Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Mike slept on the couch downstairs, waking every few hours when the blanket slipped off or his mother rolled over in her squeaky bed down the hall.

Broken ankle and sprained wrist, revealed the X-rays. Crutches for a week, a walking boot for four more weeks after that, and a splint on her arm. The ER doctor gave her prescriptions for two different painkillers, but she folded them into tiny squares and threw them out when she got home. “Plain old ibuprofen will be just fine,” she said.

Sometime around dawn, Mike gave up on sleep. He sat up and checked his phone for the hundredth time. Sienna hadn’t called or texted. He ran one thumb over the screen. Was she mad? Or had something else happened? Maybe she’d left her phone at work. Maybe it had died and she’d misplaced the charger. He hated not hearing from her. It hadn’t felt right, going to bed without the sound of her voice in his ear.
Shit, I’ve got it bad
. He set the phone aside. His mother’s words echoed in his head, and he wondered what Sienna did know about her mother’s death. Had she kept the truth a secret?

He scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. He’d tried to avoid falling for her, but in the end, it seemed stupid to deny the facts. She made him laugh. She turned him on. She listened, didn’t judge, and trusted him with her students. He watched the sun rise over the mountain in the distance, a smudge of yellow over brown. She made him want to be a better person.

He got up and made a pot of coffee, then looked in the fridge. Fifteen minutes later, pancake mix sat in a bowl next to a plate of bacon and a dish of scrambled eggs.

“Are we feeding an army this morning?” Loretta said from the doorway. She wore a sweater and pajamas bottoms with cats printed on them.

“Ma! Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve helped you get up.”

“I am still capable of dressing myself, thank you very much.” She hopped to a seat at the kitchen table and leaned her crutches against the wall.

Mike swirled pancake batter on the hot skillet and poured two cups of coffee. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I fell off a ladder and broke a few things.” She shook her head. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have tried to do it by myself.” She sighed and pushed her hair from her face. “I hate getting old, Mikey.”

“Happens to all of us,” he said as he flipped the pancakes. He added one to a plate of bacon and eggs and set it on the table. “What did Uncle Henry used to say? ‘It’s better than the alternative.’”

She smiled. “Yes, it is. He was right.”

“Besides,” he went on as he joined her, “there’s someone who lives around the corner who doesn’t think you’re old at all. Seems like he might want to spend a little more time with you.”

She looked up from pouring maple syrup on her pancake. “Are you getting fresh with me?”

“Not at all. I’m just saying that if you and Doc want to go out, you should. Call him up. Invite him to dinner.”

She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe I will. We’ll see.” She rested her splinted arm on the table. “Speaking of calling people up, did you talk to Sienna?”

“No.”

She tsked and took a long sip of coffee. “Well, you should. Don’t let that one get away. She’s the best thing to happen to you in a long time.”

Mike grinned. He knew. Damn, but he knew.

An hour later, with the kitchen spotless and his mother on the couch in front of her favorite television channel, Mike changed into a pair of jeans and a Springer Fitness polo shirt. He’d told Hans he’d be in by ten, but he wanted to see Sienna first. He sent a quick text before pulling out of the driveway just in case she hadn’t gotten up yet. Not like that would be a bad thing. He could think of little else he’d rather do than crawl under the covers and slide his hands along her naked curves.

“Good morning. Missed hearing from u. I’ll swing by in 5. MB we can get coffee?”

He left his phone on the passenger seat, but she didn’t text back. In a matter of minutes, he found an empty parking spot on Main Street and walked up the stairs to her apartment. He passed the Ericksen sisters’ door with a grin. Sienna had told him her discovery about Ella secretly feeding the stray cats.

He knocked on her door and waited. Not a sound. He knocked again and checked the time. Almost eight thirty. Too early on a Saturday morning? This time, he pressed his ear against the door and heard movement inside. Just when he was about to knock a third time, she opened it.

“Hi there.” She looked gorgeous, her hair still sleep-mussed and a robe tied loosely around her waist.

