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Isabel saw Travis tense, but she couldn’t focus on him now.
Tugging Brooklyn into her arms, she knelt on the sandy, patchy grass and rubbed her cheek against Brooklyn’s hair. The Wonder Woman tiara she loved so much ended up getting dislodged but whatever had the girl so distressed was major, because Brooklyn didn’t notice as it fell to the ground.
Isabel saw Travis bend and pick it up—she bit back on the urge to fuss at him from doing so, knowing it would hurt him with that ugly injury he had. He was a grown-ass man, after all. “Brook, talk to me. What is it you were asking Travis?”
She sniffled and shook her head.
“Come on, baby. Talk to me. Didn’t I tell you I’d try to help you with problems?”
There was a long, hesitant pause, and then Brooklyn nodded.
“And I will. But you have to do your part ... and what’s your part?”
“I have to talk to you,” Brooklyn said, mumbling her answer. “But I asked you and you wouldn’t tell me.”
Isabel sighed. She had a bad feeling she knew what Brooklyn’s question was now. Rising, she started to tell Brooklyn they’d talk back at the house.
But a booming noise erupted from the garage.
“Great,” she muttered, turning to look over her shoulder. Storm was walking toward the main road, pushing the stroller in front of her, her platinum hair swaying as she bobbed her head, a pair of earbuds blocking out the music coming from the garage.
Aaron and Storm had worked out a deal that allowed the boy to practice playing in a manner that kept the baby from either screeching along in accompaniment or protest. Storm took Mariah for daily walks and Aaron took care of Storm’s part of the evening chores.
Since it worked out for everybody—except Isabel’s eardrums—she allowed it.
But that music wouldn’t allow for a peaceful talk inside the house.
“If you need to talk to her, use my deck,” Travis said.
She slanted a look at him, aware of a quiet tension that had settled over him in the past minute or so, a tension that hadn’t been there initially. She wondered about it, but Brooklyn, as with her other kids, had to be her priority.
“I’ve got a new kid in the house,” she said, rubbing Brooklyn’s shoulder. “I should be where he can find me easily ... but maybe we’ll sit by the firepit?”
Travis lifted a shoulder, the thin, faded cotton of his t-shirt outlining taut muscles that insisted on drawing her eye.
“Either way is fine by me.”
Their gazes locked and held for a taut moment and her mouth went dry, her heart pounding in a heavy, slow rhythm that had her blood turning to honey.
“Thank you,” she said, finally tearing her gaze from his.
“I think maybe I’ll wander over and listen to the ... music,” he told her, his lips twitching up at the corners.
“It’s your eardrums.”
Taking Brooklyn’s hand, she led the girl over to the chairs by the firepit, mentally bracing herself for the old pain that was likely to flare up.
She’d handle it. She could, because Brooklyn had looked at her with a different sort of pain and she wouldn’t be a coward and hide away when a kid needed her.
There was another kidin the garage with Aaron, a taller, skinny Black kid with shoulder-length dreads and round-frame, electric blue glasses. Those glasses reflected the light and hid his eyes as he swung his gaze toward Travis when he braced a shoulder against the frame of the garage door.
The music came to a dead stop, the Black boy backing away from the keyboard and microphone while Aaron’s hand lowered from the strings of a pretty decent-looking Fender.
“Um, hi,” the Black kid said, clearly nervous.
“Hey, Travis.” Aaron didn’t look as nervous, but he didn’t look happy, either. “Guess you think the music is too loud.”
“Well, it’s loud,” Travis said with a shrug. “But I came over to listen for a minute or two ... if that’s okay.” A couple days ago, he would have said something far different—or he would shoved his head under his pillow and prayed for the noise to stop.
