Page 73 of Tex's Angel

Levi rolls his eyes again. “That doesn’t sound tedious and boring, not at all.”

Before Tex can respond, Levi’s phone pings. He reads whatever message popped up and his smile gets bigger. “Sorry, I have to go. Evan’s picking me up. We’ve been tasked with our most complicated mission yet.”

“It’s not dangerous, I hope,” I say.

He looks at me like he’s keeping the world’s biggest secret. “We’re procuring nutrition and hydro for the club’s weekly needs.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying y’all are doing the club’s weekly grocery shopping?” Tex asks.

“Roger that. Evan and I decided to create resumes with all our duties on it. We’re not looking for jobs yet but if and when we ever need to, we’ll be prepared with outstanding resumes.”

He says his goodbyes and heads offs to meet up with Evan in the parking lot.

Tex comes to sit beside me. “Most people hire someone else to write their resume because it’s such an annoying chore. My son and his friend do it for funsies. I don’t know whether to be impressed or worried.”

I gently sit up using the bed’s motorized lift to raise the end. “I’m gonna go with impressed. It feels like even he’s got too much brain power and not enough interesting things to do with it all.”

Coming closer, Tex picks up a box off the table and hands it to me. “Yeah, he’s a brainiac. He sure don’t get that from his ole pop.” He shoves the box towards me, “I picked you up some of those pecan cookies you like.”

I hesitate for a second, wondering if I should eat so soon after surgery. Tex sees my hand hovering and says, “the doctor said you could eat as tolerated.”

I quickly snatch one of the cookies and nibble on it as he closes the box. “Alright, if it’s doctor’s orders,” I tell him. The doctors haven’t been in to see me yet, I guess they’re waiting until I wake up properly. As I’m feeling quite alert, I turn to Tex, “I guess it’s time to talk about what happened. Do you want to go first or should I?”

“Ladies first, always,” He responds. Somehow, I can tell that he’s totally serious. It’s stuff like this that’s part of Tex’s charm.

“As you’ve probably already realized, Daniel Davis wasn’t associated with any of the reports I made to CPS.”

“Yeah, Wade was the one who figured out that he was a possibility. When you turned up missing, I made a beeline for the other family, but it became pretty obvious that they didn’t know squat about your disappearance and weren’t all that bothered by CPS taking what they saw as a problem child off their hands.”

“Anabel was such a sweet kid. I can practically guarantee whatever was going on wasn’t related to her in any way.”

“Anyway, Wade went to talk to your parents and then tried to squeeze information out of your ex and your sister. He ended up squeezing a little too hard on your ex and your sister began panic talking about all the crazy things that went on when you tried to help your college friend get away from her abusive boyfriend.”

“Thank God, she did. If you hadn’t come when you did, I’d be dead right now.”

“I’m sorry y’all had to go through that. As much as I’ve thought it over, I can’t imagine how one man can carry such a strong grudge for so many years.”

“Want to know the weirdest part of this whole situation?” I ask.

When he jerks his chin for me to continue, I do, “When he abducted me, he was particularly offended that I had ruined hisentire life and didn’t recognize him at first. He kept insisting that if I’d just given him a sincere apology for helping his girlfriend escape, he would have been able to let it go mentally.”

Tex frowns at me. “I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit on that whole train of thought. It seems to me like that was simply the lie he told himself all those years because he was too much of a coward to accept that he fucked up the best thing in life by being an abusive asshole. If he’d been able to get his head around that, maybe he could have gotten help and eventually ended up in a relationship. Any moron knows hitting a woman is not going to make them like you.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. Daniel Davis was a strange character. I can almost see why Gemma ended up putting up with him for so long even after he became abusive. He had a way of sounding so reasonable one moment and then going batshit crazy the next.”

“Well, he’s not going to be abducting and abusing any more women.”

My bottom lip trembles as I speak. “I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly don’t think he would have stopped at me. I truly think that after killing me he would have kept going after his ex until he found her. Even I don’t know where Gemma lives—other than somewhere in Florida—we keep in touch occasionally by text and email, but she was too scared to say anything more. I think in his mind, he always thought that if he could just get back with her then everything would be okay because he learned his lesson about abusing her. But the thing I noticed was that no matter how hard he tried to act normal, the crazy was always there, bubbling just beneath the surface.”

I wrap my arms around my stomach, feeling miserable to have been at the mercy of such an unhinged and violent man. When my eyes lift to Tex’s, I can see the longing in his face. He wants to hold me and console me. I carefully scoot over until my hip is touching the safety railing and pat the empty spot I made for him. “Come and hold me.”

He’s out of his chair and moving towards me almost before I get the words out of my mouth. He gingerly scoots onto the edge of my bed and settles in. The next thing I know he’s moving so close that all I have to do is lean over slightly and let him wrap his arms around me. Once we settle down, I begin to calm down.

“This is where I belong,” I murmur.

“You’re good at saying the kinds of things that men love to hear, sweetness.”

When I look up at him, he dips his head and gives me a tender kiss. I slide one hand up his chest because lifting my arm higher pulls on the stitches.

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