Page 46 of Creeping Beautiful

I look over at Indie when she says this. We’re on a road trip because we’re only going to Pensacola for this job. It’s an easy one because it’s Indie’s first time out. All she has to do is what she’s been told. If everything goes well, we’ll be home tomorrow before lunch. Donovan is flying in tomorrow afternoon for her debrief, and by tomorrow evening she’ll be back playing in the woods with Nate.

“What kind of game?” I ask her.

“Driving games. Nate told me all about them.”

“Did you tell him what we’re doing?”

“No. I told him you were taking me to see our aunt.”

I chuckle. This girl can lie like nobody’s business.

“I wouldn’t tell him secrets like that, Adam. Do you wanna play a game or not?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“OK. This is how you do it…”

And she takes her time to explain the rules of the Slug Bug game. Which I have played before with McKay, of course. But there aren’t enough Bugs on the road these days to have any fun at it. So we change the rules to include motorcycles when thirty minutes into the trip not a single punch has been slugged.

She laughs a lot and punches me hard when she spots a Bug or a motorcycle before me and I realize… I like her.

I would not call her a bad kid and I have always respected her, but like her?

Indie Anna Accorsi is not an easy girl to like.

But her smile is nice. She doesn’t smile for me the way she smiles for Donovan, or even McKay when he hands out praise. But that’s OK too. Because this smile is all mine.

PRESENT DAY

But by the time that job was over I realized something else too.

I loved her.

I guess that’s what happens when you get used to something and then someone tries to take it away from you.

Because our trip home from Pensacola was two days later than planned and Indie Anna didn’t smile a single second of that ride.

She didn’t cry, either. But I could tell she wanted to.

And I did exactly what McKay told me to do if things went sideways. I did not yell. Not once. I just said, “It’s fine, Indie. It’s gonna be fine,” in the most soothing voice I could manage as I watched the Company doctor restrain her to the bed and fix her up.

And the game we played on the drive home was a new one called Let’s Pretend That Didn’t Happen.

Knowing what I do now, I probably wouldn’t have played that game with her.

I probably would’ve done a lot of things differently if I had known how good she’d get at pretending shit didn’t happen.

But hindsight can kiss my ass. You can’t change the past.

Indie Anna Accorsi is a beautiful little mess. She is a lovely little bundle of blonde hair and blue-eyed darkness. And even though I should have all kinds of regrets about how she came to be mine and how we came to be hers, I would absolutely do it all again.

Knowing her now, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Because if all those terrible things hadn’t happened, she would belong to him right now. She would be living in that little brick house with Nathan St. James.

She would be whole, and normal, and maybe even happier.

And my heart would be shattered into tiny shards. Millions of bitty pieces.