Hidden Read Free

thick brown hair was messier than usual—as though he’d been running his hand through it all morning.
    Scott had a habit of doing that when he was working through things that upset him.
    She wanted to speak. To tell him that amusing Taylor with Blue while they talked was fine with her. That she was happy to hear whatever was on his mind.
    She just didn’t have it in her. She’d hardly slept. Was having trouble staying focused. Jumping at every innocuous click, bump or whoosh of air. She’d even dropped Taylor’s spoon earlier when the refrigerator had clicked on behind her.
    With a jerky nod, she followed him into the living room, where one entire corner was taken up withTaylor’s playpen, toys and sundry other toddler possessions. She would’ve moved the changing table out of the crowded room now that he was older and it was easier to have him climb onto the couch rather than lifting his almost twenty pounds up to the table for a diaper change, but they didn’t have anyplace to put it. Scott’s house, as was the case with most of the homes in the older San Diego South Park neighborhood, didn’t have a garage.
    And the crib and dresser in Taylor’s small room left no space for anything else. Which made the fact that they had little else less noticeable.
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    â€œWhat’s up?” They were in Scott’s room—their room for now—with the door open so she could hear Taylor.
    He paced at the end of the king-size bed, staring down at the hardwood floor. Sitting in the old wooden rocker that had become a haven to her, Tricia hugged a throw pillow to her belly and waited.
    Scott stopped. Glanced over at her. He sat on the end of the bed she’d made only an hour before. With hands clasped between his knees, he looked over at her.
    â€œI haven’t been completely honest with you.”
    Her breath whooshed out, but her lungs didn’t immediately expand to allow any entry of air.
    He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head.
    â€œWhat?” Her voice was low, partly because she was having trouble saying anything at all. Partly because of Taylor in the next room. But also because, as she sawhim sitting there, she watched— felt —the struggle inside him.
    She knew. Oh, not his secret, obviously. But she knew all about the dark pain associated with keeping secrets.
    â€œI shouldn’t have lied, and I’m sorry.” The conversation was getting more and more ominous. Tricia wanted to scream at him for lying to her. She’d been lied to enough. Couldn’t take any more.
    But how could she be upset with him for something she was doing herself? No one was guiltier of hiding things than Tricia Campbell—name chosen from the Campbell’s soup can she’d seen on his counter when, the morning after the first time they’d had sex, he’d asked her full name.
    â€œWhy…” she coughed. “Why don’t you tell me what this is about?” If she had to find another place to live, she’d need as much of the day as she could get. Taylor had to be in bed by seven or he’d be too tired to sleep.
    Still hugging the pillow, Tricia tried her hardest to ignore the far-too-familiar sense of impending darkness, the dread and panic that she could never seem to escape. She thought of the blue sky outside. Of the beach in Coronado, there for her to walk any time of the day or night. She thought of cuddling up to her small son for a long afternoon nap.
    â€œI’m—I haven’t always lived…this way.” He gestured to the room.
    â€œWhat? I’m keeping the place too clean? I don’t mean to, I just…”
    â€œNo!” He grinned at her and Tricia’s heart lightened. That quickly. It was why she’d been drawn to the man in the first place. There was something special about him and something deep in her recognized it. Even if, consciously, she had no idea what it