Santa Rosa County, Florida
“Is Taylor mad at you?” Brodie asked Jason on the drive home
“What? No. Why do you think that?”
She shrugged. “You’ve been checking your phone all night. You don’t look happy about what you’re reading. That’s usually what you do when she’s mad at you.”
He didn’t answer. She needed to change the subject. She wasn’t supposed to ask personal stuff.
“The Geminids meteor showers should be visible for the next several nights,” she said. “If it’s not cloudy.”
“That’s cool.”
More silence.
“It’s from an asteroid and not a comet,” she said.
He nodded. More silence. This time Brodie stayed quiet.
Then Jason said, “She’s not mad at me. Maybe a little disappointed.”
He dragged his fingers through his short hair and added, “Well, maybe a little mad, too. She wanted me to have dinner with her and Will tonight.”
“You really like Will. So, what’s the problem?”
“It’s poker night.”
She waited to see if he was joking. Or sarcastic. She really needed to figure out the nuances of humor.
When she took too long to respond, he said, “I rescheduled a training session last week, so we could see each other.” He rubbed at his jaw and stared straight ahead. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like I’m the one always readjusting my plans. Like her schedule is more important than mine.”
Brodie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say here. Taylor was a nurse. It did seem like she never knew what her work hours were, even though she was assigned to the pediatric floor. It wasn’t like she was an ER nurse and on call.
“It’s like she doesn’t even think about me until she wants to—” He caught himself. Kept his eyes from her. “Until she wants to see me.”
That’s not what he was going to say. But he had made it clear he didn’t want to talk about his sex life with Brodie. He told her that when Brodie had asked too many questions on their road trip to Nebraska a couple of months ago.
Again, Jason didn’t wait for a response. This time changing course, almost as if he needed to get his mind back on track. “I know she wants to get full custody of Will, so she has to work her schedule around that. I just...I don’t know. I just don’t want to be an afterthought. I don’t want to be the last thing she makes time for. Does that sound selfish or just totally lame?”
Now he glanced over at her.
“No. I don’t think it’s lame or selfish.” But she was curious. “Why doesn’t Will live full-time with her now?”
“It’s kind of complicated.”
“Complicated you don’t know? Or complicated you don’t want to talk about it?”
“I’m not sure I know the whole story. Will’s dad was killed in Afghanistan before Will was born. She doesn’t talk about her parents. I’m not really sure if they’re still alive. I just know she felt really alone and overwhelmed. So, when her mother-in-law offered to step in and help, Taylor let her. The rest is a bit fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy” was a strange word for him to use, and immediately, Brodie realized Jason knew more. She could tell. But this much was what he was willing to tell her. She found herself wondering if Will knew the whole story of why his mother gave him up. Or what version he had been told. She felt a sudden kinship with the boy, though she’d never met him. Adults were good liars.
The woman who kidnapped Brodie convinced her that her parents didn’t want Brodie anymore. Iris Malone had been very convincing, so much so, that when Brodie was finally rescued, she didn’t want to see her own mother. Even now, a year later, they were still working on a fractured relationship borne entirely out of lies. She couldn’t help thinking that Taylor’s son could be feeling something similar. As a kid, it’s a tough lesson to learn that you can’t trust the adults in your life. They’re the people you count on to take care of you, not hurt you. Lie to you.
“Hey,” Jason said, glancing over at her.
She stopped herself from sitting up straight. Tried to look like she hadn’t gone away even as she casually searched his face in the light from the Jeep’s dashboard.
Jason could sense stuff about her. It probably didn’t help that he had witnessed one of her worst PTSD breakdowns. In a hotel just over the Missouri border in the middle of the night. It was the first time she’d left the security of Ryder and Hannah’s home. Of course, it didn’t help matters that they were headed right back to Nebraska, where she had finally escaped.
“You were on fire tonight,” Jason told her.
Oh good. He was talking about poker.
She didn’t want to tell him that she could guess what cards the rest of them may or may not have, simply by remembering the ones they had discarded. It was easy to keep them in her head, sort them according to suit. The longer the game went, the more cards got discarded and the easier it was to figure out what ones were left to remain in their hands. It was such a natural thing that she didn’t realize everyone couldn’t do the same thing.
“You’re a good teacher,” she told him instead and was instantly rewarded with that full, genuine grin. The one he gave her earlier. The one that made her feel close to him. “It’s fun. I like listening to you guys.”
And she liked spending time with Jason. Even doing kennel chores together was something she looked forward to every morning. They had grown closer during that road trip to Nebraska, in spite of how tough it was. Not just her breakdown. Ryder and Grace had gone missing. For the first time since being rescued, she had to think and worry about someone else.
She wanted to tell Jason not to worry about Taylor. She wanted to tell him that, of course, Taylor must enjoy spending time with him. He was funny and smart and kind. That everything would work out. But Brodie also knew—even though she didn’t know Taylor very well—that the woman had quite a few disastrous relationships with men before. Men had killed and been killed because of her.
A part of Brodie didn’t want Jason to be involved with Taylor at all. She didn’t want him to get hurt. Brodie realized she didn’t have actual personal experiences, but she read a lot. Women like Taylor Donahue rarely had healthy relationships. But there was one thing as far as men were concerned. Women like Taylor usually got their way.