No Damaged Goods

by Snow, Nicole

  Because we’re each other’s refuge in the whirlwind.

  Yesterday, today, and forever.

  Before long, we get pulled apart again after dancing a few rounds.

  There’s a whirlwind of people. Everybody from Felicity to Ember to Warren and Haley’s little niece, Tara, who’s visiting this summer. Someone pulls on Blake’s arm. He looks up and grins.

  “Best damn wedding shindig I've ever seen, brother,” Holt Silverton says, his whiskey colored eyes flashing. “Here’s one more gift for the road.”

  Uh-oh.

  For a second, Blake’s face goes blank. I wonder if they’re about to get into their usual scrap over their mom’s inheritance. Then Holt holds up a big bubbly bottle of very expensive-looking champagne.

  “Only if I’m raising a toast to you, bro. Without you and the cavalry, no way would I be standing here a married man, grinning like a fool.” He takes the bottle and slaps Holt’s shoulder.

  Thank God. Relief steams out of my lungs, and I smile, feeling this giddy serenity coming over everything.

  “We gonna be seeing you again after the honeymoon, or are you jetting off to Chicago or New York?”

  Holt gives back a near-identical lopsided grin that makes me laugh.

  “Actually, I’ve been doing some thinking. With the building contracts I’ve got lined up, you know...I might just settle into Heart’s Edge for a little while. Just traded up my little rambler Airbnb rental for nicer digs at the Charming Inn till I can find something more permanent.”

  Blake nods, smiles again, and starts to tug me forward by the hand again before stopping. He looks back over his shoulder. “It’s good to have you back,” he tells Holt.

  “Good to be back, Blake.”

  Just like that, we fade into the crowd, pressing hands with friends and acquaintances and maybe even a few low-key journalists. All the drama going down here the last couple years is close to putting this little town on the map.

  Then someone says they heard that catchy song on the radio, and they beg me to sing it, and suddenly I’m standing under my own wedding bower with a mic thrust in my hand. Half singing, half laughing, I give the people what they want while they dance together and talk and throw wild humor back and forth.

  The meaning hits me just as deeply. It’s a struggle not to cry every time I catch Blake’s eyes at my side, staring gently, while I sing about a gold-hearted desperado I just freaking married.

  It’s more of a party than a wedding, honestly.

  I’m okay with that.

  I’m happy with the rest of my life starting like a celebration.

  But it’s maybe just a little much when we get piled into the back of the fire truck.

  Then driven through town at the head of a parade of cars, the siren going at its lowest volume and the fire truck trailing cans, ribbons, and big bunches of flowers behind us. People appear from the stores and houses along main street to wave and whoop and yell our names.

  Blake looks so embarrassed, and it’s adorable.

  I lean my shoulder to his, snug in my empress-waisted white wedding dress with its scalloped bodice and trailing train that makes me feel like a princess.

  “Get used to the attention,” I whisper. “You may not want to be everyone’s hero, but you are.”

  “I’m no hero,” he growls, his face flushing as he looks down at me, but he grudgingly waves to the crowd. “I’m just your husband.”

  Husband.

  God, I love it.

  I lean up to kiss his cheek, curling my arm in his.

  “You’re my husband now, Blake,” I say, and squeeze his arm, lacing our fingers together, our wedding rings touching, simple gold bands warmed by body heat and endless love. “But you’ve always been my hero...and you always will be.”

  * * *

  Thanks for reading No Damaged Goods! Look for more Heroes of Heart's Edge coming soon.

  Hooked on Blake and Peace?

  See how bright their flame burns years later in this special flash forward short story. - https://dl.bookfunnel.com/bbq0oriikk

  Then read on for a preview of another broodylicious and mysterious Heart's Edge hero, Leo Regis (aka Nine) in No Broken Beast.

  No Broken Beast Preview

  It's Not the Beginning (Clarissa)

  I always thought déjà vu would be like the books and movies.

