Axel must have seen something alarming pass through my expression because his hands grip my shoulders. He dips his head so he can look into my eyes. “Talk to me, Brantley. You’re scaring me a little bit, here.”
Shaking my head to clear it, I take a step away from him. “I’m sorry…I have to go.”
I reach down, grabbing my purse. “Would you…will you please go to the back and let Arden know I had to run out? Tell her I’ll call her in a few hours, and that I’m really sorry for leaving like this.”
His face darkens. “Brantley.”
“Please, Axel!” There’s a note of panic in my voice that stops him cold.
Axel evaluates me for only a split second before he nods. “Yeah. Okay, Spice. I got you covered. You have my number, and I want you to use it. You hear me? You need anything at all, call me.”
Nodding, I toss him a grateful glance as I walk toward the door. “Thanks, Axel.”
The last thing I see before I leave The Art of Java is his nod.
I’m heading to Florida to pick up my daughter.
4
Axel
I watched her run out of that coffee shop, and every single instinct inside me roared: something isn’t right!
Everything about Brantley had changed when she’d gotten that call. Her body had stiffened up; she’d gone rigid as a brick wall. I couldn’t help getting out of my seat; I’d needed to touch her, to make sure she was all right. And she hadn’t been. Her expression when she had turned to look at me had been like she’d just heard the worst news of her life.
Had someone died? But then, why hadn’t she gone straight to Arden to tell her what had happened? I didn’t know if Brantley still had family back in Florida where she and Arden were originally from. I had never gotten the impression that there was a lot left back there for her, including a loving family to go back and celebrate things like holidays with. Definitely not someone who’d cause a look like that to cross her face if she’d found out they’d passed away.
I knew the look; it was probably exactly the way my face had looked the day I got the call about my parents. It’s still the day I consider the worst of my life, with the exception of Flash’s accident. My parents were my whole world, the reason up was up and down was down. They kept my equilibrium stable, and when I lost them, I lost a lot of that stability in my life. So much of that purpose that made me whole.
I saw some of that stricken realization in Brantley’s eyes an hour ago when she’d answered that phone call.
Who the hell was on the other end of that line?
I watch now, my back against the wall, as Arden paces back and forth across her studio. After I’d given her Brantley’s message, she’d tried calling her best friend, to no avail. Brantley wasn’t answering her phone, and for some reason that really freaked Arden out.
“Something’s wrong,” she assured me, with a grim look in her green eyes. “This isn’t like Brantley.
So Arden had called in the college-aged girl who picked up shifts for them in the evenings at the shop, and as soon as she had arrived, we’d disappeared into the studio to talk things over and think. Arden had called Flash at the office, telling him what was going on. He’d asked her if she wanted him to leave the office, but she’d told him to stay put for now. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon, he’d only be working for another couple of hours anyway. With any luck, we’d hear from Brantley soon, and everything would be explained.
I really fucking hope so. Because Arden’s growing increasingly agitated as the minutes tick by without hearing from her friend, and I can’t fight the feeling that I should have stopped Brantley, should have somehow forced her to tell me what was going on, or allowed me to come with her on whatever mission she was now embarking on alone.
It’s that thought, the vision I have in my head of her behind the wheel, heading off somewhere, to meet God knows who, alone, that’s driving me fucking crazy right now. I don’t want her on her own.
Arden throws up her hands. “I just don’t understand! Why would she just leave? And not tell me where she was going?”
The memory of Brantley’s expression after that phone call flickers to life in my mind. Pushing off the wall, I move to the work table in the center of the room and absently scan the tools lying in organized piles on top. “She seemed really upset about whatever the other person on the other end of that call had just told her, Ards. Not sure she was thinking the way she normally would. Is there anyone in Florida she’s still got a connection to? Someone who…she’d get a call if they passed away, maybe?”
Arden looks startled. “Why would you say that?”
I blow out a breath of frustration. “I don’t know…it’s just the feeling I got, you know? It’s the way she looked. Like someone must have died.”
Arden folds her arms across her chest. Her whole, thin frame heaves with the force of her sigh. “Brantley isn’t close with her family. Her mom ran out on them when she was just a little girl, and she doesn’t really have a relationship with her dad. He wasn’t a nice guy. So I can’t think...no, I don’t think she’d go back, even if he were…” She trails away, looking lost. “She’d at least tell me!”
She nods emphatically, like she’s answered her own question. “If her dad had passed away and she’d just gotten that news, I think she’d tell me. It might have come as a shock, but she’d say something, and then we’d talk about whether or not she was going to go back. She hates Florida, you know. Lots of bad memories there, for her.”
That thought snags on something in me. Bad memories? Brantley, beautiful, vibrant, and saucy: having a dark or sad past. The idea doesn’t settle well with me. It makes me feel twisted up inside in a way that I can’t explain. Someone like her should have had a good life from the minute she was born, not have had shit she had to suffer through to get to where she is now.
But I know better than anyone it doesn’t always work that way.
Eventually, Arden packs up her things to go home. She needs to relieve Parker and take care of Dahlia.
“Keira going to be okay closing up?” I ask.
Arden nods, swinging her purse onto her shoulder. “She’s done it a few times before, even though Brantley is usually the one too close. She’ll be okay.”
Nodding, I walk Arden out front and to her car. “You call me if you hear from her, okay?”
Arden pauses in the driver’s seat, looking up at me. Thoughtful green eyes probe mine. “You really care, don’t you?”
Surprise hits me in the gut. “Of course I do.”
She stares at me for another second before she seems to decide something. Then she gives a firm dip of her chin before closing her door and driving off toward the midtown home she shares with my brother.
Later that evening, I’m sitting on my back patio. My two-story beach house is located on Tybee Island, just outside of downtown Savannah. When I left the air force, I knew I wanted to live by the water. The air calls out to me, but so does the ocean. I get out on the water whenever I can, surfing and kayaking, paddle boarding and just sitting on the beach to watch the sun rise or set. It’s a place that calms the thoughts racing through my mind, settles my thrashing spirit when I can’t get up into the clouds.