truck. Something bad happened, Caro. Something really bad. And I think that he’s suffering all alone right now. I don’t want you to give up on him. Saint’s a good guy.”
I frowned hard at that.
“That’s why he called me from your phone?” I wondered.
She nodded.
“I think so. Yes,” she said. “At least, that’s what I’m assuming. He kind of took off with my phone and I didn’t see him for hours. When I finally got it back, he looked like he’d been run over by a freight train. Before I left to go home with Malachi for the night, I saw him loading up his truck with a bag and leaving.”
Now I was even more curious.
But, saying that, if Saint wanted me to know, he’d tell me.
At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
But long minutes after Sierra left, I was second-guessing myself.
Had I made the right decision? Should I have gone and checked on him?
It was true what Sierra said. He’d sounded haggard on the phone.
What had happened to cause the abrupt change in attitude?
I was so focused on trying to distinguish truth from falsehood that I hadn’t even realized I never returned to my earlier seat until I was interrupted. Again.
There was another knock on the door, and this time I almost slammed it in the man’s face.
“Hello.” He smiled. “I’m here to help you get this tree in here?”
I looked at the tree and almost told him to shove it up his ass.
Instead, I opened my door wide. “Of course, come on in.”
I mean, I didn’t have a tree. And it definitely didn’t make sense to get one now.
So what if that tree held some memories I’d rather not think about?
It was still a beautiful tree.
“You were part of the CDC people that we were with this week?” I asked conversationally as I tried to hide my discomfort.
The man nodded his head, his eyes a little tight as he said, “I am. We’re cleaning out all of the rooms. But I was told that this tree needed to go to your place.”
I scratched the side of my face with my long fingernails, even more uncomfortable when he pushed all the way inside my house and looked around.
I stepped off to the side of the entrance and pointed at the spot.
“If you just want to drag it in here…” I stopped when I saw him come in with the tree.
They’d plastic wrapped it so that everything stayed in place while they’d transported it.
Within seconds he had the tree standing up where I wanted it, and he was taking off the plastic wrap.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Saint’s on the way over. I’ll get him to help me when he gets here in a few minutes.”
I wasn’t sure what made me say that, but I could’ve sworn that I saw the man get a squinty-eyed look before he nodded his head.
“In that case, I’ll leave you to it,” the man forced out a grin. “If you can think of anything you need besides what I brought you—the rest is on your front porch by the way—you can call me. My number is right there on the top of those boxes.”
I watched him go and knew that the man hadn’t liked either A, me or B, the mention of Saint.
I was betting on Saint.
I wondered idly how Saint knew him, or the man knew Saint.
“Thank you so much,” I said as I walked him to the door.
He reached for the doorknob but froze in the open doorway.
“Take care now, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t want to see you back there.”
I didn’t want to be back there.
I didn’t say anything to his pronouncement, though. Instead, I just nodded my head, smiled a weird smile that likely looked just as forced as it felt, and waited for him to leave enough that I could close the door.
Eventually he did, and I was left with a sinking feeling that something about that man didn’t sit well with me.
CHAPTER 12
All I want for Christmas is a blow job.
-T-shirt
SAINT
Christmas parties had never really been my thing.
Despite my name being quite festive, that was really all that I had going for me.
When I was younger, Christmas at whatever house we happened to be in, whether it be one of the random houses that we’d lived in for the year or the White House, had always been for show.
There’d been too fucking much posturing for me to ever really get into the Christmas