Don’t make me have to leave her.

He sighed, eyes opening as the water ran in the next room. She’d be back in a minute. His to hold through the night. His, for now.

His, for as long as karma decided he deserved it.

Chapter 14

At two minutes to four the next afternoon, Abilene strained for sounds—the slam of a truck door outside, of knocking, voices rising.

This room was nearly as far as you could get from the front lot, and the window was shut. Didn’t stop her imagination, though. A hundred times she could swear she’d caught a doorbell; talking or shouting or the sounds of a fight. All figments. The only actual noises were the occasional creak of the old house, the tick and whir of the heat coming on at odd intervals.

Four o’clock was the time she’d given James for their face-to-face meeting, and likely his first encounter with his daughter, provided things went well.

Mercy was downstairs, being looked after by Christine. Casey had offered to be in the room with Abilene when everything went down, but of course she’d declined. There was too much to be unpacked that she never wanted him to know about her. Too much at stake in the truths she’d omitted, the assumptions she’d let him make about her—

She sat up straight at the sounds of activity beyond her room. Real ones. Voices, then the heavy thumps of two sets of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs.

She watched the door, heart clenched and pounding, temples throbbing, palms damp. Even as she hoped it would never open, every second that elapsed before it did lasted an hour.

Muffled words were exchanged outside the room, and then one set of steps faded back down the stairs.

“Come on,” she murmured, staring at the knob, daring it to twist. “Come on, come—”

A knock.

“Yeah,” she called.

The door swung in, and there he was.

James seemed shorter than she remembered, though perhaps that was merely a side effect of all her time spent around Vince and Duncan. He looked a little older, too, and she supposed prison must do that to a man. He was still handsome in his intimidating, fierce way, but weariness had etched fine lines across his brow and shadowed his blue eyes.

Mercy’s eyes. Darker than her own. Moodier.

He kept his gaze on her as he shut the door, expression guarded. His lips were set, as were his shoulders. He looked like a man entering a ring with a spook-prone horse, exuding an aura of forced calm.

She’d brought a chair up from the kitchen and set it facing the bed. The noise of it scraping on the floor as he took a seat felt so loud she flinched.

“Abilene,” he said evenly, planting his elbows on his thighs. She knew not to expect a cordial Thanks for agreeing to meet me or the like. Despite his psychotic move on Wednesday night, turning up and creeping around, she owed him whatever he was after—another apology, assurances, proof she had things under control. And she did have most of it under control, she thought. Beneath the jitters, she felt strong. She felt ready for this.

“You look good,” James said. He didn’t mean she looked pretty—he meant that she looked healthy. That she looked clean.

“I feel good. Just a little sleep deprived.”

“Where’s the baby?”

“She’s asleep. Someone’s with her.”

“Tell me I get to see her.”

She nodded. “Unless this all goes real badly, yeah, you’ll get to see her.”

That softened his jaw. And that jaw was coated in dark stubble—unusual for James, a man who rose each morning at the same hour, rarely drank, and never smoked, who thrived on routine and shaved daily. She remembered another time when she’d driven him to forsake his regimens and lose his focus. She remembered all the power she’d felt, seeing the strongest, hardest man she’d yet met reduced to a nervous wreck. Oddly, it made her curious to watch him when he held his daughter for the first time. Would that moment change him, soften him, as his worry and care for her had, once upon a time last winter?

“I know you must be impatient,” she said. “But let’s talk first. We both must have more things to say than we did on the phone.”

A silent, mirthless little laugh curled his lips. “Yeah, I’ve got things to say.”

She nodded to tell him to go ahead.

“You want to know why I needed to see you so goddamn badly?” he asked. “Why I’m so fucking angry? It’s because I’m scared to death.”

“I know. But the baby’s fine. And I’m a good mother, believe it or not.”

“You gotta understand, Abilene, you don’t want me to see you both, and my mind goes right back to that shithole I found you in.”

She felt her face turn hot. She didn’t remember much about the place, that beige trailer she’d called home for days or maybe weeks, at the rock bottom of her heroin addiction. She remembered how it smelled. Like struck matches and incense, like unwashed sheets. Like stale sex. She had no memory of James finding her, only of waking up in his house, in his clothes, bleary and confused and wanting nothing except her next dose.

“Who are you? Where am I?” she’d asked.

“My name is James. I found you in some hellhole of a double-wide in Lime. You’re at my place.”

“Why?”

“Because I bought you for six hundred bucks off some junkie in a stupid hat.” Her old dealer, and a buyer of James’s illegal firearms.

“Six hundred dollars? I’m not a whore.”

“I never said you were. You’re here because you remind me of my little sister and because I’m a fucking idiot. I have absolutely zero interest in fucking you,” he’d said. “Not even if you took a shower—which you really fucking need to—and not if you gained ten pounds, and put on some lingerie, and did your hair real nice. The only reason you’re here is because I couldn’t not get you out of that place, but I don’t have the first clue what I’m gonna do with you. Except maybe sober you up, and feed you, and make sure you get that goddamn shower. After that, your choices are up to you. I’m just doing the bare minimum I need to to get some fucking sleep tonight. You got that?”

For a criminal, James had proven a man of his word—he hadn’t made a move on her. Hadn’t put a hand on her except to usher her out of his little house, into his truck, through the entrance to a methadone clinic. A shake on the shoulder to wake her each morning . . . and a rougher, two-handed shake later, when she’d really pushed him.

She’d stayed with him for more than two months. Long enough to pass through the hell of withdrawal and get clean, to gain back the twenty pounds heroin had stripped from her bones. Long enough for her hesitation to grow to trust, for trust to become gratitude, and, in time, for gratitude to morph into a crush. He’d been thirty-seven, and she twenty-one, but age gaps had never given her much pause.

He’d resisted her flirtations admirably, for maybe two weeks. But in the end, no man was that saintly. James had tried to be, tried real hard, God help him, but it had been no use. Abilene had been helpless in many ways, but not without her leverage.

The sex had been good. Not amazing, but intense, and tender as well. With other guys she’d been in it for whatever benefits were to be gained—shelter or favors or money—but with James it had simply been the contact she’d wanted.

For him it had been sexual, too, almost purely. Sex and some affection, probably a touch of attachment. She’d made him feel strong and needed, she thought. He’d made her feel safe and desired. It had met their needs for as long as it had lasted, but it had always been doomed, and they’d both known it from the start.

Whatever they’d been had lasted just a few weeks. Long enough for them to mess up and for her to get pregnant, though she hadn’t known that when she’d left him. She hadn’t gotten her period in ages, hadn’t felt normal in forever; the symptoms had been wasted on her until she’d been four months gone, and by then James had been out of her life for longer than they’d ever been together.