by T. S. Joyce
“Why are you here?” I asked before she had even seen me.
Mira jumped, every muscle in her body seeming to spasm with the start. “Caleb,” she breathed.
I didn’t answer. She’d gutted me, ripped me in two, and now she was here to what? Finish me off? I crossed my arms and waited.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, I know I’m the last person you want to see right now but I need help, and I don’t know who else to ask.” The words tumbled from her lips like a boulder gaining momentum down the side of a towering mountain.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward her truck, away from the noise of the rig. Something had frightened Mira, and a lump settled in my gut. She wouldn’t admit to needing my help if it wasn’t something urgent. Her fear stirred up a really bad feeling and kicked up my animal. I hadn’t changed in a week, trying to avoid the urge to hunt for her like I always did, but this was about to send me over the edge. “What happened?”
She took a deep, steadying breath, but a sob broke out of her. “He’s out. I got home and found a letter from the lawyers in my mailbox, and now he’s going to come get me. He’s going to kill me!”
Nothing she said made sense. “Who’s going to kill you?”
“My stepdad. Angus French.”
I opened my mouth to speak but an ear-splitting whistle interrupted me. It was Evan, waving with annoyed gestures for me to get back to work. I sighed heavily. “Look, I can’t do this right now. I have three more hours until my shift is done.”
“You don’t believe me,” she said, with the most hurt expression I’d ever seen on another human being. She whirled around and jerked open the door of her truck to escape me.
I caught the door before it opened halfway and gripped the frame until my knuckles hurt from the strain. “Didn’t say I don’t believe you, Mira. Just that I can’t deal with this until after I get off. Somebody could get hurt up there if we’re shorthanded. Pull your truck up closer to the rig. Lock the doors and wait for me. You see so much as a horned toad move, you flag someone down.”
Her face was so open. I could see every emotion in her eyes and, dammit, I wanted to hug her tight and reassure her I’d die before I let anything happen to her.
“We’ll talk about this when I’m done.” I turned to leave but the flash of fear in her eyes tore at everything in me and made me stop. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Mira let out a long, shaky breath and the corner of her mouth turned up in the barest ghost of a smile. “I know.”
How was I supposed to work after that? Any effort to stay in the here and now was thwarted by thoughts of Mira. Of the way her lips looked when she admitted she needed me. Of the way the wind lifted her hair as it brushed across her back, the dusty southern sky a backdrop to her silhouette.
And then there were the three thousand questions running through my mind about the utterly disturbing information she had given me that threatened to shut down all of my mental facilities. Every instinct in my body screamed to protect her. Even the short physical distance away from her felt like a canyon.
Three hours stretched on forever.
When at last the end of the shift came, I jogged to her truck and pulled the door closed behind me with more force than I’d intended. All of the pent up agitation somehow escaped through my fingertips. Mira didn’t jump this time, like she expected no less of me.
I gripped the steering wheel. “I think you need to start by telling me where you got those scars around your neck.”
“Caleb, I’m sorry.” She looked at me with those dove gray eyes, begging forgiveness. “Evan came over after our date. He told me about the job offer on the big rig.”
I jerked my head in surprise. Speaking of the devil himself, Evan jumped in front of the parked truck and pelvic thrusted in a circular motion with his tongue wagging. I could only imagine what he’d said to her. The urge to peel out and flip him over the hood was massive.
“Were you trying to let me go?” I asked, dragging my gaze away from my idiot brother.
A nod and a whisper. “I don’t want to hold you back.”
And just like that, a weight lifted from me that left me relieved and exhausted all at once. “Dammit, Mira. You won’t hold me back. I can’t remember being happier than when I thought you were mine. That job won’t bring me peace. I like it here. I fit here.” I took her hand in mine to show her the truth to my words. “Don’t do that to me again. I know you meant well, but you’re just going to have to trust me to make my own decisions about this stuff, okay?”
Moisture brushed her dark eyelashes but no tears fell. She smiled and squeezed my hand gently in her own. Thickly, she said, “Okay.”
