Chapter 11

ELEVEN

Ava

R: Hey, just checking in. You okay? Still need me to look at your car?

I read the text, but only in preview. I've read it countless times during the day, since it came in early in the morning. And somehow, I've resisted the temptation to read it fully. If there's more, I don't want to know what it says. For that matter, I don't want him to think I read it and chose not to reply. Let him think I'm busy, let him think that I'm so covered up with work that I just don't have time. The goal isn't to hurt him, to be a bitch to him. It's just to get a little breathing room, start easing out the door a bit so that when he's gone, it won't be a total shock to the system.

There's a knock on my office door and I look up to see Troy James standing there, leaning against the casing and looking as cool and composed as ever.

"You got a few minutes?"

I close the file I've been working on. It's the yearly chart review before we get our annual Medicaid audit. That shit will make you go blind if you look at it for too long. "I could use a break. You want some coffee?"

"Naw. This isn't really a social visit, Ava. I just wanted to give you a head's up. Wade Bartlett got a suspended sentence."

"What the actual fuck?"

Troy ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck with his hand, clearly as bewildered by it all as I am. "I got nothing, Ava. Apparently, he's the dog on a chain for some very important people … the kind who don't want their own hands getting dirty."

I lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling. "Sometimes I hate this state and all the ‘good old boy' bullshit that comes with it."

"So leave," he says. "Hop in that truck with Ranger and take off. See the world. Or at least the continental United States."

"And give up all this?" I gesture to my office which is nothing but plain white walls, a battered desk and a full‐length set of blinds designed to hide the fact that not even a toddler could crawl through my actual window. A window that offers a view of the brick wall of the building next door and nothing else. Well, not unless I want to look down into the dumpsters. Considering that we're located next to the only Chinese restaurant in town, and I love sweet and sour chicken, the last thing I want to do is look at their garbage. "Seriously though, what do I do now? Just wait for him to catch me out again somewhere and beat the shit out of me?"

"The no‐contact order remains in place," he says.

"And if I need to jot down a note that piece of paper will come in really handy. Seriously, Troy?"

"I know. Better than most. I wish I'd been allowed more input in this, but my professional opinion on his likelihood of following that order wasn't requested or welcomed … I'm serious about you getting out of town. I don't like that you're alone. That most people know you're alone—or think you are. Maybe if Brit gets back on her feet, Ranger can stay with you for a while."

Not going to happen. He would stay to protect me and the whole time he'd be wishing he was anywhere else. I don't ever want to be with someone when they're not one hundred percent on board. I watched my mom follow my daddy from town to town and state to state, begging for even a scrap of his affection. That will never be me.

"Don't tell him," I say. "He's talking about leaving and I don't want him to stay for this. And we both know he would."

"That's dumb."

"That's my choice," I reply.

He curses under his breath. Then looks at me, "Sorry."

"I've dropped that same word seventeen times in this conversation, Troy. Do not apologize for the f-bomb. I swear my delicate sensibilities can handle it."

That gets a grin out of him. "Oh, I know. I live with a woman who can dish it out. But old habits die hard." He puts his hat back on, a sign he's heading out. "You be careful."

"I'm always careful. But I'll be a little extra cautious."

Troy nods, then turns and takes off down the hallway, doing his duty to protect and serve the good people of Bellhaven.

My phone dings. It's another text from Ranger.

R: Had an interesting conversation with Billy McGill. Is there an asskicking ? —

And that's where it cuts off. And because I'm still playing teenage games with a man who was a fucking teenager when I was born, I just let it sit there unread.

By the time I get home that evening, I'm completely exhausted. I swore off drama. I swore off complications and men. This was supposed to be the year where I improve myself, where I change my life and let go of all my baggage, literally and figuratively. And now I'm in a situationship with a man who is leaving as soon as the ink is dry on his daughter's medical release. I'm fending off ham‐handed advances from someone who has more money right at this moment than I'll ever have cumulatively in my life. And a man who wants me dead because I had the damned audacity to tell the truth about how evil he was to his own child has been turned loose by our penal system.

I kick off my shoes inside the door. Lock it tightly behind me. Deadbolt and bar latch are both engaged. And I'm slipping my bra off under my shirt as I make my way to the kitchen. It's a terrible decision, but I deserve a bad decision or two right now. So I grab a bottle of cheap‐ass wine from the fridge and then go straight to the couch. I keep flipping through the channels on the TV. I swear there are four hundred of them and not a single thing I have any interest in watching.

Maybe it's the boredom that makes me pick up my phone. But those texts from Ranger are still there. Still taunting me. I open the app and read them. They're as straightforward as they'd seemed from the previews. The thing about dating—if that's what the hell we are even doing—a man who is honest, is that the conversations tend to be pretty straightforward.

Before I even realize I'm doing it, I'm texting him back.

A: Sorry. It ' s been a long day. A rough day.

It's only a few seconds when I see those little dots. Then his text comes through.

R: Want some company?

A: Yeah. Yeah, I do.

R: Be there in fifteen.

I put the phone down and wait. "One more bad decision in a day of them." But at least this one will be more fun.