Some other danger lurked.
And he needed to be very careful it didn’t steal away any more from him than the past already had.
Chapter Thirteen
HOW MANY PEOPLE know your last boyfriend hit you?
Bailey’s heart raced as she stared at Dawson in the shadowed lawn off the porch. How could he have figured out her secret?
Already she could hear her dad getting out of his car in the front yard. Hazel barked like crazy while Dad shushed her.
“My father—” she stammered. “He’ll come this way to go inside.” She pointed at the door behind her, her movements awkward and wooden. “Please.” She swallowed a lump of panic. “Don’t say anything.”
Dawson’s jaw went rigid. With anger? Disappointment? She couldn’t tell. But something in his expression indicated he didn’t much care to keep her secret. He nodded stiffly.
“How did you know?” she whispered, her ears attuned to the sound of her father’s uneven gait. He’d been injured in Afghanistan when she was in grade school, retiring from the military with a lot of honors but—as her mom put it—more ghosts than medals.
“I’ve seen the signs before when a friend went through it.” Dawson didn’t bother lowering his voice. “With you, though, it was only a guess.”
A guess she’d just confirmed.
Heart sinking, she cursed herself for being so easy to read. Although how could this boy who hardly knew her figure her out so fast? Before she could worry that one to bits, her father called to her.
“Bailey?” His uneven footsteps slowed for a second before picking up pace again. Hazel beat him around the corner, tail wagging, a fluorescent orange ball in her mouth. “You out here?”
He must have heard their voices.
“Yes, Dad. My friend Dawson is here.” She kept her eyes on him, hoping he was as good as his word.
Didn’t he owe her his silence after tricking her?
“Do I know a Dawson?” Dad asked as he limped around the corner. His prosthetic had never fit him well, but he had gotten tired of having it adjusted.
Mom said that was because he liked to punish himself. But it occurred to Bailey now that most of what she knew about her father had been filtered through Mom. And how reliable was that information?
“No.” She took the damp ball from Hazel’s mouth and tossed it across the yard, sending a furry torpedo hurtling into the woods after it. “He’s new to Mrs. Hasting’s house.”
Everyone in town knew the pizza-shop owners took in a lot of fosters. Mr. Hasting had been on the town council with Mom.
“Welcome to Heartache, Dawson.” Her dad was still built like a marine with his square shoulders and heavy arms, and when he reached to shake hands with Dawson,she hoped he wouldn’t flex too much muscle. “Cole McCord.”
“Nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for your service.”
Bailey watched her father’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. But the “First In, Last Out” ball cap he wore must have been what had given him away. Still, she couldn’t remember any of her other friends ever commenting on her father’s veteran status, no matter that half his clothes bore some version of the eagle, globe and anchor.
“You’re welcome, son. Although all the thanks in the world doesn’t take away the fact that Bailey’s not allowed to have male company unchaperoned.”
Oh God.
“Dad.” She spoke on top of Dawson, who’d already blurted something about being there only a minute. “He rode his bike over a minute ago and we didn’t go inside.”
Her father was already squinting into the screened porch, though, his attention now on something else.
“What the hell are all those bags?”
She tensed. As if she hadn’t been tense enough to start with. She stuffed the toe of her gym shoes into the patchy grass.
“Um. Mom was here. She brought groceries.”
