Leo Maddox (23 page)

Valerie had the widest eyes as we stepped through the front door. “Sorry about the mess,” I said, pointing off at the cluttered den. “I’m redecorating, possibly renovating, but will probably need to hire someone because I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

“Hmm,” Robby said, glancing around. “You know, that’s what I do. Renovations. Mostly bars. Maybe, in exchange for staying here, I could help you. Or not. It’s whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Standing there, with Valerie’s bag in my hand, I nodded. “Yeah, whatever,” I answered. But to be honest, all this nice-guy crap was starting to make me feel itchy. I needed Clara. I was on edge and until I knew she was safe, nothing was going to calm me down. “Let me just show you which rooms you can take.”

Marching up the long staircase, my phone started to buzz in my pocket. Anytime I received a phone call over the past few days, it kept causing my heart to flip in my chest. And it thudded extra hard this time. Wanting it to be Clara so desperately, I pulled out my phone to check the screen.

Random number. Virginia area code. Possibly a Blue Creek number. Not Clara.

I sighed, answering. “Hello.”

No answer, but someone was there on the other line, breathing a little too heavy.

“Hello?” I asked again, groaning. “I can hear you breathing on the other line. If you're selling something, I already own it and—”

“Who is it?” Robby asked me. He’d just helped Valerie get comfortable in Great-Grandma Bunny’s bedroom. The room was drowning in flowers, gaudy and hideous—so why did everyone always choose her old room to stay in?

“I don't know,” I told him. A strange feeling overtook me. The person on the other line hadn’t spoken a word, but they hadn’t hung up either. Holy shit. Maybe it was Clara.

“Look,” I mumbled quickly to Robby. “There's plenty of food in the kitchen, towels in all the bathrooms...help yourself, okay?”

He nodded and immediately I disappeared down the hall, into my room.

“Clara?” I whispered softly, my heart racing and a lump clogging up my throat as I leaned against my bedroom door. It had to be her. “I know it's you and don't you dare hang up on me.”

No response. Okay, I could deal with that.

“Your mysterious silence tells me it's you, baby,” I uttered, kind of loving that she’d called me this way. As if she’d needed to hear my voice and couldn’t resist or something. “You don't have to say anything. I realized something today. That—”

The other line clicked, dead
. Had she hung up on me?
My panicked fingers hurried to redial the number she’d called from. But when I tried calling her back, it went straight to voicemail. Like the phone she’d called me from had died.

I had to believe Clara hadn’t hung up on me.

Breathing heavily, I stared at the number for several long seconds. For shits and giggles, I texted it to my detective friend. About five minutes later he text me back. The guy sure was reliable. Turns out the number belonged to someone else I knew.

Leah Longerburger.

I wasn’t very fond of Leah—not now and certainly not in the past when I was losing my virginity to her in a desperate act to lose it to anything that moved and looked pretty—but I did what I had to do and headed straight for her house.

CHAPTER 20:

F
rom there everything else fell into place. All I had to do was show up at Leah’s moderately-sized house and immediately she started offering up information like I was holding her down and torturing it out of her. She handed me Clara’s phone and confessed that Clara had run away to Phoenix. They exchanged phones and Leah had even given her a credit card to borrow. Then she begged me not to tell Clara about
our
past.

“What?” I asked, stunned. That was the furthest thing from my mind right this moment. The few times we’d hooked up happened years ago. And I’d been so wasted, I wasn’t sure if I could accurately remembered the experience.

“Clara’s like my
only
real friend,” Leah pleaded, running her fingers frantically through hair. “She’s nice to me when most people treat me like shit. Please don’t tell her we used to screw. Seriously, please. I’ll do anything.”

“Yeah, seriously, I’ll tell her whatever the hell I want.”

“Shit, Leo. Do you always have to be such an asshole?”

I smiled. “Yes, I do.” Then I started to walk away.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a dick then I would have told you which hotel she’s staying at,” she shouted after me.

