Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  I still wasn’t used to anyone referring to Alex and Jason by their surnames, even if I knew exactly who Detective Andrews meant. It took me a moment to shake my brain into action so I could catch up. “Okay,” I murmured.

  But Ethan wouldn’t be so easily satisfied. “How the hell is letting those scumbags off easy good news?” he demanded.

  “They won’t be getting off easy,” the detective insisted. “Just a lighter sentence in exchange for helping us nail Lennon for his part in all of this. They’ll still serve time, but we’ll be able to charge him finally—and we can make sure we get him on the more serious charges this way.”

  “But how…?” My question trailed off, because I couldn’t even put all my warring thoughts into words.

  Mainly because Ethan looked livid.

  “Barnes and Lipscomb have agreed to tell a grand jury that they were acting on Lennon’s orders. They’ll get a lighter sentence, but they’ll still do time. We’ll get Lennon to show up in court under some pretense or another—we can tell him that they’re going to testify to their guilt, and he’ll want to be there to make certain they don’t rat him out for his part in things—and when he walks in, they can arrest him under a sealed indictment warrant.”

  “A sealed warrant?” I repeated.

  “They do this all the time when it’s someone well known. Actors, musicians, athletes, politicians… It’s a way to be sure he shows up and doesn’t skip out of town.”

  “Does Natalie have to be there?” Ethan asked. “I don’t want her anywhere near that—”

  “She doesn’t have to be present,” he cut in before Ethan could really begin to rant about Hayes. “And at that time, we can get the judge to issue a criminal court protective order against all three of them, too. It’ll give Natalie a higher degree of protection than what she’s already got. Police officers are more likely to treat it seriously.”

  “So she doesn’t have to testify,” Ethan said.

  “Not yet. Whenever the case gets to trial, that’ll be a different matter.”

  “But I have time to get ready for that,” I put in.

  “And the prosecution will have some people who’ll help you prepare, too. You won’t go into the situation blindly.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready, no matter how well they tried to prepare me for it. How could I walk into a court, with Hayes sitting across from me, leering at me, trying to stare me down, and tell the world all the things he’d done to me? Just the thought of it made my skin crawl.

  “You’ve got time to prepare for that,” the detective agreed.

  He went over a few more details with us. The plan was for this to take place on Tuesday—just after Carter’s next weekend visit with Ethan.

  That little boy would be a welcome distraction. And a good reason for the two of us to put the brakes on how fast things had been moving between us. Time for me to move back down to my room and stop sleeping in Ethan’s bed for a while.

  Kicking Snoopy out of the bedroom and closing the door was one thing; having Carter attempting to sleep in the next room would be something else entirely. I didn’t know how Ethan felt about introducing the idea of our relationship to his son, but I knew I wasn’t ready for him to find me naked in his father’s bed or anything of that sort. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for that.

  “Thanks again for keeping us updated,” Ethan said after the detective answered about a dozen more of his questions while my mind drifted, and then we hung up.

  “See? It’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to work out,” I said, admittedly trying to convince myself as much as I wanted to convince him. Snoopy shoved his head onto my lap, so I scratched his ears distractedly.

  Ethan’s look said he didn’t want to concede the point, but he was choosing not to argue with me. “Let’s not get too excited until the guy’s behind bars with his buddies, all right? Because I don’t know how well I can breathe until then.”

  “You’d better figure out how to breathe before Carter’s flight lands. He’ll run you ragged.”

  Snoopy’s ears perked up at the mention of Carter’s name, but he didn’t lift his head off my lap, even though his eyes were moving back and forth between me and Ethan.

  “Yes, your boy’s coming home soon,” Ethan said, scratching the dog’s back.

  Snoopy barked and wagged his tail.

  “It’s amazing how much he understands,” I said.

  “Carter’s a smart kid.”

  I laughed. “I meant Snoopy. But yeah, Carter, too.” Which was exactly the lead-in I needed to guide our conversation.

  “You have no idea. I swear, this dog always knows everything that’s going on, sometimes before I do. I’m surprised he didn’t manage to stop you from leaving…”

  “He’s not as attached to me as he is to you and Carter.”

  “That’s changing,” Ethan said. “He’s getting to be as attached to you as I am. Look whose lap he’s got his head on.”

  “That’s just because I’m rubbing his ears.”

  “Yeah, if he could talk, he’d tell you to stop doing that in about a decade, but no sooner.”

  “I don’t know. Once Carter gets here, Snoopy’ll probably want to go chase him around for a while.”

  “And when they’re both exhausted, they’ll come back to your lap for ear rubs and story time or something.”

  This wasn’t the smoothest segue ever, but I knew I had to get there eventually. “Speaking of Carter,” I said a lot more hesitantly than I’d intended.

  Ethan met my eyes. “I’ve already told him.”

  “You’ve already…?”

  “Told him that we’re together. And that I love you.”

  “You’ve already told your son that you love me?” I hadn’t been expecting to cry. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. But there were hot tears trying to spring free, and I had to blink them back.

  “I did. And I talked to Kinsey about it, too.”

  “You talked to your ex about me?”

