Never Can Tell (7 page)

“Fuck off,” I tell her which maybe isn't the best thing to say, but it makes me feel better for a moment, clears my head a little.

“Hannah, let's cut the shit. You didn't come here to look at the house, did you?” Hannah tucks some hair behind her ear and looks over at me, judging me, trying to decide if I really am a threat or not. She has no fucking idea. I've dealt with a lot of shit in my life, and now I have something worth keeping, and nobody is going to screw that up for me. I'm already having to fight with myself, convince my heart that I deserve the husband and the kids and the white fucking picket fence if I want it. It was never in my plans, but now that I've got it, I'm keeping it. This bitch can step off.

“Why else would I come here?” she says, but her voice is so full of bullshit that it stinks. I keep one hand against the back of Noah's head and the other on his lower back, bouncing up and down gently, trying to get him to soothe. He just keeps screaming.

“Might be hungry, Nev,” Ty says as I come full circle and give him a look. Ty's staring at me, urging me to go inside, so he can deal with this.

“No,” I say. If he thinks I'm leaving him alone with Hannah the Child Fucker, he's gone completely and utterly insane.

“I've got you,” he tells me, but I'm afraid that that isn't true, that his demons will eventually drag him to hell if I'm not there for him. He's
always
been there for me. It's my turn again, and I've got to do a good job at it.

Sprinkles of icy rain begin to fall, slapping me on the cheeks and beading on my hair.

“Fuck.” I can't stand out here in the rain with a ten week old baby. I just can't and Ty knows it. I start to back away, keeping my gaze focused on the two of them. The realtor blends into the background, becomes just another inanimate object that I have to filter out, so I can see what's going on with the love of my life, my soul mate, my dark horse. When my ankles bump the steps of the front porch, I growl low in my throat and spin around, heading inside and into the kitchen as fast as I can. Noah won't stop crying. He has to be fed. God, but I want to keep my eyes on Ty so bad … Still, I can't make our son suffer for that, now can I? If I did, I'd be as bad as my
mother.

So I make up a bottle and feed Noah, burp him, and put him to sleep in his crib. The whole time I'm doing this, I don't look out the window. I just do it and I try to enjoy doing it, even though I feel sick, even though I need to know what's going on. I kiss my son on the forehead and run down the stairs, hitting the screen door at the same moment Ty walks in.

He looks up at me, and the expression on his face isn't very pleasant. He's pale and sweaty, and his hands are shaking like crazy.

“What's wrong?” I ask because I know without knowing that something is upsetting Ty. And not just because he's sweating and not because of the glassy sheen in his eyes or the look on his face. I know because Ty and I are two halves of one broken fucking whole, and when we're together I feel complete, and I feel him, and I
am
him somehow because that's the way we were made, me and him. To tell you the truth, I don't think either of us would've survived much longer alone.

I take a step forward.

“She's stalking you?” I ask. Ty bites his lip and glances to the right, over at the vast expanse of living room that our meager furniture doesn't even begin to fill. The corners are dark, filled with shadows. But then, isn't that always the case?

“Something like that,” he says, dark hair plastered around the sides of his face, wet from the rain which has just switched from a light sprinkle to a torrential downpour. I rise on the balls of my feet and glance over Ty's muscular shoulder. Both cars are gone.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Ty shakes his head and runs his hands down his face, moving past me to the back door and opening it, so our two stupid pets can come traipsing in, mud trailing in their wake. “Ty?” I can see that he doesn't want to talk about it, not because he wants to keep anything from me necessarily, but because he wants to pretend it never happened.
What did she say to him?

“Never, I … ” He looks around for a minute, looking panicked. “Where's Noah?”

“He's upstairs,” I say, gesturing at the roof with a wild hand. When Ty just stands there and doesn't respond, I move forward and touch my hands to his chest, tangling my fingers in the wet fabric of his red shirt. Whatever it is, we can handle it. I know we can. The one good thing about external tragedy and turmoil is that it prevents you from retreating in, from focusing on all of that internal self-doubt, that bubbling frenzy of tightly clenched pain and the fears and doubts that plague our thoughts like moths. I press a kiss to his wet lips, soft and gentle as a butterfly. His arms come around me fast and hard, squeezing me, smashing me into his chest. “What is it?” I ask, trying to get him to spill before I start imagining worst case scenarios. “What the fuck happened out there?”

