“Please don’t do this.” Tabitha wiped at her eyes frantically. “I shouldn’t have come back. I knew this was a mistake, and I sure as heck shouldn’t have gotten into your car earlier. We can’t fix this. We’re broken, Wy.”
“No, Tab.” Wyatt jumped forward and grabbed her by both arms so quickly she gasped. He forced her out of the chair. Then he hugged her tightly and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Listen to me, darlin’. You and me, we’re going to work together to make sure coming back wasn’t a mistake. I have no idea how we’re going to do it, but we are, okay? Whatever time we have, we’re going to make the best of it. We both got demons, but we’re going to hide them. We’ll shove them in a closet somewhere until we can get to a point that we can deal with them.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to happen,” Tabitha told him with authority, because she had been going to support groups since she first got to New York and recognized what a complete mess the rape and losing Wyatt had made her. “We could be doing more damage than good by lying to ourselves and trying to make this work. I don’t want it to be impossible for us, but I think—”
“It ain’t impossible,” Wyatt told her with that hard driving confidence he’d obviously never grown out of. “Nothing is impossible, especially if it’s worth fighting for, and you have always been worth fighting for. I should’ve fought the first time. I ain’t making that mistake again, and I don’t care how many letters you write me asking me not to.”
God, she wanted to believe it was so easy.
She needed this too. It felt so good to be in his arms again, and she had been so desperately lonely without him. She had forgotten how invincible Wyatt made her feel. He forced her to believe in happily ever afters, even if life had taught her time and again, in painful and traumatizing ways, that it was impossible. She wanted to know how the story was supposed to end, but for Wyatt’s sake she should have told him no and walked away.
Tabitha had doomed them both by agreeing to move into the old Conner house instead.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
November 2012
A strange thing about demons.
Tabitha discovered they could hide in closets as long as everyone in the house was willing to keep the door shut. She and Wyatt made a commitment to keep them locked away, and it had worked amazingly well for months now.
Life wasn’t perfect, but it was close.
Her book was coming along nicely.
Jules was so busy with the final days of her pregnancy. She didn’t have much time to worry about them. Of course, that was Wyatt’s version, and Tabitha knew he always lied about those things. He spent Tuesday and Thursday evenings at her house while Romeo taught his karate classes. He usually came back bitching about Jules’s bad attitude since she’d been stuck on bed rest, but that was all Tabitha really knew about it.
Tabitha’s mother had come through her heart surgery well and was back home and recovering. Tabitha had paid a crew to do work on the house, and then she spent one full week cleaning it while her mother was in the hospital. She bought new furniture, and new linens for the beds. The house wasn’t spectacular, but it was clean and a vast improvement over what she’d found the first day back home.
She had learned well from the mistakes of the past and brought Wyatt with her this time because there was no way she was going to risk being alone with Brett. There was a part of her that knew she was delusional for being in that house at all. Her mother didn’t deserve Tabitha’s help any more than Brett did. She had left Tabitha in that hospital, knowing something terrible had happened. She’d chosen to protect Brett instead. There were days Tabitha wondered if her mother second-guessed calling 911 in the first place. At this point, she didn’t really give a fuck what her brother and mother thought about her living in the old Conner house. The whole dang town was talking about it anyway, and she didn’t owe any of them an explanation.
If Tabitha was being honest with herself, she enjoyed the pale-faced look on her brother’s face when she walked into the house with baskets full of fresh towels and Wyatt towering at her back like a dark guardian from Brett’s worst nightmares.
Good, let him sweat about it.
She wasn’t going to tell Wyatt what happened, but Brett didn’t need to know that. She hoped he passed the word on to Vaughn, and they both disappeared into the night. Tabitha might still battle with a lifetime of post-traumatic stress thanks to those two, but she wasn’t twenty-one and naive anymore. She knew how to protect herself, even if that meant Wyatt was stuck cleaning that horrible house with her.
He hadn’t even complained about it. Tabitha suspected Wyatt enjoyed the fear he caused as much as she did. Tabitha was almost sorry Vaughn wasn’t there, but then again, she knew it was a good thing he wasn’t. She wasn’t ready to face him again. Just knowing he was in town somewhere had her holed up in Wyatt’s house when she wasn’t forced to run errands.
Anytime she was out without Wyatt, she broke into a cold sweat. She was constantly looking over her shoulder, and she detested Vaughn for it. If she didn’t love Wyatt as much as she did, she would have told him just to rid herself of the fear.
She hated it.
But today was a good day as she and Wyatt shopped together in the hardware store for some supplies for his house. All that work on her old place had the two of them plotting to fix up his. He didn’t want it modernized; he wanted it restored, and it was a fun project.
“What’d you think of this?” Tabitha held up a sample of wallpaper to him. “It’s ’bout the same yellow as the one you got in the kitchen.”
Wyatt picked it up and studied it. “I guess. Lighter than what we got now.”
“I think it’ll look nice.” Tabitha took it back and held it out. “Terry told me any yellow you buy should be two shades lighter than what you think you want; otherwise you’ll hate it once you get it on the walls.”
“Why?”
Tabitha shrugged. “I dunno, but I reckon he knows what he’s talking ’bout.”
“Yeah, I reckon so,” Wyatt agreed and then turned around with a scowl as if sensing someone staring at him in that cop-like way he had. “Can I help you, Davis?”
Tabitha sucked in a hard breath but refused to turn around.
“What? Is it illegal to be in a hardware store?”
The icy shiver of fear spread from the back of Tabitha’s neck into her limbs. She reached out to the sample book of wallpaper and placed the piece back, looking for something to hide the shake in her hands.
“What you buying there, boy?”
“Nothing,” Vaughn said defensively.
“Yeah, you better put it back.” Wyatt turned to Tabitha, a scowl still on his face. He stepped closer to her and said under his breath, “You know, they use those scrubbing pads to smoke crack. They think I’m stupid, but I ain’t. I know my business. I’m calling Adam when we get back. I want him patrolling round the Davis place. I swear to God, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna make sure that boy dies behind bars. You know he got off on two counts of possession with nothing but time served and parole. Ain’t that some shit?”
“Yeah, it is.” Tabitha nodded.
“I hate that fucker.” Wyatt’s voice was still low in fury. “I ain’t never got over him threatening you like he did. I know it was a long time ago, but still. I think the only reason I do this job is the hopes of catching him red-handed one of these days. I’m glad he saw us together. Scare him a little. Scare him even more when he sees Adam’s patrol car rolling past his house every half an hour.”