She met his gaze for a fraction of a second and then looked at his knees. She didn’t open the door all the way or invite him in.

“Something wrong?” He held up his phone. “I texted you last night. I left my phone at work and we didn’t get out of the Med Center until almost six. By the time I went back to the gym to get it—”

“How’s your mom?”

“She’s okay. Broke her ankle when she fell off the ladder.”

Sienna put a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said through her fingers.

“She’ll be all right. On crutches and in a soft cast for a while. Maybe the upside is that she’ll let me help her more often.” He tried for another smile, but she didn’t return it. “Are you mad?”

She turned and walked back into the foyer. She hadn’t closed the door, so he followed her. “Hello? Earth to Sienna?”

She turned to face him and gripped the edge of her recliner. “Why didn’t you tell me you spent time in prison?”

He had to hand it to her, she didn’t pull any punches. Her face went white, and she bit her bottom lip. Everything inside him shattered. “How did you find out?”

“That’s what you have to say? How did I find out?” She closed her eyes for a second. “I asked you to be honest. To tell me if there was anything else I should know.”

“You think I was going to tell you about that? Shit, you’d never give me the time of day again. You’d look at me the way you’re looking right now, angry and disappointed and like I’m a piece of gum you have to scrape off your shoe. You wouldn’t care why or what happened.”

“Felony theft? That’s what your friend Al told me.”

If he could have punched something in the room, he would have. As it was, it took everything Mike had not to put a hole through the wall. “He’s not my friend,” he choked out.

“I went by your house yesterday after Hans told me about your mom. I was knocking on your door when Al drove by.”

I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.
Mike’s breath grew tight in his chest.

She sank into the chair. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Would you have gone out with me if I had?”

She didn’t have to answer. Her face gave it away.

“That’s why.” He took a few steps into the living room. “It’s a long story. It’s the worst story of my life, and if I could live one hour of my life over again, it would be the hour I broke into Edie’s apartment and tried to take back what was mine.” Dullness settled over him, as if already the feelings were leaving him, the joy and comfort and natural high, the pure happiness he’d felt with Sienna over the last few weeks.

“You told me she cleaned out your bank accounts.” Sienna ran one finger over a worn spot in the arm of the recliner. “So what, you tried to get the money back?”

“All I wanted was the title to my Mustang. I’d had that car since I was seventeen. Restored the whole thing the summer after I graduated from high school.” He stared at a pile of yellow notepads sitting on an end table. “She moved in with her boyfriend after I kicked her out, so I knew where she was. Al and I went there one night when I thought she’d be working.”

“You broke in?”

“Al did. He knew how to pick locks.”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze no matter how hard he tried. “Did you find it? The title?”

“Yeah. In the top drawer of a file cabinet in her bedroom.” Along with a handful of naked photos that scumbag boyfriend must have taken of Edie. He’d actually gone into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet at the sight of them. The final time he saw her, he’d wanted to ask how long she’d been screwing someone else.

“If your name was on the title, they couldn’t have prosecuted you for theft.”

“They didn’t. Not theft of the car anyway.” He ran one hand over his forehead. “I was pissed. She had stacks of cash in that drawer too, under the envelope with the title.”

“So you took the cash.”

“She’d stolen almost ten grand out of our joint account, of which probably less than a thousand was money she’d actually earned. Yeah, I took it. Not all of it. Five grand. Figured that was compensation for the shit she put me through.”

Sienna closed her eyes.

“She came home from wherever she was—not work, I found out that much, ’cause she’d lost her job six months earlier and never told me. Saw me and Al there and called the cops.”

“Why didn’t you just give her back the money?”

He shrugged. “I was stupid. I figured any judge would take one look at the situation and understand. Maybe even make her pay me back the whole amount.”

She leaned back in the recliner and pushed herself with one toe, forward and back.

“I’m guessing that’s not how it went down.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. It’s just a shitty part of my history, and I’m embarrassed as hell about it, and I’m hoping it doesn’t matter now. I did my time.” His legs went wobbly, and he sat in a straight-backed chair near the door. “Can you forgive me?”

