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Which involved more than just cooking and cleaning.
Their history also made them easier to control, I’m sure. If they stepped out of line, Magnolia and Ruby would threaten to send them back to the big house. All they would have to do is plant drugs on one of them, or something else to violate their probation.
I look to him again. His eyes were already on me. I ignore how my heart jumps. “Everyone seems so much better. Even Preston.” My nose crinkles at the thought of him. “Does he hate me now?”
A part of him has to, even if he was civil.
“He doesn’t hate you. I think all his hate is reserved for Mom and Ruby.” A thought comes to him. “Why, was he rude to you when you showed up?”
“No, he was…nice.” Impartial, but nice.
He looks back over the lake. “Believe me, if he hated you, you’d know it.”
I have no doubts. There was one person who seemed happy to see me, though. “Your dad invited me to dinner.”
He doesn’t seem shocked by that. “Yeah.” He wipes the sweat off his brow to keep it from rolling into his eyes. “He likes you.”
“Really?”
“He calls you his angel.”
His angel?
He laughs. He knows it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. “He remembers you,” he explains, reclining into the bench. “When we got him sober enough to talk, he asked where his angel was. He said he remembers you sitting with him on the front porch. After that, everything got better. He assumes you were the reason.”
Oh…
“I…” I don’t know what to say to that.
“And you were, I guess. Technically.”
I reel. I never thought of it like that.
“Scarlett,” he says, leaning forward again. There’s an earnestness in his voice and eyes I remember well. It grounds me. “You were the reason things changed.” He motions across the property. “The reason all of this is in a better place now. It all went to hell because of the article and you coming here.” He rubs the tension from his neck. “But fuck. It needed to. We couldn’t continue the way we were.”
I don’t have an argument for that. He’s right.
“Preston and Dad would have ended up dead. My drinking would have spiraled into something more destructive.” A sigh. His voice lowers reverently. “You were honestly the best thing that happened to us.”
That’s not how it felt to me, though. I felt like I was betraying him. Ever since I accepted the article assignment from my boss.
“I know it had to be hard on you.”
“You had a funny way of showing it,” I counter, halfway joking.
“Because I’m a dick.” He corrects himself. “Was a dick. I’m trying to work on it. What I should have done was kiss your beautiful feet. You didn’t know it, but you were giving me the out I needed. I was looking to get out of Nascar anyway. Mom had too much control. I was miserable. That’s why I was connecting with Colton.” He looks to the house. “You just missed him and Rylee, by the way. They stayed a couple nights.”
“I think I passed them in the driveway,” I say, but his thoughts have already drifted somewhere else.
A dark chuckle. “Poor me, though right? Poor, rich, white, entitled, little shit.”
“That was a mouthful,” I tease, trying to inject some levity.
A laugh. “More like a handful.”
“I won’t argue that.”
Things settle into silence for a long, aching minute. “But I’m serious. You forced us to clean up our messes, and we’re grateful for that. My dad is right—you’re an angel.”
