Justified (23 page)

“Mr. Cruz, is there a problem?” Eldon Simpson, one of Trapp's two police officers stood in front of us with arms crossed.

I wanted to run, or disappear, or turn into a scissortail and fly away. I could go somewhere nobody knew me, where Nathan and I could live in peace, without anyone watching, judging, talking. Then I would be free.

“Took you long enough to get here, Eldon,” Tyler slurred. “But you have other big business to tend to.” He guffawed. “Like shoe polish on shop windows.”

Eldon nodded. “You all right, Fawn?”

“Ruthie and I were just leaving.”

“You hear that?” Eldon's gaze dropped to Tyler's fists, still locked around my waist. “She's leaving with Ruthie.”

“No, she's not.”

Eldon laid his palm on Tyler's arm. “Go ahead and let go, and we won't have any trouble.”

“Get your hands off me, Eldon. I could sue you.”

The cop tightened his grip around Tyler's wrist, but the drunk's body convulsed in anger. He lunged at Eldon, pinning me momentarily between the two men before I was shoved toward Ruthie.

Chapter Forty-Seven

When we got back to the Picketts' house, Velma and Ruthie tried to encourage me, saying things weren't as bad as they seemed, but before I went to bed that night, the news reached the house. Tyler had been arrested. And if that weren't enough, the Panthers had barely won the game. With a score of 3–0, Trapp's state ranking fell into question thirty minutes after the final whistle blew.

Velma wrung her hands and fluttered around the kitchen, grumbling to herself and working off her frustrations exactly like her son would have done. Ansel lifted the remote control like a saber, silencing the evening news with a punch of his thumb, but he continued to sit in his new recliner, staring at the blank screen.

I cried myself to sleep.

The town would blame JohnScott. Not only for the scandalously low score but also for the scandal in front of the concession stand. And by association, I would be blamed too. And really … honestly … we were both at fault. But I was tired of being put down by people who expected something of me without ever giving in return. And I was finally realizing I didn't have to believe them.

So the next morning, I showered, ran a comb through my hair, and put on jeans and a T-shirt. The baby whimpered in the living room, but he couldn't be hungry, because I'd fed him right before I got in the shower. From the sound of it, Velma rocked him back to sleep.

I flicked off the bathroom light, then stepped down the hallway, expecting to see Velma.

Instead, I saw JohnScott.

My heart quivered, and I put my fingers over my mouth. He had his back to me, and he leaned over Velma's old cradle, rocking it gently.

“He asleep again?” My words came out wobbly.

JohnScott didn't turn around, didn't even flinch. “Yep.”

“I was surprised to hear him cry. He ought to sleep for a while. He's got a full tummy.”

“He needed to burp. It woke him up.”

“Did your mom burp him?”

“Naw, I did it.” He looked away from the baby, out the sliding-glass door.

“I'm surprised you knew that's what he needed.” I laughed lightly.

“Twelve nieces and nephews.” His easy answers couldn't hide the pain in his voice.

I stepped to his side, entering an invisible cloud of tension. He smelled of soap and cologne, which blended with Nathan's baby lotion until I couldn't separate the two and didn't want to.

The baby blanket had come unswaddled, but JohnScott tucked it around the edges. Nathan's lips moved in and out in a blissful nursing dream, and JohnScott moved the pacifier to the corner of the crib.

“He's been like this since birth,” I said. “Eats and sleeps.”

“Let's hope it lasts.”

He still hadn't looked at me, and his disinterest pulled a string of frantic blubberings from my mouth. “You're probably thirsty. I could get you a Dr Pepper. Or some iced coffee. Did your mother already offer you something?”

“She's not here.”

“Sure she is.”

He ran a hand over his chin. “She left.”

I glanced toward the kitchen. It seemed odd Velma would leave without telling me. “She'll be back soon?”

“Not for a while.” He stepped to the bookshelf in the corner of the room, favoring his bad leg, then stared blindly at the titles. “I didn't want to bother you, but she told me if I didn't come over here, she'd strip the starter out of my truck.” He crossed his arms. “She's done it before.”