  “She’s Carter’s mother. She needs to know who’s in my life, because it means you’re in Carter’s life, too. We may not be married anymore, but we’re still a team when it comes to our son. So she needs to know when I want someone else to be part of the team.” He stopped scratching Snoopy and reached for my hand, threading our fingers together right around the same time as my heart stopped beating and lodged itself somewhere in the vicinity of my throat, preventing my stomach from emptying its contents. “She wants to come down at Thanksgiving to meet you,” Ethan continued. “The team’s at home then, so this year I’m supposed to have Carter for Thanksgiving anyway, and she’ll get him at Christmas. But she thought that would be a good time for her make a trip down. We can all have Thanksgiving together as a family. Is that okay? Kinsey coming to meet you?”

  “She wants to meet me?” I spluttered, because I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in—”

  “It’s not that,” I cut in. “I just— I don’t—” I took a breath, trying to slow my thoughts so I could get a grasp on them before I said something stupid. “It’s just—do you think we’re jumping in too fast?”

  “You were the one who said you needed to really be with me or you couldn’t stay.”

  “I know. And I meant it. I’m just…”

  Scared.

  That was the word that refused to come out. It was right on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t set it free.

  Ethan stroked the back of my hand, the same way he’d been stroking Snoopy’s back. Soothing. Calming. “Am I moving things too fast for you? I shouldn’t have told you I loved you so soon. I should’ve—”

  “No,” I cut in.

  “No?” His hand stopped moving, the pad of his thumb just tickling the side of my pinky finger.

  “I’m glad you told me,” I forced out, silently cursing myself over the way I was bungling this. “It’s too easy for me to think that no one lo
ves me, even when so many people do everything in their power to show me they do.”

  “So many people,” he murmured, sounding hurt.

  “I know you love me,” I said. “You’d have to, or you never would have done so much for me. You never would have—” But I was too choked up to continue.

  “But you don’t love me? Is that it?”

  He sounded so calm. How could he be calm when everything inside me was like a tornado? My thoughts were whirling out of control, and my emotions wouldn’t settle.

  “I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” I said, and I immediately wished I could take the words back, because they weren’t even remotely enough to convey everything I was feeling. But I couldn’t make any more words come out, or else I’d fall apart.

  “You’re not taking advantage of me,” Ethan said.

  “It’s not just you. It’s everyone! London and Dana and Tallie and Ravyn—”

  “They’ve all been helping you out because they care about you. You’re not taking advantage of anyone. You needed help, and they care, so they helped.”

  “But with you…”

  “I love you,” he repeated. “That’s all that matters to me. You don’t have to tell me you love me. You don’t have to love me. If I get hurt because you can’t love me in return, that’s all on me, but it’s not going to stop me from loving you. It’s too late for that. It’s been too late for that for a long time.”

  “But what if I—”

  Ethan reached up with his big hand and used the pad of his thumb to brush the tears from my cheeks. “What if you what?” he prompted.

  “What if I can’t love you back the way you love me? What if I’m too scared to give someone that kind of power over me?”

  For a long time, he stared down at Snoopy, scratching the dog’s belly and ears. But then he looked up again and met my eyes, and he said, “Then my heart will hurt for you, because no one stepped in and got you out in time. It would mean that no one helped before the scars were too deep. That I didn’t get there soon enough.”

  That only made me cry harder. “But what about you?”

  “What about me?” he asked softly.

  I shrugged because I couldn’t find the words.

  “You’ve already made a mark on me, Nat. You’re already part of me—as deep as anything. So if I have to let you go…yeah. It’ll gut me. But I can handle my pain a hell of a lot better than I can handle being responsible for causing you any more heartache than you’ve already lived through. I’m not strong enough for that.”

  If he wasn’t strong enough, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was.

  “MRS. K SAID we have to read a whole book every day this weekend. I have to give a book report on them when we go back on Tuesday.” Carter had his Tow Mater backpack perched high on his shoulders while I carried his Lightning McQueen suitcase and Natalie walked alongside us.

  “Three books, since Monday’s a holiday?” I asked.

  “What holiday?”

  “It’s not really a holiday, I don’t think. It’s just a teacher in-service day.”

  “Is that jail for teachers or something?”

  I laughed. “You’d have to ask Mrs. Kuchner.”

  “I think it’s jail.”

  “Whether it’s jail or not, you’ve got the day off.”

  “Right. She said we can take Monday off. Just two books.”

  “You sure about that?” I asked. Something told me he might be either remembering incorrectly or telling me a fib to get out of doing the work. But it wasn’t really in his nature to not be truthful, so I knew I should give him the benefit of the doubt. His days of making up lies were sure to come somewhere down the line, but I hoped I had almost another decade before I had to worry about that.

  Carter jumped over a painted line in the parking lot, picking up his usual game. “Positive. Just two books this weekend.”

  “Still, that’s a lot of reading,” I said, biting back a grin. “How are you going to have time for all that when we have hockey games to go to?”

  He turned around and grinned at me and Natalie. “Back-to-back, right? Two home games this weekend.” He turned around, skipped across another line, and stood on one foot for as long as he could maintain his balance, then made another big leap to get to a clearing.