“I'm sorry, Never,” he says, and he doesn't sound like Ty at all anymore. He sounds like Tyson, the boy who suffered too much, wasn't loved enough. His breathing gets harsh and his whisper tears straight through me. “I'm sorry I fucked up long before I met you, sorry I did things that I regret, that haunt me, that are trying their fucking damnedest to fuck us up.” Ty releases me abruptly and turns away, raking his fingers through his hair, closing his eye. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“That's a lot of fucks, even for you McCabe.” I put my hands on my hips and try not to panic because that's the first thing I want to do. I want to freak out and start screaming, cussing, shaking him and demanding that he tell me what's going on. But I don't. I hold it all in because he can't, because I'm the other half to to his broken heart, and it's my job to keep this black, bloody thing beating.

He's pacing back and forth, biting at his lip ring, spinning it back and forth with his tongue. That means he's thinking hard about something. But what? What? What? I move forward and grab Ty around the arm, wrapping my hand around his solid bicep, his swarm of butterflies. He pauses then and looks down at me, eyes lost and faraway. I do my best to bring him back, reaching up and grabbing his nose ring, pulling his face down and kissing him again. It seems to work, clears his head just enough that he's able to speak. Demons still dance behind his eyes, but they have no hold over his lips.

“Remember,” Ty begins and then has to swallow, run his tongue over his lips. “Remember the story I told? The one about the girl?” I try to smile, but inside, I'm freaking the fuck out.

“I remember all your stories, and I seem to remember there being a lot of girls.” I try not to sound jealous when I say this, but I can't help myself. Ty is mine; he's always been mine, even if I didn't know it at the time. I take my eyes from his face and focus on my rings, the red and gold, the silver and blue. Both from Ty, both precious. I lean forward and press my forehead against his skin. “Why?”

“The girl … the kidnapped one.” Ty swallows. His pulse picks up. I can feel it thumping thrumming through his veins. “You remember her, right?”

“How could I ever forget?” That bit of darkness, that horrible sliver of pain is still stuck in Ty's soul, and I don't know how I'm ever going to get it out. I'm going to do my best though, or die trying. Ty swallows and steps back, untangling my hand from his arm, putting his palms on either side of my face. He looks me right in the eyes and lets me see the horror in his gaze.

“Well,” he begins, stops, pauses. I have to wonder where this is going, how we got from one house of horrors to the next. This is not about Hannah, not exactly. “People are asking questions, lots of them.”

“People?” I ask, trying to puzzle out what's going on. Ty doesn't respond to my question and keeps going.

“And they're starting to get answers. Somehow, someway, these answers are all leading straight to me.”

10

Ty is like a rubber ball – he bounces back real quick, even when the odds are stacked against him, even when a lesser man would crumble. Balls to the wall doesn't even begin to describe this man. He's the perfect walking example of perseverance. I wonder absently where he'd be if we hadn't met. Probably in a better place than me. Most likely, I'd still be back at the U, fucking random frat boys and dudes with substance abuse problems. I put a cigarette in my mouth, but don't smoke it, watching as Ty loads up our rental car and tries to figure out how to get the dog crate into the backseat. I figure he'd have been okay. After all, he was the one getting his shit together long before I came into the picture. And it was his idea that we get tested, that we go to SOG. I owe him my fucking soul.

“Holy fuck,” he says, stepping back and examining the big plastic rectangle. Angelica watches from a safe distance behind my ankles. As soon as we walked out of the airport, she started to whimper and Ty, softie that he fucking is, let her out. She has no leash. Doesn't need one, I guess. I hold Noah against my chest, tucked safely into his baby carrier, and try to pretend that we didn't get frisked by the TSA for this sole reason, that these delicate bullet drawings played no part. Shit, I'm sure the piercings and the tats had nothing to do with our 'random selection' either.

