I’m really back home.
But this isn’t my home.
I dress quickly, throwing on layers. It gets strangely cold at night here. It’s been a running joke since I was little that my hands and feet are always blocks of ice.
As I walk down the stairs and turn the corner, I realize I could close my eyes and recite this scene from memory.
Except one thing’s missing.
Dad.
Chapter Four
“I really wish we had an open cabin for you, Carrie,” Elaine clucks. She’s like a mother hen, shoving plates of chicken and potatoes at me. I groan. I am stuffed. Warm and full.
“It’s okay,” I say for the umpteenth time. Mikey keeps looking at me like I’m a ghost. I kind of am. He was fourteen when I left and was more into his football and video games than into talking to me. Mark took up my time, and college was my life. Dad begged for more than Sunday night dinners with him. I lived on campus and loved dorm life. Elaine and Brian hadn’t needed a babysitter for him since he was eleven or so, which meant we’d drifted apart.
“How’s school?” I ask him. His eyes go a bit dark, the flecks always changing color like a mood ring.
“Okay,” he mutters. I’ve touched on a sore spot. Brian frowns.
“Need to be better to stay on the team this season,” Brian says. Mikey’s jaw clenches. A tiny muscle twitches.
“You need tutoring?” His dyslexia was always a problem.
“He needs discipline,” Brian says with an annoyance I’ve never heard before. Suddenly I’m tense.
“Carrie can help you!” Elaine exclaims, handing me a hot cup of coffee the exact color I like. She always remembered how much cream I want. I mouth the words thank you and I take a sip. The caffeine won’t matter this late at night.
It’s not like I’ll get any sleep after a day like this.
“I can help,” I chime in. Mikey’s eyes meet mine and there’s a look of guarded gratitude. I can’t blame him for being skeptical. I left without saying goodbye to him.
Left without saying goodbye to anyone.
“What class?” I ask, persisting. I want to help. In a way, I need to help. It feels like a way to redeem myself.
And God knows, I need redemption.
“Anything involving writing,” he admits slowly.
“You were always such a good writer, Carrie!” Elaine gushes as she gives Mikey a half a hug, standing to his side and slinging one arm around his shoulders. His aw, shucks grin makes him look fourteen again.
The tension eases.
“Why don’t we sit down tomorrow and I’ll go over whatever you need help with. School just started last week, right?” I look at him and he’s relaxing, too.
Mikey nods. “Yeah. But not tomorrow. Tuesday. We can go to The Coffee Freak and study.”
I make a face. “The what?”
They all start to laugh.
“That’s right,” Brian says, nodding. “It opened two years ago. You wouldn’t know.”
“Wouldn’t know what?” Amy gives me bits of gossip in our calls and texts. What’s a coffee freak?
“The new fancy coffee house,” Elaine sniffs. “Like Starbucks.”
Mikey snorts. “Way better than Starbucks! That stuff is crap.” He smiles shyly. “I work there now. A barista.”
“Nice!” I say. I’d always imagined him working down at the lumber yard, not making half-caf skim lattes with a half shot of mocha syrup and a teaspoon of fat free organic Fair Trade whipped cream on it, but whatever.
I envision downtown. It’s tiny. Where would they put a coffee shop? There are some high-end clothing boutiques for the rich tourists. A gas station. An auto body shop. A camera store. The hippie food co-op. Some bars, mostly for college kids. A few restaurants. Two bookstores.
“Where is it?” I ask.
They all go silent. And then it hits me.
“Oh. The Shanty.” My voice is airy, lighter than a feather floating on the wind. A childhood, a life of memories seized and sold.
People drink their overpriced coffee in the same bar that meant everything to my dad. Having so much ripped from me means these changes shouldn’t get to me. They really shouldn’t. Coming home means facing what I blocked out.
A coffee shop, though. The Shanty is gone.
So is my childhood.
“You should see it, Carrie!” Mike says, his arms in the air, body pumped. “They redid the tin ceiling and painted all the duct work in these funky colors. The counter’s still there, and we have these copper machines imported from Italy. Coffee machines that cost more than my car. Each!” He continues but I can’t hear him, blood rushing to my ears.