I stopped, turning around briefly. “I love Clara. I’ve always loved Clara. Even when I was screwing you I loved her. So yeah, if she wants to know about my past then I’ll be honest with her. Okay? I don’t care if that hurts your friendship with her or not.”

Then I left, not bothering to ask which hotel Clara was staying at. I already knew. My gut was screaming the truth at me. Mine. She’d chosen a Maddox to stay at. And I knew this simply because I knew Clara. She’d want at least a little something familiar.

By the time I got home, Maggie was waiting for me. Turns out she’d done a search of Clara’s room and found lots of computer printouts on Phoenix. That was it—knowing she’d thought about this whole ‘Arizona Escape Plan’ long before me and knowing her little ass was probably snuggled tight in one of
my
hotel beds right now—I had to go to her. I couldn’t wait any longer.

* * *

S
o here we were at the airport—Maggie, Robby, Valerie, Stephany, Reed, Anita, and I. The whole fam-damn-ily. Anita was the woman who had been at Reed’s the other morning during my
wallowing
. Why the hell she’d tagged along was beyond me? Maybe she and Reed were dating. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that we were going to Arizona. We were getting Clara back.

Slipping into the nearest bathroom, I needed a moment alone before we boarded our flight. I’d never been so terrified in my entire life. I could boast about my confidence and inflated ego all day long, but when it came to the possibilities surrounding my future with Clara, I suddenly turned into that scared little boy hiding in his father’s library. I wanted her and I didn’t know what I would do if it turned out she didn’t want me back.

Gripping the edges of a sink in the men’s bathroom, I stared down at the running water, trying to catch my breath. When I thought I had everything under control, I looked up in the mirror and someone stood behind me.

“Motherfucker,” I yelled at Robby. “You scared the shit out of me. Don’t stand so creepily behind me, weirdo.”

Squirting some soap on my hands, I finished what I’d original came into the bathroom to do in the first place. Robby stepped up to the sink beside me to stare at me some more. I avoided looking in his direction.

“You know,” he commented, as if we were suddenly friends and it was okay to have bathroom chit-chat like we were women. “When we were younger, I swear to God, Clara had feelings for you.”

I grunted. “Then you were sniffing too much of your mom’s perfume. Clara hated me. Hell, I’m pretty sure she had a crush on you back then.”

“Just listen,” he urged. “When you lost your virginity to Leah Longerburger—”

“Oh my fucking God! Is this coming up again?” With my wet hands, I pulled at my hair, not caring that I was messing it up. “The universe hates me.”

Robby grabbed my shoulders with his two large hands, forcing me to look at him. Other men in the bathroom stared at us like we were deranged. We probably were. I would have shoved him off me too, but he was twice as big as me and truthfully, whenever I saw Clara again, I didn’t want to have a black eye. Or two. On top of a million other things I was going to have to explain to her.

“Leah was beyond proud of her ability to steal your virtue,” he shared. “I hadn’t even thought about all this in years—but I remembered this morning when Leah’s name was mentioned.”

I glared at him. “Do you have a point?”

“Yes,” he groaned, dropping his grip from my shoulders. “My point is that when you slept with Leah, the whole country club knew. Hell, I’m pretty sure all of Blue Creek knew. It was juicy gossip and small-towners eat that stuff for breakfast. And I knew you and Clara had some weird relationship going on where you argued all day. A ‘fight-mance,’ if you will. Which, by the way, grossed me out. It was like foreplay for you two. You made everyone around you want to vomit. Anyway…back to my point here. The same day I heard about you and Leah, I noticed a change in Clara. She must have heard the rumor. And whether she knew she liked you then or not, your big v-card news
hurt
her. Instead of being carefree and easygoing, suddenly she shut down. She became very stoic. And I noticed that the little ‘fight-mance’ the two of you had going…well, that changed too. It turned downright mean. You screwed up back then, Leo, and I don’t even think you realized it at the time. You had her and you ruined it. So, don’t ruin it again today.”