Ty circles the carrier with his hands on his hips and tries to pretend that he's all cool, super tough shit, that we weren't clutching hands in fearful silence as the plane descended onto the tarmac.
God, I hate fucking flying.
He, like me, has a cig clenched tight between his lips, but it's not lit either. He's promised me that as long as I'm not smoking, neither is he.

“Well, shit,” he says, glancing in the backseat of the sedan we've rented and making eyes at the hissing face of Chuck Norris. “We don't really need this damn thing, do we?” I shrug, wondering what it is he's getting at and then watch as he curb stomps the poor kennel with his boots, rendering it to plastic shards right there in the parking lot. Ty grins.

“Aren't you just fucking precious?” I ask, rolling my eyes and doing my best to keep the smile off my face. I don't ever tell him this, but when he does immature shit, I find him cute.
How ridiculous.
“Have fun cleaning that up?”

“Sure you don't want to just jump in the car and drive away?” I give Ty a look and he laughs.

“Okay, okay, I got it,” he murmurs around his cigarette. I step back as he bends down and gathers the plastic up, gesturing for the stupid dog to jump into the car and closing the door behind her. I sway on my feet a moment and have to put out a hand to balance against the side of the car. Like a hawk, Ty's eyes snap up to mine. “Are you alright, baby?” I nod and try my best to smile. He knows better, I'm sure, but I'm keeping a game face on for him. Even if I have to retreat to the bathroom every five minutes to puke, I'm going to grin and bear it. For Ty. Always for Ty.

I lean back against the car and let my eyes fluter closed for a moment. I'm exhausted, all the way down to the bone. Last night, Ty and I packed up the rest of our shit. This morning, we got on an airplane. Last night, he confided his fears in me. This morning, he's perfectly fucking fine. I want to talk about it, but I can see that he doesn't. My only hope is that since we're out of New York, his fears are all for naught. He's not wanted for murder or anything, so no detective in his right mind is going to come after him. They might call him, sure, but that's okay. I think that's what he wants. Despite Hannah's warning to the contrary, I think he wants to hell the cops everything he saw all those years ago. If this cold case can get solved, I have a feeling that a little piece of Ty would heal along with it.

Marin Rice.

The girl that Ty saw all those years ago, the one he ran away from but never forgot. The one whose death he blames on himself.

I open my eyes and watch my dark knight gather up the plastic and carry it around the corner in search of a trash can. He thinks I don't know, but I can guess he's going to try and steal a smoke while he's at it. I drop my chin to my chest and look down at Noah, wishing with everything inside of me that he doesn't have to go through the same sort of pain that Ty and I have inside of us. The little monster inside of me, the one that's always told me to do things, who made me into a person I didn't want to be, I have to make sure she's not hereditary. I brush my fingers across Noah's soft tuft of hair.

There's always the chance that Hannah is just stalking Ty, that she didn't come over just to warn him. Why would she anyway? What does she have to gain? Why does she give a fuck? And then again, we don't even know if she's telling the truth or not.

I groan low in my throat and let my head fall back.

Ty believes her. That's what counts. I need to operate off of that assumption.

I pull my lighter out and flip it open, staring down at the flame and salivating at the thought of lighting my cig. An older couple walks by and gives me a pair of looks that could kill. I flip them both off and tuck the lighter back in my pocket. I might've been raised by a white trash mother, but I'm not about to smoke a cigarette with one baby strapped to my chest and another inside my belly. I take my cig out from between my lips and tuck it into my pocket, just in case I need a pacifier later. You never know.

“Back,” Ty says, coming around the corner. His unlit cig is still in his mouth. I smile and step forward, running my hand up his chest. He looks down into my eyes and I see an apology burning there. I don't know what it's for or why, but I can see that he means it, genuinely and from the bottom of his heart.

That's when I smell the cigarette smoke.

“Ty,” I begin, raising an eyebrow. He laughs, low and deep, masculine and dark. God, I just want to fuck the shit out of him. “That's a bad boy,” I whisper, drawing his cigarette from between his lips. I stick it into the left front pocket of his jeans, burying my hand in as deep as I can get it, caressing his leg through the fabric.

“That's right, baby,” he says, pressing a chaste kiss to our son's head and then a filthy, immodest one to my lips. “I'm just downright naughty.”