Page 40 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

"Hamilton!"

"I ain't said nothing."

"Keep doing that."

His truck was the only one left in the lot except for a flatbed with a flat tire. The gate was still open and the light was on in the office, and Waylon came around the side of the building to meet my car with his whole back end going.

Bobby Jo came out of the office and stopped on the step.

Four days’ worth of stubble shadowed his jaw, and dark circles sat heavy beneath his eyes. Something inside me dropped at the sight of him. I’d spent the last nine days staring at my own ceiling at night, never once considering he might’ve been doing the same.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

We stood there in the gravel, about fifteen feet of empty space stretched between us.

“You all right?” he asked.

“No.”

His whole face changed. Whatever he had been holding onto for nine days went out of him in one secon. He came down off that step toward me. "What's wrong?"

Cody’s truck was still parked beside the shop, and behind the closed roll-up door came the muffled sounds of someone moving around.

“Can we go inside?”

He shut the office door behind us.

“I’m sorry.” The words came out before my nerve could leave me. “I’m not going to explain it or dress it up. What I said to you was wrong and it was cruel, and you had told me about your daddy because you trusted me with it, and I turned around and used it. I’m sorry, Bobby Jo.”

He leaned back against the edge of the desk and folded his arms across his chest. His eyes stayed on me while the silence stretched between us.

“It hurt,” he said.

"I know."

"I've had that said to me my whole life by people who don't know me. Ain't never had it said by somebody who does."

I pushed my glasses up, they were always slipping at the worst time. "I know. I'm not asking you to say it's fine."

He nodded once, and let out a breath. "Is that why you come out here?"

I shook my head.

My hand was already in my purse. I got hold of the little plastic stick and my fingers would not work right. Carefully, I set them down on his desk blotter between a stack of invoices and a coffee cup.

Bobby Jo looked down at it.

Then at me.

Then back down at it.

"What's that?"

I blinked. "Bobby Jo."

"I know what it is." His voice had gone very quiet. "I'm asking why they’re on my desk."