Once my family is gone, Reese smiles, and some of the heaviness lifts. “Do you mind if I sit on the couch with you, honey?”
“No. I mean, no, I don’t mind.”
“Thanks.” Settling beside me, she turns her head, and I can feel the weight of her stare on me. “You really worried us today, Tabitha.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You said you were hiding from ‘everyone’. Can you tell me why you were hiding?”
Heat rushes to my cheeks and I jerk my shoulder up in a shrug. “Don’t really wanna.”
“I understand that. But this is really important.” She pauses, as if weighing her next words carefully. “Tabitha… are you scared of anyone here?”
“What? No, of course not!” Well, I am pretty worried about the spanking I have coming, but I’m notscaredof anyone.
I don’t think the sheriff will really appreciate that distinction, however.
“Then tell me why you were hiding on the roof.”
“It’s embarrassing,” I whisper, tears once more welling in my eyes.
“Nah,” she says, a surprising grin stretching across her face. “Embarrassing is when your mom has to call the fire departmentbecause you were pretending to be a monkey and you climbed so far up in the tree you couldn’t get yourself down.”
“Did that happen to you?”
“Yup. Worst part was, the girl I had a huge crush on at the time was riding along with her dad that day and he happened to be on that call. Talk aboutembarrassing.”
A giggle slips free before I think to smother it, and Reese winks. “That is super embarrassing. I’m sorry that happened. Was your mom mad?”
“Oh, she was furious,” Reese says with a laugh. “I was grounded the rest of the summer.”
I’m gonna be way more than grounded when Daddy finds out why I was up on that roof. But I don’t see a way around telling the truth, so I might as well just get it over with. “I wanted to see if they’d come looking for me.”
Reese frowns. “Why wouldn’t they look for you, honey?”
“I…I didn’t have a mom like yours growing up. I didn’t really have anyone. And now I have my Daddy and the rest of my family, and sometimes it just doesn’t seem real. Like one day they’re all gonna wake up and realize I’m too much work and they’ll just pass me along to the next family like when I was little.”
“Tabitha, I want you to look at me, right now.”
Sniffling, I turn to look in her startling green eyes. “Ma’am?”
“You may have noticed by now that the Thornes and I don’t have the most… amicable relationship.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “It’s come up a couple times.”
“Uh-huh. Well, despite how I feel about them individually or as a whole, there is one thing I know for certain. The Thorne family sticks together. And they protect what’s theirs with a ferocity unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Theonlyway you’re leaving this family is if you make that decision to walk out the door yourself.”
“I want to believe that. I thought—” Just the thought of trying to explain my plan out loud has a fresh wave of humiliation flooding my body.
“You thought what, sweetheart?”
Dropping my gaze, I sigh quietly. “I thought if I made them think I’d run away, I could see how they reacted and it would finally convince my heart we’re safe here. Like, if they went looking for me and they didn’t send me away, I could finally believe they really love me.”
To my surprise, Reese tosses her head back and laughs, loud and long. “Honey, Grayson Thorne calledme,the person she hates most in the entire fucking world, to come help them look for you. If that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.”
Warmth spreads through my chest and I find myself smiling. “That’s a really good point, actually.”
Taking my hands in hers, Reese gives them a hard squeeze. “Look, Tabitha. I don’t know what kind of trauma you have in your past, but what I do know is those people in there love you, fiercely. So maybe just give them a chance to prove they’re gonna stick instead of trying to push them away. Okay?”
