Justified (9 page)

JohnScott's hand rested beneath my elbow, and he was bending slightly, checking on me, so when Tyler reared back and pummeled him below the chin, JohnScott didn't see it coming, and his head snapped to the side.

The coach's fingers slid from my arm as he fell hard to the ground.

Chapter Twenty

Dodd and Grady physically restrained Tyler to keep him from kicking JohnScott in the ribs as the coach lay sprawled on the post-office parking lot. They gripped Tyler by the arms and walked him up and down the sidewalk until he stopped cursing and fighting them.

My cheek stung from Tyler's palm, but my dignity stung far worse, and I turned my back on the crowd. I should have helped JohnScott get up. I should have apologized, but half the Panther football team rushed to the coach's aid as soon as Tyler threw the first punch.

“I'll give that low-life cattle prodder what's coming to him!” yelled Sophie's eldest son as he pulled JohnScott to his feet.

The hairdresser answered him just as loudly. “He's got a lot of nerve coming to Trapp and messing with our coach.”

But JohnScott put an abrupt halt to his team's taunts with a few short words, and Dodd and Grady loaded Tyler into his fancy double-cab truck to drive him home to Snyder. Ruthie followed in Dodd's El Camino so they would have a way back to Trapp.

“Fawn, honey, you all right?” Sophie patted my shoulder.

“I'm just so … embarrassed.” I stepped to the side of the shrubbery at the corner of the building in a feeble attempt to shield myself from view.

Sophie followed. “That boy's always been a drinker. I'm not sure but what you're better off without him.” She swept a stray lock of hair from my forehead with her long fingers. “Thinks he's better than the rest of us. I mean I'm sorry for his losing his father and all, but that only goes so far, you know. He ought to be drying himself out by now. And certainly ought to be treating you with respect.”

JohnScott emerged from a huddle of teenagers. “You boys go on about your business.”

“But, Coach, we can't let him get away with that. It ain't right.” A burly senior thrust his jaw out, but JohnScott answered sharply, hands on his hips.

“Anyone who retaliates will run laps on Monday.” His gaze swept the players until every pair of eyes lowered from his stare and a collective sigh of disappointment shushed through the team.

Sophie clucked her tongue. “Now, Fawn, don't you take Tyler back after this. I don't care if you are about to pop, he needs to know once and for all that he can't go around treating people like dirt.”

Her words rang in my ears like the droning whine of a mosquito, and I began to wonder how I could get away from her, but more important, how I would get home. Desperate to escape the town's prying eyes, I considered JohnScott, weighing the possibility of asking him for a ride, but the coach turned and walked briskly toward the United with two players tagging along behind him. He didn't so much as glance back at me.

My already bruised ego took another hit, and I blinked three times to keep from crying.

Sophie's eyebrows rose slightly, and then her expression melted into disappointment. Apparently she had been hoping the coach would offer me a ride as well, and she hummed slightly as though my status had been knocked down another notch.

When my cell phone vibrated, I expected it to be Ruthie. Instead, it was a text from the coach.

Head toward Aunt Lynda's house.

I stared at the phone.

I didn't want to go to Lynda Turner's house. She would only say
I told you so
, and she would be right.

Sophie leaned forward, trying to see my screen and speaking with syrupy sweetness. “Darlin', do you have a way to get home?”

“Yes.” I backed away from her. “Thanks, Sophie.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” she called. “I'm always around.”

I strode quickly down Main Street, and the only thought in my brain was to get away from the street dance. I needed to be alone. To hide. To think. I turned onto Avenue S and immediately felt the safety of its shadows. After walking half a block, I leaned against a tree trunk near the sidewalk, obscured by the near pitch-blackness.

Later, without a doubt, I would cry, but for now the invisibility of darkness comforted me, and I closed my eyes and let the stillness settle like salve. My nerves calmed, and my pulse slowed, and I gingerly touched my tender cheek.

I wanted to hate Tyler.

I should have hated him, but I found myself making excuses for him. He had been under a lot of stress since his father died—not to mention the baby—and those two things could cause a person to lean on the bottle.

I let my head fall back, tapping it against the rough bark of the tree.
Bump, bump, bump.

No.

There weren't enough excuses to explain away Tyler's behavior, but even more than that, there was no excuse for me repeatedly taking him back. This had to stop.

So I would be raising a child on my own.
Big deal.
I wasn't the first single mother on the planet. If others could do it, so could I.

Of course, I didn't want to be alone, but it would be better than being with a man I couldn't count on. I glanced down the street, where I could see Lynda Turner's porch light shining. Ruthie's mother had told me,
Some things are worse than being alone
.

With Tyler's slap still lingering on my cheek, I was finally convinced of the truth in Lynda's words.

A vehicle approached slowly from a side street, and as it drew closer, I recognized it as JohnScott's truck. He stopped long enough for me to get in, then drove in the opposite direction from Main Street.