I smile. I raise my eyebrows at times, and I make little sounds that indicate I’m hearing him and reacting to his words. That’s all pretend. My body can take in his nonverbal signals and fake the right responses. If he knew that I was dying inside he would stop talking in an instant.
He doesn’t know. And I won’t tell him.
Elaine sees something’s wrong with me and taps his hand. “Deal the cards! Euchre won’t play itself.”
Brian laughs and says, “I’m out. You three play.”
Three-person euchre sucks, though. Mikey’s face falls a bit, but he doesn’t argue. Brian’s on a recliner now in the living room, the kind that swivels, and he rolls it back toward the television, some detective show on the flat screen. Subtitles dot the bottom of the screen and he keeps the sound low.
I shake myself out of my own stupor and as Mikey deals, I ask Elaine a question.
“His hearing?” I nod toward Brian.
Her face crumples into a sympathetic frown. “Long gone and getting worse.”
Mikey leans in like a conspirator. I get a whiff of masculine body spray and it makes my stomach flip. Not in a good way.
“And he won’t wear the hearing aids,” Mikey adds.
“I see that hasn’t changed,” I say, shifting my cards around, grouping the clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts around, mind already focusing on strategy. And then I look up and laugh at Brian. I’ll say it if Mikey won’t.
“Brian! There are only three of us. We need a fourth!” I shout, nice and loud. Giggles pour out of me and I don’t know where they’re coming from, but I know they feel good. I feel good. Relaxed and like my batteries can charge just a little here in a safe place.
The door to the garage opens and I hear footsteps in the back. Must be Daniel, Mikey’s brother, coming in. He’s my age and Amy told me he’s a mechanic in town. Mikey mumbles something to his mom about how one card is bent at the corner, the Queen of Hearts.
And then a voice that makes heat fill my belly instantly asks, “Room for me?”
Chapter Five
Mark?
What is Mark doing here? Elaine gives me a sidelong look and a sinking feeling fills me. Matchmaking. The entire time Mark and I were dating she practically planned our wedding. Appointed herself my mother stand-in. Used to say she didn’t have a daughter but I was close enough. She couldn’t wait to go flower shopping and pick the perfect centerpieces for our wedding.
I never told Mark any of this, because it felt like I’d jinx it.
When I came back I figured she would try to get me back together with Mark. I thought she’d give me more than, oh, two hours of being home before setting us up.
As I turn and catch Mark’s eye, I see bewilderment. Then he tilts his chin and his jaw tightens, his eyes on Elaine. She’s suddenly up and busy at the kitchen counter, rearranging the perfectly-neat spices or something.
“Mark!” Brian says loudly. “Good to see you! How’s number four working for you?”
Number four?
I groan suddenly. I can’t help it. It hits me. I know what “number four” means. The fourth cottage out back.
Mark looks at me when I make the sound, and his tongue starts to roll in his cheek. He’s suppressing his anger, and I can’t blame him.
Neither one of us chose this.<
br />
Man, does he look good. Not that he didn’t look fine in the rain, wet and rescuing me like I was a damsel in distress. But now he’s wearing jeans that look like he’s poured into them. A grey Henley shirt, short-sleeved, his biceps pushing the edges of the sleeves out as he crosses his arms over his chest.
A chest my own ear has rested against for one hundred days. I had memorized his heartbeat.
Mark’s hair is blown dry and sandy blonde again. The ends of his hair turn up, no longer curling from the rain. He looks like he is on edge and relaxed at the same time. Not many people can do that.
Mark can.
Mikey looks at Mark like he’s a god. Cops do that to younger kids, I guess. But then again, Mikey isn’t a kid any more. The air in the room shifts. Tension returns.
It’s my fault.
“The cabin’s great,” Mark answers Brian, but his eyes are on me. I won’t look at him. Won’t give in. My hand reaches for another chip from the bowl like it’s attached to a different Carrie. One whose dad isn’t dead, who didn’t leave in disgust three years ago.
