Page 10 of Love Takes Home

“What’s up?” I ask. I put the phone on speaker so I can pull out the pizzas. Ginny’s not waking up.

“It was him.”

“Fuck. Not that I give a shit, but is he alright?”

“Couple of cuts and bruises, hit his head on the steering wheel, but he’s fine. They’re taking him to the hospital for observation, but he’ll be out by tomorrow.”

“Does he know?”

“That my sister finally got sick of his shit and left his sorry ass? Oh, yeah. He knows.”

“And his reaction?”

I swear, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get Davis to just tell the fucking story.

“Well, which one would you like? The one he personally had with me and Ranger or the one he showed to the nurses?”

“What did he do?”

“Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing he was already laying in a hospital bed with all the insults and names he used to describe my sister. And that you weren’t there. You’d have killed the fucker.”

“I still might.”

“One could only hope, right? But as soon as a nurse was in earshot, he started wailing about how unfair his life is, that she was the love of his life and he didn’t know how he was ever going to move on.”

“Barf.”

“Yeah, the nurse was Rose. Soon as he figured out she was older than him, he shut up. What a fucking fool. But that means he’s going to make her the bad guy. And you know what happens when people start talking.”

“They never shut the fuck up?”

“They know how to make a person’s life miserable.”

“Surely everyone else knows this guy’s a fraud and an asshole.”

“That’s the thing, man. They don’t. They know him as the super nice vice principal who bends over backward for their kids. The one who takes over coaching responsibilities on top of his workload to make sure there’s a baseball season. He’s like a fucking saint to everyone else.”

“And Ginny just left the good-guy at the altar.”

“Bingo. And she’s not here to defend herself or tell her side of the story, so everyone is making up their own.”

“Fuck. We should spread one about him. That he was rushing to show up after spending the night with another woman, cheating on Ginny.”

I think about it for a minute, something scratching my brain, but not coming through.

“What’s the silence?”

“I think I need to call you back. Something’s off with the whole thing, but I need to do some digging. Ginny’s fine. We’re here at the cabin, and we’ll be here until you call that Trish is ready.”

“Have her call me later?”

“Will do, talk soon.”

I end the call and send a message to Nate. He’s technically my boss, but it’s convoluted. I have five of them, and depending onthe day of the week or what I need depends on who I work for. But he works all hours of the day and night, so sending him a message to call is always safer than calling unless it’s an absolute emergency.

“This better be important. I’m doing stuff,” he says when he calls.

“So, you’re sitting at a coffee shop fantasizing over some chick that you’re too chickenshit to talk to and you don’t want anyone to know why you go there for your coffee?”

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