34. Bellamy

THIRTY-FOUR

bellamy

Arlo put his open palms beneath the automatic hand sanitizer pump once.

Twice.

Three times.

"That's enough, Arlo," I said, watching liquid drip from his hands to the hospital floor.

"It smells good."

I sanitized my hands, then opened the door to Mom's room.

She pushed up in the bed, smiling the second she saw us. "There are my boys."

Ugly purple bruises covered her face. Black stitches criss-crossed the gash on her head. Gritting my teeth, I dropped my chin to my chest and stared at the hospital tile.

I hated him. I hated that he'd done this to her for most of her life.

"Momma!" Arlo ran to the bed and crawled up, snuggling in beside her. "I stayed at a castle last night."

"You did?"

"Uh-huh. Miss Drew had Push-Pops and Cokes in glass bottles. And more bedrooms than the Motel-8."

"Really?" Mom's gaze slowly lifted to me with an arch of her brow. "And who is Miss Drew?"

I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. "This girl I'm…" I wasn't even sure what was going on between Drew and me anymore. But whatever it was, when I wasn't around her, I missed her. "I'm dating. She came and got him last night while…" You were carted off unconscious to the hospital, and they hauled me off to jail for assaulting Dad.

"Anyway."

She nodded, tugging at her hospital blanket. "That was sweet of her."

"I like her," Arlo said with a curt nod. "She's nice and smells good."

"The officers said your charges would be dropped now that I've been able to give witness and…" Her jaw tightened. She quickly swiped away the tears building in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Mom, don't. You didn't do anything."

"I just…" She pulled in a ragged breath, then pressed a kiss to the top of Arlo's head. "I wish they'd let me go home today. I'm fine. Really."

They'd held her for observation since he'd given her a concussion.

"They said you'll be discharged tomorrow."

"Just want to be able to bill us more," she grumbled.

I sank into the chair at her bedside, clasped my hands, and leaned over my knees, staring at the hospital tile.

Before I left the jail this morning, Officer Robins had helped me fill out a temporary restraining order—the guys at the precinct were all too aware of the shitshow that went on at my house, and I couldn't just let her stay in this mess. I couldn't let Arlo stay in it. Because what would happen when I eventually left?

I stopped by the family court and dropped off the paperwork after I picked up Arlo from the park, and part of me thought I should tell Mom, but then, I knew I needed to tell her that when Arlo wasn't around.

"Grandpa's coming up," I said.

"Yay!" Arlo clapped. "Pop-Pop's coming."

"Dad? You called him?"

"Yeah. I don't want you staying at the house alone."

Mom drew in a heavy breath.

All these years, she'd never breathed a word to him. Had made me promise I wouldn't tell because Grandpa was bat-shit crazy.

I'd listened to her back then because I was a kid, and that's what kids do—listen to their parents even when they know it's wrong.

I wasn't a kid anymore, though. And someone had to take care of her.

After we left the hospital, I swung by Home Wares and grabbed locks for both the doors, changing them before I made dinner, then made Arlo get ready for bed.

A peaceful silence hung over the house without the hum of a baseball game in the background or the constant creak of Dad's recliner. And maybe that's why Arlo snuck into my room at one in the morning. It was too quiet. We didn't know how to handle peace.

He crawled into my bed, tucking Spike between us on a huff. "Are they gonna get divorced?"

The chirp of crickets outside my window filled the silence of the dark room. "Yeah."

Arlo knew Dad was mean, but he was still young.

I could clearly remember being his age and loving my dad, even after he'd hit me. I spent years trying to figure out why I sought out his approval. Why I loved someone who hated me. I wasn't even sure when the need to love him morphed into rage-filled hate.

"Does that mean I have to go stay with him sometimes?" Arlo whispered. "Billy has to go stay with his daddy every other weekend, and I don't want to stay with Daddy without you."

I turned on the pillow to face him.

He petted over the unicorn, refusing to look at me. With a restraining order, he wouldn't get visitation, and even if he tried, there was no way in hell I'd let Dad win anything but supervised visitation. With any luck, he'd be serving a couple of years in jail anyway.

"No. You're not gonna stay with him. Don't worry about that, okay?"

He nodded, then grabbed my arm and tugged on it in a silent plea for me to let him on my chest.

I wrapped my arm around him and patted his back. "It's gonna be different from now on. I promise."

I put the last coat of paint on the living room wall and stepped back with a smile.

The places where I'd mudded the holes weren't even visible.

Wiping the paint over my jeans, I snagged the bucket and brush and headed onto the back porch to clean up.

I'd spent the last day patching holes and cleaning up the shit my dad had broken in the middle of that scuffle. The coffee table broke in two when he threw me into it, but I went by the Salvation Army and found one I thought she'd like for ten bucks.

The back door banged against the side of the house when Arlo sprinted out, wielding my phone above his head. "Baby Girl's texting you!" And that was weird coming from my six-year-old brother.

Baby Girl: When are you coming back to school?

I stared down at the message and smiled.

Me: Don't know yet

Me: Come over?

Baby Girl: I can't drive my car. Dad's threatening to check my mileage now.

Me: I'll come get you

I just wanted to see her. Bad. It had only been a few days, but I couldn't stand it any longer.

Baby Girl: Just come over here

Me: I have Arlo

Baby Girl: Bring him

Baby Girl: Don't park your car on the drive, though. My dad likes to appear like a freaking genie

I shoved my phone into my pocket, then slung the water from the paintbrush. "You wanna go to Drew's after dinner, Arlo?"

"Yay!"

"She said they aren't castles, but I think she's lying." Arlo stood outside my car, hitching up his pants in the dark while he waited on me to scoot across the passenger seat.

