Blinding Trust (13 page)

Chapter 17

Savanna

I stood in the doorway staring at Ty. He had his hands crossed against his chest.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated.

He looked back and I noticed a cab was sitting with the engine running. “You got any cash? This dude says his credit card machine ain’t working.”

I rummaged through my purse and handed him my whole wallet to go through. I think I was just so shocked that he was standing in front of me that I couldn’t comprehend what I was actually doing.

When he came back inside, he had a small book bag on his back. He sat it down on the chair and walked over to me. Before I could say anything, Ty pulled me into a tight hug. “I got here as soon as I could.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m taking care of my best friend, like I said I would. Geesh, do I have to spell it out?”

I plopped down on the couch and watched him sit next to me. “You shouldn’t have come. What did you tell Miranda? She must think you’re up to something.”

“Miranda is fine. I would have brought her with me if Amy wasn’t due to pop a baby out of her vagina any day now. Besides, she thinks I’m here to help out while Colt is gone.”

I didn’t want Ty holding information from his wife. This was just a big fat mess. “You should go home, Ty. I will pay for
the ticket. I’m fine. It was just a false alarm.”

I went to stand up and he grabbed my arm, pulling me back down on the couch. “Not so fast, Wonder Woman. Look me in the eye and tell me that nothing is wrong.”

I opened my eyes wide and looked at him, but the words wouldn’t come out. I could deny it all I wanted, but I knew that he would see right through my lies. I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t talk about this with you, Ty.”

He pulled one of my hands down and held it. “I’m here because you need me to be, whether you will admit it or not. I have no hidden
agenda and I sure as hell don’t want your money. Like it or not, you’re going to tell me.”

I could have sat there and beat around the bush until he gave up, but I knew that come
morning, he would be hounding me for answers again. I had to face the fact that he was the only person around who was supporting me. I wished it was Colt, although, I knew he was where he needed to be. Life went on, even if I ended up having cancer or not.

“Do you promise not to tell anyone, especially Colt?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Now just spit it out. I haven’t pissed since I left the airport and the three beers I had before I got on the plane are ready to come back out.”

“Just forget it! This is hopeless. You can’t even be serious for three seconds.”

I was getting so frustrated with him. For Ty to hop on a plane to come to my rescue was just surreal. I knew he cared about me. We were family and that’s how it should be, but I just couldn’t believe that he would drop everything to make sure I was alright.

“Go to the bathroom and we can talk when you get back
.”

Ty got up and headed down the hall. Since I’d slept for so long, it felt like morning for me. I grabbed a bottle of wine and a beer out of the refrigerator.
After I had a glass, I met Ty back in the living room.

“Ugh, oh! We need alcohol for this discussion?” He seemed as worried to hear my news as I was to say it out loud.

I poured the red wine into my glass and drank half of it before answering him. “My doctor found a lump in my breast.”

He said nothing.

I couldn’t look at him. I was so afraid of what he was thinking. Ty look a long drink of his beer and shook his head like it was hard to swallow. “Van, you have to tell Colt.”

I put my hands over my face. “I can’t tell him yet. I have to know how bad it is first.”

He reached over and pulled me into his chest. “Please don’t cry. Dammit, woman! I knew it was something like this. Why do you think I got here so fast?”

I let Ty continue to comfort me. “I didn’t want everyone knowing. Right now, I don’t know how serious it is. How can I explain things when I don’t even know what to do myself?”

“When does Colt get home?” He asked.

“He won’t be home until Saturday,” I cried. I just wanted h
im to be holding me and doing what Ty was trying to do. I appreciated it so much, but it wasn’t his job.

“I’ll stay until Colt gets home. Miranda is fine with it. I sat her down and told her how upset you were and how you had called for her. She wanted to call you right away, but thought you’d get pissed at me for telling her that something was wrong. With Amy on the verge of popping out another littl
e kid, she didn’t want to leave. She sends her love and said that when you’re ready to talk, you know how to find her.”

Miranda and Ty had always been there for me. Their love continued to grow, as well as the trust that they shared. No matter how much the man joked, she knew he was always just going to love her.

“I kind of figured you would tell her.”

He rubbed my shoulder and made me look up at him. “What’s the next step?”

I shrugged. “They are doing a biopsy on Thursday.”

“I’m going with you.” He was adamant.

I shook my head. “You can’t! Colt will kill you!”

“Van, here’s the way I see it. You haven’t told Colt anything. He’s busy protecting your son and you don’t want to interrupt that. I get it. The thing is, you can’t go through this alone. Maybe I was the last person on earth that you wanted to know this information, but I do know. Now, it would be
impossible for me to let you go through it alone.”

This was the side of Ty that not m
any people got to see. His emotional side was usually camouflaged by humor. “What if I don’t want your support?”

He cocked his eyebrow and laughed at me. “Of course you do.” He reached over and grabbed both of my hands, then pulled them up to his lips and kissed them. “Everything is going to be okay, Van. Just pretend I’m Colt.”

I pulled away. “You’re nothing like him.”

“You’re right! I still have a set of balls, where Colt lost his man card years ago.”

“You just went from hero to asshole in ten seconds flat.”

He patted my leg. “I’m going up to the guest room to get some sleep. Just as a precaution, I’m locking the door. I know it’s going to be hard for you to resist the real man sleeping a few rooms down.” He winked and got up off the couch.

“Eh, how does Miranda put up with you?”

He was halfway up the stairs. “Be nice or I will do an upper decker in all
of your toilets!”

