The deep breath Ty took filled up his whole body, blew out his chest, cleared out his brain, and he decided he just had to be honest. There was no point in trying to protect Casey—he’d failed at every turn. This kid was doing it all himself. He’d been fighting his own battles … God, he couldn’t imagine how long. How bad things must have been with Vanessa. And in those foster homes. That walk across the river. He handled all that shit himself.
There was no protecting this kid.
He had to just get into the trenches with him.
“I’m so scared, Casey,” he breathed. “I’m so scared I’m screwing things up for you. You walked across that bridge.” His words squeezed past the heavy rock of emotion in his throat. “You walked into that garage, and that was the fucking bravest thing I’d ever seen.”
The American flag on the pole at the entrance to the clinic snapped and twisted in the wind against a stone-gray sky. It was ragged, that flag; the seams between the red and white stripes were splitting. Frayed.
“I’ve never done anything half that brave in my life and I just want to deserve that. Give you something that’s worth the risk you took. I don’t know if I’m ever going to figure out how to be your dad. Or if we’re going to figure out how to be a family. But God … I just want to help.”
He blinked back the hot tears behind his eyes and turned to face Casey, who was staring back at him. His blue eyes wide and bright and awful in that red, swollen face.
“I … I ah, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I moved in with my grandparents when I was thirteen.” Of course he’d never told Casey this. He’d never told Casey anything about his life, scared that it would make him seem weak or that Casey would take one look at all the mistakes he’d made and follow in his footprints. He’d thought his parenting style would be to pretend he’d been a different person. But Casey had found his old footprints anyway and seemed pretty damned determined to follow him.
“My folks had been killed in a car accident,” he continued. “And I know that sounds sad and it was, but it was kind of the best thing that ever happened to me. They weren’t nice people. They weren’t nice to each other or to me; we moved all the time because they couldn’t keep it together to hold down jobs or pay rent. I don’t know what would have happened to me if they hadn’t died. Pop was the one who got me started with bikes, riding them, fixing them, refurbishing the old ones. About two weeks after I moved in with them, I’d gotten into all this trouble at school. A lot like the trouble you got into today. Some kids were mouthing off about my hand-me-down shoes and high-water pants and my secondhand backpack, and I just took a big swing at one of them. They ganged up on me and I got the crap kicked out of me.”
He shot his son a wry look, but Casey remained silent. So much like Pop, Ty thought with no small amount of affection.
“Well, your mom was right about me: I was a troublemaker. And so the weekend after I got in all this trouble, Pop took me out to the garage and I thought he was going to beat the living tar out of me. Pop was huge and he had monster hands.” He held up his own hands, remembering suddenly what it felt like when Pop’s big hand landed on his shoulder. How comforting, how he’d thought Pop and those big, strong hands could fight back anything that would try to hurt him. Those hands made Ty feel safe—for the first time in his life.
Had Ty ever done that for Casey? Ever made him feel safe?
“It’s what my dad would have done,” Ty said. “But instead Pop had this old Royal Enfield and he said we were going to fix it. And I couldn’t figure out how we could fix this thing. I mean you should have seen it.” He nearly laughed at the memory. “It was rusted and old and dented and just looked like scrap to me. But Pop said, we fix it one piece at a time.”
One piece at a time. He’d forgotten those words when it came to Casey. He’d tried so hard to wipe his past clear, wipe out all the trouble and all the problems that had driven Casey across the bridge with that address in his pocket. That had been his first mistake—Casey was never going to forget where he’d come from, just like Ty had never forgotten. He remembered it all, the very, very bad and the very, very good.
“Did you fix it?”
“No, actually. The motor was shot and we couldn’t find the right parts, and eventually we just used the thing for scrap.”
Casey burst out laughing and then groaned, holding his nose. “That was a terrible story.”
“I guess it was.” Ty couldn’t help laughing either. He popped open his door. “Let’s get your nose looked at.”
Chapter 12
The end of the day was a relief. Shelby just wanted to go home, take a hot bath, and try to get hold of Ty to see how Casey was. It would be a very long time before she would forget the look on his face when he’d turned to face her in the school yard. Bloody and beaten, but wild and terrified.
And so sad.
And then in the teachers’ lounge when he wouldn’t look at her.
She couldn’t stand the idea of him beating himself up that he’d hurt her.
The beautiful weather from the weekend had taken a turn, and while the sun was still clear and bright, the January chill was back in the air, so she zipped up her coat against the wind as she crossed the parking lot to her car.
“Shelby!”
She turned to find Joe Phillips running across the lot to meet her.
“Hey,” he said, coming to a stop. His panting breaths fogged in the air. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Thanks again, Joe, for all your help today with the kids.”
He waved it away, like he’d been doing all afternoon. “I’m glad I was the teacher closest to you when you yelled for help.”
She smiled at him but the silence went on for too long, and she couldn’t hold onto that smile forever.
“Well,” she finally said. “I need to get—”
“This Friday some teachers are getting together down at The Pour House and I thought I’d see if you wanted to come?” His glance darted to her face and away, only to come creeping back.
