Page 78 of Guarding Over You
“It’s never that simple. You know that as well as I do.”
“I’ll dig deeper,” Clay said.
“We are missing something,” he said. “Because if it’s not Billy or Tina, then who could it be?”
“What else do you know about Arden?” Clay asked. “You said her last job was at social services. Did she piss anyone off there? Or at the hospital? I’m guessing she’s crossed paths and pissed a lot of people off.”
Blaze put his head back. “Not sure why I didn’t think of that. Or she didn’t either. I’ll find out. I’m working the next four days.” He looked at his watch. “I’m sure she’s sleeping now. No way I want to bother her with this.”
She’d looked as exhausted as she’d said she was feeling.
It killed him he couldn’t fix it when it was his job to heal people.
But her wounds... they were just too deep for him to reach. For now.
25
WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
Her first night alone in her new place.
It was cold. Eerie. Not the calm environment she was coming to love and appreciate.
Maybe she should have told Gracie she couldn’t stay at her grandparents’ tonight, but they’d wanted some time with their grandchild now that Arden had moved further away. To give her a break that she often needed but rarely took.
She was in town for the visitation anyway. Her parents would return her daughter to her tomorrow morning.
Canceling on them would draw questions.
Answers she didn’t want to give. No one else needed to know what was going on in her life.
Hell, she didn’t even want to know what was going on, but she couldn’t avoid it.
The sudden loud bang had her jerking upright and felt as if it was rattling her windows, making her look around the living room, the blanket she had wrapped around her no longer soothing as she gripped it tighter almost choking her.
There was nothing and no one but herself that she could see. Just her deep rapid breaths and her heart pounding in her ears as if it was a drum set going off for a long solo.
She looked out the blinds that were now constantly closed, but saw nothing more than a gray car driving down the road at a normal speed.
Settling back onto the couch, she picked the remote up and flipped through channels. The house creaked. The fridge hummed. Every small sound clawed at her nerves.
Gracie would be sleeping by now, she was sure, while she’d be wishing the night away faster to be with her daughter again.
The tapping in the kitchen had her jolting again, standing, and creeping closer to look around the corner, her blanket still gripped around her like a cape she hoped to hide under. As if throwing it over her head would cause the world to fade away.
Against the glass door was a bird flying around, its wings almost flapping into the glass, then moving off.
What. The. Hell. Why tonight of all nights was she hearing everything like this? Every noise magnified as if a whisper in her ear telling her that nothing would ever be the same again.
Not what she needed when her nerves were stretched thin with unanswered questions as to who or why this was happening to her.
Billy’s voice from earlier still replayed in her mind, his anger, his denials.It’s not me. Give me a break.
But she’d seen his eyes when he came for Gracie. The control behind the calm. The heat simmering underneath. He’d put on a good face for their daughter, but the seething under the surface, it was still there, never completely gone as much as he’d said he’d changed.
Enough that her skin itched and crawled like it did when he was in a drunken rage.
Julie hadn’t been thrilled with the turn of events, but with no proof of who was doing it, Arden couldn’t cancel the visitations and left to kill time on her own, trying not to remember two weeks prior when she got her first kiss from Blaze.