That shaking, barely breathing thing that I had going on…well, it doubled. No, tripled. “Are you sure about this?” I choked out.

“No. But what if I’m right?”

It killed me thinking that I might have hurt Clara in the past and not even realized it. “All this time—what if I could have been with her all this time and I was too stupid to notice my feelings were reciprocated?”

“Trust me, Leo,” Robby said, “I’ve made a lot of similar mistakes. That’s why when you see Clara today, you’re going to drop the bullshit. If you care about her as much as I suspect you do then you should just be honest with her. That makes you vulnerable as hell, but if you don’t give her everything then…then you’re probably going to end up just like your father one day. Alone.”

Throwing a nasty look his way, I walked for the exit. I was downright sick of people telling me how I’d turn into my father one day. “Thanks for the advice,
Dan
.”

“Anytime, roomie.”

Rolling my eyes, we left the bathroom to go join the others. The whole group appeared to be waiting on me. Maggie looked especially concerned. She pulled me aside immediately. “We've got another five hours to go,” she whispered. “Calm down, Leo—”

Oh, God.
“Jesus Christ. Fuck me,” I whispered.

Across the crowded airport, one person caught my eye.

Clara.

I ran. Not even able to help myself or bothering to mention anything to the others, I started to move. She was here…and so I ran.

Just short of closing the final feet between us, I stopped. My knees felt a little wobbly as I stood there before her. It was hard to believe she was actually here. Her blonde hair was extra wild today and her eyes were tired, but I didn’t miss the small smile that came to her lips as she took me in. Damn, she was a beautiful sight for sore eyes.

Her suitcase slipped out of her hand, falling to the ground beside her feet. Her big eyes were a force of nature as they stared into mine. We were frozen in place as people swirled around us, all hurrying on to their different destinations.

“Hey,” I muttered, both nervousness and excitement bubbling in the pit of my stomach.

Her smile widened. “Hey.”

“What’s that?” I nodded to the stuffed animal she held in her hands. She squeezed it so roughly, I think its head was about to pop off.

“Um…an armadillo.” She stared down at the gray thing. “I got him in the gift shop in Phoenix. It's dumb, I know, but I got him for you.”

My heart rate spiked a little. “They have armadillos in Arizona? I thought that was Texas.”

Her cheeks flushed and her smile vanished as she shook off my comment. “You're right. It's really stupid.” Then she bent down, unzipping her suitcase as fast as she could as if she was about to bury my gift away in her suitcase.

I bent down with her, my hand stopping hers on the zipper of her bag. “Give me the stuffed animal, Clara,” I said softly.

Taking a few deep breaths, she let go of the little guy. In all my life no one had ever given me a stuffed animal before. Actually, for as much as the people in my life traveled, no one had ever brought me home a souvenir at all. I stood, checking out the armadillo. It was cute in an ugly sort of way. And, just because it came from her, it instantly became my favorite possession. Clara stood too, fidgeting and clearly anxious about her gift.

“He reminded me of you,” she explained, “because armadillos have hard shells. But then at the same time, they're cute and soft on the inside. And—”

“You're so fucking adorable,” I uttered, cutting her off. Because she was and I couldn’t resist saying so.

“What?” Her eyes darted up to meet mine.

“You heard me. I love your gift, and I especially love how flustered you're getting. It's really sexy. I have tons of expensive shit and nothing I own means as much as this. It means you thought of me while you were away.” I dug around in my pocket. “I actually got you something too. And now you can watch while I get flustered.” I pulled out my Harry Winston gift. “Give me your hand,” I commanded.

As nervous as I’d been talking in the bathroom with Robby minutes ago, I felt surprisingly calm now. Clara was back in my life. And between her gift, her mysterious phone call yesterday, and the shaky nervous way about her right now—I knew she’d come home just for me. I knew I had her heart. Nothing had ever been so painfully clear to me before. And that made my own heart swell and sing.