“Sweetheart –”

“I’m not done,” I snapped.

He closed his mouth and held my eyes.

I let him do that for a while then I whispered, “Thanks, Mike. It’s good to know early you’re an ass**le. I’m glad to know that now before I gave my heart to you because I had one day with you and I was all set to wrap it up in a tidy bow and hand it right over. I’m glad to know you don’t want kids but I do so even if you weren’t an ass**le, we’d be wrong. And I’m glad to know you know straight up you wouldn’t make a move for me seeing as it would suck to be with a guy who I spent one weekend with and got excited about the possibility that Hilligoss would be a ten minute drive away every day rather than a six month wait. I actually got excited about being home again and watching Fin and Kirb finish growing up and going to their football games on Friday nights. So it’s good to know I’m not with a man who didn’t give enough of a shit about me to consider that same thing.”

“Dusty, give me a chance to speak,” he said softly.

“No, you’ve said enough,” I returned immediately and then kept right on talking. “You know, I don’t know what went down with your wife or that Violet woman. What I do know is I’m not them. And I also know that twice, you jumped to conclusions about me, this time making it three. And I’ll mention that not one of those times did you actually take the time to speak to me like an adult about the shit going on in your head. So, I’ll add to things I’m glad about and that is that I don’t have to endure a lifetime or however long we might have lasted of your tests. Me proving I’m good enough for the super hot, gorgeous Mike Haines. Because frankly, that would be exhausting.”

He didn’t speak and I noticed his face had gone blank.

So be it. It was time for me to finish up.

So I did.

Speaking softly, I told him with complete honesty, “What I’m not glad about is that you showed me something amazing and then you yanked it right away from me. I’m so sick of men toying with me like that, playing games with my heart. So the last thing you get from me, Mike, is that I’m really, really not glad after caring about you and thinking the world of you for decades that you turned out to be a man like that.”

Then I turned, tossed the f**king teenage angst bullshit journals I wrote twenty years ago on his couch and started to move through the room so I could get the f**k out of there.

I didn’t make it and this was because Mike caught my upper arm as I tried to pass him.

My head snapped back and I hissed, “Take your hand off me.”

“You laid it out, Angel, and I deserved it now you give me a chance to explain.”

“Take your hand off me.”

He pulled me gently in front of his body and dipped his head closer to me, whispering, “Give me a chance to explain.”

I stared up at his face.

God, I wished he wasn’t so beautiful.

“Take your hand off me.”

“Honey, give me a chance –”

I went up on my toes and in his face, screamed, “Take your hand off me!”

Then I didn’t give him the opportunity to comply. I wrenched my arm free, took two quick steps past him then whirled.

“No more chances, Mike, this,” I pointed to the floor, “is strike three.”

Then I ran out of his house.

Luckily, he didn’t follow me.

And luckily I made it home safely even though my visibility was limited due to me crying my f**king eyes out.

*

Saturday, 9:36 p.m.

Mike stood in the cold on the balcony off his bedroom staring at the Holliday Farm lit up in the not so distant distance and holding his phone to his ear.

Not surprisingly, he got voicemail.

“Sweetheart, don’t leave without phoning me. There’s more to say. I’ll meet you wherever you want. But we need to talk, Dusty. Please, honey, don’t leave without seeing me.”

He took the phone from his ear, hit the button to disconnect and continued to stare through the cold dark.

Then he put the phone on the railing of the balcony, picked up the glass of bourbon also sitting on the railing, lifted it and threw it back.

Then he put the glass to the railing and trained his eyes back on the farm.

“Fuck, I’m such a f**king dick,” he whispered.

Then he grabbed his phone and the glass, turned around and walked back into his house to get more bourbon.

*

Tuesday, 9:49 a.m.

I got on the plane carrying a white bakery box filled with fresh Hilligoss donuts for Jerra and Hunter.

I’d turned in my rental by myself.

I didn’t look back after I got through security.

And after the plane leveled out, I couldn’t help but think I couldn’t wait to be home.

Chapter Six

Wounded Bird

With her hands carrying the handles of a hamper filled with folded, clean clothes, Clarisse walked through the door at the top of the stairs that led from the basement to the living room. When she did, she saw No stretched out on the couch watching TV, his hand in a bag of microwave popcorn.

His eyes came to her, dropped down to the clothes she was carrying, he grinned his teasing grin and she knew he was about to say something that was going to tick her off.

“Penance or are you workin’ off the allowance you owe Dad?”

She stopped and stared at her brother.

It wasn’t either.

Something was wrong with Dad. She didn’t know what it was but whatever it was made him not right in a way Clarisse didn’t like. Since they came home from Mom’s last Sunday, he’d seemed sad or mad. She didn’t know which but it felt weirdly like a combination of both. What was weirder was that he didn’t seem mad at someone, he just seemed mad. And Clarisse thought it seemed almost like it was at himself.

Clarisse didn’t like it when her Dad was mad at her. What she did like was that when he got mad, he said it right away, explained it, doled out punishment and they moved on. This was unlike her Mom who could sit on being ticked about something for months. Clarisse figured she could do it even for years. Then she’d suddenly explode when it was least expected and it was never pretty. She didn’t only do that with Clarisse and No. When they were together, she did it to their Dad all the time.

So if their Dad was mad at one of them, he would say. And he wasn’t saying. And since Clarisse couldn’t talk to him about whatever was bothering him, she was doing the next best thing.

She was helping out.

On Monday, her Dad took a case that meant overtime. This meant for the last three days he didn’t get home before nine. Once they were in bed when he got home and she only knew he got home because he came in and kissed her temple like he always did when he got home way late.