“The scars,” I reminded her.
She sighed. “Drive. I can’t do this if you’re looking at me.”
I spared a glance for my truck but decided it would be fine parked here until my shift in the morning. The old Chevy’s idling engine sounded like a freight train, and we ambled out of the parking lot behind the rest of the crew. “Where to?”
Mira shrugged miserably. “Anywhere but home. He’ll find me there.” She drew her knees up to her chest as if it would protect her from the words she would say. “My stepfather, Angus, was a cruel man. He hurt my mother, and when I tried to defend her, he hurt me. One day, right after my seventh birthday party, Angus decided he fancied me.”
She spared a frightened glance for me, but I tried to keep my disgust hidden behind a stoic face. If he was alive like she said, I already wanted to kill him.
“He never touched me, Caleb. I fought him, and he didn’t push too hard. It was a game to him. He knew it made me uncomfortable, so it was his way of toying with me. Of hurting my mom. One night, he got really drunk and found me hiding under my bed. He said, ‘Mira, you’re a pretty girl, and pretty girls should have pretty things. Like a pearl necklace.’ And then he took his cigarette and held me down and burned the first notch into my collar bone. And over the next year, he did the rest. He finished the necklace the night he killed my mother.”
Unable to take anymore, I swore under my breath. My stomach twisted with a nauseous clenching and, for a split second, I thought I would be sick right there on the dashboard of her truck. This was the first time I realized evil really existed. “Was that when you went into the institution?”
Mira was quiet for a long time. She looked out the window and bit the end of her thumbnail. “You read my report?”
“Becca brought it to me. You could’ve told me, you know,” I said, turning onto Dark Corner Road.
“I said we can’t go to my place,” she protested, straightening up with a panicked look.
“We aren’t. I’m taking you to my place.”
“Oh. So, Becca was the one who posted those flyers all over town?”
A fury I hadn’t known before burned in my gut. I knew that girl would make copies and possibly blackmail Mira. I hadn’t, however, thought she had it in her to go as far as peppering the town with that shit. “I didn’t know she did that,” I gritted out. “Where has Angus been all these years?”
Mira swallowed audibly. “In prison. For child abuse and child endangerment, not for murder.”
“How did he get away with killing your mom?”
“Angus had planned my mother’s murder down to the tiniest detail. I didn’t understand that because I was only eight at the time, but he had everything nailed down to look like self-defense. The blood spatter, the trajectory and timing of the bullets. He shot himself twice, then killed her with a smile on his face. The neighbors called in the gunshots but their report matched Angus’s lies. He had very good lawyers, and after what I’d seen, I had trouble speaking. I had so many thoughts and visions, memories rattling around my head that I couldn’t say what I wanted to.” Mira glared at the turnoff to her house as we passed. “Before the cops showed up, Angus repeated this made-up story of what happened over and over to me, but I knew what I’d seen. Because of the stutters in my story, and my trou
ble speaking coherently, I was deemed an unreliable witness. Angus couldn’t deny the allegations that I had been abused, though. The evidence was there, still bleeding on my neck, which was exactly what he wanted the cops who arrested him to think. My mother had gone after him because he hurt me. He wanted them to think she shot him, and then he killed her in self-defense. So he got prison, but not for long enough.” Having unloaded something so cavernous and dark that she had likely kept to herself for so many years, she let out a long, shaky breath. “So that’s me. Crazy Mira.”
I pulled the truck to a stop in front of my house. “Don’t say that. You aren’t crazy.” I pulled her to me and hugged her tightly. “You’re strong. You went through something no one should ever go through, and you survived. Screw anyone who calls you that. They don’t know anything important about you. Not like I do.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Mira
Maybe it would work. Maybe Angus would look and eventually give up when he couldn’t find me. A knowing part of me scoffed at my naiveté. Angus was a thoughtful and organized hunter. He wouldn’t give up until his heart stopped beating.
