Crazy Thing Called Love (32 page)

“He’s allergic to strawberries.” Becky couldn’t look at Maddy or she’d cry worse.

“I didn’t buy any strawberries.”

“He doesn’t like eggs. Or fish sticks. Fish sticks make him throw up.”

“I have ham. Can he eat ham?”

Becky nodded, swallowing back the puke in her throat. “But not in a sandwich. He likes it if you roll it up and put it in his hand.”

“Becky, are you okay?” Maddy’s hand touched her shoulder and Becky jumped up and away, out of the water. She felt naked in her swimsuit. The bruises were gone from the last time Aunt Janice got mad at her, but she felt like they were still there. Like everyone could see them. Would always be able to see them—and no one, no one, would ever want her.

“I’m fine. Totally fine.”

* * *

Becky was right, Charlie needed a nap, he was practically asleep in Billy’s arms as the four of them took the elevator back down to Maddy’s apartment.

Today was an anomaly. A surreal departure, and so, because surreal departures didn’t matter, Maddy let herself look at Billy with that kid in his arms and she let herself be happy. Very, very happy.

She forgave herself for being weak—what woman wouldn’t be at the sight of such tenderness from the scary hockey player, and the trust from the young boy whose life had been turned upside down.

If she took his picture and created a poster out of it, she’d make a fortune.
THIS IS BILLY WILKINS
, she’d print in big bold letters on the bottom of the poster. The real Billy Wilkins.

The one no one saw but her.

The elevator doors binged open and Maddy led them out.

“I forgot my towel,” Becky said, putting her hand against the doors, her feet still in the elevator.

“Oh …” Maddy glanced at Billy. “We’ll come with you.”

“I’ll go,” Becky said. “You don’t have to come. Put Charlie down. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.” Maddy handed her the key card and Becky disappeared behind the elevator doors.

“Come on,” Billy said. “This kid isn’t as light as he looks.”

Inside the condo, Billy put Charlie to bed in her spare room and Maddy closed the shades, making the room dark. Maddy and Billy stared at each other over the bed and Charlie’s sleeping body.

“She wouldn’t run away without Charlie, would she?” she asked.

“I don’t trust her. I’m going up there.”

“Okay I’ll … I’ll stay here.”

Then Billy was gone and Maddy worried maybe they were being ridiculous, but the girl’s behavior in the hot tub had been really strange. And if she balked at having Billy follow her every move, then maybe she shouldn’t act so strangely.

Maddy heard the front door shut and leaned over the bed to carefully tug the goggles off Charlie’s damp head and the water wings from his little arms.

The plastic squeaked and pulled and she winced, hoping she wouldn’t wake the boy. In the end, she had to lift his arm all the way off the bed to get the wing off.

Holding her breath, she waited for him to scream, but he just sighed, rolling over in his sleep, leaving a wet spot on the quilt from his trunks. She went back into the living room, where Billy had left his duffel bag, and she found Charlie a pull-up and a pair of thin sweatpants that looked comfortable to sleep in.

Back in the shadowed room she weighed her options and decided quicker was better. Just strip him as fast as she could, get him redressed, and hope he was tired enough to sleep through it.

Luckily, he was—until the very end, when she pulled the quilt over his thin, pale, baby bird chest.

“Becky?” He sighed, his eyes opening halfway.

“She’ll be right back,” Maddy said and really really hoped that the cold knot of worry in her stomach was wrong.

“Cuddles,” he said and scooched over until his head was at her knee and his arm was thrown over her waist.

Cuddles, she thought. Cuddles sounded very good. She slipped down in the bed and pulled his cool body to her side, waiting for Billy to come back.

The bathrooms near the pool were empty. The pool was empty.

She’d run away.

Billy hurried back into the elevator and jabbed the button for the main floor—and when the doors took too long to close, he jabbed that button, too.

He couldn’t think, he couldn’t formulate a plan past the swearing in his head. It was one long line of very freaked-out and scared
fucks
, ricocheting around his brain.

The doors binged open and he sprang out across the lobby, his flip-flops squeaking against the polished floor.

Lou at the front desk looked up.

“The girl I came in with,” Billy said. “The girl in the pink hoodie, did she come back through here?”

Lou nodded and pointed toward the door, the wide world outside. “About five minutes ago.”

“Which way did she go?” he asked, pushing open the doors, letting in the heat, the sunlight, the sounds of cars and a thousand other things that could hurt a girl on her own.

“North,” Lou said. “Toward the street lights.”

Billy checked both ways anyway but headed north, sprinting past women pushing baby strollers, couples walking hand in hand—all of them so blissfully unaware of the fear in his heart. Billy’s stomach was spewing acid. He was never going to be the same after this.

He checked every face he could, glanced across the street, looked behind him, but he couldn’t find her and the freak-out in his chest escalated.

“Have you seen a girl in a pink hoodie?” he started asking strangers. Most of them just shook their heads. No help. No help at all. Should he call the cops? Should he call Maddy?

“Christ!” he muttered, and then, at the corner, stymied by a red light, he yelled it. Scaring away birds and
people in equal measure. He fisted his hands in his hair and looked both ways down the side street.

And there, a half block ahead, was a young girl in a pink hoodie.

Relief flooded him so furiously that for a minute he saw spots. He didn’t wait for the light to turn before running across the street, dodging cars slamming on their breaks.

“Holy shit, buddy!” someone yelled and Billy ignored him, jumping over the curb, running down the city block in his flip-flops.

“Becky!” he yelled. “Becky!”

When she finally heard him, she turned, took one look at his face, and jabbed her thumb out at the traffic driving by.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he yelled and pulled her hand down. Hitchhiking? Didn’t she watch movies? Didn’t she know what happened to thirteen-year-old girls who hitchhike?

