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Miranda gets to her feet, smoothing her outfit much like Tilly does when she’s nervous. “No, he’s right. I’ll go.” As she starts to walk away, she turns. “But you should too, Til. You know what’s going to happen if you stay.”
Tilly looks between me and Miranda. “I’m staying, Miranda. I’ve run enough.”
Miranda sniffles and looks at the wall. “I’ll try to delay her, but it won’t be long.”
I’m about to grab her by the arm and toss her out, but Mack is already on his feet. “This way, ma’am,” he says, gesturing to the door.
I sit back down on the couch, but my hands go back to my temples. So much has changed that my mind is whirring. Was it really just last night I was laying with Tilly in a warm bed, basking in our relationship shift?
It doesn’t matter. Now that I have her, I’m not going to let anything happen. There’s no way I’m leaving her side, that much is certain.
Chapter twenty-three
Tilly
Miranda's only been gone a few minutes, and I’m already regretting my choice. Tommy’s pacing the living room like a caged animal, and the sight of it is a heavy weight on my heart. His distress, so raw, quietly eats away at my determination.
“What if we just go to the police? Just tell them what you know, Til.”
Before he even finishes the thought, I’m shaking my head. “I’ve never been involved; I don’t know how things work. I probably know less than the feds at this point. It won’t do any good.”
“We can’t just do nothing!” he shouts. His mother is on her feet, grabbing hold of his arm.
“Tommy, we all just need to calm—”
He cuts her off by wrenching his arm free of her grip. “No! I’m not just going to sit here and wait for them to hurt her!” He’s screaming at his mother, and the sight makes my chest tighten. I’ve never seen him so upset. Not my Tommy. He’s always the one that’s calm.
But then again, when it comes to me, he does have a protective streak. A few years ago, when Sam was in trouble, he blamed it on Greg and lost his cool, hitting the former FBI agent in a rage about Sam being taken away from me. God, I remember that short fight. How Greg never hit back or how I rubbed Tommy's shoulders to get him to relax. Looking back, I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t see what was right in front of me. Tommy has truly loved me for a long time.
The warmth spreading through me at the thought soothes my heart. I know that I’ll do anything to get my happy-go-lucky Tommy back. Anything. But really, I don’t have the slightest clue as to how to make that happen.
He starts pacing again, and I’ve seen enough. "Come on, Tommy," I urge, pulling him toward the bedroom.
He wrenches his arm away from me. "No! We have to figure this out."
But Henrietta is on her feet. "Baby, go. Talk to her. Mack is here; we'll be fine."
He huffs out something that sounds like an angry "fine," and I follow his stomps down the hall.
Once inside our bedroom from the night before, I lock the door, seeking a moment of privacy, of sanity. He sits on the mattress, the same one we made love on not twelve hours ago. "I’m only going to ask this once." I take a deep breath, closing my eyes to steady myself. "Can you handle all this?"
“We’ll get through this—"
His protest is cut short by my insistence. "Tommy! Just answer me. Is this too much? Because I can leave right now. We can cherish the memory of that one night and let it be."
"What? No, Tilly, I’m fine," he asserts, but even as he does, he rubs both palms over his face. Bloodshot eyes meet mine. Ha! Fine? Tommy might not be a woman, but in this moment, fine means, ‘standing on the edge about to jump off into lava.’
"You’re not fine. You were seconds away from punching something. I had to pull you away before your flailing gave your mom a black eye.”
He grumbles about something, and I slide onto the mattress behind him. With nimble fingers, I start massaging his shoulders. Just like back at the surf shack. And just like then, he relaxes the moment I touch him. "It’s nice that you want to fix things," I start, not liking where I’m going with my little speech. "But it was one night. We can still walk away from this."
He crosses his arms, a barrier against the vulnerability of our conversation. As I knead into his tight muscles on his back, his posture softens, a sigh releasing some of the tension he carries. "Don’t ask me to forget, Tilly. That’s not fair."
I can't help but smile. "I didn’t say forget anything. I meant stop trying to be together if that’s even what you wanted. We haven’t really talked about it, have we?"
That makes his lips curve into that smug grin, seeing how flustered I am talking about our relationship status. "You did promise to visit me in Costa Rica." His voice, teasing and light, makes it impossible not to let my worries fade, even just a little.
"Did I?" I play along, though part of me knows exactly what he's talking about.