Caleb’s house wasn’t what I expected, which somehow made me care about him more. He didn’t reside in some country mansion like the one he’d grown up in. He had spent his hard earned money on the acreage that made up his property and put a double-wide mobile home directly in the center of a meadow. The home looked new, and well-made, but when I had cause to think about where he lived, I had always imagined a large homemade of sticks and bricks.
He came around the front of the Ford and opened my door. “What are you grinning at?” he asked, head canted.
“It’s just that your home is kind of perfect, is all.”
He bowed gallantly. “You want the grand tour?”
I rested my hand on his outstretched palm and nodded. There was a sizable deck that constructed the porch, complete with two chairs and a small table to enjoy warm evenings. Inside, his furniture in the living area was simple, functional, but everything worked well together to invite a homey feel. The kitchen was large with modern appliances, and the two bedrooms in the back were spacious. One, he had made into an office, and the other was his room. I blushed when I saw his bed. The bedding was nice, dark, and haphazardly thrown in some semblance of order. It was definitely a bed I could find myself comfortable in.
“You hungry?” he asked, deliciously close to my ear.
“Starving, actually.”
“I’m not much of a cook, but surely we can put something together from a stocked pantry.”
And stocked, it was. Caleb had everything I could possibly imagine in the way of food. I pulled out shelf after rolling shelf of non-perishables and found the refrigerator full as well. “I thought a bachelor would just have frozen pizzas to eat,” I murmured in awe.
Caleb yanked the stainless steel freezer door open and stood back. “I have those too if you have a hankerin’.”
I laughed at the row of meat lover’s specials. “Tempting, but would you mind if I cooked instead?”
A tender expression crossed his face. “You want to cook in here?”
I looked around. “Never cooked in such a fancy kitchen outside of Opal’s before.”
Slowly, deliberately, he crossed to stand in front of me. His skin smelled masculine and alluring with a faint undertone of animal. He took a breath before he spoke in a tone so velvety soft, it sent a warm sensation to parts of me I hadn’t given much thought to before he came into my life.
“Say it. Tell me you need me as much as I need you.”
My eyes focused somewhere in the region of his collar bones. If I looked into the brilliant blue of his eyes, I would melt into a useless puddle on the wooden floorboards beneath my feet. “I can’t say it now. I need you for safety, and you will always wonder if I said it for the right reasons. It won’t count.”
“Look at me.” He waited until my reluctant gaze met his. “The fact that you just said that will make it count. Say it.”
It would be the biggest admission of my life, but he was worth taking the risk. “I need you. And not just for the material stuff. Fixing up my house and trying to get me a job… That stuff doesn’t matter. I’ve needed you from the moment I brought you up to my house. After I killed the grizzly? You had to live, and not just because it would be a weight on my conscience, but because you were the most beautiful thing I ever had in my life, and I couldn’t lose you. I knew you wouldn’t ever think about me again after you left, but you had to exist.”
The tenderness in Caleb’s eyes was overwhelming. He leaned forward, placing his hands on the counter behind me. He rested his forehead on mine for just a moment before he kissed me. His lips were as soft as the first time he kissed me on the balcony of the pie shop. I clenched the front of his shirt with my fists, and he stretched forward, parted my lips, demanding more. His hands found my hips, and with ease, he lifted me to sit on the counter. His obvious arousal made me feel powerful. How did I have such an effect on a creature so compelling? His arms snaked around my back and pulled me closer to his body, and I wrapped my legs around him in desperation to be even closer.
“Can I see?” I asked in a ragged breath.
Caleb stopped kissing me, and for a second I thought he would refuse. He eased back slightly and pulled at the top button of his shirt.
I moved my fingertips under his. “Let me.”
I pulled at each button in turn and revealed more and more of the still angry red scars. When he shrugged his opened shirt off his broad shoulders, I raked my eyes over every inch of his muscular chest. “You’re so—” Words failed me. None were grand enough.
He ran his hand through his hair as if uncomfortable. “Ruined?”