  Seasick, blurring vision, sound coming down a wind tunnel of slow, sleepy voices.

  Everything swaying back and forth.

  On TV, déjà vu is this slow thing that whirls you around like a merry-go-round grinding to a halt with your stomach left somewhere far behind your bobbing horse.

  But in reality, déjà vu comes quick.

  Harsh.

  It’s a slap to the face, a gut punch, a falling elevator.

  And right now it’s hitting hard enough to leave me breathless as I stand in the ruins of my once proud candy store.

  Can I even call it my store?

  My stores are back in Spokane, where I started this chain. Sweeter Things shops pepper Eastern Washington and branch west to Seattle.

  Technically, I co-own the Heart’s Edge branch, too, but I haven’t even seen it until now. Not beyond a few photos when my sister Deanna first bought the property to bring our franchise to Montana.

  I’ve never needed to see it before. I trusted my baby sister to keep the business running just fine.

  Especially when seeing it means returning to this cursed town, after I swore I’d never, ever come back again.

  Last time I was here, I stood in the ruins of a life, watching everything I love burn down around me.

  There’s no fire here in the candy shop.

  Just displays tipped over, supplies strewn everywhere, glass and dishes and cookware smashed and thrown across the room.

  But I can smell phantom smoke anyway. It makes my chest so tight I feel like I’m choking on memories, the worst night of my life.

  “—iss Bell? Ms. Bell. You listenin’ to me?”

  I blink, shaking myself.

  There it is. The wah-wah voice, that Charlie Brown’s teacher trombone thing, and I realize Sheriff Langley has been talking to me through his thick handlebar mustache, looking at me quizzically with his pad held awkwardly in his hand while I just stare numbly at the shop’s carnage.

  For his sake, I nod, never taking my eyes off the scene.

  All the pieces are still here, just broken. Everything except my sister.

  She’s missing.

  That’s part of the sucker punch, too. Remembering that awful night, trying to find her, trying to save her, to be the big sister she needs and protect her, only I was so much younger then.

  I’m older now.

  Old enough to realize, far too late, that I should’ve been here in Heart’s Edge to help watch over her, instead of running away while she meddled with things better left alone.

  I press my fingers to my mouth, closing my eyes, taking a shaky breath as I remember our last phone call, how excited and yet frantic she sounded as she said, I think I’m onto something, Rissa. Something big. Something that’ll finally let us take back our lives and move on.

  Don’t, I’d told her. Our lives were never taken, sis. We’re alive, and I’m grateful for that every day. I don’t need anything else. I’m happy now.

  She’d been so angry with me for saying that.

  Called me passive, scared, a liar, said she was going to—

  I don’t even know.

  The phone cut off with an ominous crackle. I thought she’d hit her limit for tough sisterly love and ended the call.

  Then the next time it rang twenty-four hours later, it was this small-eyed sheriff with his peculiar way of squinting and his familiar drawl, telling me somebody broke into the shop, and Deanna’s nowhere to be found.

  “Ms. Bell?” Langley whispers again. “You don’t look so good. You sure you don’t just wanna–”

  “No.” I take a deep breath, open my eyes, force
myself to focus on him with my head swimming and my heart so heavy it crushes everything inside me into a massive ball of pain. “I’m listening. I’m sorry. I...you’re sure she’s not at home?”

  “I searched up and down, ma’am. Even know where she keeps the spare key. Them fake rocks don’t fool nobody.” He tries to smile, but it’s a sad thing, a confused line, like he wants to try to make me feel better but knows he can’t. “I looked all over her apartment, Ms. Bell. Everything’s all neat and tidy. If anybody’s been in there, they weren’t looking for loot. And it doesn’t look like she left in a hurry. And...”

  He clears his throat and looks out the front display window.

  The shattered front display window, open to the slowly cooling air of early autumn whisking inside. Not far from my sister’s car, an Easter-candy-pink vintage VW bug, sitting in the lot.