She blinked, rocked back onto her heels. “The Pour House?”
“Yeah. Sean’s got great barbecue now and there will be a bunch of us there, so you know …”
Not a date. Whether he was trying to make that clear for her sake or his, she wasn’t sure, but she chafed at the reminder.
Calm down, Shelby, she told herself. Not a date, but fun. And if there’s anything you need in your life right now, it’s fun. The pressure had to be regulated before she went nuts the way she had with Ty.
Accusing him of following her to church?
Her crazy had been showing.
“Shelby?”
God, she was standing here thinking about Ty while talking to Joe.
“Maybe,” she said. She needed to check with Deena, make sure she could come over to hang out with Mom.
“Friday, around seven?”
“Sounds great.”
“Great!” he said with a big smile. “I’ll email you with details.”
She nodded, trying not to say “great” again. We sound like idiots. “Good night, Joe.”
He jogged back toward the school and she got into her car. She started the ignition, but couldn’t quite put the car into drive.
What a weird day, she thought. A really weird day.
* * *
Ty cleaned up the paper plates from the barbecue they’d picked up at The Pour House and brought home after the clinic. Casey hadn’t eaten half of what he usually ate, so Ty wrapped up the half rack of ribs and put it in the fridge for later. Maybe after the Tylenol he’d taken kicked in, he’d get his appetite back. But for now, Casey had gone to his room with an ice pack and instructions to rest, like the doctor told him.
The doctor also said nothing had been broken and there wasn’t a concussion, which had caused Ty to sag in his chair with relief.
But the relief had been momentary.
Casey still hadn’t told him why he’d thrown the first punch.<
br />
“Why are you protecting them?” he’d asked.
“I’m not protecting them,” he’d said, staring at the yellow barren fields as they drove back home.
Ty threw away the paper plates and headed out to the garage.
But the Velocette carburetor didn’t hold his attention. The pieces spread out on his workbench were a puzzle he didn’t care about at the moment. The puzzle of his son had apparently turned him off mysteries.
The Indian Chief, gleaming under the garage lights, was a problem solved. It had seen the best of Ty’s attention, and it was obvious for some reason at this moment that it was time to let it go. He’d held onto the bike for long enough.
When he finished with a bike, he had a small group of collectors he emailed to gauge interest. Sometimes, no one was interested and he went to an online auction site, but if there was a lot of interest, he just set a time and a date for the sale himself. The bike went home with the highest offer. He had enough of a reputation that his group of buyers grew bigger after every auction, and at this point he had about seven men and three women he could email.
Ty went back into the house to find his laptop. It wasn’t where he’d left it on the couch last night, or in the “office” where, quite frankly, it almost never was. It wasn’t in his bedroom or the back porch, where Casey sometimes used it for homework.
He knocked on Casey’s closed bedroom door.
“Come in,” came his son’s muffled voice.
Ty pushed open the door to see his son sitting cross-legged on his bed.
He should have a dog, he thought, for no other reason than that his double bed looked empty. As though a dog would fill up some of that space around the boy. Make him seem so much less alone.
I am barely managing what I have, he thought, immediately cooling on the idea.
The dark circles under his son’s eyes looked worse in the weird green light from the computer screen in front of him.
“You’re supposed to be icing your face,” he said.
“I did; it was too cold.”
“That’s kind of the idea.”
Casey didn’t say anything. He sat hunched over the screen, his arms wrapped around his stomach.
“What are you watching?” he asked, stepping into the room, trying to be cool, because being overtly demanding and overtly concerned hadn’t gotten him very far today.
Casey was, oddly enough, a neat freak, and there were no toys or books to kick out of the way as Ty made his way over to the bed. He wondered suddenly if that was a product of the foster system or if that was his nature.
“Nothing.”
Ty looked down at the YouTube home page. “What’s up, buddy?”
Casey flinched and Ty held himself still, unsure of what he’d said or done to cause the reaction. But Casey didn’t explain. “Look, you can choose not to tell me, it’s okay. I get that you want your privacy, but I think you’ll feel better if you just get some of this stuff off your chest.”
Casey turned miserable eyes toward him, swimming with worry and grief.
It was without a doubt the most emotion the boy had ever shown him, a true glimpse behind the I-don’t-give-a-shit mask of the last few months.
Ty ran a hand over the footboard of the bed, his thumb stroking the cheap wood because his son wouldn’t let Ty touch him and he wanted to—so badly, just give the kid a hug. He’d tried that once before a few weeks after they’d started counseling, when the overworked woman at DCFS had told him that Casey had missed out on all the normal affection that kids his age grew up with.
That hug had not gone well. Stiff and awkward. Fast. Not to be repeated.
“How about if I promise you won’t be in trouble, whatever it is.”
“I’m not scared of being in trouble.”
“Then what are you scared of?”
Casey took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and the words just poured out.
“I punched John because he was saying awful stuff about Ms. Monroe. How last summer there was this TV show that came to Bishop and this guy … this like cookie guy, I don’t know. He said some stuff about Ms. Monroe on the show.”
