“Do you think she’s hot?”
“Are we in high school? I remember you giving me shit when I brought up how you felt about Reenie.”
“That’s different. I never hid how I felt. You hide everything.”
“There isn’t anything to hide.”
“Come on, Clay. Don’t make me sit here for hours. I’ve got a busy day. There is more going on and I know it. Something is pulling you toward her. You like people you can save.”
“I’m not drawn toward that,” he argued. “They just find me.”
“So there is an issue?”
“Not an issue,” he said. “But trouble seems to follow her everywhere.”
“Anything I need to be on the lookout for?”
It wouldn’t hurt to fill his brother in.
He told Ford about the ex-boyfriend and how that went down, keeping out specifics of what Meredith did, but not how Fredrick reacted days and weeks later.
“What she did was petty and done all that day. Nothing major. This dick just kept it up. Anyone who taunts another with their weakness is a sign for me.”
“I don’t like the thought of anything dead left for someone. I don’t care that it was bought at a grocery store.”
“My thought too. She doesn’t seem to think he’s a threat. Not a physical one. He claims he didn’t touch her car and she believes him,” he said.
“Do you think she still cares about him?”
“No,” he said. Not with the way she was clinging to him on Sunday.
Control he always prided himself on diminished rapidly.
“And you know this how?” Ford asked, a smirk filling his face.
He narrowed his eyes. “Because I know. Leave it.”
Ford laughed. “Fine. Those things happened a few weeks ago, right? Nothing more?”
“She got a letter on Saturday. It was pretty vile. She thought it was from the ex, but the ex says it was from the woman he was cheating on Meredith with.”
“Did you see the letter?” Ford asked.
His brother was taking this a lot more seriously now.
“I did. I stopped over on Sunday to get these muffins. I looked around her place at the locks. I’m not happy with the quality of them, but not really sure I can go in and change them just yet. She’s got a nosy neighbor who watched me pull in out of his window and then leave. Meredith said this guy is the neighborhood watch.”
“That never hurts,” Ford said.
“She wasn’t happy that I made a big deal about looking around her place for those things.”
She’d followed around on his heels asking him a million questions.
He saw the disappointment in her eyes that she thought he was there to visit her, not check up.
He didn’t like he’d put the look there and kissed her before he left.
In the past, he wouldn’t have cared if a woman felt that way.