  It’s surrounded by the shards of glass from the broken windows. They’re mixed with the broken window pieces of the shop that used to say Sweeter Things in curly gold letters garnished with pink and green flowers made to look like they were sculpted out of fondant.

  Jesus, is that blood?

  Is that glinting red edge along one glassy fragment blood?

  Or just the sandy red earth of the rolling landscape? Mountains and valleys and forest beyond the main road, reflecting back in the broken pieces?

  I can’t ask myself that.

  I can’t, or I’ll hyperventilate and pass out right here, and then I’m no good to anyone.

  Langley clears his throat again. He can’t say it.

  So I take a deep breath and finish his sentence. “...and you think if she was kidnapped, it had to be here?”

  “Uh, yup.” He frowns down at his pad. The page is blank, but I don’t think he realizes I notice that. “Look, I’m gonna be straight with you, ma’am. This doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

  “Do senseless acts of violence ever make sense, Sheriff?”

  “No, but...dammit.”

  He squints, looking out across the sunny afternoon, slow and thoughtful. Sheriff Langley’s not cut out for this kind of sleuthing.

  Heart’s Edge shouldn’t be cut out for this kind of crime at all, if you take the town at face value.

  On the surface, it’s Pleasantville.

  Small-town values, small-town goodness, small-town charm.

  Beautiful vistas.

  Quaint local legends.

  All the heart and warmth and welcome of a place off the beaten path, where no one’s a stranger and everyone’s a friend.

  But underneath, it’s totally Stepford town.

  Vicious secrets with a smile, and every last one of them could kill you.

  I just hope those secrets haven’t gotten Deanna.

  “I just don’t get it. Why the kidnapping?” he finally finishes, like his mouth caught up to whatever his brain was turning over. Probably trying to figure out how to handle a crime scene investigation that isn’t cow tipping or someone getting a little too wasted at Brody’s and trying to drive home. “I mean, we got ourselves a pretty standard smash and grab here. Break in, get the cash in the register, get out. Why they gonna go and take your sister?”

  I have a thousand answers to that, but none I can give him.

  Some things are better left buried. The less people know, the better.

  Some things I wish I didn’t know. But there’s something I can do, at least.

  Stepping through the shop front gingerly, the glass crunching and crackling under my heeled boots, I pull the sleeve of my thin knit sweater over my hand as I round the shattered display counter. I don’t want to mess up any fingerprints with my own, if Langley ever manages to get around to taking them.

  But when I punch in the override code, the cash drawer pops out.

  I stare down at the stacks of bills and coins inside.

  “It’s full,” I say, my lips numb. “They didn’t take the money.”

  They just took Deanna.

  “Shit. Huh,” Langley says, scratching his pen into his thinning hair, frowning. “Like I said...don’t make sense.”

  “No,” I answer slowly, dread turning my mouth bone-dry. “No, it doesn’t.”

  There’s a long, awkward silence.

  Langley clears his throat, stops, then starts again, making a confused sandpaper sound before he sighs and hitches his belt up. “Listen, I’m gonna have to call in an investigative unit from Missoula. We just don’t have the resources out here.”

  I nod slowly. Good.

  Missoula means more people with more experience with crimes above petty theft, who might be able to do something. “How long do you think that’ll take?”

  “Don’t know.” He looks uneasy. “You planning on staying here in town?”

  “Yes,” I snap. How could I not with my sister just gone?

  It’s not his fault, I remind myself. Rein it in.

  I know why he’s looking at me so funny. Uncomfortably, nervously, like he can’t believe I’m back here at all.

  Small towns have long memories.

  So do I.

  Wentworth Langley was there that night so many years ago, same as me. I only wish I couldn’t feel the pity party dripping out of his eyes.

  Everyone sees me as the sad, tragic girl who lost her illustrious father. The human symbol of a small-town tragedy.

  They have no flipping clue what I truly lost that night.

  Langley makes an odd scratchy sound in the back of his throat and looks away, embarrassment scrunching on his forehead in ridges. “Well...you wanna lay low, keep it hush-hush, I won’t say a thing. If...you know, if you don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself, Ms. Bell.”

