Page 14 of Sawyer
“You did not!” Lele said with a giggled gasp.
“I did. We were at The Reef because I thought a scary movie would give us a good reason to cuddle.” By the time he finished describing his date, she was laughing so hard her sides hurt. She almost missed his asking, “Okay, that’s my worst day period. What’s yours?”
And just like that, she didn’t feel like laughing. Her pulse quickened. The room around her faded away, dissolving into cinderblock walls and humming fluorescent lights. She was back in the interview room of the Elk Jaw police station, confessing to a crime she didn’t commit. Only now, she knew what the next five years would hold. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days of hell.
She still heard the echo of the clanking cell door as it slammed shut. The bitter aroma of burnt coffee filled the air. Thedarkness at night, so thick the narrow window of a cell doesn’t help.
“Hey.” A large hand gripped her shoulder. “Lele, you okay? Where’d you go? Because if you’re thinking about a date, I want the guy’s name and number.”
The deep rumble of his voice tugged Lele back to the present. Was she crying? She hurriedly wiped the tears from her cheeks. She hadn’t had a flashback like that in a long time. She’d hoped she never would again, but here she was, humiliating herself in front of her new friend.
Her tall, muscled, gorgeous new friend, who sprinkled words like spanking and consequences in his conversations.
At a loss for what to say, she grabbed the first thought that passed through her brain. “I thought I was supposed to be talking about dates.”
His eyes softened. Why had she never noticed his hazel eyes? An entire forest of colors… browns, greens, blues… melded in his gorgeous eyes.
“We were. But if it upsets you that badly, I don’t want you remembering it at all. I hope whoever did that to you is in jail.”
Reality slapped her as a cold sense of dread ripped through her entire body. Did he know who she was? It was big news, but that had been six and a half years ago. Her breathing quickened to match her pulse, and the room spun.
Her fear was a tangible, living thing, like an animal she’d kept caged for the past two years that was now fighting to get free. She couldn’t let it. If it did, it would consume her until nothing was left of her life.
“Lele,” he called to her. “Leyla! Look. At. Me.”
Her gaze snapped to him at his tone. When she read Daddy books, that was exactly the voice she heard in her head when the Little was in trouble.
“That’s a good girl. Keep your eyes on mine. I was trying to getto know you, not send you into a panic attack. Am I really that scary? I mean, other than in your driveway yesterday?”
She slowed her breathing. It was fine. Nothing was wrong. She was fine.
“Sorry, no. Of course not. I don’t know what that was.” She did, but she wasn’t about to talk to him about that. “Have you ever… have you ever been in a situation that wasn’t your fault, but you wound up taking the blame?”
The muscles under his eyes tensed. “A few times. Why? Is that what you were thinking about? Did that happen to you?”
She barked out a laugh, though there was nothing funny about his question. She didn’t answer him. She was tired. She needed to stop putting him in the role of Daddy in her head. Some fantasies were too dangerous.
No Daddy would want her. Especially not one like Saul. There might be lots of men who threatened spankings and consequences. But to offer—no, to demand she not mow her grass because he was doing that for her as long as he was in town? Nope. That was a Daddy move to the core.
So, he was not for her. Daddies were always nice in the books. They always put their Littles before anyone else in the whole world. Even themselves. He was like that. So, he was not for her.
She didn’t deserve a good Daddy like him. She didn’t deserve a Daddy at all. She hadn’t sold drugs to the undercover FBI man, Jaxon. She’d never do anything like that. But she should have been able to think of a way to help him.
She hadn’t. She hadn’t even been able to tell him how sorry she was for what happened. She’d written the man every week for five and a half years. And for five and a half years, they had come back unopened.
“Lele, are you still with me? Did you get blamed for something that wasn’t your fault?”
“What? Oh, no. It was my fault.” She should have figured out away to do better. Even Hector hadn’t been able to help her. “I..I think you need to go. I have to finish prepping the bar. Thank you for mowing my lawn.”
His expression didn’t change, but he gripped his beer so tight his knuckles whitened.
Great. Now she made the one person in town trying to be nice to her mad. And she kicked him out of the bar. He'd probably never come back.
"I'm sorry I said something that upset you," he said. "That wasn't my intention. But you’re right, I still have several things I need to get done today. If you change your mind and want to talk about anything, you can give me a call."
Reaching for the pencil attached to the bar by a string. He started to write something on the back of his ticket, but he stopped and stared at the curly pencil. After tilting it to the side, he studied the black and white pencil. Brow furrowed, he asked, “Do the squiggles this pencil is bent into spell the word 'moo’?”
“Yes,” she admitted with reluctance. Because nothing says professional businesswoman like a curlicue pencil. “They were giving them away at the dairy last weekend.”
