Keep You (37 page)

             
“Did he talk to anyone?” Mike asked. “Did he have friends here in the complex? Anyone who might know where he was headed?”

             
“No. Everybody hated that man. Whatchu want with him anyway? Ain’t nothin’ but a piece of shit!”

             
Mike continued to press, very
Law & Order
with his probing questions, trying to find any little bread crumb to follow, but Tam wasn’t listening. He could feel himself reeling backward from this moment, this horrible place, the last vapors of opportunity sliding through his fingers.

In truth, he had no idea what he’d intended to do to the man once he’d found him. Slam him up against the wall? Break his jaw? Get caught up in the moment and ram a dinner fork through his throat? He was too volatile and knew it, but there’d been this hope unfurling in him that if he could just finally shake off Hank, then he could have Jo.
Worry free. He’d never have to wonder if his old man would take away the one good thing in his life.

             
Now he didn’t know what to do. Hank, he realized, would never stop haunting him.

**

              Jo plopped down on a chair in the tiny break room and began unlacing her work sneakers. It was a miracle, really, that she hadn’t made some disastrous mistake that day, as distracted as she’d been. Tam had promised to call. And he hadn’t.

             
“Are you gonna come with us to Chili’s for margaritas?” Sasha asked.

             
Just listening to the question annoyed her. “No.” She scraped together a bare smile as she pried off her other shoe and pulled her flip-flops out of her bag. “I think I’ll just - ”

             
Her phone rang.

             
Jo dove into her bag, fingers fumbling over wallet, keys, old tampons and a random spare shirt before she latched onto her phone and pulled it out.

             
“Damn,” Sasha said, and Jo didn’t care how stupid she looked.

             
She held her breath while she checked the screen to see who was calling.
Tam
. She pressed talk, heart thundering in her chest.

             
“Hi.”

             
“Hi, gorgeous.” Just two words, and she could
see
the fatigue pulling at his face, bearing down on his shoulders. He sounded like hell. He sounded like Tam. Her stomach did a grateful cartwheel.

             
“How are you doing?” she asked, and suddenly she wished she didn’t have a witness, because even the most benign of comments felt intimate and tender, their reconnection still so fresh she was afraid she’d dreamed it.

             
“How ‘bout you come outside and we can talk in person?”

             
Jo threw her phone in her purse and hauled it up over her shoulder. “Bye,” she told Sasha as she bustled out the door and through the treatment lab. She dodged a German shepherd in the lobby, tossed a distracted wave to the desk staff, and nearly tripped on her way through the airlock and out into the parking lot.

             
The ’65 Malibu was parked under the Honeygood sign, Tam leaned back against its rear fender, arms folded, his eyes the same color as the car’s glittery blue paint. The wind was kicking up and it pulled her hair over her shoulder, the clouds overhead churning and growing more charcoal by the second. Lightning flickered inside a thunderhead.

             
She took a deep breath and it was her eighteenth birthday; it was Jess’s wedding and a summer evening at the pool; it was all those hundreds of times he’d been propped against her dorm building. And it was now, and she wanted to be this sophisticated, Audrey Hepburn-esque girl who gave him a coy smile and sauntered toward him, hips swinging. But this was
Tam
, and she wasn’t sophisticated for shit. He looked like hell, but a wide, white grin stole across his face as she jogged the last few steps between them and launched herself at him.

             
His arms circled around her and his chin dropped on top of her head. Jo pressed her face to the front of his t-shirt. “How are you doing?” she repeated her question from earlier.

             
He sighed and it ruffled her hair. “Better now.”

**

              She followed him in her car about two miles down the highway to the Home Depot parking lot. They parked at the far reaches, up close to the road and away from passing customers. Jo locked her Mustang and slid into the passenger seat of the Malibu as the first fat raindrops started to fall. They pattered loudly against the roof and windshield and Jo pulled her door shut, sealing them in together.

             
The backseat was crammed with Rubbermaid tubs of laundry, a laptop, a pair of red sneakers and a pair of cheap black dress shoes. A red tie lolled from one basket like a happy dog’s tongue.

             
“I cleaned out my apartment,” Tam explained. He stared out through the rain-spattered windshield and raked a hand through his hair. “I probably shouldn’t have, but…I don’t have much and I figured…even if…”

             
“Even if what?” Jo prompted gently. She laid her hand over his thigh and the worn denim that covered it.

             
He took a deep breath. “Even if I’m not welcome at…” He didn’t finish.

             
“Oh, Tam, baby.” She scooted across the vinyl bench seat until she was pressed up against his side, her heart clenching.

             
“I went to see my dad today. Tried to, anyway.” He swallowed. “He was gone.”

             
Jo waited, listening.

             
“I was gonna…shit, I dunno what I was gonna do. But I’ve got no idea where he is now, or when he’ll turn back up.” Air pumped in and out of him, hand shaking as it pushed back through his hair again.  “And he will turn back up, Joey. He always does. And it’s never pretty. He…God.” His eyes pressed shut. “He’s dangerous. To anyone who’s close to me.”

             
“Tam.” She didn’t fight the urge to reach up and smooth the hair above his ear. “I’m not afraid of your father.”

             
His eyes cut over toward her, glowing blue, full of all the fear she didn’t feel. “You should be.” He wasn’t shaking, but she could feel the electric currents running beneath his skin. He was a live wire detached from its power pole.

