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He takes a quick trip to the building’s dumpster and returns, using our childhood secret clubhouse knock. It’s a small thing, but it’s reassuring somehow.
He fills a glass with water and downs it. “Okay, pack a bag and you can come back to the hotel with me.”
I shake my head, curling deeper into the pile of pillows on my couch and pulling the blanket that’s on the back tightly around me, like a security blanket. “No. This is my home. You checked everything, Dom and Logan are gone. I’m not leaving.”
I know I sound petulant and whiny, but I’m hoping TJ will cut me some slack after my night. He’s not quite willing to give it up though. Turning to me, he leans against the kitchen counter, his voice quiet and softly pleading.
“Come on, Allie. I’ve got two double beds in my room, comfy and warm, safe and . . . not here.”
“Nope,” I reply, shaking my head. “I won’t be chased from my home.”
Funny. I never felt in danger until Dom, and now he’s the one I’m in the most danger from. He’s the only one with access to hurt my heart, my body, my soul.
TJ looks around, and I understand the feeling. Even though he’s searched, there’s still that little niggling feeling that we’ve missed something, that we’ve got a big hi-def camera or something pointed right at us and it’s streaming video of me right now.
“Listen, Allie, I can’t leave. I just don’t feel like you’re in a safe place. But I won’t force you. Can I stay the night?”
His question unknots a giant ball of tension from my chest, and I nod. TJ drops down on the couch beside me, relieved.
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
“I got you, Sis,” TJ says quietly, looking down between his knees.
After a few minutes, he speaks up again. “How’d everything get so fucked up, Allie-gator? What happened?”
I don’t answer because he seems to be leading himself somewhere, processing something in his own mind. His head falls back to the couch and he stares at the ceiling.
“When I was in high school, I had this whole picture, you know? You were gonna be this famous dancer, living in Manhattan or LA or Paris or some shit, and I was going to be the soldier boy. Yeah, I was thinking about it even then. Blame Dad with all those old fucking John Wayne movies, I guess. Then, well, I had Janine, dreaming of happily ever afters and all that romantic shit. I thought I was gonna come home, surprise Janine with being back, and we’d be happy. I mean, I was going to surprise her with damn-near a guaranteed year at the base stateside. We’d get the family started, have a couple of kids, dinner at home. And somehow, it all got shot to hell. Now I’m stuck here, without her, without the dream, without the happily ever after. I filed for divorce, did I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t,” I reply, but I’m really not that surprised after what he told me. “I’m so sorry, TJ. If you need anything, please just say the word and I’m there.”
The offer is real, but I know he won’t call on me. That’s not how he operates. He’s always been the caregiver, not the care-receiver. He’s always taken care of me, patiently and with his whole heart. It’s one of the things I love most about him and an example I’ve always tried to live up to myself. Still, he nods, his head rolling over to look at me.
“Thanks, Allie.”
I sit forward, putting a hand on his knee. “It’s her loss, you know? You’re an amazing man, TJ, and if she couldn’t see that, didn’t appreciate that, it’s her loss.”
He picks his head up and looks me dead in the eye. “His loss too. You’re better than this, better than him. You deserve more than to be questioned and followed, kept in a cage. You are one of the strongest people I know, Allie. You’ve fought and reinvented yourself so many times, and you’re so close to getting out of the tunnel you’ve been in for so long that I swear . . . looking at you, it hurts because your light is so bright. You can leave your debts behind, this life behind, and get all the things you’ve always wanted. Don’t let him keep you in the dark.”
Chapter 21
Dominick
Every morning when I wake up, I look at the calendar, each blank square stabbing in my heart as I look back at that night.
Two weeks. Two weeks, and tomorrow, the calendar changes over, taking that night off the page. And not a single word.
I’ve felt myself retreating day by day as my mind starts to fray before crystalizing back into the ice-cold, manipulative fucker I was before Allie. I hadn’t realized how much she’d changed me, melting my frozen heart in a watershed of rebirth, shaping me into something better. But now, without her light, her sun, her warmth, every thawed drop has refrozen into sharp edges, making me ready to gut anyone who so much as looks at me sideways.
