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Miguel turned to stare out the window and I didn’t know what he was thinking. If this was good. Or bad. If he was insulted.
“Think about it, okay?” I finally said, wondering if I’d just made a huge mistake. “Just think about it.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything, and after a moment I started the car again and continued to drive out to the build site.
Surveyors were putting up flags, marking the areas where the individual houses would be built, and men were climbing into little Bobcats and diggers, getting ready to level the land for the concrete pour.
And in the middle of it all was Tyler. An unforeseen conductor. A surprise leader.
The second I drove up, Tyler—wearing a hard hat and those perfect jeans that made my body sweat—turned away from the men he’d been talking to and approached the car.
My heart thundered in my chest.
“Hey, Tyler!” Miguel said, hurtling out of the car before I even had it in Park. “Sorry I wasn’t here on Monday—”
“It’s okay,” Tyler said, clapping Miguel on the shoulder. I could see the emotion in Tyler’s eyes, the relief and the love he felt for that boy. I had to look away, his visible emotions tearing at my walls, my carefully crafted distance.
“I’m glad you’re here today,” Tyler said to Miguel. “You ready to work?”
Miguel nodded.
“Attaboy. Go see Derek over there and he’ll get you set up.”
Miguel was off like a shot. Tyler watched him go and then slowly, turned to face me.
21
I clenched and unclenched my hands, smoothed down the front of my shirt.
As his long slow stride brought him over to the car, I found myself breathless. Waiting.
He ducked, smiling when he saw Louisa in the backseat.
“It worked. They’re with you now,” he said, clearly relieved, and I knew I should have called him earlier. To thank him. To tell him that everyone was safe. But I’d been a coward for two weeks, scared of what other things I might have said.
I got out of the car. “I should have called—”
He waved me off. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “I’m just glad it worked out. Everyone’s doing all right?”
I nodded, words completely beyond me.
“Good,” he said. “That’s…good.”
We both looked out at the work and I was stunned to see my father out there holding one of the surveyor flags.
“Is that my dad?” I asked.
“I couldn’t believe it, either,” Tyler said, “but a few days ago he came out here saying he wanted to work.”
“With you?”
“He doesn’t talk to me, but every once in a while he’ll nod. Yesterday he told me to have a good night.” Tyler shrugged. “He didn’t tell you?”
I reeled. My father? And Tyler? I felt the need to check the sky for flying swine.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”
“Do you…forgive him? For what he did?”
Tyler sighed. “I mean, it was a shit thing, no doubt about it. But he wanted to protect you. He was scared for you.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No. But I understand it. And I think he wants to figure out how to make it right. I feel bad for him, honestly. He seems lonely.”
It was that easy for Tyler. He was that kind of man, who understood doing the wrong things for the right reasons all too well.
If he can do it, a small voice whispered in the back of my head. So can you.
“You’re still staying?” I asked.
“Lots of work to do.”
I glanced up at Tyler only to find him watching me. His smile was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. Hopeless. Lost. And I wanted to have a hard heart, I wanted to be unaffected, but it was impossible. Part of Tyler O’Neill lived under my skin and I would never be impervious.
The truth was, I understood why he lied. How in his head it was all right. He was protecting the people he loved in the only way he knew how. With secrets and deceit and self-sacrifice.
It was wrong, but everything he did, he did because he loved me.
A light went on in my head. My heart.
Tyler O’Neill just needed to be shown a different way to love.
He wasn’t that different from Miguel—scared of the unknown and making decisions out of fear. Betrayed by people who should love him.
The battle in me turned and sharpened and now I was fighting for him. For him to see me, really see me, and understand that I stood in front of him a whole person.
“I don’t need protecting,” I said, and his eyes, electric in their intensity, swung my way.
“You’re the toughest, strongest woman I know, Juliette. I was stupid to think you needed me to protect you.”
“And I don’t need you making decisions for me.”
He nodded. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You told me you wanted to show me the best of yourself,” I said.