She didn’t answer right away. “It’s a lot to forgive. I wish you’d told me the truth from the start.”

He folded his hands between his legs. “You didn’t tell me the truth about your mother.”

“What are you talking about?” Her words were ice.

“The Oxy? The drugs in her system the day she died?” He glanced up, but before he finished, he could tell by her expression that she’d never known.

“Of course she had Oxy in her system. She was taking them for her back pain.” Then realization flashed across her face. “You son of a bitch. Are you saying she—”

He didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Instead, his gaze snagged on a yellow notepad sitting on the table beside him.

Pine Point Blue Collar Workers,
read the title at the top of the page. He reached down and flipped it over.
Local Professionals
, read the next. Below that title he saw his own name.

Owns a gym

Divorced

Lives with mom

Spent time out in CA? Came back why??

Mike grabbed the notepad in both hands and flipped to the next page. Then the next.

“Please put that down,” Sienna said, her voice unsteady.

He didn’t look up. On every page, he saw the names of people and places he knew. Arrows connecting them. Question marks. Theories about past mistakes and present connections and possible affairs. The blood climbed into his face.

“Mike, please don’t read that.”

“What is this? Your
research?” He flipped back to the second page, the one with his name on it. “This was what you wanted? Dirt on me? Is that why you came back?”

“No.”

“You must be damn happy you found out about me being in prison. Wow, that’ll make your whole project, huh? Local guy hides great big secret from everyone except his mother and his former friend and the woman he’s sleeping with.” Agony tore at him. “
Was
sleeping with. You can be sure that’s never happening again.” Everything he’d told her, everything he’d shared with her, shot to shit. “Was that the plan all along? Get me to sleep with you and tell you everything I know about Pine Point? He whistled. “Man, sorry I held back.” He shook the notepad so hard the top sheet ripped partway off. “I could tell you so much more,” he said through clenched teeth. “Not like I would.”

“Please, listen to me. I didn’t go out with you or sleep with you as part of my research.”

“Really? Because that’s sure as hell how it looks.” He got to his feet. She tried to reach for his hand, but he shook it off. “I didn’t tell you about prison because I cared about you. I didn’t want to ruin what we had.” He tossed the notepad on the floor. “Thought maybe you cared about me too, but it looks like I was wrong.”

“I do care. Please, don’t go.”

He shook his head and turned around.
You want secrets? Add your mother’s drug addiction to the list.
But he wouldn’t say those ugly words. He could never hurt her that way. Instead, he slammed the door behind him and walked to his truck, jaw and fists clenched so tightly that all the blood disappeared from them. Didn’t matter. He didn’t have much of a heart left anyway.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Somehow, Sienna got through the next few days. Only the nonstop needs of her students kept her from dwelling on her conversation with Mike and the look of betrayal on his face as he read the pages she’d written. It wasn’t what it seemed like, she wanted to say, but she knew that wasn’t true. All that work, all her research, did stem from the people she’d met over the past three months, the stories she’d heard, and the things she’d seen. A hundred times, she picked up her phone and tried to think of something to say to him. Then she thought of those words, the things he’d said about her mother, and she put her phone down again. Ridiculous. Impossible. Instead, she the spent nights curled in her recliner, flipping pages of her notepads, and painstakingly transferring the details to her laptop. The only person she didn’t write about was Mike.

“Miss Cruz, is Mr. Mike coming to read-along this week?” Caleb asked on Monday.

“I don’t think so,” she answered. “He’s very busy with his job.”

“Maybe
we
could read to
him
,” Billy offered. “Maybe he would like a break from doing all the reading.”

He’s taking a break,
she thought
, but not from reading.

“What about the baseball game?” Caleb asked on Thursday. “Mr. Mike said he would go to the Silver Valley Panthers’ opening-day game with us. He said he’d sit behind home plate with us and tell us about all the players.” He walked over to Sienna’s desk and put his hand next to hers. “Opening day is April sixth. That’s one week from Tuesday.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Sienna cleared her throat and looked at the hopeful faces of her students. Even Dawn waited with her hands clenched under her chin. “I don’t know if Mr. Mike will be able to come along. But I’ll call about tickets today, okay? If there are still some left, I’ll ask Ms. James if we can take a field trip to the game.”