“Don’t touch me!” she yelled. Her lips were bleeding and raw and it was obvious she’d been crying. And he didn’t know what to do about that. What to do about any of this except fight his way through. Bully and push until he got her back to the house, where he would then lock every door and pay her a million dollars a year to never scare him like this again.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and as far as stupid questions went, it was about the best he’d ever asked.

“Leaving. I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy? Are you crazy?” He knew in the dark corners of his mind that he wasn’t doing this very well.

“Yes!” she said. “I’m crazy and stupid. And poor white trash. And nothing but trouble for everyone. So why don’t you let me go?”

“What about Charlie?” he asked. “You were just going to leave him?”

Her face got that terrible broken look that women’s faces got when they were trying not to cry. But the tears leaked out the sides of her eyes anyway. He was stupid in the face of that look. Useless.

“You like him. You won’t send him back.” She had to yell over the sound of traffic. “You’ll take care of him, right?”

The clouds of his fury parted for just a second and he got a glimpse of what was really happening.

“I know you paid to come down here, Becky.”

“So?”

“I know you want to be here.”

“Fuck you.”

Oh, she was trying so hard to be grown-up, and the words, so ugly and raw, just proved how young she was.

“Will you please come back?” he asked, feeling himself break and crack, splinter apart.

She shook her head.

“Becky, I can’t talk about this on a busy street.”

“And I can’t go back to Aunt Janice.” Her voice was lost in the wind and the dust, but her heartache filled the landscape, pushing him onto his heels.

“I know,” he said, he reached for her, forgetting for a moment the scars she carried, and she flinched back so hard, so fast, she tripped over a rock, falling on her butt in the dirt. “Don’t. Oh God, Becky.” He stood there, helpless, and watched her pick herself up, get back on her feet. His entire body ached to touch her, to pick her up and carry her out of danger.

But she wasn’t going to let him.

No one took care of Becky.

Tears ached behind his eyes.

“Trust me, Becky.” He held out his hand, knowing she
wouldn’t take it, but he had nothing else to offer her. “I will do everything I can so that you don’t have to go back to Janice.”

Her eyes were wet, her lips cracked and red, and he’d never seen a person more lost. “Trust me,” he whispered.

After a long
moment, shoulders hunched against the wind, she walked by him and started back toward Maddy’s condo.

He followed a few feet behind her, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say. How he was supposed to make this right.

A semi went by and he felt himself blown apart by the wind, pieces of him lost into the sky, to the horizon.

Over the last fourteen years, so much of his life had slipped by without a fight. If it wasn’t hockey, he didn’t try all that hard, the effort not worth the pain of failure.

Losing Maddy had taught him that.

And now he stood on the precipice of a fight he’d never once contemplated. And he had no idea how to win.

Once they got in the foyer of the condo, Lou scrambled to his feet. “You found her,” he said, obviously relieved.

“I found her,” Billy said, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal. He even managed to smile, but once they got in the elevator he slumped against the walls.

“You took about a million years off my life, Becky.”

She didn’t say anything, just watched the illuminated numbers as they climbed. The doors binged open and Maddy was standing at the end of the hallway, half inside her condo, half out.

“Oh, thank God. I was beginning to get nervous,” she said.

“She was halfway down the street,” he told her, once they were closer.

“Are you okay, Becky?” Maddy asked, but Becky walked right on by without answering.

“Is she okay?” Maddy whispered to him.

“I have no clue,” Billy answered, feeling about as shitty and out of his depth as he ever had. It was like the end of their marriage all over again, not the
end
end, but the stuff before, when everything he said was wrong and everything he did only made it worse.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her hand curling around his arm, firm and warm and competent.

Her touch brought him back to himself. She gathered him, collected him. Centered him.

I need you
, he thought, fighting the instinct to grab her, to cling to her.
I need you to do this with me. I can’t do it alone, and don’t want to think of doing it without you
.

But he knew that was her great fear. That she’d get sucked into his life and lose herself in the process. If she was going to help him, she needed to be there by choice.

“I’m okay,” he lied.

“What a liar,” she whispered, knowing him so well. “Just tell her, Billy. Your lawyer be damned, she needs to know she’s not alone.”

“Yeah?” That’s what his gut was saying, too. But his gut could get things wrong.

“Yeah.” She touched his face, just once on his cheek, and he turned his whole focus to her. Such was her magic. “You’re not alone, either.”

It was everything he’d ever wanted, all over again. But better somehow. As if the years had rubbed off the excess, leaving only exactly what they needed of each
other. His strength and commitment, her brain and fierce heart.

Maddy, back by his side, on his side. He felt stronger with her there.

“Thank you,” he said.

The door opened and shut behind her and Becky tried not to flinch. She stared out at that view and tried to imagine she was a bird, or a fox or something. Something fast. Something no one could catch.

“Becky,” Uncle Billy said and she could see his reflection in the glass, beside her—shadowy and incomplete, but there he was. Maddy was on the other side of her. She’d pulled a yellow T-shirt and black yoga pants over her swimsuit, her hair was clumping and weird, but she was still the prettiest woman Becky had ever seen.

And, there in the middle, was her. Too young, too stupid, too slow. Her hair was a crazy mess from the wind outside.

With as little motion as possible, because it felt like every bone in her body was broken, like every muscle had been bruised, she pushed her hair away from her eyes.

Trust me, he’d said and she had and she hated it.

I think I’m going to be sick
.

Maddy touched her back so gently Becky didn’t even feel it, wouldn’t even have noticed if she hadn’t seen it in the glass.