Page 12 of Until You Found Me

His brows furrow in confusion. “Now you’re telling me tostop seeing her?”

She makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “Dammit, just think about it? Or don’t. Or, I don’t know, forget this entire conversation. She’s fragile, she needs a consistent routine in order to get through this and I’m only saying that if you plan to be a part of that, then you better be consistent. Tessa isn’t ready for anyone’s learning curve, and after what happened with Lydia…I saw her crying in town the day she left.”

“That wasn’t what it looked like.” he sighs. “None of your fucking business, either.”

The mention of the one woman he tried to let in during his whole adult life makes his hackles rise and skin prickle. A mistake is what that was, but Audrey doesn’t know shit about what happened there and she won’t learn it now. None of it means that he’ll abandon Tessa. Learning curve or not, he isn’t in the business of being an asshole for the hell of it.

He offers up a glare without further comment and stalks out of the room, wondering how he must look to her if she’s already trying to warn him away. Audrey should know better after all these years that getting in Tessa’s pants only to split the next day isn’t the reason he keeps coming back.

‘She’s attached to you.’Whispers cruelly in his ear as he heads back down the hall. Part of him wants it to be true while fearing the possibility.

What if he does let her down? What if he runs out of insulin a few weeks from now and disappears forever because he dropped dead in his own home? He’d leave her then like Audrey is claiming he might. Willing or not the outcome is still the same. She’s right about him having a learning curve the size of Texas when it comes to any sort of relationship,platonic or otherwise. Fuck, she’s got a point. He has no business inserting himself into Tessa’s life when his own is so uncertain. He can’t be any sort of stable presence for anyone.

He enters her room, and she greets him with a sweet smile, glad to see him after only a few short minutes apart. All he wants is to lean into that. To be important to someone in a way he’s never been before and assumed he could never be.

* * *

The shelter is exactly how he remembers it from decades ago when he followed his momma inside. Falling apart on the outside and with a stench that flows through the closed windows of his truck and right up his nostrils. Sewer water and some kinda lemon scented cleaner. It takes him back to that little room they shared for a whole three days before she left the property and his father dragged them back home again. How she cried twenty-four-seven, and it only blended into the sound of other people crying through paper-thin walls.

“It’s not so bad.” Tessa clutches the only belongings she has in this world, a grocery bag full of spare scrubs from Audrey.

“It’s only temporary,” he tells her quickly. “That other place will come through soon and for all we know you could wake up tomorrow and remember—”

She hisses through her teeth. “I dunno if that would be better or worse, Logan. To remember. Do you think it’s safe here? From him, I mean. Whoever he is. Could he get in if he found me? Audrey said it’s fine, but it’s hard to believe anything is fine.”

“They don’t let men in at all. He won’t get past the door. They got measures in place even if it looks like it’s about to collapse.”

“Does that mean you can’t visit?”

“Can’t go in, but you could come out. If you want to.”

She nods. “I do. Whenever you have time. I’m not going anywhere, so don’t rush.”

He’ll make time no matter what else is happening, but he doesn’t say that because it sounds odd. Sounds like something a significant other might say and they aren’t that to each other. Not even close. “I’ll be back tomorrow, first thing. We’ll get breakfast at the food truck down the road.”

“You don’t have to work?”

“Not tomorrow.”

Despite everything, he takes it as a win that her face brightens even a little. Then she bravely gets out of the truck and stands on the curb in the shadow of this place that used to haunt his own nightmares. “It’s still better than where I woke up. Can I ask today’s question now?”

“Mhmm.”

“How old were you when you came here with your mother? You don’t have to tell me anything else, or even that if you don’t want to.”

He stands beside her, knowing he can go no further, already being glared at by one of the workers through the window. “Seven or eight.”

A baby screams in the upstairs portion of the massive house, wailing so loud it may as well be right next to them, competing with the argument from the backyard between two women over a hair dryer. It’s chaotic and loud and she isn’t even inside yet.

“Seven or eight,” she whispers sadly.

“But I made it, and so will you. I’ll see you soon.” He pauses, looking her in the eye while fighting ingrained habits that tell him to look away. “I promise I’m coming back.”

“For breakfast.” She smiles.

And then she disappears into the building and he’s told to get off the sidewalk or risk being forced to leave.

He gets back in the truck and blasts the heat to chase off the cold, trying not to imagine her alone in there inhaling mold spores and smelling other people’s vomit. Hopes that the inside is better than he remembers it and tells himself that there’s nothing else he can do, nothing reasonable anyway. She still isn’t his responsibility.

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