Page 64 of Traitor
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ford
“Areyou sure you don’t want to stay a little while longer? I didn’t mean for you to move out.”
Mercy looks up from the box she’s carrying, and wipes sweat from her forehead. “No, you were right. I haven’t been doing right by Lexie. She deserves a nice home, a stable life. Just because I had her when I was young doesn’t mean she should pay for my mistakes.”
“Look at you acting all grown-up.”
Mercy hip checks me as we drop off our load in the living room of the small rental she’d found the day before. “Watch it, baby brother.”
“Hey, Uncle Ford,” Lexie says, as she bounds in the door carrying her suitcase and a box. “This one has your name on it.”
I give Mercy a sidelong glance. “Trying to steal some of my stuff.”
She holds up her hands. “I plead the Fifth. I’ll be right back, I’m gonna grab another load.”
Lexie scampers off to her room and I investigate the box. It’s a small one from the post office. I vaguely remember seeing it a couple weeks ago, before everything went down. It has my name on it.
And Tate’s.
It’s from Tate’s mother.
Jesus Christ.
I have to sit on the corner of Mercy’s bargain basement couch as I hold the box away from me like it’s a live grenade. There’s no telling what’s inside it. I’m not even sure I want to know.
It can’t be anything good.
I’m saved from figuring it out when Mercy comes back in. “Help me with this?” she asks. I set the package by my keys to remember to take it home later and grab the top box from her stack.
She puts hers down on the kitchen counter and turns to me with a serious look on her face. “I want to apologize,” she begins. I start to wave her away, but she catches my wrist. “No, I mean it. I’m sorry. For being such a bitch and not considering how you’d react if I showed up with no warning. I shouldn’t have left Lexi with you the way I did. I guess the both of us can be real jerks sometimes.”
Pulling her into a hug, I kiss the top of her head. “You were already forgiven, short stuff. But what do you mean both of us?”
She smirks up at me. “Peyton, you jackass. You haven’t exactly been fair to her.”
I don’t know what I’d rathernottalk or think about more: what’s in that package or Peyton. “I don’t want to get into this,” I say.
“That’s the point. We’ve buried everything for so long, it’s gotten to be routine to ignore the important shit. You like her. Hell, you may even love her. Don’t push her away now like you’ve done everyone else.”
She won’t give it up and I haven’t talked to or seen Peyton since I left her place the week before. Not knowing if she’s okay has been slowly killing me.
“Since we’re sharing, the truth is, I think I fucked up. I haven’t told her the horrible shit that happened to me. I didn’t want the same thing to happen again. I pushed her away so I wouldn’t lose her. How fucked up is that?”
Mercy chuckles. “That’s the thing about us, Ford. When we find people we care about, we hurt them.” Mercy’s eyes are on Lexie, who reclines on the loveseat with her face in her iPad. “I think it’s about time we made some changes before it’s too late.”
“I doubt she’d have me back after what I did. But I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.”
“You were telling me the truth, and like you, I didn’t want to hear it. But I’ll do better. The question is…what are you going to do?”
Damn,if it wasn’t hot as hell on the lake. It nearly made me smile to realize I’d gone from one scorching hot climate to another. But this time, I have someone to come home to, someone who looked forward to seeing me at the end of the day.
Somehow it made all the difference. Or it would have, if I hadn’t thrown it all away.
A fine day for fishing, despite the heat, I had to admit. A damn fine day.
The only sounds were the slosh of water against the sides of the boat, theswishandplopof the fishing line and lure with each toss, and the occasional hum from the trolling motor as we skimmed the prime spots of Bear Lake.
