Page 59 of Traitor
When I don’t answer, she presses against my shoulder and I relent, turning to face her. She pauses before taking the final step to bring her body fully against mine.
Having her against me, remembering what it had been like to be afraid for her, to think I was going to lose her, causes my shoulders to cave inward and my stomach to clench.
I kiss her once, softly, then take a step back. “I can’t do this. I have to go.”
“Ford,” she calls out behind me. “Ford, wait!”
I don’t take her car in case she needs it, so I walk the couple miles back to the lodge.
She doesn’t follow me.
Covered in sweat,I push in the front door, my anger simmering beneath the surface. The reporters swarming the front yard are a furious buzz of noise and movement behind me.
“Uncle Ford,” Lexie shouts. “I thought you’d gone to jail.”
Mercy comes out from behind the counter as Lexie throws herself into my arms. “Are you okay?” she mouths over Lexie’s head.
“I’m fine,” I say to both of them.
“You don’t look fine,” Lexie says. “You look sad.”
Trust a kid to get straight to the heart of it. “I promise I’m all right, sweetheart. There’s a lot going on right now. Why don’t you go help Nell sort out the late-night crowd, okay?”
She pauses, but I give her a little nudge and she says, “Don’t go to bed without me, I have to tell you what happened with Cody!”
Lexie scampers off with Nell, who gives me a pointed glance. I turn back to Mercy. She arches a brow at me.
“What?”
“Nothing, not a thing,” she says with a smirk.
“Don’t fucking start with me.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You’ve got that look.”
Mercy follows as I duck behind the counter for something, anything, to keep me busy and take my mind off everything. “I don’t have any look.” But there’s humor in her voice and it grates on my last nerve.
“You have no idea what’s going on, Mercy.”
She snorts. “Please, like it’s some sort of mystery. I knew once I saw that girl, it would only be a matter of time before you kicked her to the curb. You’re a serial monogamist, but as soon as it gets too serious you flake out.”
“And you’re better? Why the fuck are you even here, Mercedes? Why do you keep putting Lexie through this bullshit? You talk about me getting my shit together? At least I don’t drag my daughter around the country, chasing strange cock. You want to talk shit about my life? Take a look at your own before you cast judgements. You don’t know half the shit I went through.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Lexie says from behind me. I turn and find her holding plates and silverware, her expression stunned and tears spilling over her cheeks. “You don’t get to talk to my momma like that.”
Lexie shoves the plates at me, then yanks on her mother’s arm, and shoots me a look so full of loathing I wonder if maybe her mom taught it to her or if she came by it naturally. She tucks Mercy under her shoulder and hurries her from the room, leaving me alone with my regrets.
