“Then I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll decide what comes next. In the meantime, try to get some rest.” He shoved his legal pad into his briefcase and rose.
Corinne didn’t move.
“Aren’t you going to walk him out?” Whitney asked.
“I—We’re not…together,” she stammered.
Those bruised brown eyes slitted in a glare aimed squarely at him. “You idiot.”
Tucker opened his mouth—to say what, he had no idea—but Corinne beat him to it.
“He’s not the idiot in this scenario.”
Did that mean she regretted walking away? Tucker quashed the surge of hope. He wasn’t about to pin anything on an off-hand remark.
Whitney stared at her. “Please don’t tell me you chose Friday night to actually listen to anything coming out of my mouth.”
Corinne ducked her head. “You weren’t wrong.”
“Oh for pity’s sake. I was wrong. I was hurt and angry, and I said it to get a rise out of you. And apparently it did. Why should you ruin a perfectly good fifteen-year streak now?”
Tucker watched this play-by-play and decided he’d never understand women.
Whitney pointed at him with an imperious hand. “Go fix it.”
“But you’re not settled yet—” Corinne began.
“I’ll see to that,” Lily Mae said, coming into the room. “Whitney’s right. Go fix it.”
Corinne looked his way, a mixture of panic and resignation on her face. “It seems we need to have a conversation.”
So he was finally going to get that explanation? Tucker spread his hands. “I’m all ears.”
~*~
Exhaustion did nothing to keep the nerves at bay as she followed Tucker back to his apartment. She wasn’t ready for this. Truth be told, she might never be ready for this, so maybe being railroaded into it was for the best. She owed Tucker an explanation. She didn’t dare hope for more than him maybe not hating her when she finished, because Whitney was right. She was an idiot.
“Want wine?” he asked, ever the congenial host.
“It’d put me to sleep.”
“Okay then.” He kicked back against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms.
For the first time since she’d known him, he didn’t turn on the stereo, so there was no music to set the tone. His usually open expression was shuttered, and Corinne had the sudden thought that she’d hate facing him from the witness stand. This wasn’t her kind, funny Tucker. She’d given him up and hurt him in the process. Now he stood, closed off and remote. A stranger.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“How about starting with why the fuck you thought it was a good idea to go up against a guy twice your size, who could’ve done to you exactly what he did to Whitney?”
Corinne refused to flinch, though she recognized the foolishness of her actions. Instead, she squared her shoulders. “Because I’ve survived worse. She hasn’t.”
He swore, low and vicious.
She hated talking about this. But she’d opened this subject, so she might as well get it all out there. She waggled the middle fingers of her right hand. “These fingers were jammed when I tried to block
a blow. He was upset I didn’t have dinner ready on time.” At the time she’d managed to convince herself it’d been an accident. That Lance had just been gesticulating wildly, and she got caught in the crossfire.
Holding up her left hand she said, “This wrist was broken when he shoved me back, yanking the phone away to prove I was talking to another guy. It was the cell phone company calling to offer us an upgrade.” The stunned shock of that moment still reverberated through her, but Corinne didn’t focus on it, moving instead to the next thing. “He dislocated my left shoulder when I talked back to him because he didn’t like how I’d cut my hair. And of course there were countless bruises for doing nothing more than breathing too loud or interrupting his TV time. The coup de grace was when he broke my collarbone because he said I looked at another man on the street. I left him that night with nothing but Kurt, his diaper bag, and the clothes on our backs.”