  “That’s right. One tomorrow night and another on Sunday afternoon.”

  “I can bring my book to the games and read at inna-mission.”

  “You won’t be watching all the fun?” Natalie caught my eye, barely containing her laughter over the way he’d mispronounced the word.

  I winked at her.

  “Nah. That stuff’s boring. I’d rather watch the hockey.”

  I noticed that she didn’t try to correct him, though. One more way she was a perfect fit in our lives. I just hoped I could convince her to agree—and to accept and admit that she loved me.

  She did. I knew it. She was just scared, which was understandable, given her history. Eventually, she’d come to accept that opening herself up to love was the only way to get through life, even though she’d been through hell and back.

  I already knew how Carter and Snoopy felt about the matter without even asking them. They were both open books. If you showed them kindness, they loved you in return. Simple. Which meant they loved Natalie.

  And Kinsey approved, even though she hadn’t met Natalie yet. My ex didn’t need to meet her to approve of my choice. Carter’s mom had always wanted the best for me, and as long as I was happy, she was happy, too. She knew I wouldn’t invite a woman into my life—and Carter’s life, by extension—if it wasn’t someone who belonged with us.

  I trusted her in the same way. She hadn’t dated anyone in a while, but I hoped that would change soon. She deserved to have love in her life again, and it could only be a good thing for Carter to have more role models to look up to.

  Three or four parents had to be better than two, right? Something like that.

  He wobbled and almost fell over, but he reached up and grabbed hold of Natalie’s hand to steady himself. She was still wearing the boot these days, but she never even used the crutches for balance anymore. It wouldn’t be much longer before she was back to whatever her new normal would be.

  And I intended for me, Carter, and Snoopy to be a big part of that new normal.

  “And we can read together before bed, too,” I added.

  “No! I have to read it myself.” He was offended almost to the point of being scandalized. I loved that he wouldn’t take the easy path and was determined to do things for himself. It would serve him well for years to come.

  “Well, you can read it to me. Bedtime reading doesn’t have to be me reading to you,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe Natalie can come read with me and Snoopy.”

  I chortled at his less-than-subtle hint. My kid knew what he wanted. “Maybe she can,” I said.

  “She can,” Natalie put in. “What books are you reading?”

  “I’ve got The Adventures of Taxi Dog and Dogku.”

  She glanced at me with a question in her eyes, and I shrugged. I hadn’t ever heard of them, but that didn’t mean much.

  “They sound fun,” she said.

  “I thought Snoopy would like them because they’re about dogs. I got ’em at the libary.”

  “It’s always important to think about what books your puppy will enjoy most,” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Don’t make fun, Dad. Snoopy likes to read with me.”

  “Snoopy likes to do anything with you. Because you’re you. He’s your dog, and you’re his kid, and that’s what dogs do. They like hanging out with their kids.”

  “I think Snoopy’s pretty smart that way,” Natalie said.

  “He knows he’s got a good deal with you, bud,” I added. “He lucked out, getting the best kid in the world to have as his boy.”

  “He’s a really smart dog,” Carter added matter-of-factly. “I’m gonna teach him how to rea
d.”

  Natalie chuckled. “Sounds like quite a task. I’ve never heard of a dog that can read.”

  “Snoopy will learn. He can already find which cup has a ball under it. He’s magic.”

  “He can?”

  “Yup!”

  Because he watches Carter hide the ball, I mouthed to Natalie over Carter’s head as I fished my keys out of my pocket and clicked the button to open my trunk.

  She had the good grace not to laugh out loud, but her amusement was fully evident in her eyes.

  “Everything in the back,” I said, loading Carter’s suitcase inside before reaching for his backpack.

  “Can I keep my iPad to play in the car?”

  I narrowed my eyes in mock scorn. “Depends. What are you playing?”

  “Angry Birds Blast! And I’m stuck on level seventy-nine.”

  “That’s a tough one,” I said, not that I had any idea what level seventy-nine was. I’d never played the game before. “Better work hard on it in the car.”

  He climbed into the back and buckled himself into his booster seat while Natalie and I both got in the front. “Are we getting Braum’s for dinner?” Carter asked.

  The last time I’d promised him Braum’s was the day I’d pulled Natalie out of that house. Our ice cream date hadn’t quite panned out, and there weren’t any Braum’s locations in Michigan. His only opportunity to pig out on their burgers, crinkle-cut fries, and ice cream was when he came to visit me.

  “You okay with burgers tonight?” I asked Natalie as I pulled out into traffic. “They’ve got some healthier things, too. Salads and chicken sandwiches and whatnot.”

  “And ice cream!” Carter said.

  “I’m always down for ice cream.”

  “Then it’s a date,” I said.

  She didn’t attempt to correct me or deflect the idea of us going on a date. And it didn’t matter to me that Carter would be with us—in my mind, it was a date. A family date.

  I could get used to this idea.

  No, that wasn’t exactly true. I was already used to it, and I wanted it to become our permanent reality.

  Carter, Snoopy, and I needed Natalie in our lives every bit as much as she needed us.