Page 52 of Hideaway Whirlwind
Afterward, when it’s time to get ready for bed, Goldie watches us pass from her bedroom’s doorway. I stop to squeeze her hand, an apology of sorts for our argument. She had my back and, without hesitation, put herself between me and the bear of a man she thought was attacking me. She’s agood woman and a real friend—the very reason we were able to get out of Las Vegas, and has been incredibly generous to let us stay with them. I’ll forever owe her a debt of gratitude.
But man, we need a place of our own where our every interaction and reaction won’t be watched, weighed. Where assumptions won’t be made, whether right or wrong. Where I can fall apart without people thinking the worst of the man who has done nothing but give and give and give some more. His home, his care, his love.
I’ll be the one toset him straight, just as soon as the kids are asleep.
* * *
“Elliott,” I whisper-yell when I step onto the front porch, the tips of my slippers hanging off the edge. I won’t go any further, since it’ll trigger the floodlights’ motion sensors, and Davis or Goldie would more than likely come out to investigate. A shadowy shape moves in the trees, and my heart leaps to see it.
Though I’d plugged Elliott’s phone number into my contacts list and I’ve tapped on it often enough, I finally send him my first text message.
Me:Goldie told me what Layla said to you. She shouldn’t have done that.
Big Papa Bear:It’s what I needed to hear. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done to you. I should have stopped when you told me to.
Three dots appear and disappear several times. The shadowlingers just at the edge of the treeline, not coming any closer, and I imagine my Elliott suffering alone with his broken heart full of shame and remorse as he taps out his next message.
Big Papa Bear:It kills me to say this, but I’ll leave you and the kids alone.
I begin to type out my next message, but it would be so much more effective and meaningful to say it face-to-face. To wrap my arms around him and tell him that I don’t want him to leave us alone—just give us some time. That I understand why he did what he did. Tell him that no one should have compared him to my exes.
Fuck this. I step off the porch, sayingscrew youto the lights when they flick on. When Goldie steps out mere seconds later, the shadow darts away, twigs snapping as it blunders through the woods.
“Elliott! Wait!” I take off toward the trees, but my legs are too short to catch up to him when he has such a long head start. An engine turns over, headlights disappearing down the road with the squeal of tires before I make it to the end of the driveway. I bend over, one hand on my knee to catch my breath before I type out:
Me:Please come back.
Big Papa Bear:I can’t. I have to stop being selfish and think about what you need instead of what I want.
I start typing again, but Goldie yells my name from behind. She’s standing in the open doorway in only a long-sleeved T-shirt, her legs and feet bare. As a mom to a toddler and aninfant, I know first-hand how exhausted she must be, and she doesn’t need me and my drama disrupting what little sleep she gets.
“Sorry I woke you up,” I say when I come inside.
Goldie covers her yawn with the back of her hand, her thick hair thrown up in a huge, messy bun. “He was here again?” When I murmur a begrudging confirmation, she frowns at the house alarm pad above the narrow console where we keep our keys. “Damnit. I can’t believe I forgot to set it before bed.”
“I turned it off,” I guilty admit, having memorized the code after seeing her punch it in earlier.
Goldie clicks her tongue before she says, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t do that again. After what happened with Lily…”
I’m the one being selfish, and my guilt multiplies. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
I crawl in beside my babies, back to sharing one bed—my choice, since I wanted them close tonight. It’s yet another reason why we need to get our own place as soon as possible, where I can give them a stable home, a solid routine they can rely on, and where we can all relax without other people watching our every move.Someplace like the cabin, I think, right before my exhaustion wins, and I fall into a nightmare.
Elliott
From my perch on the edge of the loading dock during my fifteen-minute break, I watch my old rig take a left out of the parking lot and disappear over the hill. My former home on the road has been stripped, scrubbed, and repackedwith everything Vaughn—one of the seasoned truckers who recently moved to town—will need for the next five weeks, now that he’s taking over my old routes.
I can’t say I’m necessarily sad to see it go, like I thought I would be. Now that I’m on the other side of things with my semi-forced retirement, I view my rig as the self-imposed prison cell I’d made it out to be, voluntarily locking myself away from the general population for nearly half my life.
And I’d do it all again.For Birdie and Dustin and Sydney and Kendall and the little one.
I lean on a hip to pull my phone from my pocket for the millionth time. The text bubble with the three dots is still there from last night, and I want so badly to know what Birdie was going to say. Her last text message, asking me to come back, wasn’t some grandiose declaration of love or anything, but it’s possibly the start of herchoosingme, I foolishly hope. So, I’m determined to give her the space she needs and let her take the lead.
“Need to speak to you in my office,” Russell says from behind. Time to get my ass chewed out by the boss, it seems.
I grunt, my muscles shaking and protesting as I rise. I punished myself for hours last night for what I did, digging holes in the hard-packed earth for some things that needed burying, my hands blistered and bleeding. Then I moved on to flipping the tractor tire over and over until my legs gave out and I could no longer stand. I did one punishing exercise after another until failure, then had to crawl up my front steps on my hands and knees, where I collapsed on the living room floor because I couldn’t make it to my bedroom.
Maybe it wasn’t the best choice, given that today is the first day back at work since the freeze. With a mountain of delayeddeliveries to be made, every employee not out on the road is here, coordinating schedules, prepping trailers, and moving pallets. It’s all hands on deck, and mine are useless right now, much like the rest of me.
