“Careful, there,” I said.
None of them answered me, just kept right on adjusting the straps with her dangling in the air. I held my breath as they got it moving again. Let it out when she was on the dolly they’d use to roll her in the truck.
Showing no care whatsoever, as far as I could tell, they worked on getting her up the ramp. One of them stood in the truck and pulled a strap they’d tied around her. The other two pushed from the behind. Between the three of them, they got her on—barely. I’d warned them she was heavy.
I’d been up most of the night finishing her, but I wasn’t yet feeling the lack of sleep. I was still buzzed, on a creative high that I reckoned would keep me up a few more hours before I’d crash.
They started tying her down, and I pushed my way in.
“I’ll get this.” I took the strap from one of the movers.
He just shrugged and they all gave me space to work. I reckoned they thought I was being overly fussy about it all, but I didn’t give a shit. I’d worked too hard on this piece to let them bounce her around down the highway all the way to Charlotte.
My phone rang as I got the last strap tied down to my satisfaction. It was Dee.
“Hey,” I said, wiping my forehead with my sleeve.
“How’s everything going over there?” she asked. “Did the movers get the piece?”
“We just finished loading her.”
“Just now?” she asked. “They should have been on the way to Charlotte hours ago.”
I jumped out of the back of the moving truck. “I’m aware of that, Dee. They were late, and it’s taken some doing to get her in the truck.”
Dee’s huff sounded highly annoyed. Or maybe she was just as stressed about all this as I was. “Well, okay, are they on their way?”
“Soon enough. And Dee, I swear to god, if there is a single scratch on her—”
“Calm down,” she said. “These guys are good. I use them all the time.”
I wasn’t nearly as confident as she seemed to be, and it bothered me that I wouldn’t be in Charlotte to help unload when they arrived. Wasn’t much I could do about it, though.
“Well, she’s on the truck, so that’s something,” I said.
“Okay, good. I’ll see you in Charlotte.”
“I reckon you will.” I hung up the phone and slid it in my back pocket.
The movers closed the back and piled into the truck. One of them stuck his head out the passenger’s side window. “Looks like you have a flat tire.”
The moving truck roared to life and they started down my long driveway. I cringed at how much it bumped up and down and hoped I’d secured my sculpture well enough.
I glanced at my truck. Front tire was indeed flat. “Well, shit.”
I walked over to inspect it but couldn’t find what had caused the puncture. I’d have to put on the spare and take it in. Probably need a new set of front tires. I stood up and kicked the tire. I didn’t have time for this shit. It was a six-hour drive to Charlotte, and I had to leave first thing in the morning.
The crunch of gravel made me look up. Figured it would be Jonah, but it was Leah Mae.
She was still driving that silver rental car. Struck me as odd that she hadn’t bothered to buy something. She must have been spending a fair bit of money on that rental—money that could have bought her something decent enough to drive, even for just a short while. Hell, I could have helped her find something if she’d have asked. But she hadn’t. She was still living in that vacation home of Scarlett’s, too—when she wasn’t staying at my place, that is. But it wasn’t like she had a home.
It all bothered me, maybe a fair bit more than it should. But I couldn’t stop thinking about L.A., and Brock Winston, and how she’d acted at that party. There were a lot of unanswered questions between me and Leah Mae, and seeing her come up my driveway didn’t make any of that better. Made it worse, in fact, because I knew I wasn’t in any state to talk to her.
She parked and got out of the car, smiling at me. She was dressed in strapless top covered in silver sequins with a skirt that looked like a pink tutu. By itself, the outfit might have looked a bit ridiculous, but she’d paired it with her cowboy boots, and the ensemble looked damn adorable. Course, she always looked adorable if you asked me.