“Sorry I left you,” he said, “but we probably didn't need to be seen leaving together. You all right?”

“Yes.” I answered him readily enough, but then I began to wonder.
Maybe I'm not all right.
This didn't feel like the other times Tyler and I had broken up. It was far more painful. And foreign.

And permanent.

As we approached the outskirts of town, I noticed a group of stragglers at the Allsup's, and I lay down across the seat. I didn't want to be seen with JohnScott.

Maybe the coach understood, because he didn't say anything as we drove up the Caprock. His truck windows were down, and the wind whipped through the cab, blowing away my jumbled thoughts and brushing against my tense muscles. By the time we stopped in front of my shack, my hair had blown into a tangled mess, and I fingered it to one side as I sat up.

We both stared out the front window as the engine idled.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered.

He grunted. “Not your fault.”

“He hit you.”

JohnScott rotated his jaw. “You know? I haven't taken a punch in a long time.”

I stared at the dash, frowning at the glowing lights until they blurred from emotion.

“No, wait,” JohnScott said. “Last season, I got in a tangle of players at the end of the Denver City game and ended up with a concussion and a couple broken ribs.” He killed the ignition. “That was worse than this, because those boys knocked me out cold.”

I opened the door and slid from the truck, unable to find humor in his attitude, and realizing, with a shock, that my greatest emotion was not that of loss. Yes, I would break up with Tyler once and for all, but more than sadness or humiliation or regret, I felt anger. Intense anger.

At myself.

JohnScott got out of the truck, and with both doors shut, we were left in the pitch-blackness of a new moon. There were still things that needed to be said, and I rested my elbows on the hood, wishing I had left the porch light on.

“Why are you with him?” JohnScott stayed on the opposite side of the truck, and even though I couldn't see him, I imagined him leaning on the hood like me.

“I'm not anymore.” I released a long breath. “I never should have been with him in the first place.”

I could hear the coach rubbing his whiskers. “Do you love him?” he asked.

“Well, that's the million-dollar question.”

“I'm sorry. It's none of my business.”

No one had said that to me in a while. It seemed everyone considered my life their business. “It's all right.” I turned and leaned with my back against the truck, staring toward the edge of the Caprock to my sacred view, now hidden in the night. I longed for a full moon so I could feel the openness of the landscape. So I could escape. “I thought I loved him. But maybe I was just addicted to the idea of him.”

The engine clicked as it cooled, settling down in the same way my thoughts were settling into logic. “I don't want my child to grow up in two separate households, and I thought we could make it work. He loves me, I know he does.” I heard a desperate whine in my voice and corrected it. “But now I realize he's not capable of loving me … the right way.”

“You've come to terms with a few things.”

“I had a short discussion with a mesquite tree back in town.”

His boots gritted against sand as he stepped around the truck, and he leaned against the hood next to me, joining me to gaze into the darkness. “So you're done with him.”

“It won't be easy, but yes, I'm done.” Pounds and pounds of bad decisions lifted from my chest, and for the first time in months, I felt light and free.

We stood there in silence for several minutes before JohnScott asked, “How old were you when you first got together?”

“Sixteen.” I chuckled. “His
bad-guy
persona appealed to me back then.”

JohnScott paused, seeming to think about something. “So you don't really know what it's like to date a
good guy
.”

His words rubbed—it was one thing for me to call Tyler a bad guy but something else for JohnScott to do it—but I couldn't argue. “I suppose.”

“I don't mean to offend you, but guys like Tyler need a daily kick to the groin until they figure out how to treat a woman.”

“What's your point?”

He shifted. “He ticks me off, treating you like dirt. And in front of everybody. I had half a mind to let the team work him over.”

“You don't mean that.”

He sighed. “No, I would never do that because I'm
the good guy
. The one who always follows the rules, always does the right thing, always walks away from a senseless fight. Yet Tyler hurts you over and over and over.”

I pursed my lips. “Well, I can hardly blame him this time. I should have known better.”

“
Of course
you can blame him.” He cut a sigh short in disgust. “Stop playing the victim.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Don't look back.” He raised his voice, but it traveled over the cliff, swallowed up in nothingness. “Quit settling for the likes of Tyler Cruz. You deserve better than that.”

“Tyler is more than what you saw tonight.”

“He's only as good as his worst day. You said yourself, he has a bad-guy persona.”

My anger toward myself quickly paled in comparison to my mounting irritation with the coach. “Yes! Tyler's a bad guy, and I'm the stupid little girl who took him back
six times
.”

“You're only stupid if you take him back a seventh time, Fawn.”

“Well, I don't plan on it,” I snapped.

His voice sounded gravelly, laced with aggression. “Then you should date someone else for a change.”

“Who would date me, JohnScott? What kind of person would want me now?”

“Maybe someone like me!” He slammed his palm against the hood of the truck, and I jumped.

Silence hung heavy between us.

