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TRACK 42 - PART 4

There's something I didn't tell you about last night.

That statement was enough to rattle my own nerves.

"What is it?"

She folded her arms across her chest and averted her eyes to the ground. Now I was truly beginning to worry over what she was about to say.

"Come on, baby. What is it?" I did my best to swallow the fear out from my tone to remain comforting. "You can tell me."

"When you were gone..." she started, squeezing her eyes shut.

"What happened?"

Her eyes glossed over as she whispered, "Please don't be mad at me."

A lump formed at the back of my throat. "I won't." I desperately hoped my words would end up being true. But the way she shook with nerves in front of me, barely able to hold my gaze, caused me to think that I may have lied.

"I called him," she said softly.

Oh god.

"I don't know why I did it-"

Please tell me she didn't.

"You weren't around and I couldn't get it out of my head-"

No - please tell me this wasn't happening.

"I know it was fucking stupid of me to do-"

I didn't think I would be able to hear her utter the words out loud.

"But I couldn't open that letter."

Eyes widening at what she had said, I quickly interjected. "Wait, hold on. Who did you call?"

"My dad."

Wait. What?

She shuddered. "Saying that word sounds fucking weird out loud, doesn't it?"

"What made you want to call him?"

TJ shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, really. I saw my mom a couple of times when you first left. She kept asking me if I had burned that letter. I told her I did even though it was right there in my bag. And then I just couldn't get it out of my head... But I didn't want to open it." Her green eyes finally found their way back to mine. "So I told Hank that I wanted to tell him on the phone that if he wanted to talk, he could come and speak to me in person. I wasn't going to read it in a letter. He could say whatever he wrote to my face."

"You said all of that to him on the phone?"

She nodded.

"And, you thought I was going to be upset because you called him?"

She nodded again, but this time, with a slight hesitation in her movement. "The last time we talked about him and the letter, things didn't go so well."

I winced at the memory. "Yeah, well, I was being a fucking idiot," I told her bluntly. "But in no way am I mad at you for doing that. Baby, I'm fucking proud of you."

"You are?"

"Of course I am. It takes a lot of courage to do what you did."

TJ stepped forward and closed the remaining distance between us by placing her lips on mine. I raised my hand to her cheek to cup her face as I kissed her back.

"Thank you," she mumbled as she pulled back.

"For what?"

"You said you don't know what you did to deserve someone like me in your life," she reiterated what I had told her last night. "That's how I feel about you."