Page 40 of Stay Away from Him

“Mama?” he said, confused. “I fell.”

“I know, sweetie,” Melissa said, blood on her fingers. “Mama’s got you.”

“Am I going to be okay?” he asked, then started taking big shuddering breaths. “Is that—am I bleeding?”

There was panic in his voice by the time he reachedbleeding, and his breath broke and became sobbing. Suddenly Melissa was surrounded by people, other parents at her shoulders and heels offering help.

She heard Thomas’s voice, calm and loud and confident. “Put some pressure on it,” he said. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

Melissa felt a tissue being pressed into her hand by one of the other parents nearby—she never saw their face—and she pressed it where it looked like the blood was gushing from, dead center on Bradley’s forehead, a little way up from the crook between his eyebrows. Then she looked up.

“Where is she?” Melissa asked. “Where the fuck is she?” She’d heard people joke about mama bears before, but she’d never fully identified with the term until just then. She felt it rising huge within her like a tidal wave: the animal urge to hurt the woman who did this to her boy.

A chorus of voices rose up: “I think she ran off,” “I saw her go that way,” “It looked like an accident to me.” But it was Thomas’s voice that Melissa heard most clearly, as he sidled up next to her and spoke directly into her ear, low and direct.

“We have to get him out of here,” he said. “We can deal with Kelli later.”

Melissa looked up at him, and whatever difficult conversation they were having moments before was completely forgotten. In that moment, the sight of his face brought only relief. His calm, his strength, his knowing exactly what needed to be done.

“Where?” Melissa asked.

“Let me carry him to the car,” Thomas said. “I’ll show you where to go.”

Chapter 10

Melissa drove and Thomas took the back seat, next to Bradley.

“Just keep holding that tissue against your forehead,” Thomas said. “You’re doing a great job.”

“Am I going to be okay?” Bradley asked, his voice shaky. Melissa tried to catch his eyes in the rearview, but she couldn’t see his face with the blood-spotted tissue pressed up against it. He’d need a fresh one soon—the one he had was almost soaked through.

“You’re going to be fine, bud,” Thomas said. “Your mom and I are going to get you fixed up good.”

“Where am I going?” Melissa asked.

“Take a right on 96,” Thomas said. “And keep going until I tell you to stop.”

“ER?” Melissa asked, making sure to use the letters rather than the wordsemergency room, which would only freak Bradley out worse than he already was. She was still new enough to the area that she didn’t know where anything was.

“ER would just put us in a waiting room,” Thomas said. “We’re headed to my clinic. I’ll patch him up myself. Hear that, bud? I’m going to be your doctor today. Can you be brave for me?”

“Yes.” His voice was so small; Melissa almost cried at the sound of it.Hewas so small. Defenseless against the world.

“Good man,” Thomas said.

It was a relief to be with Thomas, to be dealing with this alongside someone strong, and confident—and a doctor to boot. But Melissa was still shaking, all the same. Gripping the steering wheel too hard to steady herself, to anchor herself against something solid. She couldn’t get the image out of her head: the image of her son falling, hitting his head on a rock. The image of him being attacked. Of Kelli Walker gripping him hard by the shoulders. Putting her hands on him. Saying something that scared him.

“What did she say to you?” asked Melissa. “That woman.”

“She said I was going to die,” Bradley said. “That I needed to tell you someone was going to make us both dead.”

Anger rose up in her, blotting out the edges of her vision. As usual, a five-year-old’s account of events was a little garbled, but Melissa was pretty sure she knew exactly what happened. Kelli Walker told her son that Thomas was going to kill him. And Melissa.

Kelli was obsessed. Unhinged.

“Melissa.” It was Thomas’s voice. Soft, from the back seat. She glanced in the rearview and saw him looking back at her through the mirror. His eyes gentle, soft, but worried.

“What?”

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