I held my breath as shock caused my anger to slither away unseen.
Someone like him?
Someone like JohnScott Pickett. My mind raced through the past few weeks of swimming and cleaning my yard and catching snakes. Every word he said to me rang in my ears in shouts and whispers and questions. He couldn't have meant it the way I wished he did.

But then his hands gripped my shoulders in the darkness, and he frantically inched them up my neck to the sides of my face, finding my lips with one of his thumbs before pressing his mouth firmly against mine.

It started quickly. Unexpectedly. One second we were sort of arguing, and the next second he was kissing me. My first thought was that his mouth felt different than Tyler's. His lips were softer and more full, and he tasted vaguely of Dr Pepper and Juicy Fruit gum.

A voice inside my head said,
I shouldn't be doing this
, and I kept my arms folded over my chest. But as one of his hands slid through my hair, gently working a tangle through his fingertips, I couldn't come up with a reason to hold back.

Every thought of Tyler disappeared in the warmth of JohnScott's lips and the intensity of his kiss, and I hesitantly wrapped my arms around his waist while the ringing in my head yielded to a beautiful song of emotion.

Chapter Twenty-One

I told no one about the kiss.

The next afternoon, I sat in a metal folding chair at my baby shower in the tiny fellowship room in the back of the church building. I ate cake with sugary frosting and wished I didn't feel like smut.

JohnScott's kiss ended as quickly as it began, and he broke away from me, seemingly startled by the predicament in which he found himself. He ushered me to my front door while he mumbled apologies. He was sorry for kissing me, and sorry for his lack of self-control, and sorry for his absence of tact. He opened the door, and the dog brushed against his leg, prompting him to back down the steps, apologizing again—for what, I wasn't sure—but by the time he sped out of my yard, I was completely convinced that JohnScott Pickett was very sorry.

Sorry he had touched me.

The church ladies, in belated kindness, blessed me with a baby shower, and as I opened bag after bag of diapers, wipes, and little clothes, I imagined their unspoken accusations echoing off the walls.

“You're thinking about something.” Ruthie popped a pillow mint in her mouth. “Tell me.”

“I'm thinking my life's a mess. You wouldn't understand.”

“Oh, that's right.” She nodded. “I have
everything
.”

“Everything except money.”

She held her fingers in the
Who cares
? symbol. “I can still understand your problems.”

Pamela Sanders stopped in front of my chair and patted my knee. “We can all understand your problems, darlin'. What that boy did to you in town last night was a flat-out crime. And what he did to Coach Pickett was outrageous.” She turned to Velma, two seats down. “You've gotta believe me when I say the church is behind our coach one hundred percent. It's a crying shame what happened to your boy.”

Velma shook her head. “JohnScott's a good man, but trouble seems to find him no matter what.”

Ruthie's mother, sitting between Velma and me, had kept her eyes on her plate for the past hour, but she now lifted them. “Thank you, Pam. We do appreciate the kind words about our family.”

Lynda and Velma surprised me when they showed up for the shower. Neither of them had been in the church building for years, and Lynda had all but sworn she would never set foot there again. Their presence flattered me, but at the same time, I felt like a fraud, surrounded by JohnScott's cousin, aunt, and mother.

My own mother slipped into the room, and a momentary hush fell over the fluttering mouths, but then the conversations continued at an increased pace as the ladies tried to camouflage the pause.

I stepped to the punch table, feeling the childish need for my mother to tell me things were going to be all right. “Hi, Mom.”

“I heard what happened last night.”

A protective shell fell in place around my feelings. “You and everyone else.”

“It'll clean up easily enough.” She scooped two almonds with a teaspoon and placed them gingerly on her glass plate.

“I'm tired of cleaning it up.”

Empathy flashed across her face. “But you love him, Fawn.”

“I'm not sure I do. I'm not sure I could survive Tyler's kind of love. Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy.”

Her lips screwed into a pout. “Don't be silly.”

Lynda appeared at my side. “We all feel that way sometimes, don't we, Susan?”

My mother's eyes snapped. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Talk to the girl for once.”

Mother glared at Lynda, then turned away and went to sit next to Milla Cunningham.

Bless Dodd's mother. The woman had taken it upon herself to minister to my cranky mother when the other church ladies weren't really sure what to do with her. As a result, Milla spent more time with my mother and less time with me, but we seemed to have an unspoken agreement that it was best under the circumstances.

Lynda pretended to admire the decorations on the serving table. “Don't feel bad telling your momma about Tyler. She knows exactly how you feel.”

“What do you mean?”

Lynda let out a breath. “They called it acute depression, and she had to be hospitalized for a while. I'm not saying you're depressed. Clearly you're not. But your mother knows what it's like to be overwhelmed.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Lynda lifted her gaze from the sugary blue-and-white cake, peered sadly at my mother on the far side of the room, then frowned determinedly into my eyes. “Because I've been on that ship too, Fawn.” She shook her head. “A lot of people have.”