Chapter Nineteen
Today was a good day, Georgia decided. For a lot of reasons. She was able to spend some time with some old friends, see how their lives had changed, the balance they had with their careers and families. More importantly, now that she had stepped out of the cocoon of Willowhaven, she figured out it was exactly where she wanted to be, her pocket she was excited to get back to.
She couldn’t wait to feel Easton’s arms around her, and ever since he texted he had a surprise for her, her mind had been running laps through sensual fantasies—ones she thought he could read all over her face at times, simply because he brought them all to life.
The photo shoot was over for the most part. All she had left to do was catch a few live shots then this deal was a wrap.
As she stood at the edge of the gathering crowd, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a ‘bottle blond’ in trashy clothes pass. A sick feeling full of hate and maybe, just maybe, a tinge of gratitude shot through her. She looked up, but whoever the girl was she’d moved into the crowd.
Georgia smirked as once again she not only realized how much she’d grown since this was her daily, but also felt outright relief it wasn’t any longer.
Deep in thought, she felt a hand move up the inside of her thigh. Within those few seconds, her mind was all over the place. First she was a little pissed Easton hadn’t trusted her enough to do her job and come back to him—he had moved his shifts which meant next week the three of them wouldn’t have as many days together, as many sleepovers. Then she thought it was pretty hot he cared enough to want to make sure she was safe.
Fight with him or slam your lips against him…why not both, her thoughts clamored.
But then, that very next second she realized that though the touch was familiar, she recognized it, her body was cold, not hot. She felt rage, not passion. She jerked to her side to see Hunter right beside her.
Out of instinct she slugged him in the gut. He did double over, but he did so with a laugh, meaning he was too high to feel any pain.
“Yep, that’s you all right,” he said, clasping his gut.
“What the fuck, Hunter?”
He lifted his chin as he approached her. “Right. What the fuck? When did you become a lying bitch?”
She pushed him back again but he only moved marginally, clearly stoned off his ass and…pissed?
“When did you decide becoming a criminal was a fucking peachy idea?”
He jarred his head back like what she had said was crazy talk.
Georgia moved closer to him just so he could hear over the music. “You stole from me.”
“You tricked me.”
“After you stole from me.”
Hunter dipped his head in shame as he moved closer. He reached his hands around her waist, down her ass. “I wanted you back…I needed you to see me.”
***
Easton walked in the bar just in time to see Georgia recoiling from some sleaze as he moved his hands over her. She pushed him, but he kept on.
Any other day, he might have walked up and asked the guy what his problem was. After the day he’d had—not happening.
Two strides later, he was there pulling Georgia back and slugging the ass dead in the jaw. He went down like a bag of bones. Georgia screamed the name ‘Hunter’ as she pushed forward. Hunter. That name was like acid in Easton’s veins. Her ex, the ass, made it to his feet with blood gushing from his nose and lips like it was impossible to feel pain. He struck at Easton but didn’t even come close.
Hunter laughed. “Who the fuck we fighting over, boss? How ‘bout we go back to our own lives.”
Easton pulled his brow together and as he did Hunter saw his chance and charged.
He never made it very far on his quest. Easton dodged his drunken punch then laid him down with one hit to the jaw.
The crowd reacted, moving between them, knocking Georgia around in the turbulent waves of bodies.
The bouncers knew Hunter was trouble and were already hauling him out. Easton was next, but they didn’t give him hell. More than a few of them and the crowed slapped him on the shoulder like he had just won the game. He wasn’t paying attention, he was looking for Georgia. A minute or two after he was taken out, she came out, drenched in fury. She charged right past him, only throwing a glare in his direction.
Even though she was basically running, he was right on her heels but didn’t say a word ‘til they reached the trucks. He had managed to park next to Memphis’s.
He gripped her arm and turned her to face him before she could get in the truck. “Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be here?” he demanded.
“I didn’t know,” she said, seething.
“But you made sure you hung out after you figured it out, didn’t you?”
She slapped his arm. “He just showed up, and I had it under control.”
“Under control!” he bellowed. “His fucking hands were between your legs—is that under control for you?”
She glared so hard that he could feel it burning through his skin. “He was high, high as hell. Saying the same shit he always did. I dealt with it.”
“No, I did.”
She shook her head in pissed dismay. “You don’t trust me. You never will. I will always be the girl you think will run. You think I wouldn’t think twice about leaving you behind, about leaving Grace behind.” Tears had merged with her furious tone.
“If I did think that, it sure as hell is not my fault.”
That hurt, the way he was looking at her, like she was a stranger, like what they had together was some kind of fallacy. She had given more of herself to him than anyone else in her entire life and apparently it wasn’t enough, she wasn’t enough. “What’s wrong with you? What does that mean?”
“You won’t talk about your past, and you won’t talk about the future; you just talk about right now.”
“Because right now is what I have! And why would I talk about a past that I don’t care to dwell on?”
