Page 31 of Hero Next Door
Well that was... unexpected. I’d never pegged Dev for the kind of guy who brought his neighbors breakfast. Then again, we weren’t in Nashville anymore. We were in a town where everyone knew everyone, and maybe this was what they did here.
That was probably it, I told myself firmly. He was just being friendly.
For the second day in a row. Third. Fourth.
“What are you, some kind of feeder?” I asked, stepping out of the way. “Also, I do have a coffee maker here.”
“Sure you do. But mine was already running and it would have been a waste not to use the coffee it produced.”
I saw several holes in that logic, but one look at how proud he was of himself and I decided that I wouldn’t point the flaws out.
There would be plenty of time for winning arguments with him later. Right now, I wanted a cup of coffee, stat. And I wouldn’t say no to a stack of pancakes.
CHAPTER17
Dev
The moment I left Butterfly Glen, with a promise that I’d be back later to help Parker out with some of the cabinets that were still upstairs, I called Jackson.
Not because I particularly needed to talk to him or anything, but because I wanted to talk to Avery. Over breakfast, Parker had said something about being happier than she ever thought she could be in Arberry, and though she’d seemed to be leaving the door open for questions, the moment I asked the first one that came to mind, she closed down.
The girl had a history in this town—a history that I evidently didn’t understand—and I wanted to know what it was. You might be asking why I cared. After all, wasn’t I only in this to help her with the house, and to make sure she sold it as a B&B rather than a lot of land that could be developed into way too many houses? Hadn’t I already said that I wasn’t going to get involved with this complicated Nashville transplant who’d been clear about her intentions right from the start?
Yes.
Was my gut telling me that I was lying about all of that, and that I cared more for her than I should? Also yes.
But as long as I was going to care for her more than I should, I wanted to know who I was caring for. I wanted to know what, exactly, Arberry had done to her. And as far as I knew, I had a straight line to that sort of information in the tiny, pixie-like best friend.
* * *
“Easy,” Avery said with a shrug, shoving french fries into her mouth like she thought we might be facing a food shortage next week. “Her dad hit her. A lot. Made her do all sorts of things she shouldn’t have been doing and basically made her life a living hell.”
I blinked, shocked at both the information and the delivery.
What kind of friend was Avery, that she just gave information like that over a basket of fries and chicken fingers?
The kind that doesn’t beat around the bush and is answering your question,the voice in my head said firmly. The voice was right. I knew Avery well enough to know she didn’t bother mincing words, and that she didn’t see any problem with being as straightforward as possible. It made her a terrible liar. And, it turned out, a very poor secret keeper.
If Parker had even asked her to keep those things secret, which, I had to admit, I didn’t know. Maybe Parker was proud that she’d come through all that and hadn’t sworn Avery to secrecy.
Maybe she’d never bothered to swear her to secrecy because she hadn’t expected anyone to ever care enough to ask the questions.
That seemed a whole lot more like the Parker I was starting to think I might understand.
I stopped thinking about the why, then, and forced myself to actually look at the information Avery had just given me. I’d skipped right over it in favor of wondering why Avery was being so forthcoming, and I had to admit that I’d done it because it was so shocking, so horrible, that it hadn’t really... got in.
But once it did...
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
I pictured Parker as a kid, all huge brown eyes and long brown hair, legs that were too long for her body and a frame that was far too thin, and tried to imagine that tiny, perfect being standing up to someone who was actually...
Who was actually...
“Oh my God,” I whispered again.
And in that moment, right there at a table covered with fries and chicken and beers, I realized that Parker had a much bigger hold on me than I’d thought. Because my entire body was tense with the need to protect her. I was ready to spring up and kill anyone who’d dared to lay a hand on her. Ready to commit murder against a man who’d thought he could do such a thing.