“No. Perfect. You’re perfect to me.”
His smile was slow, and he ran a light fingertip over the scars on my neck that peeked out from beneath my loose collar. “So are you.”
The moment was interrupted with the shrill trumpet of the telephone. Caleb reached across me, apparently not inclined to put any distance between us, and answered it.
There was a muffled murmur of a girl’s voice on the other end of the line.
“No, I think I got it,” Caleb said, brushing a strand of hair out of my face and tucking it behind my ear. “Hey, Mira says hi.”
Dead silence filled the other end. The voice picked up in an excited volume that I could almost understand. He chuckled and handed the phone to me.
Sadey didn’t bother with a greeting. “Are you back with Caleb? Tell me you’re back together!”
“Yes, we’re back together.”
His eyes danced, and he inhaled slowly, as if he were savoring a weight being lifted from his shoulders.
A string of incomprehensible shrieks followed, and I handed the phone back to Caleb, then rubbed my throbbing ear.
“Gotta go, Sadey. We’ll see you at Sunday dinner.” He hung up while Sadey was still mid-question.
The mention of Sunday dinner would have been intimidating if a more desperate fear didn’t loom in the forefront. Every minute or so, I thought of the very real danger I was in. Of the danger I put Caleb in by being with him, and it sent a cold bolt of fresh dread skittering up my spine.
He watched my transformation with concern knitted into his blond brows. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m scared. Angus won’t stop until he finds me.”
Caleb watched the waning light out the window as if it held the answers. “Look, he won’t find you here. Tomorrow we’ll go to the sheriff—”
“But he hates me.”
“Hear me out. If he and his deputy ignore us, at least we tried there first. We’ll go into the city and find someone who will help. We’ll keep at it until somebody takes us seriously and grants you a restraining order against him.”
The plan sounded solid enough, and a wave of relief washed over me. I knew he would figure out a way to keep me safe. He was calm in the face of adversity, confident un
der strenuous situations. It’s what made him so good at his job. His self-assurance eased my cowardly bits.
I put my mind to more favorable ventures than dwelling on imminent danger. “I want pasta.”
He grinned. “I have a craving for spaghetti myself.”
I hopped off the counter and rummaged through the pantry until I found the ingredients I needed. Caleb pulled his shirt on, to my dismay, but left it unbuttoned as a consolation. Eventually, a fire crackled in the fireplace and the smells of a hot meal wafted through his cozy home. I was standing at the stove when he pressed his body behind me.
His hands fell to my hips, and he kissed my neck softly. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“Keep doing that,” I said, stifling a moan.
His breath was delectably warm on my neck, and the vibration of his chest rumbled against my back as he chuckled. “Anything else?”
I sighed happily. “Taste this.”
Caleb did as instructed and said the spaghetti sauce simmering away in one of his pots was perfect as is.
“Okay, take the garlic bread out of the oven then. Dinner is ready.” I gave the Caesar salad one more toss and set it on the small dining table.
We took our time eating. There was no hurry, and our conversation was easy, like before I’d tried to set him free. He asked about my mother, before she’d met Angus, and I shared the good memories I had. Playground visits when I was younger, slip-n-slide summers, and infinite wishes she’d made on dandelions.
“She used to be fun,” I explained. “She didn’t like raising me by herself, but she always took me to the library and read me books before she tucked me in at night. And on Friday nights, she’d always order us a pizza and rent a cartoon for me from the movie store. I thought we were happy the way things were, but then she met Angus, and she changed. For the better, at first. She practically glowed when he helped around the house and took care of me when her friends asked her to go out for girls’ nights. It didn’t last, though. He was pretending. That was part of his manipulation, to show her his best side so she’d cling to the way he used to be when he would drink. I always knew he was bad, though. He didn’t trick me at all. I didn’t care about him, so I could see how hard his eyes looked when he told my mom he loved her. I could see him holding his hands out like he wanted to choke her when her back was turned. They weren’t even fighting. He would just do it in passing.”
