by Max Monroe
He laughed. “Fine, fine. Call me when you’re back in town.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“You’ll consider it?” he repeated. “Well, fuck, that’s a hell of a lot better than the last time I told you to do that.”
My eyebrow quirked up. “What’d I say the last time?”
“That you’d slap me in the dick.”
“Don’t worry, T. I’ll find a way to accomplish both.”
His deep chuckles were the last thing I heard before hanging up the phone.
Only then did I realize I’d expressed my intent to see him. Because no matter how I planned it, dick slapping was an in-person kind of thing.
Forty years of my parents’ marriage and thirty-five years of my own life history had brought me here, back to my hometown, Frogsneck, New York. My parents were the picture of everything I wanted in a marriage when it came to commitment, and celebrating so many years of their love for one another tonight had been a seriously special experience. They were the best kind of people—loving and loyal and fucking honest to a fault.
But I hated being back here in my hometown, the looks people gave me and my parents never having faded even after this many years.
Perception is the ultimate example of “it is what you make it.” Unfortunately, what people “made it” sometimes lacked basis in the truth.
I knew I shouldn’t have come here to the local watering hole after the party. I should have remembered the past and toasted to the future in the privacy of my childhood home instead, but I hadn’t.
And now, as the door opened to reveal one of my most negative high school memories, I had to face the consequences.
“Hey, Ryan, you see who’s here?” Johnny Townsend asked his friend, Ryan Fondlan.
I’d spent so many of my younger years despising Johnny that even the sound of his name made my blood pump faster. That was probably the half-baked reason John from BAD rugby and I couldn’t seem to get along. BAD was the rugby team Kline, Wes, and I played on during the week and the basis of our ridiculous nickname, the Billionaire BAD Boys. The team was aptly sponsored by and named after Wes’s restaurant, BAD. It was a terrible fucking name for a restaurant, but hell if Wes wasn’t profiting. It probably helped that he owned an NFL team and drew in the professional athlete crowd.
John was on that team, and I couldn’t deny we spent far too much time tossing jabs at one another. Shit. I probably needed to try not to be such a prick next practice.
“Johnny—” Ryan attempted to interrupt, but it was no use.
Ryan had always been the well-meaning sidekick to Johnny’s insensitive ways, and it pained the fuck out of me to see them both singing the same tune after this many years. It’s one thing for boys to be boys, but it’s quite another for men to act like them.
“I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. A big shot like Thatcher Kelly at the Sticky Pickle? Seems odd to me,” Johnny prodded, trying to incite a rise out of me. He’d been pushing my buttons since I was an overweight freshman just trying to survive high school. I’d never been insecure, but he’d been all too happy to try to make me that way. The tables had only turned when two years, a foot of height, and fifty extra pounds of muscle on my frame made them.
“Cool it, John,” Ryan suggested, directing, “Have a seat and get a drink,” before turning to me.
“Hey, Thatch.” Ryan greeted me with a grimace, settling onto the stool next to mine and keeping himself between Johnny and me—a smart move—but that didn’t stop Johnny from looking over me closely as Ryan spoke. “How are things?”
“Pretty good,” I told Ryan honestly, but I kept it short in an attempt to make this interaction as painless as possible. I took a pull of my beer. I wasn’t normally that big a fan of Coors, but tonight it seemed to be going down smoothly.
“Been a while since you’ve been around,” he went on.
“Yep.”
“And you’re okay with that?” he asked, and Johnny scoffed.
“Of course, he fucking is. Too good for places like this.”
My jaw ticked, but I did my best to ignore Johnny and focus on getting through the conversation with Ryan.
“Yeah. I see everyone I want to regularly. My parents come up, and Frankie’s in the city.” I shrugged.
“Frankie,” Johnny said derisively under his breath, and I started to get really fucking annoyed for the first time tonight.
“Fucking watch it,” I warned as I pushed off my stool. The sound of it scraping across the wood floor pulled the attention of several nearby patrons.
Ryan immediately stood up between us. “He’s just having a bad night, Thatch. Recently divorced and his wife won custody today,” he whispered.
Forcing my pounding heart to slow, I sat back down on my stool and flagged the bartender to close out my tab. Safe to say going out for a relaxing drink was no longer anything but stressful.
“How is Frankie these days?” Johnny asked, undeterred. I tried my best to take Ryan’s information to heart and ignore him—and get the goddamn bartender to hurry up. The faster I got out of here, the better.
“Fucking shut up, dude,” Ryan advised as I towered over them. I’d never been meek, but now I was the exact opposite of meager. At six-five and two hundred and fifty pounds, I was practically double their size.
“He stays away too,” Johnny continued. “But I guess I wouldn’t come home if I were him either. A fucking scumbag pig in his own shit, clinging to the coattails of the guy who killed his fucking sister just to keep his crappy business afloat.”
Johnny stood up from his stool as my blood boiled, and he rounded Ryan to get in my face, a slimy smile on his.
His smarmy voice dropped to a knifelike whisper. “Tell me, Thatch. How does it feel to get away with murder?”
I watched as a drop of blood ran from the raw split in my knuckles and dripped to the concrete floor. One and done, I’d knocked ol’ Johnny clean out with a halfhearted swing of my fist, and now, here I was—in the cold concrete confines of an eight-by-ten cell.
As far as the eyes of the law were concerned, the one hit wasn’t that much of a problem, but the bar brawl that ensued between everyone else sure was. I guess in an old quiet town like this, entertainment value could be found nearly anywhere—even in an unlikely and unfounded opportunity for a fight.