Who didn’t leave ashamed.
Who wasn’t betrayed by the very man staring at her right now.
“Your tire okay?” Mark finally says to me, taking a step forward and pulling out the dining chair right behind where Brian is sitting. That puts him and Mikey together as a team, and me and Elaine as the other. Good. I can read Elaine’s nonverbal hints like the back of my hand. You play Euchre all your life with someone, you figure out all their secrets really fast.
“My tire is fine,” I say tightly. “Thank you.”
Elaine’s turn to narrow her eyes and watch us with suspicion. She can feel the tension between us. I hope my arousal isn’t obvious. Mark is triggering feelings I haven’t felt in years. I put those feelings into a box in my heart. I scribbled “The Past” on it and stuck it in storage.
I don’t want to feel attracted to him. I don’t want my body to respond to being in the same room with him. I don’t want to think about how he tastes when he kisses me.
Seems like that box is coming off the shelf a little too fast.
“Good. Just be careful,” Mark says with a frowning half-grin.
Mikey turns over the card that determines the suit that is trump. Trump means that suit—hearts, clubs, spades, diamonds—is the power suit, and those cards beat other suits. The Jack has all the power in this game, this seemingly unimportant nobody in the royal family. He comes up from behind and bam! He’s suddenly more powerful than the queen, king or ace.
Go Jack.
And spades is trump, which makes the Jack of Spades the true king. Jack of Clubs isn’t too shabby, either.
The game, which had been so important to me, is now trivial. Other games are more critical. The potato chip I like, a local brand you can’t get in Oklahoma, sticks in my throat. All I can see is Mark. He’s changed into warm, casual clothes, and his bare arms make my heart race. The tiny bit of stubble on his jaw feels intimate. So do his eyes.
They’re not looking at his cards.
I’m melting into the chair under his stare. So many questions fill my heart. If only I could ask them. If only Mark would tell me the truth.
That is the problem. If I ask, and he lies, what little sliver of hope I cling to will die.
Like my father.
Mark’s eyes roam over me and I wonder what he thinks. I’ve filled out in the three years I’ve been away. Always known for my big chest, I now have curves everywhere. Nice ones that men like. “Hot mama!” they’d cry out when I walked down the street on my way to work. Construction workers loved to ask for my number. Or beg me to do things to them that made me blush.
The way Mark traces my new body sparks a fire in my belly.
And below it.
As I play a ten of clubs without thinking, I remember. The nights I spent in my rented room in Oklahoma City, sharing a place with seven other girls, were filled with Mark. They could probably smell him in OKC. I carried that much of him with me. Three years of working midnights as a check processor and visiting my father in the prison they moved him to was what it took to drive away the imprint of Mark’s hands on me, his lips on mine.
My soul didn’t want his branding any more, but that was harder to wall off. You can’t make something burned deep in you disappear.
Scars might fade, but they never go away.
“Took that hand, and with a ten!” Elaine says, standing to give me a high five. I imitate her and as I reach up, my shirt lifts and shows my belly.
Mark and Mikey stare.
Mark shoots Mikey a look of death. Elaine hides a smile.
I fight to hide mine.
The game continues. Our words are few. Everyone is pleasant, but it’s weird. Creepy. I want to beg Mark to give me an explanation. Something that makes what he did make sense.
When your boyfriend turns your dad in to the feds on trumped up drug charges, you’d like to know why.
Trumped up. Oh, I’m a real comedienne tonight, huh?
Dad tried to tell him. Brian, too. He wasn’t the one with the meth. Wasn’t making it or dealing it. The shady chemistry professor at the university was the one who masterminded everything.
But Mark had bills of lading proving dad had ordered all the chemicals and the special equipment to make the meth. The DEA busted the largest meth lab in the history of the state.
Grant funded, too, it turned out. The federal government had paid for tens of millions of dollars worth of meth, all created in a lab where thousands of chemistry students passed through every day.
Higher Education at its finest.