My fingers tightened around the wooden trim of the cradle. “Very resourceful.”

He turned suddenly. “Fawn, everyone and their dog has been telling me you're finished with Tyler, but I don't know what to think. You tell me one thing, and then I see the two of you making out—”

“We were not making out.” I deliberately glared at him, partly to convey my disgust and partly to encourage myself I wasn't as tainted as I felt.

He leaned against the wall and peered at me silently. Blankly.

“Come sit down.” I motioned to the couch, but when he didn't budge, I sat next to the crib and looked at the baby, gathering strength from his innocence. “When you showed up at the hospital, it felt right and made me happy.”

“I was out of line.”

“You were the only person I wanted to see,” I added hurriedly. “Of course, I needed your mother there. She's a tremendous help with the baby, but you're the only one I wanted, just because.”

He sighed, and his muscles thawed with the release of air. “I don't blame you if you want to be with him. He's the father of your baby.”

“Please stop calling him that. It makes me sound like I should be on a talk show where families yell at each other on national television.” Driven by nervous energy, I stood up abruptly, but then found I had no where to go. And I had no way to escape the tension that hung in the room like a cloud of smoke. “I know you saw him kissing me, but it's not what it looked like.”

“How so?” He monotoned the two words, bored, indifferent.

“It's not like I wanted him to kiss me.” My words tumbled. “He still insists he's going to take care of me, but I told him again that it isn't going to happen. I don't want to be with him.”

JohnScott's shoulders withered.

I walked around the couch and stood on tiptoe, forcing him to look at me. “I don't want to be taken care of the way Tyler would take care of me.”

“He's the father of your baby.” He winced at his use of the phrase. “That sort of gives him a natural right to a relationship.”

“With the baby. Not with me.”

He blew air through his teeth. “Tyler Cruz has it all, Fawn. Looks, money, confidence. Girls want guys like him.”

“He doesn't have integrity or compassion. And he doesn't love me. Not really.”

“But he's the father.”

A jab pierced my temple. “Every time you say that, it reminds me I had sex out of wedlock, and I feel like a harlot.”

He stepped away from the bookshelf. “You're not … that.”

“I feel like it though, so what's the difference?”

He ran a hand through his curls, then sighed, and his next words sounded like a begrudged confession. “The difference is your heart.”

“Not everyone sees it that way.”

“Of course not.” He shrugged. “There's always somebody who will tear you down, but you're a good person. You'll land on your feet.”

“Well, I'm not going to land on my feet next to Tyler Cruz.” A tear of frustration welled in the corner of my eye. “And if I have to shake you by the shoulders to get you to listen, I'll do it.”

The corners of his mouth pulled down, and his eyes locked with mine. He frowned, but in the shadow of his gaze, I saw a dilemma, a debate, as if I were an opposing team that had to be analyzed.

My body felt crippled. I had just threatened to shake him by the shoulders, but his scowl withered my confidence, and I realized there was nothing I could do. I couldn't make him hear me, believe me, love me. He either did or he didn't, and I would have to pick up the pieces and get on with my life either way. The wetness in the corner of my eye grew into a puddle and slid down my cheek.

JohnScott took a step toward me and touched the tear with his fingertip, as though checking to see if it was real. His brows eased. “You don't have to shake me.” His finger trailed across my lips. “I hear you.”

I melted into him, slipped my arms around his waist, and nestled beneath his chin. We hadn't hugged since the baby's birth, and without Nathan between us, I felt incredibly close, almost as though I stood inside him. “I've missed you.”

He ran a hand through my wet hair and pressed his lips against my forehead.

“JohnScott, I've had so much on my mind. Motherhood isn't what I expected. It's so much different and so much better. And your mom and Ruthie have been great, but I wanted to share it with you.” I kissed his chest, then rested my ear against the spot, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. “Ruthie said you were sad.”

His hand trailed up and down my back. “I have a confession to make.”

I lifted my head to meet his gaze.

“I'm a pouter.”

