Page 64 of The Wild Charge

The first was a Yelp review, of all things, in which someone claiming to be a parent said she’d sent her daughter to volunteer at New Way Home in her senior year of high school. The woman was a single mother working two jobs, who’d worried about her daughter getting into trouble after school if left to her own devices. Her daughter, though, complained of the owners being “creepy” and “invasive” toward her. They’d asked her lots of personal questions, and even bought her clothes.

“Okay,” Fox said, “that’s not great.”

“But just one case,” she agreed.

So she showed him seven similar stories. Two more were on Yelp, the rest were on a Chicago-based site on which women could warn other women of dangerous places and suspicious persons around the city. All sorts of crazy theories and accusations were thrown around there, but five people accused the Kellys of shady behavior – including one young woman who claimed Dennis had penned her into a corner in the library and groped her at length, his hand over her mouth, until someone else came into the room and she was able to break free.

“Fucking creeps,” Fox said. “That’s the story of the world: the rich and powerful with ugly predilections prey on the very people they claim to help.”

Eden said what he hadn’t: “It doesn’t prove they’re selling girls into sex slavery, though.”

“No.”

She turned to him, then, only belatedly realizing it was the first time she’d done so – and was brought up short.

He was staring at her. In a way he never had before.

It was such a foreign expression that it took her a long, breathless moment to place it. He looked…soft. Open, but tense in the shoulders, lips trying to quirk downward into a frown, because he didn’t do open, not ever, and he wasn’t sure how to begin, but he was trying, here, glowing blue in the light of her computer, eyes big and unshielded.

“I’m sorry I took off before,” he said.

Sorry. Had he ever said that word to her?

“I don’t do this sort of thing very well.”

She managed to swallow. “I know.”

“I had to…” He gestured to the side of his head. “For a few hours. Talk to someone smarter than me.”

She was startled by her own snort of laughter. “You’rehumble enough to think someone out there is smarter than you?”

“Shut up,” he said without heat. “At least one. And he said – well, it doesn’t matter what he said. Because this is my own decision. No one pushed me into it.

“Whatever you want to do, however you want to handle things, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I like what we have, even if it looks strange to normal people. I’m not normal, and neither are you, or we wouldn’t be sitting here in this situation right now.”

Her eyes started to burn again. Coming from him,abnormalwas a compliment of the highest order.

“What do you want to do about the baby?”

She sniffed, and began to lose the battle against the forming tears.Just hormones, she told herself. And Charlie Fox. “I – I want to keep it.”

He nodded. Then cocked his head to the side, trace of a rueful grin touching his mouth for the first time. “I’ll be a shit dad.”

“Not as shit as you think you will be. Not as shit as your dad.”

“God, no one could be. He’s the gold medalist in that sport.”

She laughed – and the tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Do you want a hug, or would you like to remain stoic?”

“Oh, fuck you,” she muttered, dashing at her cheeks. But she was smiling when she climbed out of her chair and into his, settling on his lap and hiding her tears in his throat. He smelled of cigarettes and bourbon, and that faint whiff of pavement that came with being on it all the time on his bike.

His arms came around her, and his deep exhale stirred her hair. “Creeps and kidnappers. What a wonderful world we’re bringing new life into.”

They both chuckled, and she wasterrified, but it would be okay, she thought. He believed in her more than anyone ever had, and if he was in her corner, she could face the whole world, ugly or not.

Her computer pinged with an email notification, and she jerked upright. “Oh, maybe that’s Ratchet.”

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