Page 35 of Almost Had You

Daddy shakes his head just once. “A promise, Earl. A promise. Good evening, Mrs. Ballentine. My apologies for bringing work into the home. Forgive me.”

Mrs. Ballentine is taken aback by his show of kindness. She clears her throat and shows Daddy to the door. I bound down the stairs and follow my maker into the night. His SUV is idling in front of the house, driver’s side door still open. Kip isn’t here to follow him around and clean up after him.

“Daddy, please.”

He holds out a hand to stop me. A gesture he’s done thousands of times before. When I was a little girl, rushing his home office to show him the newest fashion on my Barbie doll, and when I wanted to ask permission to go on the mission to Africa to help with the hunger crisis, when I wanted to tell him about a homeless girl I saw in town square. Wallace Wellsley wouldn’t hear of any of those things from his daughter, giving her the palm of his hand and a twitch of his lip to show his annoyance. I grab his wrist and force it down, out of my face.

“I might be a disappointment and I might bring you shame by leaving, but you need to get a couple things straight.” I breathe in a rush, my heart banging against my ribcage as my father studies me through slits. “I am not killin’ Mama.” I shake my head. “The Ballentines aren’t traitors, and I may have been sneaking around your back, but it was because you never would have listened to me anyway. You don’t even want to listen to me now.”

He sighs loudly. “You’re right about that.” He places a hand on the door and swings into his SUV. “Watch yourself. You may not want to have anything to do us in your quest to leave this place behind, but you wear the Wellsley name, Clover, and regardless of what you think you want, I know you’ll be back. This is your home. It’s where you belong. Go on and move somewhere else to figure it out.” He clears his throat, placing both of his hands on the steering wheel. “But don’t bring home any mistakes you can’t pack in luggage.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat and close his door without responding. I watch his taillights as they disappear down the drive and turn onto the main road. Maybe words so cruel and sharp would give others pause, but they drive me forward—propel me in the solidarity of my decision.

Mercer comes up behind me, his warm hand on my shoulder. “Well now that we’ve got the semantics out of the way, we have a twenty-four-hour drive on the horizon. Let’s rest up.”

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I whisper into the warm night air.

He breathes heavily, bending his head into my neck, lips against the skin behind my ear. “I’m sorry you had to grow up with that.”

I turn in his arms to face him. “Twenty-four hours, huh? Good thing I packed my knitting needles.”

Mercer quirks a brow. “You did not.”

“What else did you think I was going to do all day in a car with you?”

I press my hands against his hard chest. That one brow of his waggles up and down. “Have you heard of such a thing as road head?”

I play at mock disgust but ask him to tell me the details of how it works without creating a traffic accident. He does, voice low, and I almost forget my daddy’s threats.

“Sounds dangerous,” I conclude.

He ushers me into the house. “Not nearly as dangerous as that there knitting hobby of yours.” Mercer winks at me as he closes and locks the door behind us.

_______________

“My legs are going to fall right off,” I whine. Mercer turns up his blasted, annoying music instead of answering my fifth cry for help this hour. “I’m going to die inside this car.” I groan loudly and open the window to let my hand float along the breeze. I was okay the first fifteen hours, and then we switched so Mercer could take a quick nap. I drove for four blissful hours. Now that he’s back at the helm, the militant atmosphere has returned. I’m only allowed to drink every once in a while, because I refuse to pee in a zip lock baggy and sling it out the window. I told him I’d squat outside, behind a tree, but he said that would ruin our time. The GPS is merely displaying the time to beat, not the amount of time it will take to arrive at our destination. I capped my water after that and have resigned myself to misery.

“Poor, poor pet,” he chirps back at me. “At least you’ll die in the confines of riches. How much did this car cost anyway?” We’ve talked about almost everything under the sun. I’m surprised this is the first time my car has come up in conversation.

I’d toss this car off a cliff if it meant I never had to sit in it again at this point. We only have thirty minutes of driving left and my whole body is stiff and aching. I shrug. “I don’t know, it was a gift.” Honesty concealing a lie. The true Southern way.

Mercer passes me a look. The one that says he doesn’t believe me. “I’m just curious. I don’t judge you for your insane wealth. How much? Come on.”

“You called it insane,” I fire back. “That’s judging.”

He nods. “It is quite insane, but I didn’t call you insane.”

I mess with the top knot on top of my head. “Less than a hundred…I think.”

“Dollars? Pesos? Quid?” Mercer throws out, knowing darn well what I mean.

I grunt. “Thousand. Because for some reason you want to hear me say it. Less than one hundred thousand dollars.” One hundred and seven if we’re being specific. I only know because I saw the figure on the invoice after it came back from the shop.

He shakes his head and readjusts his grip on the steering wheel. “And you’ll drive it to the salon to cut hair. You’re a walking oxymoron. Pointing out, again, I’m not judging you, just giving you a plebian point of view. This car costs more than some folk’s houses, Four Leaf Clover. Your co-workers work to pay bills. No offense, but you don’t know what that feels like.”

Mercer is pointing out obvious things. “You don’t think I know that? How do you think Goldie got the funds to buy the salon to begin with? I’ll be with her, and yeah, so, maybe the stylists that work there won’t understand, but she will. Goldie did the same thing I’m doing. She just figured it out earlier than I did.” And her parents supported her decision, I think. “The car is just a car.”

“Only someone with wealth can say this is just a car.”

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