He shook his head in fury.
“Your past made you. It’s the reason for your fears and until you deal with it we’re stuck on pause.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Me? You’re one to talk. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think your life started when Grace was born. That’s as far back as you go. If someone even dares to mention those dark years in your life, you look like you’re going to kill someone—like you do now. You know how that makes me feel? Did it dawn on you that I know if somehow down the road I tick you off bad enough, you will forget I exist? The same way you did with her.”
He took a step forward and glared down. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to her. I could never hate you.”
He let out a curse and stepped back when he saw her eyes well with tears. This fight was ridiculous, exactly what the ghosts from their past would want to happen. “I want to talk about next year, the year after. I want to make plans with you beyond what shifts I’m working this week. You refuse to look forward.”
Georgia let a shuddering breath out. “Nobody knows what’s coming tomorrow. I’m building a life step-by-step, moment-by-moment, and I am not alone in that. You have walls, too, holes in your past, topics you don’t touch.”
“Because they are dead to me. Like I thought your past was.”
“My past is dead. I know it is because I dealt with it, paid my dues, walked my path. And the fact that you drove up here, screwed up all the time we had planned out for next week, which is in the future, mind you, and beat the shit out of him proves to me Hunter is a sickness, he sucks you in and pulls you down. What if you had been locked up? Huh? How would that have gone over?”
He didn’t say a word, just glared forward. That son of a bitch was all over her, and he was the one she was blaming? And that wasn’t even the worst of it…
“And thanks to you, I screwed over my friend. I didn’t finish what they were paying me to do. You let Hunter suck us both in, but that’s fine. Now I know I wil
l always be a runner to you.”
And with that, she got in the truck and fired the beast to life.
It was a miracle she made it to Willowhaven. The tears were endless, and the sick feeling in her stomach made her recoil over and over. Conflict had always been poison to Georgia, which was why she dealt with things she’d rather not face for longer than she should.
Easton was right there, right behind her, keeping a safe distance but making sure she knew he was there.
When she got to her house, she charged in the door, locking it behind her and turning all the lights off, just to signal that she was still ticked. She knew he had a key, that even if he didn’t he was more than capable of getting in her house. She was expecting him to do so. Expecting to knock down a lot of walls with him tonight, to ride the path of emotion and end it breathless in his arms.
When she heard his truck pass by, only slowing down, she slid down the door, thinking he was going to check on Grace or that he really wasn’t off for the night and had to go back to the house.
She sat there, her mind racing. From the radio, she heard the voices of the hall. She gathered before long he wasn’t on shift. A weight sunk in her gut as the moments ticked by, then hours, long enough for him to cool down, long enough for him to do a million things.
She stared at her phone, almost sent a text a time or two but never did. She fell asleep right there against the door with her bag still across her.
***
The whole way back, Easton’s mind reeled. As he put the pieces together, understood what was at risk, what he’d already battled—he vowed this shit was going to end. He wasn’t wasting one more second of his life in this twisted limbo of fate.
Right as they reached the town limits of Willowhaven, his phone rang. He pulled it to his ear without even looking, thinking it was her. “Ooo, lover—you sound so aggressive, heated.”
Easton went rigid with rage, but the months on end of coaching from his federal buddies managed to wade through his mind.
He pulled the phone away, tapped a button right as he passed by Georgia’s and saw her slam the door and turn off the lights. Fucking perfect.
“Everything you say to me, I’m recording, know that,” Easton said evenly into the receiver as he drove on. Completely dumbfounded that one waitress at one pool hall could impact his life this much, know when he was happy and fuck him every time.
“So you can hear my voice forever and always? You miss us that much?”
“There is not a thing about you I miss.”
“That’s not true. We had too much fun together. We made a life together. You see me every day when you look at her.”
Wrong. “What do you want?”
“I’m just concerned that her father is hanging out in bars, picking fights and getting thrown out. It’s horrible, really, considering that when he’s not in bars he’s rushing into fires, working days on end. Not caring that she might lose him on any given call—you’d think that because you’d lost your own father in a fire you’d know better.”
“What do you want?”
She paused and then breathed out dramatically. “I’m worried about you. I told my lawyer that. Told him that we talked before and that we might be able to work something out. That you were so nice and agreeable. And you just might have our daughter’s best interests in mind.”
He didn’t say a word.
“I think we should meet tomorrow. Go over what we talked about earlier.”
“You honestly think what we talked about before is going to happen? You think I’m afraid of you? That any of this bullshit you pull is going to change the way I feel about you?”
“I do have a lawyer. I did state my case, my concerns.”
“Good for you.” You sure as fuck need one.
“Tomorrow.”
“I work tomorrow.”
“Pretend you were thrown in jail tonight and call out. One o’clock at the nasty diner you like to eat breakfast at. Bye, lover.”
