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Something about his warm hand on mine made me feel safe.Hemade me feel safe.
“Anyway, after college, he showed up in Cope.” We’d talked on the phone a few times, but I’d been stunned to see him in the grocery store. “He sweet-talked my aunt into staying with us for a while. Said he wanted to buy a few acres to start a farm but his parents wouldn’t support him.”
Teague tightened his grip on me.
“He even took me out to see it. There was no for sale sign on it, but I didn’t know how things worked.” I squeezed back hard as a fresh wave of shame washed over me. “He’d ask me for five bucks, twenty bucks, fifty bucks here and there. He said his parents had cut him off and promised he was looking for work. I found him a job at a neighbor’s place come harvest, but he didn’t show up.”
I’d never connected why he wanted a farm when he had no interest in farming. And he was from Charleston, so I didn’t think he had any experience in it either.
“But he was charming. He brought something new to our dull lives.” It seemed silly looking back, like I’d been chasing a shiny object.
“I loaned him the money because I understood what it was like to struggle.” Even though I’d been saving all that time and hardly ever spent any of it, I wasn’t stingy. If someone needed help, I wanted to do it.
“Whatcha got there?”
I snapped the lid on my box closed and clutched it. “This was my dad’s.”
Curtis leaned in the doorway. “You never knew him, right?”
I shook my head. “No.”
The only thing I’d known of either of my parents was the pictures of them hanging on the wall downstairs. And this box.
“At least you have a piece of him,” Curtis said kindly. “Bet you keep your special stuff in it.”
I shrugged. My aunt didn’t even know how much I had saved in there. “Not really.”
“Oh come on. What is it? A diary?” He flashed that easy grin as he stepped closer.
“No.” I held the box tighter.
“Mm-hmm,” he said as if he didn’t believe me.
Closer. Closer. Closer he came. I resisted the urge to put the box behind me. He reached out. Everything in me seized.
Don’t touch it.
He scruffed my hair. “Sweet dreams.”
I didn’t exhale until he left the room. Thank goodness he’d easily given up on finding out what was in my box. When I heard his door click shut down the hall, I closed my own and buried it in my closet underneath a pile of stuff.
I took a deep breath and breathed out again.
It’s safe.
“Pepper?”
I blinked at Teague, confused by the tangling of the past and present.
“Sorry. Was just seeing that time again in my head. Anyway, he disappeared one day,” I whispered. “Along with my box of money.”
I slumped my shoulders and leaned against his. “The whole town laughed at me when he left. They didn’t know what he’d taken. But they called me a fool for thinking anyone would stick around for me. When I got my next paycheck, I packed my backpack and left town.”
Teague shifted so his back was against the headboard. He pulled me between his legs and cocooned me.
“My car broke down in Virginia. I couldn’t pay to fix it, so I sold it and stayed in a motel for a while. But I couldn’t get a job either. I was a college graduate who couldn’t manage to scrape by. It wasn’t supposed to be like that.” I’d studied hard to get a leg up. I’d saved so much to make sure it wasn’t going to be like that. Lost. Poor. But trust in the wrong person, unwise faith in humankind, had changed the way I saw life. Again.
Teague’s arms were like a safe barrier between me and the world. Inside them everything was going to be okay.
