Page 24 of A Lonely Road (Spruce Hill #2)

“One night when I spoke to her on the phone, he wasn’t there, which almost never happened.

She mentioned Shawn borrowing money and asking for joint bank accounts.

I managed to convince her it wasn’t a good idea.

She had money socked away from the sale of the house after the divorce, not a ton, but enough to keep her afloat. ”

Dread weighed me down at the direction this story was taking, but I knew Nora needed to get it out. I pressed my lips to her temple and waited, listening to the way her breath trembled past her lips.

“I brought it up to my father when I went out to see him about a week later, but we were too late.” When she paused, I squeezed her hand gently and she closed her eyes.

“Shawn flew into a rage when she wouldn’t give him access to her accounts.

He trashed the apartment and disappeared with all of her cash and valuables.

He tried to clean out her savings even though he wasn’t added to the account, but the bank wouldn’t let him make a withdrawal. ”

“Jesus Christ.”

“She was devastated. She blamed me for ‘upsetting him’ and refused to speak to me for months. Even now, we barely talk.”

“You saved her from being scammed and she blamed you for him being an asshole?”

“Pretty much.”

I shifted to pull her onto my lap and wrapped my arms firmly around her. My own parents were recently retired and traveling the world together, but we were all so close. It was hard for me to imagine facing something like that, especially at such a young age.

“Holy hell,” I muttered. “Oh Nora, I’m so sorry.”

She nodded against my chest. “He’s why I took the self-defense classes. And why I overreacted when that guy grabbed me at The Mermaid. It’s hard to forget how the apartment looked when we got there. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I thought we were going to find her—”

Dead. The unspoken word hung in the air as my arms tightened around her. “She was okay though? He didn’t hurt her?”

“She was terrified . . . and then she was pissed. My dad wanted to help sort out the apartment, at least, but she wouldn’t let us do anything.

Eventually, it seemed like our presence did more harm than good, so we left.

It was almost a year before she spoke to me again, and that was to tell me she was marrying some other guy she’d just met.

I wasn’t invited to the wedding. I tried to keep in touch for a few years, but eventually I just gave up. ”

For a long time, I simply held her. My mind raced as I processed all she'd said, trying to piece together all the things I knew—and the things I thought I’d known about her. It had been clear from the start that she’d suffered some past trauma, but this was beyond anything I’d imagined.

“Is that who you saw today? This Shawn guy?”

A shudder wracked her body, but she shook her head firmly. “No. I don’t think so, anyway. That guy at the bar that night, he looked so much like Shawn, it threw me a bit. He’s been on my mind a lot more than usual since then.”

“Understandably. Did the guy today look like them, too?”

She nodded. “In a generic sort of way, yes. Mousy brown hair, tall. Creepy. I didn’t get a good enough look to really say.”

My hand moved slowly up and down her back, the repetitive movement comforting us both as something fierce and protective ignited along my veins. “So there’s no reason to think that guy is trying to find you? To settle a grudge?”

At that, she sighed heavily and buried her face against my neck.

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know why he would bother.

After it happened, my dad called in some favors to dig into Shawn’s past. It turned out he’d done something similar to half a dozen other women, and after my mom, he disappeared into thin air.

He’s probably drinking mai tais in Tahiti or something by now. ”

“You haven’t seen him again since it all went down?”

“No,” she hedged, but the word was unconvincing.

I cupped the back of her neck and tipped her head so she could see my raised brow. “No?”

“I don’t know for sure. There have been a few instances over the years where I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye in random places. When I’d look again, he’d be gone. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, because it happened more at the beginning.”

“Does it still happen? ”

She hesitated, then said, “The day I had coffee with Sam, I got that same feeling, like someone was watching me, but I didn’t see anyone. Probably just my nerves.”

So soon after the incident at the bar, I wouldn’t be surprised if her imagination had run wild, but what if someone had actually been watching her? I didn’t want to freak her out any more than she already was, so I kept that to myself for the time being.

“Is he the reason why you moved around so much?” I asked.

“Not directly. I just start to feel claustrophobic when I’ve been in one place too long. I guess I always blamed my childhood rather than that period of time, but . . . I don’t know. I think I’ve been looking for somewhere I might finally feel safe.”

“I hate that you’ve been dealing with this for so long.” I kissed the top of her head and tucked her back under my arm, snug against my side.

“I just always wondered if I should have done something different, you know? Been more tactful or something so it didn’t all come crashing down on my mom like that.”

“Nora,” I said, my voice firm, “not a single thing that happened was your fault. All of that is on him.”

“I know. Logically, I know that.”

I thought back to the scene at the bar, wondering if the fresh trauma from that night had colored her reaction to a chance encounter today.

Not that I could blame her for it, even if that happened to be the case.

The longer I thought about it, the more my gut twisted with that fiercely protective surge of emotion .

“Have you had panic attacks like that before?” I asked.

After the incident at The Mermaid, I’d chalked up her breakdown on the sidewalk to an adrenaline crash, but the thought of Nora struggling to breathe when I wasn’t there to help her through it opened a gaping chasm in my chest.

A tiny sigh ghosted past her lips. “The year after it happened, I had a few of them. Maybe more than a few, I guess. My dad insisted I talk to a therapist and that helped. It helped a lot, really. The panic attacks tapered off, but I saw the therapist until I graduated and moved away. After that, I think . . . I think I started avoiding anything that might trigger one.”

I chewed on that for a minute, reflecting on the way she’d moved around so often, avoided serious relationships, kept to herself as much as possible. It might have kept the anxiety at bay for a time, but I was beyond certain now that she wasn’t cut out for such a lonely existence.

And as much as I wanted to wrap her in my arms and protect her from the rest of the world, I was also pretty sure she’d never agree to that.

Instead of offering something she might refuse, I pressed my lips to her temple. “Where’s your dad now?”

“I think he’s docked off the Chesapeake Bay at the moment. He retired and bought a houseboat. We keep in touch, when he has cell service, anyway. ”

“I’d like to meet him someday,” I said softly. “He must be a hell of a guy to have ended up with a daughter as special as you, Nora. ”

Though she had held herself together all through the sad tale of her mother’s withdrawal, my gentle comment somehow opened the floodgates.

I held her as she cried, stroked her hair and soothed her, hoping she understood just how precious she was to me already.

Having witnessed the true depths of Nora’s strength made her sorrow all the more heartbreaking for me to watch.

It was a long time before either of us spoke.

“My friend Casey is in town and she’s going to take over bartending for a couple weeks until my full time guy comes back,” I said, my voice low. “I wondered if you’d like to go away with me for a few days?”

The tears had dried and her breathing finally evened out, so she tipped her head back to look at me. “Away where?”

With my fingertips, I traced the curve of her cheekbone, the arch of her eyebrow.

“Not far. There’s this little bed and breakfast on the water, the Lakeside Inn.

I think you’d like it. It’s usually booked solid all summer, but my friend Henry is the manager there.

I got an inside tip that they had a cancellation this week and he’s holding it for us.

I told him I’d let him know by tonight.”

Slowly, Nora nodded. “Okay. On one condition.”

I cocked a brow and waited, watching the way she first bit her lip and then offered a cheeky little grin.

She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Give me enough warning before you do that thing that makes me scream, so I can muffle it with a pillow. I can’t handle the thought of your friend overhearing that.”

I let out a joyous laugh and kissed her soundly. “I solemnly swear I will warn you before I do that,” I said, then added with a wink, “Like . . . how about right now?”