“I'll say you are.”

“I like to work through my problems, but I'm not sure that's what I've been doing the past week.”

I fingered his sleeve. “I won't complain about your juvenile behavior if you won't complain about mine.”

“Deal.” He pulled me against his chest and rested his chin on the top of my head, and we swayed in the corner of the living room. My mind emptied and my heart settled, and I clung to him, feeling like a rescued child.

“Ruthie said you have bruises.”

“It's nothing.”

He bent over me, running his fingertips across my jaw with feather-soft tenderness. Then he kissed each yellow spot. “He's not going to get close enough to hurt you again.”

As I stood in the shelter of his arms, my paranoia about Tyler seemed trivial. “I'm worried about you.”

“Me?” He laid his palms firmly on my shoulders. “Oh, you mean my leg? It's okay now.” He chuckled. “But when it happened, it felt like a branding iron.”

“Not your leg. Football. It's eating you alive.”

“Yep.” He brushed a strand of hair away from my face, and his bewildered gaze traveled to my ear as he gently nudged the wayward curl behind it. “The school board, more or less, told me to get my act together or else.”

“Or else what?”

“I didn't ask.” A corner of his mouth wrinkled. “I think I'd better take these boys to the play-offs or look for another job.”

“If that's all they want, you have nothing to worry about. I thought you were going to say they told you to break it off with me.”

“At this point”—he chuckled—“I think they've decided I'd be more productive if I kept you.”

“You'd be more productive if you would talk to me.”

He rested his forehead gently against mine. “I didn't want to look weak.”

I shook my head, rubbing my nose against his. “Not weak, just real.”

“Real.” His mouth grazed my temple, then circled my cheekbone before settling familiarly against my lips. His kiss felt soft and warm and cautious, but as seven days' worth of fear and doubt fell from my shoulders, my response gradually escalated, and I silently conveyed the desperation of all the words we had left unsaid.

Settling back against the bookshelf, he drew me closer, answering my unspoken plea as his lips begged for confirmation. And I wordlessly answered him, willing him to believe my regrets, my intentions, my love.

When the baby cried, we pulled away from each other and looked toward the crib. We couldn't see Nathan, but the cradle shook slightly from his kicking, and we both smiled.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Tyler reached for the binoculars on his dashboard, then slammed the door of his truck. He hadn't counted on being jailed for the night, but it didn't matter. He'd still had plenty of time to set things up over at Fawn's house before she returned from the Picketts'.

Earlier that day, he had spread a new tablecloth on her kitchen table, and right in the center, he positioned a pot of flowers, a live plant so it wouldn't wilt. Beneath the salt-and-pepper shakers, he placed a greeting card and a new Bible. Then he filled her small freezer with dinners and her refrigerator with milk and fruit.

Before he let himself out, he set up the baby monitor, taking one of the receivers to keep for himself. And so it wouldn't be obvious what he had done, he took time to unpack a few other baby items, making it appear he had thoughtfully prepared for his son's arrival. He considered leaving the diamond ring on the table next to the flowers but thought better of it. He wanted to see the expression on her face when she saw the size of the rock.

She had come home this afternoon. He knew she'd come back to him eventually. She spent the first thirty minutes walking around the front yard, carrying his son in one arm and pointing at the horizon with the other. Tyler watched her through his new field glasses, itching to give her the ring and get his life moving forward, but he bided his time. He had things to take care of before that.

She went inside the house, and since the sun hadn't set, she was out of his line of sight. But no matter, he could listen on the monitor. A cloud of dust appeared to his left, and he gritted his teeth as the coach's truck approached the house. Tyler needed that jerk out of the picture, so he had a plan for JohnScott Pickett. Or rather for the brakes of his truck.

His plan seemed simple. When Fawn and JohnScott were busy in the house, he would slip over there and tamper with JohnScott's truck. Tyler had parked closer to her house this time, only a half mile away in a mesquite thicket. Neither of them would know he had been there, and the coach's brakes would fail a few minutes after he left the house. He'd probably make it to the highway, accelerate to fifty-five, and lose control.

