Page 9 of Passion in Bloom

“Wanna talk about it?”

I pressed my lips together and licked the inside of the seam. I didn’t. Since I came back to Burton, I stuck, religiously, to keeping to myself. To protecting my privacy and insisting on solitude. It seemed the safest route to getting back on my feet, both mentally and physically, but now, nothing was safe. Nothing could be close to safe when I knew David was in town.

“Just know the offer stands,” Nance said as she walked through the office spaces with me. She didn’t push. She wasn’t pestering with curiosity. For the first time, I stopped for a moment to realize I’d never had someone like her in my life. My parents had been crossed out as a support system years ago. When I was a kid, I learned the cruel lesson that I didn’t have a family to lean on. That included never having a grandmother. An aunt. Anything. Eric’s mom and dad passed long ago. Our grandparents had passed.

With Nance, I saw hope of someone older, wiser, and more patient to hear me out. It didn’t matter that she was a coworker. She was a friend. And she’d already proven as a transplant to Burton that she was immune from the biases and prejudices that the locals held against me when I grew up here.

“It’s my ex,” I said before she could take my silence as a no thank you to talking about what bothered me.

“Ex...husband?” she guessed as she tipped her head to come to her little office.

I followed her. I may as well tell her. I started this topic, and it wasn’t like David had to be some kind of secret. He was here. He’d make himself seen and known. Roarke and Todd already saw him, and I doubted they’d keep their mouths shut. Soon enough, gossip would spread and everyone in town would be aware that Heather James’s ex was in town.

“Hell no,” I said as she set her purse down on her desk. Not once did she look away, giving me her full, undivided attention.

“I’ve never been married.” I shook my head. “Or engaged,” I added quickly.

“So an ex-boyfriend.” She crossed her arms, tipping her chin up with such an automatic mama bear look that instantly started to make me feel better about talking at all. “From around here?”

“No.”

“From Chicago?”

I nodded.

“Hmm. Is he calling or something? Or is it just the memories and whatnot?” She frowned. “Or am I reading this wrong and you just miss him?”

I almost laughed. I could never, in a million years, miss David. “How are you reading this?”

She gestured at me. “You look like you’re about to go to war. Or coming back from it.”

“Sounds about right.”

She frowned harder. “Which one?”

“Both. David didn’t handle the break-up well.”

“Are you the breaker or the breakee?”

“Breaker. I didn’t actually break up.” Because he never let me say that I was leaving. “I just ran.”

“Is he abusive?” She roved her gaze over me, as if needing to see the bruises to get even more pissed off on my behalf.

“Yes, not... He didn’t beat me. It was more up here.” I pointed at my head. “A control freak.” I swallowed hard, feeling both sick and excited to get this off my chest. “I’ve never told anyone about this. About him.”

“Damn, girl.” She set her hand on my shoulder and rubbed it.

“I take that back. I tried to.” And the cops didn’t do a damn thing. They’d only facilitated spreading word to David that I was trying to press charges against him.

“But he’s here. He came here, followed me here.”

“To get you back?” she guessed.

That would be a normal, sane way of wording it. But with him, it was something far more. I nodded. “When I say he’s a control freak, think of the worst-case scenario.”

She shook her head. “Well fuck that. And fuck him. No one’s going to make you go anywhere or do anything you don’t want to do.”

I wished I could believe that, but she didn’t understand how sneaky he was. How cunning he could be.