Page 52 of Melody

If Tommy had found her this quickly after she thought she’d done such a good job of covering her tracks, she had to do better next time. It didn’t matter that everything had worked out so perfectly here, almost like it had been meant to be. This time, she’d ditch the car, maybe trade it in for cash and then buy a car from a person and not a dealer so she could get away with not filing paperwork.

Or maybe she’d need to find someone who could make fake IDs. She knew there were people who could do that…people who could make them look legit. She’d have to research that when she landed somewhere away from here.

She still had a little cash and she’d been saving. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t matter. She’d make do.

Shehadto.

By the time there was a knock at the door, she was almost done packing. She hurried out of her bedroom and stared at the door. There was a distinct possibility that it wasTommyandnotKyle. Picking up the paring knife, she stood back from the door a few feet. “Who’s there?” Her voice communicated that she wasnotfucking around.

“It’s Kyle. Who’d you think?”

Immediately, her shoulders dropped and her gut unclenched. Setting the knife on the kitchen counter, she unlocked the door and pulled it open. Then she grabbed Kyle’s wrist to encourage him to step inside quickly.

“What’s going on?”

“I have to go,” she said, locking the door and then rushing back to the bedroom. She’d seen Kyle’s furrowed brows, his kind blue eyes, and knew she’d have to tell himsomething. She couldn’t just leave in a panic without giving him a reason.

“Gowhere?”

Taking the last two blouses from her closet, she started folding them. “Anywhere but here.”

Kyle shook his head. “But why? What’s going on?”

With a long sigh, she placed the blouses in the suitcase and looked at this man that she’d begun falling for. Already she was regretting that they hadn’t had a chance to see where it would have taken them.

“How much time do you have?”

“I already let the Assistant Manager know I didn’t know when I’d be in—so however much time it takes.”

Oh.He just got sweeter and sweeter…which would make leaving all the more bitter. She sat on the bed and patted the space next to her. When Kyle sat down, she said, “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start wherever you want.”

While she appreciated his kind patience, he didn’t understand that she was under the gun. The longer she stayed here, the more danger she was in. The more danger theybothwere in.

But the story might not make much sense without context.

Closing her eyes, she took a long, deep breath and decided to start at the most logical place. “After my mom died, it didn’t take long for me to realize I couldn’t afford to stay in our old house. Besides not having the money to maintain it, I could barely afford the mortgage, much less the bills and stuff. So I packed up what I wanted to keep and rented a small storage unit and then had a yard sale to sell what I could—and I sold my car and keptmy mom’s. That gave me a little breathing room until I sold the place. After paying off all the bills, I saved as much as I could, but it was hard. I knew rent would be almost as much as the mortgage, but I might have fewer bills. I waited tables and made decent tips and planned to get a better job at some point. But I was still in mourning, you know?”

Kyle nodded and took her hand. “Yeah. I get it.”

She knew he did, having lost his brother not so long ago. “Well, I guess my head was pretty messed up. No, I know it was. I guess it made me kind of vulnerable. There was this guy—a guy I thought was kind of a bad boy, but it turned out he was averybad guy. I didn’t know it at the time. He came in the restaurant a lot, usually hanging at the bar, but he’d flirt with me all the time.” She remembered just how charming he’d been, wearing down her defenses. What had he actually said that had made her fall?

Looking back, it wasn’t what he said. It was all the other girls in the restaurant, many of her fellow servers. They’d all thought Tommy was the cutest guy and his bad boy aura—which turned out to be bad to the bone—just made them all weak at the knees. The fact that he’d picked her out of all of them, especially over gorgeous model-like Lara, had started to get to her.

Now, though, she knew…he must have sensed her vulnerability. A year or two later, when she’d been able to fully process the grief of losing not only her mother but then everything she had, she might have been able to see him for what he was and been able to resist his appeal.

There would never be any way to find out.

“I wound up going out with him—and one thing led to another. I thought I was in love with him, so when he asked me to move in with him, I did. The timing was perfect because an offer had been made on the house. But he became possessive and controlling. He never beat me, but he was rough. He’d grabme or hold me too tight, things like that.” Like the bruises he’d frequently left on her upper arm that she’d cover with makeup so they’d be less obvious to the people at the restaurant. “But I just thought that was who he was, you know? Maybe over time, he’d get less rough.”

Stupid.

Shaking her head, she continued. “He actually proposed to me after we’d been together for almost two years. I think I might have laughed until he slipped a breathtaking diamond ring on my finger. It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen. It was several small thin oval diamonds surrounding a round one so that it looked almost like a flower or the sun. I’d never seen anything like it. That first day, I just kept looking at it, admiring it, loving the way it looked on my hand. But when I woke up the next morning, I knew it had to be out of Tommy’s price range. Thing is, I knew Tommy dabbled in illegal activities. He wasn’t what I’d call adrug dealer, but he sold drugs sometimes. He supposedly worked in construction, but the whole time we were together, I didn’t once see him working. Not one time. So later that next day, I asked where he got the ring. I should have known right then, because of the way he got angry, asking why I couldn’t just be grateful for the gift.”

She took a slow breath, trying not to experience the emotions she’d felt back then, but it was difficult completely removing herself from them. “Because of how pissed he’d been, I vowed to never ask again and tried to let it go. But day after day, customers commented on it. Then there was one customer in particular who said he used to be a jeweler and guessed it was probably worth at least four-thousand dollars.

“No way could Tommy afford that. No way.

---