“Yay!” Billy and Bailey danced around the rug. Caleb nodded. Silas rocked in his chair with a giant grin. Only Dawn didn’t move or change expression, as if she knew Sienna was lying about Mike and the reasons he didn’t come to see them anymore.

He lied to me
, she thought at night, as she lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
He didn’t really lie
, came the next thought.
He just didn’t tell me about a pretty bad part of his past.
She tried to put herself in his position. Would she have confessed an arrest and jail time to someone she wanted to spend time with?

Probably not.

But that didn’t change the heaviness in her heart. And when she let herself consider the possibility about her mother and the painkillers, everything turned darker. It couldn’t be true. Elenita’s death couldn’t be connected to a drug addiction. Sienna blinked up into the dark. But what if it was? What else didn’t she know?

* * * * *

That Friday, Mike pulled up a stool at the end of the bar next to Mac and Damian.

“Hey, look who the hell it is.” Mac thumped him on the back. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Keeping long hours at the gym.” It was the only way to stop thinking about Sienna twenty-four seven, and even that strategy was barely working.

“Heard your mom took a tumble,” Damian leaned across Mac to say. “She okay?”

Mike nodded and took the beer Nate poured him. “She gets rid of her crutches on Monday if the doctor gives her the green light. Then it’s a month in a soft cast.”

“She keeping you busy?”

“Not too much, believe it or not. Doc Halloran’s been coming around and helping out.”

“Oh, yeah? Some senior loving?” Mac asked.

“Something like that.” He took a long drink of the cool amber beer. “I’m all for it, if it makes her happy.” At least one Springer living in Pine Point deserved that.

“Sienna coming by tonight?” Damian asked as Nate dropped off three menus.

Mike trained his gaze on the TV behind the bar. “Don’t think so. We’re not really hanging out anymore.”
She betrayed me. She betrayed all of us.
The names on the yellow paper swam in front of his eyes, and he had to drink again to banish them.

“Sorry to hear that.”

Mike shrugged. Should’ve known he couldn’t trust her. Couldn’t trust any woman. They always found a way to hurt you.

Nate turned up the volume as the local sports broadcast came on. “You guys know what you want?”

They ordered, and then Mike found himself watching the scouting report for the Silver Valley Panthers.

“Hopes are high this year for the Panthers, who have newcomer Tommy Allen as a starting pitcher and the dazzling duo of Myers and Rivera at second and shortstop for another season…”

A lump caught in Mike’s throat.
I told the kids we’d go to a Panthers game. Opening day.
He couldn’t believe how much he’d looked forward to the idea of talking pitch counts with Caleb or helping Silas catch a fly ball. He couldn’t believe how much those kids had gotten under his skin, period. He watched the highlight reels of the Panthers practicing in their home stadium and wondered if Sienna would take them to the game without him.

For the first time, his resolve faltered. He’d spent a long five days pissed beyond belief. He’d worked out until he could barely move, he’d snapped at his mother, and he’d gone for long drives, trying to make sense of someone who would exploit other people’s private lives. He spun the beer mug in his hand. He couldn’t forgive her with a snap of his fingers. But he wondered if he’d been too hasty in walking out of her apartment without letting her explain.

“Here you go,” Nate said a few minutes later. He delivered burgers for Mac and Damian and a Reuben for Mike. He sank his teeth into the sandwich with gusto. For a few minutes, he forgot about Sienna. He ate every last bite, finished the fries on his plate, and declined another beer. “See you guys around,” he said as he paid his bill.

“Taking off already?”

“My place is a pigsty. And I’ve got quarterly numbers to go over at the gym.”

Mac and Damian waved goodbye, and Mike ambled to his truck, parked in the back lot. He tried not to think of the last time he’d parked here, when Sienna hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him.