Dad was dealing, they said. A professor in the chemistry department gave the police and feds a ton of evidence proving it. Allegedly proving it.
Claimed Dad was the kingpin of a huge drug network. That he sold meth on campus through his job on campus.
Lies.
All lies.
Dad couldn’t prove anything, but worse? His lawyer couldn’t disprove anything. As the head of facilities, he ordered what the professors asked. How do you prove you didn’t do something?
A clip that made the evening news for other a week runs through my head. Dad is red-faced and furious, his eyes wild. “It’s not like I was ordering stuff to make a bomb!”
He made CNN. MSNBC. FOXNews. Even Tosh made fun of him.
My dad became an Internet meme.
And I became The Daughter Who Must Have Known.
“Carrie? You got anything good?” Mikey kicks me under the table and I look around. Elaine is asking, waving her cards.
I look down. “Pass.”
“Is that ‘pass’ or ‘paaaaaassssss,’” Elaine jokes. If I say the word slowly, it’s a hint that my hand has something halfway decent but not enough to overpower all the other cards.
I just shrug.
“See, Mom? Carrie won’t cheat like some people,” he says, sticking out his tongue. “She’s honest.”
Now I see the fourteen year old in him. It makes me happy again.
Until I look over at Mark.
His jaw is tight, and those eyes are speckled with anger. He reaches for a chip and stops himself, taking a deep sigh. Mark plays a card. As he pulls his hand back it brushes against my glass, almost tipping it. Like the gentleman he always is, he grabs it and diverts the fall, letting my water pour into his lap and not mine.
I grab some napkins from a stack on the table and start mopping up the water, dabbing at his…
Oh, God! I’m gently patting his crotch!
Elaine bites her lips and turns away. Brian is oblivious, watching television. Mikey’s mouth keeps opening and closing like he’s a fish.
And Mark looks down at my hand, which has come to a complete stop on his jeans button, the napkins shredded and falling into little white clumpy bits on his…
Wet spot.
I freeze, my muscles finally stopped by my mortified brain. Don’t look up! I tell myself, backing away like I’v
e just run into a hungry lion.
I kind of have.
Mark looks at me as I catch his eye. The air changes. Everyone else in the room fades. It’s just me and Mark, and my hand is on his growing bulge.
I snatch my arm back and start to say, “I’m sorry,” but all that comes out is a gasp. The way he watches me makes a slow smolder build in my skin. My nipples feel hard against the soft cloth of my shirt. My nub warms and flares to a fire I haven’t felt in three years.
And my heart? It starts to sing.
“Enjoying yourself?” he says with a crooked smile, the look sultry and inviting, as if he wants me to touch him again.
I’m sure he does.
“I’m so sorry!” I choke out. Elaine and Mikey have magically disappeared. Brian sees nothing, engrossed in his show.
Mark reaches for some fresh napkins and dabs himself clean.
“It’s just water,” he says, starting to laugh.
It’s a sexy sound, a deep rumbling in his chest. The kind of sound a man makes after he kisses you with fire and longing.
Except we haven’t kissed.
Oh, how I want to. He didn’t do anything wrong, technically. Right? He was just the arresting officer who had to get my dad and turn him in.
But he never told me. He could have shared that tiny little detail that would end up ruining my life.
His anguished voice from three years ago fills my head. “I couldn’t tell you,” he’d said. “It made Joe a flight risk if I told you. I was doing my job.” His voice had broken after that, and the first sign of bright tears had been in his eyes as he’d held my numb hand. Mark had apologized so many times that the words “I’m sorry” stopped making sense. They sounded like word glop after a while. Eyem Sar Eee. Eyem Sar Eee.
The memory fades and so does the heat in my body. I can’t turn off how he makes me respond, but I can control how I react. Maybe my skin, my belly, my nipples, and my sex have a mind of their own.
But I can choose what to do.
“You can blot my crotch any time, Carrie,” Mark jokes, and the spell is broken. He’s released me.
I couldn’t release myself after all.
Dangerous To Love Page 165