"These aren't castles," I said.

"They look like them."

And they kind of did—at least compared to the houses in Dayton. Two and three stories. Brick. Manicured lawns.

"Why'd we have to park all the way down here?" he asked as we started up the small hill.

"Because."

"Because isn't an answer."

God, I loved him, but sometimes the kid was exhausting. "Because Scrooge McDuck doesn't want people to visit her."

"Why!"

"She's in trouble."

Arlo shook his head. "Your fault, huh?"

This one actually wasn't my fault. It was all on her and her anger, ramming a Maserati into my car..."No, it's not my fault." I gave him a playful shove, and he giggled.

"I don't think she'll poop on you."

"No?"

"Nuh-uh. She's nice. Nice girls don't poop on people."

I laughed, scrubbing the top of his head before we started up her drive, the enormous house lit up with landscape lighting. "I hope you're right, buddy."

He took off, running up the porch steps to ring the doorbell. Repeatedly.

Light cut across the porch when the door swung open. He darted inside without a hello.

"Butthead! You're supposed to say hey first," I shouted, kissing Drew on the lips as I stepped inside.

He stomped back over. "Hello, Miss Drew."

"Hey, Arlo." Drew cut into the living room, then came back with her hands behind her. "I got you presents."

Arlo jumped up and down before she gave him another unicorn toy, this one with a shiny blue horn. "Thank you."

She lifted a brow. "No, that one you won." Then she handed him a pair of SpongeBob swim trunks. "You can swim in the pool this time, Peehead."

He snatched the shorts, squealed, then hugged her. "I like you, Miss Drew."

"I like you, too, Arlo." She smiled before leading us through the kitchen and outside.

Arlo stopped on the porch steps and gasped. A massive unicorn float drifted across the surface of the illuminated pool.

"A horse with a horn!" he shouted, barely stopping to change his shorts.

Drew sank into a lounge chair then sat right back up when Arlo jumped in, her gaze focused on water. "He can swim, right?"

"Good enough…"

She started to push up, and I latched onto her arm.

"Yes, Drew." I almost laughed but didn't because that shit right there was chipping away at my armor. "He can swim."

"Asshole."

Yeah. This girl was doing my heart in, for sure.

I tapped her shoulder and motioned for her to scoot up. She hesitated before she shifted, allowing me to sink behind her. Her stiff body slowly relaxed against me, and I rested my chin on the top of her head.

"Where'd you get the shorts from?" There was no way the girl had a pair of kid's SpongeBob pants on standby.

"Nora and I went to Wal-E-Mart and got some, in case he came over again. Kid gave me hell about swimming last time."

And for the first time, I thought I might understand why people fell in love. Because that...that made my chest go a little tight when nothing else ever had. "And the float?"

"That, I actually bought last summer. Dad says it's a monstrosity, so we never get it out."

I skimmed my chin over her soft hair. "It is a monstrosity…"

"Arlo doesn't think so." She nodded toward the pool.

He had his legs wrapped around its neck. He fist-pumped the air and let out a war cry. "To the death, Horny Horse!" Water splashed when he kicked his feet.

"Now I'm just picturing a horse with a boner," Drew laughed.

"You're sick."

A long beat of silence stretched between us, filled with the sounds of Arlo splashing around.

She took a deep breath and turned her cheek to my chest. "Is your mom okay?" Her words were barely a whisper.

This was the crap I wasn't good with.

No one outside of the guys and Nash knew about what a shitshow my life was, and she did. There wasn't much in life that embarrassed me. I'd grown up wearing thrift-store clothes and shoes with holes, just like most everyone in Dayton, but that shit—the crap with my dad—that wasn't someone not finishing school, not making the cut. That wasn't someone who hit the bottle a little too much or got hooked on a drug that controlled their lives. That shit wasn't just a lifetime of bad decisions; it was inherently who he was.

And now she knew that, and she was still right here.

"She comes home tomorrow," I said.

"That's good."

Minutes passed. I watched Arlo have the time of his life, playing some make-believe shit with that unicorn float.

"Are you going to get in any more trouble over it?" she asked.

"No."

Her fingers played over my arm before she let out a heavy breath. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

The memory of that night snuck in, uninvited. My blood pressure immediately spiked.

Did I want to talk? Not really, but I had no idea how much she knew, and I didn't want her to think I was the kind of guy who would just beat up my old man—even if I were the kind of guy who would break into her house and destroy shit with a baseball bat.

"He deserved it, Drew. He really fucking deserved it."

She sat up and swung her legs over my thigh, then brushed her fingers over my cheek. "I don't think you'd hurt someone unless they deserved it."

I couldn't help but laugh at that shit. "I broke into your house with a baseball bat and destroyed it."

"Well, I did get you arrested. Which, by the way, I'm sorry about."

"And I'm sorry I got you fired." I swept her hair from her face. "God, that word is like thorns in my throat."

"My point is, you didn't hurt me."

"You're a girl."

"In a place like Dayton, does it matter?"

"Shit like that should always matter."

A small smile touched her lips. "See, you're like a knight in thrift-shop armor."

"Nah, baby girl. I'm a villain who just wants the princess."

"Me? Oh, no, I'm the evil queen."

I pulled her into my lap, kissing her. "Even better."

"Ewww! Why would you do that?" Arlo whined from the side of the pool. "That's the part in movies you're supposed to cover your eyes for."

"Close your eyes if you don't wanna see it." I kissed her harder. When she went to pull away, I squeezed her hips.

"We're going to scar the kid."

"He's looked at my dad's Playboys . He's fine."