more than I was prepared to admit it did. I’d messed up in a way that was monumentally stupid, but I didn’t think she would just leave. Not without giving me a chance to explain myself. To figure out how to fix it. It was the worst possible scenario. Now she not only had returned home, and we weren’t together, but I had hurt her in the process.
Deciding a shower might help me clear my mind, I stripped down and got under the hottest water I could stand. Instead of clearing my mind, however, it only made me laser focus on my anger and look for an outlet to direct it. It settled on Danny.
The PI, Dallas, had sent me Danny’s information, which included a home address. I was sure he thought I would never be so stupid as to go confront him directly, but at that moment, I was ready for the fight. If I could just clear this whole thing up with Danny, then I could move on, go back home, and try to figure out what could be done about Amanda. I wasn’t ready for her to be out of my life in that way yet. And the more I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
I got out of the shower, got dressed, and headed down to my car. Speeding a bit, I made my way to Danny’s house hours before I knew he would have left for the bar. As I parked, I watched the house for a few moments, making sure there was no one around before I confronted him. I wanted this to go smoothly, but if it didn’t, I also didn’t want a whole lot of witnesses to see me beating the ever-loving piss out of him, either.
Slamming the car door a bit harder than I perhaps thought I would, I wondered if I’d alerted Danny to my presence. Either way, the reckoning was coming, as I walked up his pathway and then up the steps to his porch. When I knocked on the door, I could hear the sound of a small dog yipping somewhere inside and feet shuffling toward the door.
“Who is it?” Danny’s voice said from the other side of the door.
“Tom Anderson. Open the fucking door,” I said.
I realized as I said it, that perhaps it wasn’t the best way of ensuring he would either open the door or open the door and not have a gun in my face. Too late to change it, I stood there waiting, and when the knob turned, I readied myself to bolt if a piece of steel was shoved between my eyes. Instead, the bleary-eyed and confused Danny stood behind a screen door, wearing a T-shirt and striped pajama pants.
“I ain’t letting you inside,” he said from behind the screen.
“I don’t want to come inside,” I said, then sighed. “Look, asshole. We know you did it. You burned our place down. You’re trying to sabotage us.”
For a moment, his eyebrows raised and he looked confused, then angry. I saw him reach for something beside the door and tensed, relaxing when I saw it was only a coffee mug. He took a sip and sat it down.
“I’ve told you and everybody else who asks me about this, and God knows there have been enough damn people asking about it, that I don’t know the first damn thing about how your bar burned down. I’m not going to cry about it, mind, but I have no idea how it happened. So, unless you have an officer with you and some proof, I’m going to ask you once to get the hell off my property, because this conversation is over.”
He began to shut the heavy door, and I kicked at the screen door’s frame.
“Just let me buy you out!” I yelled.
He stopped pushing the door closed and opened it again. I looked at his eyes, burning with hatred and anger as I spoke to him. I was sure mine were just as angry, and just as filled with hatred as his.
“Just let me buy you out, and you can move away. Somewhere way the hell away from here. And we can all be at peace. Just name your price,” I said.
Danny looked up as if he were searching for strength, and the gesture angered me even more. He was treating me like I was an annoying door-to-door salesman. Half his body was still behind the semi-shut door, and he shook his