If his father were still alive, Byron Cruz would have slapped Tyler on the back and said,
Well done, Son
.

Tyler snickered when he realized the new binoculars were stronger than the last pair. He opened the door of his truck, flipped on the monitor, and reached for a beer.

“Fawn, I'll change Nathan's diaper.” JohnScott's voice sounded muffled and distant over the intercom, and Tyler figured the idiot was in the bedroom.

He clenched the beer can and cursed. This would be the last day JohnScott Pickett would find himself anywhere near his wife's bed.

She answered him, and her voice sounded nearer, louder. “You change diapers?”

“Well … only wet ones.”

“Impressive.” She moved farther away, probably nearer to the coach, and when the baby fussed, both of them made whiny baby-talk sounds.

“He's probably hungry,” crooned Fawn. “Then he'll be sleepy.”

“I'll stay in here.” JohnScott's voice got loud, and Tyler turned down the volume on the receiver.

Silence for a few seconds, and then Fawn followed him. “Would it bother you if I … just covered with a blanket?” The baby's cries almost drowned out her words. “I hate for you to sit in here all by yourself.”

“Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

Tyler squirmed in the seat of the pickup. Of course the coach didn't mind ogling a half-dressed woman. Fawn may not have had the body she had a year ago, but she was still gorgeous, and the pervert had no business being in the room when she fed her baby.
Their baby.
His and Fawn's.

She laughed nervously. “This is all so new to me.”

“Not to worry.” Tyler heard a thump, and then JohnScott said, “I'll put this swing together and pretend you're not here.”

The baby finally stopped crying, and Tyler turned the monitor back up a notch, guzzling the rest of his drink.

“Who put these other things together?”

Fawn hesitated so long, Tyler figured she hadn't heard him. “I guess Tyler. He must have stopped by sometime before I came home from your folks' place.”

Tyler heard two clanking sounds and then a click as though two parts of the swing had been snapped together.

“I don't like it,” JohnScott said.

Fawn answered quickly. “He got these things ready for Nathan and left some groceries and flowers. It's probably his way of apologizing for making a scene at the game.”

“Fact is, we don't know what he meant. Baby toys and groceries tell me one thing. Flowers say something different.”

Tyler tested the binoculars, but the sun hadn't set enough for him to see in the house. Another few minutes, and he should be golden.

A stretch of silence followed, broken only by the squeaking recliner, and Tyler pictured the coach reading instructions. “If I start putting all these gadgets together now, I should have them finished by Nathan's first birthday.”

Fawn laughed, and Tyler gripped the monitor tightly.
She shouldn't laugh at something so stupid.

When she stopped, she said, “I really ought to take some of it back to the store. Do you think I could, even without the receipts?”

“Will he mind?”

Finally Tyler could see them through the living-room window. Fawn rocked the baby in the recliner, and the coach stood with his back to her. The flake must have come straight from football practice, because he wore coaching shorts and a Trapp High School polo shirt.

“I don't know.” Fawn's shoulders slumped.

JohnScott turned and watched her for a few seconds. “Hey.”

She looked up at him with a slight smile, and the fool went to her.

“Everything's going to be fine, you know.” He kissed her on the lips.

Tyler had the urge to pull JohnScott out of the house and beat him to death. The coach had nerve to kiss Fawn while Tyler's baby sucked on her.

Sickening.

When the baby made a smacking sound, JohnScott cleared his throat and turned away.

“About time you got embarrassed,” Tyler yelled. “Get
away
from her.”

Tyler clenched the steering wheel with one hand, calming his anger while he watched what happened behind the coach's back. Fawn laid the baby across her lap and adjusted her shirt and underthings. He only saw skin for a second, but he could see that Fawn wasn't flat-chested like she used to be.

“Here, let me burp the little guy.”

When Fawn smiled at JohnScott again, Tyler spit in the sand.

