole who doesn’t see it.”
Tabitha pulled back. Her eyes filled with tears before she could even find the words to express her absolute horror at the insult. She couldn’t even breathe past the hurt. Desperate for air she fumbled for the handle and opened it. She picked up her purse and stepped out of the car, all the while waiting for Wyatt to say sorry. Her mind just couldn’t accept that he would say something so terrible and not immediately apologize for cutting her that deeply.
Sometimes Wyatt said dumb things, but he never meant them.
She was still expecting him to make it better when he backed up and turned down to the main road. Then she stood there in stunned disbelief, feeling eleven all over again. It was like that afternoon when she’d burned all her stories with the first, terrible realization that heroes weren’t real. Tabitha stayed where she was, crying in the darkness for a good twenty minutes, waiting for Wyatt to come back.
He never did.
* * * *
By the time Tabitha got home, she was a mess. She was tired from working and broken from the fight with Wyatt. She stumbled up the steps, hearing the music rattle the walls. She groaned and looked heavenward. God must have a real vendetta against her.
She took a moment to wipe at her face and even reached into her purse for her mirror. She looked at her reflection in the porch light. The horrible part of being a redhead was that crying always showed on her face long after the tears subsided. There was no way to hide it, so she didn’t even try.
That was how badly Wyatt had hurt her.
She didn’t care what anyone on the other side of that door thought. She walked in to find her mother passed out on the couch. Brett and Vaughn were arguing over something in the kitchen. She was hoping they wouldn’t notice her, but with the night she was having, she wasn’t surprised when they did.
“What about Tabitha?” she heard Brett whisper as she walked in. “Will that work?”
Vaughn looked at her for a long moment and then shrugged. “Hell yeah, it’ll work.”
Brett stepped into the living room. “What the heck happened to you?”
“Leave me alone,” she mumbled as she walked toward her room.
“Hey, now.” Brett came forward and grabbed her arm. “Don’t be like that. You can talk to your brother.”
Tabitha stared at him, wondering if she had somehow stepped into an alternate reality. One where Wyatt was mean and Brett was considerate. “What?” she asked in complete disbelief.
“Come on, sit down.” Brett led her over to the other sofa and pushed her into it. “Something happen at work? You get fired?”
“I don’t have any money, Brett,” she said defensively.
“I’m not asking for money. I’m asking why my sister is crying.” Brett sounded so earnest it was still messing with Tabitha’s sensors. He turned around and took the glass Vaughn handed him. “Here, try this. It’ll take the edge off.”
Tabitha shook her head and pushed it away. “I don’t like this stuff.”
“One time in your life won’t kill ya.” Brett laughed.
“No, I suppose not.” Tabitha took the drink and sniffed it, hating the smell of vodka. “I guess I might as well, since he thinks I’m like her anyway.”
“Who thinks that?”
“No one.” Tabitha took a drink and grimaced over the burn. “I don’t like it.”
“You haven’t even tried it.”
Tabitha leaned back against the couch and took another drink. Then she looked to her mother, who was blissfully passed out. Just once it’d be nice to know what it felt like to completely escape from the world that hurt her. The glass wasn’t that full. It was mostly vodka and a little orange juice. She downed it in one shot and then looked at the bottom. “Why’s it grainy? Did you use rotten orange juice?”
“It’s fine.” Brett waved off her concern. “So do you wanna talk?”
“No, I wanna go to bed.” Tabitha stood up and waved off Brett’s offer to help. It was too strange to be dealt with. She’d think about it tomorrow when she could breathe again. “Night.”
“Night, Tab.”
She wanted a shower, but she never got naked when Vaughn was in the house, so she went to bed instead. She fell down against her lumpy mattress and stared at the ceiling, feeling like her world was caving in around her. She was still in utter shock over Wyatt saying what he did. As she pondered it, the ceiling looked like it really was spinning.
Maybe she
was
falling into an alternate universe.
If she did, it might be a good thing. If everything in the alternate universe was opposite, maybe Tabitha would be lucky. Though, even as she thought about it, she knew she had been lucky. She had a beautiful husband who loved her.
Or she thought so anyway. Maybe it had all been a lie.
The room spun more forcefully, and Tabitha’s stomach lurched. This booze was terrible stuff. She was going to be legitimately sick. She jumped up and then pitched to the ground immediately as if her legs weren’t working. She had to crawl to the door, and she fumbled with the lock, because everything was blurred and uneven. She could barely get her hand on it, let alone get it open.