  Dear God. I’d rather be invisible.

  I hate the way people look at me.

  I hate that every time someone looks at me, they aren’t seeing Clarissa Bell.

  They’re either seeing my father...or him.

  The man they blame for everything. The monster. The outlaw. The demon of Heart’s Edge.

  And I can tell, when their eyes go just a little blank, their smiles just a little too plastic, they’re thinking about what a poor victim I am. Or maybe what a fool to have ever loved a madman.

  But I’m not a victim.

  I haven’t even seen him in so long. Who knows if he’s alive.

  Still, as long as I’m here, I can’t escape how deep we’re intertwined.

  At least when I’m away from this town, the one sweet reminder I let myself keep only brings joy.

  Until a resounding metallic crash comes through the double doors leading back into the kitchen, and I groan. There’s my sweet little joy. Right.

  I know that sound.

  It’s not a kidnapper. It’s not trouble.

  It’s my son, refusing to sit still when I ask him to.

  Sure as the sky is blue, when I glance into the parking lot, there’s no little crop of chestnut-brown hair poking up in the passenger seat of my car, where I told him to stay.

  Rather, the instant I push the kitchen doors open, there’s a shame-faced seven-year-old boy covered in flour, surrounded by the huge industrial mixer bowls he’s just knocked over.

  Deanna must’ve been right in the middle of prepping tomorrow’s batch when she was interrupted.

  The thought is sobering enough that I can’t even be mad at Zach.

  I don’t have room to be pissed at the people I love. Not when I’m so scared for the only other flesh and blood family I have left besides this beautiful—and dusty—little boy staring nervously down at his feet right now.

  “I don’t even know what to ask first,” I say, folding my arms over my chest. “Do I want to know why, or how?”

  Zach winces. “It was an accident, Mom.”

  “That explains the how. Now how about the why?”

  “I just...I wanted to see if it was sugar or flour!” he confesses meekly, and I sigh.

  What he means is, he was hoping it was sugar he could steal for his insatiab
le sweet tooth.

  He gets that from his father.

  I know from experience. But I push that thought aside before those memories, those idyllic nights, can rise up to make me hurt with the memory of what could’ve been.

  There’s no room in my life for could-have-beens.

  Only for the present.

  And it’s a life I’ve made all my own. Piece by painstaking piece, all for a son I love more than anything.

  Sighing, I reach out to draw him closer, ruffling his hair, making it snow flour down the shoulders of his already-dusty jacket. “Come on, ZZ-boy,” I say. “There’s really nothing else we can do here. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  * * *

  I almost don’t recognize the man behind the counter at the Charming Inn.

  Half a lifetime ago, I remember playing with Warren Ford as a kid.

  I remember him being taller than the other boys, and any time someone got it in their head to be a bully, Warren would be there, making a human wall out of himself.

  I remember how he’d play and tussle with Blake and his brother, Holt, and that strange boy we all called Tiger. Usually Deedee and I just watched and laughed and braided flower crowns, Warren’s sister Jenna bouncing around between us and the boys until she was a dirty mess with flowers in her hair and new rips in her jeans.

  Now, standing here with all six foot something of his thirty-something self, he’s a memory of my childhood, of boys with dusty knees and crooked smiles and sunshine-freckles and messy thatches of dark hair.

  In my head, he’s not the owner of Charming Inn, so it’s just...weird.

  It’s jarring to see him here and not Ms. Wilma Ford, his grandma. Instead, he’s with a short, curvy, green-eyed woman who must be his wife. She’s tucked against his side, a little boy with bright-blue eyes and a gurgling laugh bouncing on his hip.

  When I look at Warren, I still see that gangly boy with hands and feet too big for his body.

  But there’s a bearded man looking back at me, a man who’s clearly been through things judging by the scars and tattoos on his body, and the old shadows haunting clear eyes.