             
“Running scared of that asshole,” she said with conviction, “only wrecks
your
life, it doesn’t help keep anyone safer.”

             
“You don’t know that. My mom, she…” another big, throat-jacking swallow gripped him.

             
“Your mom, rest her soul, kept
letting
him back into her life. You couldn’t protect her because she didn’t want to be protected.” He blinked hard. “I’m not,” she said fiercely, “gonna let some dickhead bully me – I’m not gonna let him bully
you
. You have a right to live, Tam. You are a good, the
best
, guy, and you deserve to be happy.”

             
He glanced away from her and Jo was overcome by the sense that she was pushing too hard. “I’m sorry.” She sat back and let her hand fall into her lap. The rain was coming down in buckets, clouding over the windshield, thundering on the roof. It was like they were underwater.

             
“Walt wasn’t wrong,” he said after a moment. “I wanted to knock his teeth in, but he had a point.”

             
“Walt misled me on purpose for four years. He’s a shit.”

             
“I misled you too,” he said, turning to really face her for the first time. The haunted look in his eyes told her he was replaying that afternoon in the rain, four years ago, and that he hated what he saw.

             
Jo sighed. “For the right reasons. I wanted to hate you for it, but at least…I dunno.”

             
“What?”

             
“I thought you were done with me, Tam. I thought…after all the sneaking around and us not telling Mike…you were ashamed of me. I was this dumb, lovestruck kid and you didn’t want me.” It hurt just remembering it. Saying it was like taking a knife to old wounds.

             
Tam stared at her a long moment, the rain streaking down his window behind his head. “I
never
didn’t want you.”

             
“Then why are we sitting here having this conversation?”

             
He glanced away again, and again she watched emotions work the muscles in his throat. His jaw went rigid.

             
Thunder rumbled, rattling the windows, and Jo felt a headache starting to build that had nothing to do with the humidity. It was happening again: he was pulling away from her, and desperation was a living, breathing, clawing entity trapped in her chest. “You know what?” She bristled, not caring if anger was the wrong reaction. “Screw your dad,” she said to Tam’s profile. “
Screw him
. I’m twenty-three and I live with my parents because none of us can afford to be self-sufficient. I didn’t get to go to vet school, I’m a damn tech. I drive a ten-year-old car with bad brakes and I don’t go on vacation or splurge on stupid, girly things. And you know what? None of that bothers me because life is hard. Life is expensive and unfair and it’s hard freaking work.” She was winding up, her words coming fast and hard, and she couldn’t stop, not caring that her voice was echoing around inside the car. “I don’t ask for much. I don’t want Delta’s fairytale. But when my best friend in the
world
, when my high school sweetheart and the man I love so much it
kills me
, says we need to be apart…I say
screw that
.

             
“I don’t want extravagance. I don’t want
Ryan freaking Atkins
. I want you, and you’ve got no idea how bad I wanna keep you, Tameron Wales, or you’d quit with the bullshit.”

             
He looked at her, the smallest of smiles lifting the corners of his mouth. His eyes were slick. “Stealing my line?”

             
“Whatever works.”

             
Thunder crackled. Rain fell in heavy, relentless sheets.

             
Jo took a deep, steadying breath, not embarrassed, but not proud of her outburst either. “What do you want, Tam?” she asked. Now that she had the rant out of her system, she was so sleepy she could hardly keep her head up. “Hmm? What about you?”

             
He nodded and a sigh swept through him, taking with it some of the tension in his face. He seemed world’s older than his twenty six years, his eyes ancient. “The same thing I’ve always wanted.”

             
“And what’s that?”

             
“I wanna stop worrying. I wanna stop being the guy with the secret.” His smile stretched in a sad, culminating sort of way. “I wanna shake your dad’s hand and ask him, man-to-man, if I can marry into his family.”

             
Jo felt like a fist closed around her throat. Her breath caught.

             
“I’ve wanted you since you were fifteen in that spotted bikini. I meant it, before, in Ireland. I love you, Joey. And I missed you so goddamn much… Screw my old man.”

             
Jo dabbed at her eyes, trying to tell herself that she wouldn’t cry, not
again
.

             
“Come here.”

             
In his cavernous, big-enough-to-play-basketball-in car, there was room for her to climb into his lap and slide her arms around his neck. He caught her face in his hands, thumbs smoothing the tears back from the corners of her eyes, and Jo allowed herself one moment of perfect clarity in his blue eyes before she closed her own and met his kiss.

             
It was not the desperate, whiskey-soaked plea of Ireland, or the searching, mindless asking for comfort of the night before. It was sober and sweet and when his lips moved against hers, it tasted like four years ago, like a moment’s reprieve from all the boring, harsh reality of ordinary life.

             
Tam’s fingers trailed down her throat, over her clavicles, his hands molded themselves to her breasts and then down her sides, landing on her hips. His tongue plunged into her mouth and flirted with hers. Jo leaned into him and felt the cool flat of his belt buckle against her skin where her shirt had ridden up.

No, not ridden up, Tam was
pushing
it up.

“Oh, God,” she said with a breathy laugh as she broke away, their lips smacking apart. “We cannot do this in the Home Depot parking lot.”