When she did finally manage to unlock it, the door opened by magic, and she blinked up, seeing Vaughn looming over her, dark and menacing, like one of those villains from the stories she still wrote when she had the time.
She wanted to run away, but she puked on his feet instead.
“Fuck, Tabitha.” He kicked her, his foot connecting with her jaw, and she fell backward, but she didn’t feel it. “I’m gonna make you sorry for that.”
She blinked up at the ceiling that was still swirling in the darkness, making her feel like she was falling into an endless black hole. The door clicked shut. She heard the lock flip, and then someone was pulling her up, forcing her onto the bed.
Even as sick as she was, she still managed to scream when Vaughn’s face swam into view. She tried to push him off her, but her arms weren’t working the way she wanted them too.
She felt Vaughn’s heavy weight over her, and another scream burst out of her, this one pure and terrified. She said one word, the only word she could think of that would stop this from happening.
“
Wyatt
!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Wyatt.”
He stared at the police radio, stunned to hear his name come across it. Usually they used call signs. Already having a terrible night, he picked up the mic with a sense of dread and said, “Yeah.”
“You have to come back to the station,” Jules said slowly. “Right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just come back.” The quiver of fear was noticeable in his sister’s voice.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Wyatt’s breathing fell shallow in fear. “Is it Dad?”
“What the hell?” His father’s voice broke in. “This is a police radio, not a telephone.”
“Both of you come back.”
“Okay, fifty-six me at the station,” his father said before Wyatt could find the ability. “Boy, you gonna answer her?”
“I’m ten fifty-one,” Wyatt said numbly and then dropped the mic on his lap.
If his father was okay, there wasn’t anything that could really end him, unless it was Clay. He’d been training late. What if—
Wyatt tore out of the parking lot he’d been sitting in to do paperwork. He turned on his lights and siren and pulled into the station five minutes later behind his father, whose siren was blaring too. He leaped out his car and left the door open as he ran to the front doors.
“Do you know what it is?” Wyatt barked at his father.
“Not a clue.” His father opened the doors and burst into the sheriff’s office like a bull. “What the hell is going on?”
Jules was sitting at dispatch, shaking, with tears rolling down her face.
The fear forced all the air out of Wyatt’s lungs when he met his sister’s horrified gaze. She was looking at Wyatt, not his father, and he didn’t know why he knew it, but he did.
“Oh God!” he shouted. “It’s Tabitha!”
“It was a drug overdose. I put in the call for the ambulance on the phone. I didn’t want you to hear it over the radio,” Jules said in a wild, sobbing rush of panic. “She was unconscious, and her mama called it in. I’m sorry, Wy Wy. I got them out there as fast as I could.”
“Is she dead?” Wyatt choked on the words.
Jules shook her head. “No, but it wasn’t a good call.”
“Oh shit.” He looked to his father desperately, feeling young and afraid, hoping he somehow had a way to fix it when Wyatt couldn’t. “What’d I do?”
“We get you to the hospital.” His father grabbed his arm, jerking Wyatt so hard he stumbled. “Jules, call in someone to cover us and then work the board.”
“What?” Jules jumped up. “I’m going with you. I have to go with him!”
“Not this time.” His father pointed to the board. “You sit there and do your job. He’ll never get there if you’re driving him. With that twin vibe y’all got going on, you’ll wreck for sure.”
“I have to go!”
“Nope.” His father was already opening the door and dragging Wyatt with him because his legs had stopped working. “Boy, you got fifteen minutes to pull your shit together before we get there.”
“It takes half an hour to get to Mercy!”
“Not when I’m driving.” His father jumped into his police jeep. He flipped on his sirens and lights and then using his loudest, most intimidating sheriff’s voice growled, “Get in, Wyatt!
Now
!”
Wyatt got in and slammed the door.
Then he crumpled. He leaned his forehead against his knees and did something he hadn’t done since the day his grandfather died. He started crying. “Fuck,” he choked out between sobs. “Oh God, Dad. It’s my fault.”
“It ain’t your fault.”
“No, it is. We had a fight. I left her there. I just left her in the road. I ain’t never done something like that to her before. I drove her to it. I know I did.”
“Jesus Christ, Wyatt.”
“Oh God, if she dies, I’ll die with her. I said the worst things to her. That can’t be the last thing she heard from me.”
“I’ll get you there. It won’t be the last thing she heard from you. I promise.”
He nodded, hoping to God this wasn’t going be the first promise his father broke to him. “Okay.”