Casey nodded. “I’m dying to know who told him where to find you.” Perhaps he could make that information a condition of a face-to-face meeting. Casey still needed to have a little chat with John Dancer, and maybe a second, depending on whether the person who’d spilled about Abilene’s location had done it for a payoff, or simply to keep all their bones unbroken.
“Miah’s gonna have words for your ex,” he said, thinking aloud. “Fuck with his property and his business, and that charming cowboy shtick falls away real fast. Maybe I’ll leave that to him, and you and I can just focus on establishing some kind of civil discourse, or whatever, with Ware.”
“I told him I’d see him. That I’d call him tomorrow to arrange a time, after I checked with the Churches.”
His heart kicked back into third gear. “You sure you’re ready?”
“I’m sick of hiding—I know that much. I’m sick of being afraid of him, and the unknown. And I want to be able to go back to work soon, get back to normal.”
He nodded. “Course you do. Tomorrow, huh?”
“For the call, maybe the meeting, too. It’s up to Miah and his folks, ultimately, if James is going to meet me here.”
“And you’re going to let him see the baby?”
“If it goes well, I said. If he keeps his cool.”
“And you’re sure you’re ready?”
“Yeah.” She curled up on her side, hair falling over the edge of the bed. “I’m ready.”
“I’ll stay close, and we’ll make sure either Vince or Miah can be here, too.”
“You going to eavesdrop?” she asked, something cagey in her expression.
Casey shook his head. “I’ll stay close enough to hear if you call for us. We’ll probably need to pat him down and hold his car keys, too. Hope he can handle the prisoner treatment.”
“He’s had enough practice,” she muttered.
Casey sighed, sensing her weariness and registering it in his own bones. He lay down, too, body curled the opposite way as hers, so they were face-to-face, upside down. A small silent laugh hitched her shoulders, a gesture of exhaustion, not amusement.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“I hope so.”
He reached up to take her hand, their fingers twining. “It’s a shame he couldn’t have explained himself to Vince, saved us all the trouble of putting you in lockdown.”
“We were . . . We’ve got an intense history. He’s mad about more than he must be comfortable sharing with anyone but me.”
Casey nodded, ignoring the way his stomach soured.
In nearly no time, he’d grown possessive of this girl, and hearing her say those words—history, intense—made his insides squirm in a way he wasn’t used to. His relationships had all been so frivolous, he’d rarely gotten close enough to a girlfriend to feel jealous this way. He’d been in love, or thought he had been. He’d said those words to a couple women over the years, and meant them. But could it really have been that deep, when he’d barely registered a fraction of this sting before, and when it had always been so easy to move on, once the fun faded and the expectations began to weigh him down?
By all accounts, Abilene should have him running for the hills. She was dependent, to say nothing of her child. She was a train wreck in ways he couldn’t entirely pinpoint, and her baggage was big enough to cram an ex-con into. Whatever else was in there, he was afraid to know. And he didn’t need to know. They weren’t a couple, wouldn’t ever be; plus nobody was a completely open book. There were always a couple pages glued to the cover. Always a few unknowns.
He chanced one last squeeze of her fingers before letting them go. “I’m real proud of you for talking to him.”
She shrugged. “I’m real ashamed of how scared I was. How much worry I put everybody through, avoiding it for so long.”
“You did your best in a fucked-up situation.”
“Doesn’t feel like I did.”
“Honey, if you could see all the shitty decisions I’ve made in my life, or Vince, or Raina . . . Anybody except Miah, basically. You’d think we were all the biggest dumb-asses you ever met. Fucking things up is just part of life. The best you can hope for is that you get most of it done before you hit thirty.”
“I have a child, though.”