He didn’t breathe until he got to his house, until he saw Grace sleeping soundly in her bed.
He sent the call to Memphis and the fed guy, then paced his porch until Memphis got there.
Easton told Memphis about Hunter, how he reacted. Memphis really couldn’t find fault in it but knew his sister would. Well at least until he set her right about a few facts she would.
Best advice Memphis had was to get through this Trish shit and then fall at Georgia’s feet. Made sense to Easton, even though his hand twitched to text her. A few more hours, baby…it will be all over then.
***
The dawning sun woke Georgia up. Not seeing one call or text on her phone made her heart ache. She crawled to her feet and stumbled to the shower. The fight was blazing through her mind, how it must have looked to Easton, what he was saying but not really saying when they fought it out. Her chest was burning, but in bad way, in an aching way.
The entire morning, she glanced to her phone over and over. Nothing.
She was dressed and ready to leave at one. She was supposed to meet a client at the park at two and wanted to take Memphis his truck. She had already asked him to give her a ride over to her meeting.
She was calling Memphis to tell him she was on her way when she opened her front door. She stepped back, thinking she was still asleep—locked in a never ending Hunter nightmare.
Hunter was walking around her porch, peeking in her windows.
“What are you doing here?”
His lip and nose were taped up and bruised. He still looked high as hell and reeked of cigarettes.
He hitched his thumb to the driveway. “Wanted to say hi…sorry.” He glanced to the bags around her. One was Memphis’s. She had washed his travel clothes, just because they were all over his truck, and the other was her work bag. “That’s my girl. No town can hold you.”
She rolled her eyes. So wrong. “Hunter, I already told the bondsmen where you were—you need to let them take you in. You need the wake up call.”
Right then, a cop car clicked its siren to get their attention as Wyatt’s truck pulled up behind it.
Both of them jarred back. Georgia surely didn’t expect them to arrive at her house, but her second thought told her Memphis must have heard Hunter—she never hung up from calling him. But then again, she knew even if he floored it he never would have gotten to her house that fast—he had to have already been on his way there.
Hunter groaned as he threw his hands up. His eyes caught hers, only for a second, but in that second Georgia saw the life they had together, and not only the bad times, or the detox times, the good times, too.
It was an awakening for her. In some way she figured out in every life, we live a numerous lifetimes, ones that shape us, make us stronger. They help us to understand who we are and what we want. Hunter was a harsh, cold, wicked lesson, but without him, she would never be here.
“Hunter, you can only help yourself. I really hope you do.”
He looked her over once, as if her words had stabbed his soul, and then made his way down the steps. One cop got out and walked over to her with Memphis and Wyatt, the other trailed Hunter.
“He didn’t do anything,” she said to Memphis, not the cop.
He nodded once.
The cop asked her a few questions briefly. Apparently they were already looking for Hunter so their attention was with him.
“Can you give me a ride?” she asked Memphis, keeping her head down as she made her way to his passenger side.
Memphis said something to Wyatt and the cops, then made his way to his sister who looked shattered. He knew it had nothing to do with Hunter.
She was waiting for him to say something, to question why Hunter had popped up, but he didn’t which meant that Easton must have told him about last night.
She had no idea whose side Memphis would take, and the stoic stance he kept as he leaned into his door and drove through town told her it was more than likely somewhere right down the middle.
When she looked up, she figured out he was not taking her to the firehouse or the park. Instead, they were parked in the back space of a little diner next door to the fire hall. It served grease with a side of eggs. All the guys surfaced there throughout the day, not so much for the food, but the coffee or so Memphis and Easton claimed.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she said, figuring he was taking her to lunch.
“I’m not talking.”
“You’re on his side?” she bit out.
“That deal belongs to y’all.”
“You have an opinion.”
“Everyone does.”
“So you think it was cool for him not to trust me? To follow me up there?”
Memphis stayed silent, staring at the diner.
“Hunter showed up a second before he did. Yesterday had nothing to do with him.”
Silence.
“Fine, take his side. Not like you haven’t chased me down before. Probably got the idea from you anyway.”
“Yep.”
“What?”
“He did. I gave him the night off.”
“You sent him there?”
Memphis lifted a shoulder, still keeping his stare on the diner. “He had a bad day. Thought he deserved it.”
“He had a bad day because he thought I was going to run.”
“Nope. There is something you need to know…”
***
That morning, Easton had packed up Grace and sent her and his mother to his aunt’s a few towns over for the night. He thought about asking Georgia to go with them, but he knew she was safe doing her projects, not knowing. And God help him, he knew when this was over he would grovel, do whatever he had to do to end this night with her wrapped around him—completely spent.
He did stop by the town florist, ordered four-dozen roses and asked them to put as many stems of lavender as they had in the vases. He hoped that would smooth things over until he got to her this afternoon.
It took the feds two hours to wire him up and brief him on what to say and what not to say. He was numb to it all.