I threw my hands in the air. “Oh my God! Go home!”

“See you in the morning!” He yelled.

When I finally got up to my room, and locked my own door, I thought about having to call Colt and let him know that Ty was at the ranch. Since he hadn’t been in a good mood for weeks, I couldn’t imagine him being happy about it.

Knowing that I wasn’t going to get much sleep, since I’d already slept so long earlier, I grabbed my Kindle and started on a book that I had on my to-be-read list.

I finished the whole thing before sleep came again, and when it did, I kind of wished it hadn’t.

I had horrible nightmares of being dead and watching my kids grow up without me. I saw my daughters grow up without a mother and Colt becoming so old and lonely. I dreamed of Noah being a rockstar and getting emancipated from his father.

Each dream was worse than the one before it.

By seven in the morning, I’d had about enough of them, so I went downstairs to make some coffee. Once I had my cup, I went into the living room to relax before Ty woke up and started getting on my nerves.

A vibration caught my attention and I noticed that Ty must have left his cell phone downstairs when he went up to bed.
After it buzzed so much that it got on my nerves, I grabbed it just to turn off the notification.

Seeing that the message was from Colt, made me want to know if Ty had told him he was coming. Curiosity got the best of me, as I opened up the message.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It had
to have been some kind of joke.

There was no way my husband was around naked women and sharing the pictures with his cousin.

I couldn’t stop looking at it.

The caption…that caption said it all.

I was hurt, jealous, mad and a bunch of other things all in one. Colt was going to hear me loud and clear when he picked up the phone. While still holding the phone with the incriminating message, I ran toward my bedroom to grab my phone.

Ty stopped me in the hallway. “I was looking for that.”

I put it behind my back. “I need it for a minute.”

“Did you lose yours?”

“No! Just…I need it, okay?”

I no sooner spun around, when I felt him grabbing my arm. “Hold on! What could be so important that you have to use my phone?” He snatched it out of my hand and looked down at the opened screen. A huge grin formed on his face. “Holy shit! This is awes…err, it’s terrible. It must be just a joke. I send him naked pictures all the time. He probably Googled it.”

“You are doing that thing you do!”

He looked all innocent. “What thing?”

“The thing where you take up for each other, so us women don’t find out you really did something wrong!”

“Bullshit!”

I pushed Ty and went running into my room, locking the door, so he couldn’t follow me. “When I get done with his ass, he may not have balls left!”

“Van! Open the door. He doesn’t know I’m here. Just wait until he calls you.
I’m sure there is an explanation. Do you really think he’d let Noah around that kind of thing?”

I stopped punching in Colt’s number and thought about what Ty was saying. There was no way Colt would have allowed our son to be near anything like that. As mad as I was about the picture, I wondered if I was freaking out over something that never happened.

Reluctantly, I opened the door and saw Ty standing there. “You’re telling him a different reason for coming here, Ty. I’ll talk to him about the picture later.”

Little voices filled the foyer and I found myself almost running downstairs to greet the girls. They both had new dolls in their hands that were wearing outfits that matched their own.

Addy held her doll up. “Mommy, look what Grandma got me.”

“That’s so cute! You girls look like you had a great time.”

Colt’s mom smiled. I could tell how much she loved being a grandmother. “They were angels. I told them we could go next year if they wanted to.”

“There’s my pretty nieces!” Ty came running down the stairs.

I could see the curious look he was getting from his aunt. “Ty got here late last night to help out when the alarm company comes to fix the chicken houses. Since Colt isn’t here, him or Conner had to be here. I told him there was plenty of room at your house.”

“I guess you’re better company than me and Lucy. We tend to get boring nowadays.”

Ty hugged his aunt. “You’re never too old to have a good time. Maybe you could cook me some of your fried chicken while I’m here.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes, I think all he loves me for is that darn chicken.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Didn’t Miranda and the kids come?”

He held up his arms. “I wanted her to, but with Amy being due, she didn’t want to leave. That’s why I’m here and Conner stayed.”

“Of course. Amy would kill him if he wasn’t there for this one. They claim this is the last one they’re having, but we all know how the two of them are.” Colt’s mom gave Ty the look like she knew what they did in their spare time.

We all three laughed.

Addy and Christian had run upstairs and finally came back down. Addy looked sad. “Where’s Daddy and Noah?”

“They’re still in California. They’ll be back this weekend.” I tried to reassure her.

“Can you ask him to come home now? I want to show him my doll.”

I bent down and kissed her little forehead. “They will be home in a couple of days.”

“How about, after Uncle Ty gets done with the alarm guy, we go out for ice cream?” He always talked to the kids like he was one himself.

She started getting all excited. “Mommy, can we? Can we please?”

“Of course.”

Colt’s mom leaned down to talk to Addy. “How about Grandma makes fried chicken for dinner and then you can go have ice cream afterwards?”

“Yay!”

“That sounds great, Mom. I will bring a side dish.”

She started to walk toward the door. “See you all at six, then. Savanna, don’t you let him get on your nerves too much.”

Her reference to Ty must have hit a nerve. “I’m not that bad, am I?”

We both look
ed at each other and ignored his comment.

Once
she was gone, Ty turned to me. “You came up with a story fast.”

“It’s not a story. I was going to have to call Colt and give him the bad news about it. They were fitting us into their schedule. Anyway, they’ll be here around ten. It’s the first four chicken
houses. You just need to be there to sign and answer any questions that he might have.” I had almost forgot about them coming. I would have had no clue what to tell the men.