Page 35 of Guarding Over You
“Nah,” she said, waving her hand. “I don’t see that. My ex and me. It’s complicated. I tried to protect or help him for years. I think it’s just my nature and when I realized it was hurting not just me but Gracie in the end, I left him. We’ve got supervised visitations for custody right now.”
“He’s violent?”
“Not physically. He’d break stuff and throw things, but never hit me or Gracie.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “There are more forms of violence than physical.”
“If anyone is aware of that, it’s me, which is why we left. Today, he called when I left the ER. I answered, walked outside, which was a good thing, and let him get his frustration and anger off his chest over the custody situation. I thought it was over, but when I left work hours later, there was a note on my car.”
“A note?”
She let out a sigh, reached into the back pocket of her jean shorts and unfolded the paper and handed it over.
“It could mean a lot of things. Or it could just be a way to get a reaction out of me.”
Blaze read it and every part of his being that said not to overreact was shoved in the corner.
He turned his neck to the side, heard the pop, lifted his shoulders and dropped them while he tried to form his words and keep the anger from them. “Do you have a restraining order against him?”
“No. I haven’t needed one. He normally follows the rules.”
“But he didn’t last week,” he argued. “I heard that part.”
“Nope,” she said, all but spitting the word out. “It was the first time he’d done that. Guess he’s got a new girlfriend and shewants to meet Gracie. That’s not happening. He’s not allowed to be alone with her, and there is no way some woman I don’t know is coming into the picture.”
“And now this note? Maybe you need to go back to your lawyer? I know a good one if you need to change.”
She let out a sound somewhere between a snort, a cough, and a laugh. “I’ve got everything documented. I was going to give it a few days for things to settle down before I passed the information on, but now that I’ve got that letter, I’m not sure what to do. I don’t know for certain it’s him.”
He had Ford in his head to not jump the gun right there with Gale snapping the same thing. But the other part of his brain had Clay whispering,“Fuck that, do what you can to protect them.”
“Is this his handwriting?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “No one writes anything anymore. I can’t tell you the last time I even watched him sign anything let alone write. It could be, but this is all caps and that’s harder to tell.”
“Who else could it be? Sounds like him right after the phone call? Could he have driven there to do it? He knows your car and where you work, right?”
“Yes, he knows those things, and yes, he could have done it since he gets out of work at four and it was close to four-forty when I got to my car. I don’t know who else it could be. But I also know that confronting him with this will only make matters worse. At least right now.”
“Maybe you need to just worry about you and Gracie and not him.”
11
BLAME MYSELF
“Iknow. I should. I need to. I was sitting here thinking it through.”
She hadn’t expected Blaze to drive by, let alone come down to see if she was all right.
She’d waved at him with a smile, but guess he wasn’t buying what she was trying to sell.
“Can I ask more about your situation with him? Maybe be a third party to give my thoughts. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“You know,” she said, turning to look at him while he continued to eat. One meatball was gone, half the pasta and he was cutting into the next globe of beef. “I haven’t had anyone to really talk to in a long time. Not a man, that is for sure. And here you are, someone I’m flirting with. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve flirted withanyone? Let alone just admitted that, which is even stupider because you were probably just being nice and now I’m a headcase in your mind.”
“Whoa,” he said, putting his hand up. “Slow down. You’re not a headcase. You’re not wrong on the flirting because I’ve been doing it back and maybe it’s been a while for me also. So put thatall to the side for now. I just want to know about Billy and that situation. Don’t worry about the rest. We’ll get to that when we can.”
Not what she’d thought he’d say, but she appreciated it just the same.