“What kind of stuff?” Ty asked carefully, feeling like the ice he thought was solid beneath his feet was actually razor thin.
Casey shook his head, the tips of his ears glowing red hot.
“Case—”
“That she was a slut. That she … she sucked his dick.”
Ty sat down hard on the edge of the bed. His muscles turned to water, his bones pudding. “That’s why you punched him?”
“Yeah.”
“Good for you, son.”
Casey shot him a wan smile over his shoulder. “That’s why I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened.”
“I totally understand.” Ty put his hand around the back of Casey’s neck and gave it a little squeeze. What he wanted to do was haul the kid into his arms, hide him from a world that was too damn much for both of them at the moment. “I’m proud of you.”
“Well, that’s why I hit him the first time. I don’t know why I kept hitting him. Or why I kicked him. Sometimes … sometimes I just get so mad.”
Pop used to have a dog, a mutt with some kind of crazy hunting instinct, and it would see a squirrel and just go so still. He’d turn himself into a dog statue.
That was Casey. A kid statue.
Ty tried to blow out a long breath as quietly as he could, so it didn’t sound like a heavy sigh. “I understand that, too. You’ve had a few shitty breaks, kid; being mad makes sense. We just … maybe we just need to find you a way to deal with it instead of beating up kids in your class.”
“I’m the one that got beat up.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ty said. “I saw that John kid—you got in a few good punches.” Casey smiled at that. “And two against one, that’s not fair.”
Casey stopped smiling and looked back at the screen. “I don’t know why Scott would let John say that stuff about Ms. Monroe. She’s so cool to him at the Art Barn, she like … she’s just cool.”
Ty winced and swore silently, unable to believe what he was about to say. “Apparently Scott and John have been friends for a long time. And Mr. Root said things aren’t great in John’s house.”
“That makes it okay?”
“Absolutely not. It doesn’t make it okay at all. But things don’t happen without a reason, you know? Sometimes it helps to know the reason.”
“John said it was all on YouTube. The whole thing with Ms. Monroe and that guy on the TV show.”
Ty glanced at the YouTube home page on the computer. “Have you looked?”
Casey shook his head.
“Maybe it’s best not to know,” Ty said.
“Do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t think it’s any of my business,” he said. “And no matter what happened between her and this guy, no one ever says that kind of stuff about a person to other people. It’s mean. It’s rude. It’s not …” Oh Christ, is this really happening? Hasn’t enough happened today? “Look, when you get older and things start happening between you and girls—you don’t brag to your friends about it. You don’t make up shit about girls just to seem cool. A girl decides she likes you enough to do anything with you it’s kind of a gift. And you treat it like that.”
“I just can’t believe anyone would say anything like that about her on TV.”
“Me neither,” he said. And if it was true? God, he just couldn’t imagine. A woman like Shelby, who wore her privacy, her reputation like a suit of armor, what would the world thinking that about her do to her? Frankly it explained a lot of the hot/cold treatment she dished out.
Sometimes knowing the reason did help.
“I was going to send out some emails. Can I use the computer?”
“Yeah.” Casey shoved it over with his toe. “I’m done.”
“You know,” Ty said, grabbing the laptop. “We’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”
“But
I’m suspended. I don’t have school.”
“Right. Which means you’re going to work with me.”
“What?”
His face would have been funny without all that bruising.
“Them’s the breaks, kid. You’re on my chain gang until you’re back in school.”
“You’re working at Cora’s, right? The deck? That won’t be so bad.”
“Fritters aren’t part of the deal,” he said, crossing the room with the laptop under his arm. “Ice your face and get some sleep.”
Ty took the laptop into the living room and stretched out on the leather sectional with the computer in his lap. He emailed his potential buyers, then contacted his buddy the auctioneer who was licensed and worked for a case of beer and a tune-up on his Harley.
And then, his breath held, he went over to YouTube.
It wasn’t his business. It wasn’t. And a better man maybe would honor what he’d told his son and not look it up.
But he was Wyatt Svenson, and Shelby Monroe let him in just enough that he felt like it was his business.
So, with a mostly clear conscience, he typed Shelby Monroe + TV show into the search engine.
No results.
See, Ty thought, there’s your sign. Stop now.
Instead he typed in Bishop, Arkansas + TV Show. The menu showed up with a list of segments for the morning show America Today. The first one said “Hilarious finale. Slut-shaming and small-town mayor implodes.”
At first it was a slick piece about the Maybream Cookie Company moving its factory back to a small town in the States. Apparently, this was the finale and America had given the highest number of votes to three towns: Bishop, a town in Michigan, and one in Alaska. After the slick promo, two anchors talked about the three towns and then introduced the live shot of Bishop.
Immediately, he noticed Shelby looking utterly terrorized. He recognized Cora, holding onto her and Monica. A dark-haired man and a blond guy were squared off in the center of the shot. The dark-haired guy was trying to get to Shelby, but the big blond wasn’t letting him past.
Between the Sheets Page 14