The coach reached for the baby and walked to the window, holding him like a receiver cradling a ball. “You're a good boy, Nathan. You're going to grow up and be a strong Christian man, but before that, you need to burp so your momma won't worry about your tummy.” He lifted the baby to his shoulder. “That's better. Now you can take a little nap in your bassinet. Notice how nicely it's put together. So sturdy.”

Fawn stood behind him, and the coach kept talking. “You're going to need a tough cradle, because you're going to grow, and then you'll be a big, strong baby. And when you're in high school, you can play football for Uncle JohnScott. You'll probably be a lineman.”

Tyler gritted his teeth. Not only would his son never play ball for Trapp High School, but he would never call JohnScott Pickett
uncle
.

Fawn picked up a blanket. “How could he be a lineman? Tyler and I aren't that big.”

“You've got a point.” JohnScott held the baby out from his chest, looking into his face. “You might not be a lineman, but what about a running back? Or a receiver? Or the quarterback?” He pulled the baby close to his face. “Or if you're really lucky, we might let you be the
kicker
.”

Tyler came out of the truck, breathing deeply. The coach wasn't merely trying to take Fawn. He had set his sights on the baby, too, but Tyler would never let another man lay claim to his son. A new idea formed in his mind. An idea so obvious he didn't know why it hadn't occurred to him before—much better than the brakes on the coach's truck.

He lifted the binoculars and stared.

JohnScott swayed with the baby in his arms while Fawn hovered near his elbow. The three of them were wrapped in a nauseous, sappy glow that made Tyler spew curse words like a Fourth of July fireworks show. He stepped back to the truck so he could hear what they were saying.

“He's about asleep again,” Fawn murmured.

“I have that effect on children.”

“It's true.” She took the baby from him and laid him in the bassinet. “I slept through most of your history classes.”

JohnScott laughed but caught himself and quieted, and then the two of them stood over the bassinet, gazing down at the baby. Then the coach slipped his arm around Fawn's shoulders and hunched over her like a vampire attacking his prey.

Tyler leaned against the hood of the truck, intrigued. Then he pressed the binoculars against the bridge of his nose and watched closely as Coach Pickett ravaged Fawn for what would probably be the last time.

When the animal finally released her, JohnScott asked, “You holding up all right?”

Tyler turned up the volume on the monitor when the wind whirred through the cab of his truck.

“Besides being exhausted all the time?” Fawn said. “Yes, but I feel a little stir-crazy.”

JohnScott rubbed the back of her head, and Tyler imagined her hair getting tangled. Fawn would hate that.

“Let's go for a walk.”

Tyler cackled. “Excellent idea, Coach.”

Fawn stared at the baby. “I couldn't leave Nathan.”

“Five minutes. And we'll stay in sight of the house.” JohnScott reached toward the end table by the window and unhooked the second monitor from the charger. “You'll be able to hear him the entire time.”

Fawn peered hesitantly into the bassinet, and Tyler cursed. “Go on the stupid walk, Fawn. Go with the stupid, stupid coach.”

“It's getting cool outside.”

“You can wear my hoodie.”

“I guess five minutes wouldn't hurt.” She spread a blanket over the baby, and a few seconds later, she and JohnScott went out the back door.

Tyler counted to twenty-five before starting his truck and speeding toward the house. He only had a few seconds, and he didn't dare pass up the opportunity. He would rescue his son, and then Fawn would see how things ought to be. He would use the car seat, and then she would see what a good father he was. He might even buckle up himself. Tyler laughed, feeling an instant high.

Fawn and Ty would be his at last.

He slid to a stop in front of the house, and the light from JohnScott's flashlight swung lazily, reassuring Tyler that they were still walking away from the house. Thank God for the wind whooshing through the cedars, blowing dust past the house and giving Tyler more time under the cover of its sound.

He pulled the screen door open, gripping it firmly so the wind couldn't wrestle it out of his hand. Then he stepped into the dark room and closed it softly behind him. His hands shook uncontrollably, and he studied them for a brief second, feeling another charge of adrenalin. The porch light cast shadows across the living room, and Tyler could just make out the bassinet.

He stepped toward his son.