“How’s yer girlfriend doin’ these days?” Al Halloran appeared from the shadows, eyes bloodshot and words slurred.

Mike froze.
Count to ten
, he told himself.
Last thing you want to do is get into a fight with this asshole
. He didn’t answer. Instead, he kept walking to his truck.

“Hey.” Al cut him off partway there. “What, now you don’t talk to an old friend?”

Old friend?
Mike shoved by him. “We haven’t been friends in a long time.”

Al didn’t take the hint. He followed Mike to his truck and reached for the handle.

“Get your fucking hand off my truck.”

Al’s eyes went dark and cold. “I’m blackballed in this town. Can’t get a job to save my life.”

“Could’ve told you that six weeks ago.”

“Wasn’t that hard for you.”

“I don’t spend my days stoned out of my mind.”

Al shrugged and let go of the door handle. When Mike went to open it, he reached out and grabbed Mike’s shirt instead. “You gotta help me. I helped you. When you needed a job, I gave you one. Gave you a place to live too, for a whole year when you came out to California. You forget about that?”

Mike wrenched away from Al’s grimy grasp. “I’ve been thinking more about all the ways you screwed me since.”

Al stuck both hands in his back pockets. “You took that money from Edie all on yer own, man.”

Yes. He had. And he’d been paying for it ever since.

If Al hadn’t told Sienna about prison, she wouldn’t have ignored his texts that night. He wouldn’t have gone over there the next morning. He wouldn’t have seen all the things she’d written about people. One tiny pebble in the pond, and all the ripples spread.

Before he knew it, Mike took Al’s shirt in his fist. He bent close enough to see the gap in Al’s greasy smile and smell his terrible breath. “Why’d you tell her?” His fist tightened, and the fabric bunched around Al’s neck. “Why’d you tell Sienna about me serving time?”

Al wriggled in his grasp and struggled for breath, but Mike didn’t let go or loosen his grip. “It didn’t have anything to do with you. You should’ve minded your own business.” Al’s eyes bulged in his face, and finally Mike dropped his hand. The Reuben and the beer churned in his stomach. “Get the fuck out of here. You make me sick.”

He turned to go, but Al must be stupider than Mike remembered, because he punched Mike in the kidney as he went to unlock his truck. Pain shot through his back, and he staggered against the truck. “What the fu—” Another punch. This one took Mike almost to his knees.

With a roar, he spun. Red blurred his vision, and he swung out with both fists.
You ruined everything
, he thought as he made contact. Once. Then again. Then a third time. Bone splintered and drops of blood sprayed both their shirtfronts. Someone shouted from across the parking lot, and Mike backpedaled as his senses returned. Al crouched on the pavement, holding his face. Blood poured from between his fingers.

What the hell did I do?

Mike looked up to see Mac and Damian standing in the parking lot, wide-eyed. He grabbed Al’s arm and pulled him to his feet. “Get out of here. You tell anyone I beat the piss outta you, and I’ll send the cops to wherever you are so fast you won’t have time to hide your stash.” His hands trembled. In the blink of an eye, he’d returned to the punk he’d been years ago, fighting, cursing, letting someone else get the better of his temper. He swallowed back bile and hated himself.

Al staggered away without another word.

Mike drove straight home and took a long shower. He didn’t want to be that person anymore. He’d come to town wanting to leave that guy far behind him. He closed his eyes and rinsed under the spray. Tiny spots of Al’s blood covered one wrist, and he rubbed them until the skin went raw.
You have to be a better person.

He toweled off and walked naked to his bedroom. He’d started to become a better person, first when he returned to Pine Point and then when he opened Springer Fitness. He’d learned from the past and left it behind him. He hadn’t realized the missing part of his life until Sienna came to town. She’d changed him, her and her students. He stretched out on his bed and flipped on the TV. He wanted to be better. He wanted to be proud of the way he spent his days. Most of all, he wanted the feeling of deep-down happiness he’d discovered over the last three months.

But he had no idea had to get it back.