Page 50 of The Wrong Heart

Her brows dip further, confusion marring them. “Like what?”

“Like I’m something you can fix.”

Melody hesitates, my response soaking in like the late-spring rainfall. She worries her lip again before sliding off the hood and landing on her feet, until we’re nearly toe-to-toe. Her body sways and teeters, still unbalanced from the alcohol she poisoned herself with, and she tilts her head up to meet my steely gaze.

And then she fucking smiles… because of course, she does.

“All broken things can be fixed. The hard part is deciding that they’re worth fixing.”

She makes a little sound after the words spill out, almost as if she surprised herself by them, caught herself off guard. Maybe she never thought to apply them to her own dents and cracks. Melody stares off over my shoulder, the ghost of her smile still lingering.

But the moment is severed when a car engine roars up, lights flashing at us, and a juiced-up Land Rover slows to a stop a few feet away. Melody jumps back, moving out of my bubble that she had no business invading in the first place, and her whole body tenses when she spots the vehicle.

She runs her fingers through her mess of matted hair. “Great,” she murmurs.

The driver hops out, looking ready to kill something. “What the fuck, Melody?”

I recognize him then as the headlights brighten his silhouette against the dark night. It’s her brother. He’s got fury in his gait and murder in his eyes. His sandy hair flies in a thousand different directions as he stalks over to us, and I inch backwards with my hands in my pockets, kind of wishing the storm would start up again, so maybe I could fall into that super low statistic of people who get struck by lightning.

“What are you doing here, West?” Melody almost tips over when her left foot sinks into the spongy mud.

“Tammy from O’Toole’s called me and said you walked out of the bar plastered. Then she saw your car speed out of the parking lot. Are you insane?” West suddenly seems to notice my existence and pulls his eyes from his sister, pinning them on me. A frown follows. “Aren’t you the contractor?”

Awesome. I’m fucking soaked and miserable, my dick is acting up, and now we’re having conversations. I blink at him, hoping my face portrays the fact that I’d rather be eaten alive by ancient scarab beetles than be standing here right now. “Yeah.”

West narrows his eyes at me like he’s trying to force pieces together that don’t fucking fit.

“I called him,” Melody intervenes, taking her brother by the arm and trying to guide him back to his car. “It had to do withLoving Lifelines. It’s a thing.”

He pulls his arm free. “Why didn’t you call me? Or Mom and Dad? Or Leah?”

“Can we talk at home? I’m emotionally exhausted right now.”

“Do you not trust us? Are you embarrassed that you’re still hurting? Jesus, Mel, we all love you. You don’t need to hide from us.”

Melody seems to wither, like sheistrying to hide from him, and glances my way before reaching for her brother’s arm again. “Just take me home. I’ll get my car in the morning.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, West reluctantly follows her lead with a harrowing sigh. They both climb into the vehicle while I watch from the ditch, up to my ass in muddy water. The engine rumbles to life as Melody fastens her seatbelt and wrings out her hair, her image hindered slightly by the rainy window. But she turns her head to look at me when the vehicle begins to pull away, tires tossing up mud and gravel, the stereo sounding through the glass with some kind of alternative rock bullshit.

I stare right back at her, our unanswered questions still hovering between us. Still lurking.

“Why did you come?”

“Why did you call me?”

I’ll reckon she called, and I came, for the same reason our eyes always seem to find one another’s, even when there’s a dozen other people in the room—but I don’t have a reason for that right now, so I bury those questions away with the rest of my ghosts and old bones.

And as the car peels off onto the dirt road, I catch the little smile on her face as our eyes hold tight and she mouths,“Thank you.”

Walden lifts up when I trudge through my front door at nearly midnight, looking like a drowned rat. The dog appears confused as hell as he stands a few feet away from me, eyes bugged out and probably judging me. The red ball hasn’t moved from its place beside the couch, and his food bowl remains untouched, leading me to believe he enjoyed his night just as much as I did.

My car keys clank against the little glass table as I pull off my soggy t-shirt and toss it into the heap of other stray shirts I still need to wash. Walden stares at me, unmoving, as I saunter into the living room, bare-chested and bad-tempered, but his eyes never stray from my face. They never dip any lower, and I appreciate that.

He doesn’t notice my scars.

Then I scold myself because he’s just a dumb dog that doesn’t know what scars are, and also, he’s probably going blind, so my thought process is being really fucking stupid.

Shaking my head, I reach for a random banana sitting on the ottoman and peel it back, debating whether I want to head straight to bed or go jerk off in the shower because my dick is still restless and pissing me off. But I thinkhandlingthat situation will piss me off even more since I know exactly what triggered it.

---