A Man Worth Keeping

She’d thought she could trust Chris. The last person in her life who was on her side in the war between her and Jared. And when she’d gone to him with the information she had about Jared’s involvement in the human smuggling, her old friend had set her up.

He told her she and Josie were safe staying at his cabin. He told her he would bring the chief of police and the D.A. to hear what she had to say. He held her and listened to her and that night, after she put Josie to bed, when she answered the door expecting the cavalry, Jared had stood there instead.

“The hospital in Charleston has records of what you did to me,” she said. “And I have proof of those men you’ve been dealing with.” A slight lie—she had no real proof. But her cousin had told her about private investigators whose job it was to dig up the dirt no one wanted found. If she told the right people, they could find the proof and they both knew it. “So why don’t you cut the bullshit? If you didn’t think what I knew could hurt you, you’d have already called out the dogs on me.”

He was silent for a moment and it was so gratifying more tears bit into the back of her eyes. Victories, no matter how small and brief, were not something to be taken lightly these days.

“What do you want?”

“I want to make a deal,” she said.

“Forget it. I’m not dealing with trash like you.”

“Fine then. I’ll call my lawyer—”

He laughed. “Please, no one in town would dare represent you.”

She laid down her ace card and hoped it was enough to scare him away from them for good.

“My cousin knows people who would.”

He paused for a second and Delia held her breath. Her cousin Samantha, who ran the shelter in South Carolina, had resources such as lawyers who specialized in these sorts of cases.

“You haven’t talked to her about this,” he finally said. “I know because I talked to her when I tracked you to that crappy shelter you took our baby to.”

“I haven’t talked to her yet, Jared. But I could.”

She could hear him breathe, could imagine the vein in his forehead pressing against his skin. The ugliness in his soul turned his handsome face into something evil.

He was not the man she had married. He was not Josie’s father. This man was a monster and she didn’t understand when it had happened. When had he lost control? This all seemed like some absurd nightmare, one of his terrible practical jokes that only he thought was funny.

“You wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re too weak. Too scared.”

Once maybe that had been true. But she was Delia Dupuis. And she was her daddy’s girl and tough as nails.

“Don’t push me, Jared. You’d be surprised what I could do.”

“I’ve seen what you can do, and I owe you for that.” That night in the cabin she’d nearly split open his skull with a fire poker. When his grip around her throat eased, she’d pulled herself free, prepared to run, but rage and a long list of injuries for which she deserved retribution forced her to turn back to him and kick him solidly, viciously, between the legs.

He’d passed out from the pain on Chris Groames’s floor and she’d grabbed her sleeping daughter and run.

She swallowed bile, hating herself and what she’d turned into when backed into a corner.

“Why haven’t you talked to her, then?” he asked. “With all this proof you’ve got on me.”

“You want Josie to see what you really are?” she asked, her voice cracking. She was doing the unthinkable, protecting him in order to protect her daughter. “You want her to be called as a witness against you? She’s a little girl, Jared. It would kill her.”

The line was silent for so long she allowed herself to hope that he was seeing reason.

“Jared, let us go. We can—”

“You talk to your cousin and she’s dead,” he growled.

Ice water like fear chilled her to the bone. Years ago, she would have said Jared, despite his temper, wasn’t capable of real violence. But the last year of their marriage and whatever mess he’d gotten himself mixed up in with the smuggling of drugs and immigrants over the Mexican border had convinced her otherwise.

He was capable of anything and she had the bruises to prove it.

“Stop looking for us and I won’t say anything. To anyone. Just leave us alone,” she nearly begged.

“I’m happy to leave you alone. I’m happy to let you rot wherever you want to. But you’re not taking my girl.”

“I’m not letting you have her back.”

“Tell me, does Josie even like you? You left her for six weeks, Delia. That’s a hard thing for a kid to get over. You divorced her father. You’re making her run all over the country. What are you telling her about this little trip of yours?”

“We’re doing fine,” she lied.

So many mistakes.

But she hoped keeping Jared away from Josie was the one good thing she could do as a mother, to make up for the mistakes she’d made. Even if Josie hated her for it.

“You’re a criminal, Jared. You think I’m going to let her go back to you?”

“And you think I won’t hunt you to ground like an animal? Josie is mine, Delia. You proved that when you walked away from her.”

In the end, he was right. She’d left her little girl with a monster. A monster disguised as a devoted father.

She was suddenly tired, too weak to keep battling. Her adrenaline and nerves bottomed out and she sagged against the wall.

“Leave us alone,” she breathed.

“You can’t run forever, you—”

She disconnected the phone and pressed it hard to her lips until she felt her teeth. Her pulse chugged in her ears and cold sweat ran down her back. She slammed her fist against the wall, wishing it were her husband or Chris Groames.

How did I get here? she thought, hysterically.

Her fingers traced the yellow and purple bruises on her neck through the thin cotton of her sweater.

Two weeks ago she’d gotten back from France. She’d been trying hard to make amends with her daughter, to put aside the guilt she had about her mother. She’d been thinking about planting a garden behind her little house. Her own herbs and some tomatoes for Josie to pick when they were ripe.

But then the news story about the van of immigrants broke and her life changed.

This is too much, she thought, too much for me to handle on my own.

But she didn’t have a choice. Jared made sure of that.

Her father was dead. Her mother, if she were alive, would be less than useless, having spent her whole life avoiding anything messy or ugly. And this was both.