“Kelly!” Sheriff Miller yelled, startling me from my focus on the ground. “One phone call!”
I nodded with a polite “Yes, sir,” and got up from the bench in the holding tank to exit the cell. Sheriff Miller looked on while one of his young deputies opened the sliding door. His eyes held disdain, and I, frankly, couldn’t blame him. I’d caused him more than enough problems in the years before leaving Frogsneck, and now, my first night back after half a decade, I was his problem again.
Still, he respected my parents, something I couldn’t say for a lot of the small-minded people here, so I did my best to appeal to that. “I’m sorry about this, Sheriff.”
“Right,” he said through a chuckle. “I’m sure you are. I can’t imagine expensive suits are comfortable jail attire.”
I filed that away and kept my cool. His eyes changed when mine didn’t. A flicker of begrudging respect, perhaps. “No, sir. I’m just sorry I’m in here, keeping you busy in the middle of the night. No matter what somebody says, I should be able to keep my cool at thirty-five years old. That’s why I’m apologizing.”
“Margo’s a pretty big sore spot, I imagine,” he murmured, showing he knew the real reasons behind everything, no matter how much he actually witnessed. That’s what made him a good sheriff.
My high school girlfriend, Margaret—Margo to most—died on a weekend away with me. I’d been the only one there to witness the whole horrible thing. Honestly, I’d moved on from it. Not her death, and not what I’d witnessed, but the whole life-changing aspect of it. I didn’t carry it with me into everything I did, and I certainly didn’t spend my time worrying over something I knew I wasn’
t responsible for. Small-minded people apparently had a lot more time on their hands.
But being accused of something so horrendous never becomes routine, and I still hadn’t figured out exactly how to keep it from besting my patience. That was why I usually stayed away.
I hated that my first trip back in years had ended so predictably.
“Yes, sir,” I answered honestly.
“Make your phone call,” he ordered, gesturing toward the lone pay phone.
Fuck. It was safe to say technology wasn’t helping me now. I didn’t know anyone’s number by heart other than my parents’. Well, I knew one. I laughed to myself at the reason I knew it.
“The last four digits spell out Cass now,” my memory of a single late-night phone call with a tipsy Cassie Phillips said in my head. “How fucking great is that?” Fucking ridiculous is what it was. But, yeah, that wasn’t happening.
“Sheriff—”
“What?” he snapped. Fucking great. We’d had our moment of mutual respect, and now I’d already ruined it. Fucking fuck.
“Would I be able to look through my phone to get a number? I only know one by heart—” I started on a lie.
“Then use it, Kelly,” he interrupted.
I cringed as I pressed on. “I’m sorry, sir, but that number is for my parents, and quite frankly, I’d rather sit in here for eternity than ruin their fortieth wedding anniversary.”
“Fine,” he agreed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
But it was short-lived. “No phone call. Go sit down.”
Shiiiiit. The deputy opened the door again and waved me inside. As my ass met the cold bench, I leaned my head into the hard wall behind me with exasperation.
I was going to rot here. Sheriff Miller was going to make me stay here forever. Way to fucking go, big mouth. Johnny started to smirk at me from across the cell until he realized there weren’t any bars between us.
“Townsend!” Sheriff Miller yelled. “You’re up! Phone call.”
Johnny pushed himself up off the bench and walked out, wandering down to the phone without one word. Five minutes ago, I’d have said I was the smarter of the two of us, but now, I wasn’t so sure.
Closing my eyes, I tried to drift off to sleep or happiness, whichever came first. I thought I’d be thinking of a green-eyed girl, the one from my past who had given me so much grief tonight, but the eyes I saw were ninety degrees counterclockwise on the color wheel. Bright blue and fierce, I hadn’t seen them anywhere but my fantasies for an entire month. There had, however, been an exorbitant amount of fantasies.
Oh, fuck. Jail was not the place to start thinking about fantasies.
With a deep breath, one thought bled into the next as I fell into a fitful sleep.
“Kelly!” being yelled by Sheriff Miller woke me from my catnap. I shook my head to clear the sleep and glanced around the otherwise empty cell. When my gaze landed on him, his expression was amused, and two beefy fingers were gesturing me toward him.
When I stood in front of him, he opened the door and waved me out and toward the phone.
“Hopefully, that nap helped you remember a number. You’ve got one minute to think and three to call. I’d suggest you make the best of all four of them.”
Shit.
Still groggy from sleep and frustration, I didn’t waste time, scooting out of the cell and heading straight for the phone. If I didn’t go now, I had a feeling I wouldn’t get a third chance. I mean, the practical side of my mind knew he couldn’t actually keep me there forever just because I didn’t know a phone number, but after the night from hell, it sure felt like it. I tried to use the brain in my head, man up enough to call my parents, but the effort was fruitless. Any time I spent avoiding this call was nothing but a delay in getting out of here, and today was the last day I could afford to spend on piss-scented vacation.
A shrill ringing in the distance echoed in my ears. I stirred in my sleep, turning over to blearily glance at the clock on my nightstand. The blood-red numbers revealed it was half past two in the morning.
“Fuckin’ hell,” I mumbled to no one in particular, pulling the comforter back over my head to form a cave of covers.
But the phone continued to ring, vibrating across the nightstand and mocking my sleep-deprived brain. I loved my sleep. Loved. It. While most women daydreamed about Henry Cavill sexing them into oblivion while his Superman cape slapped them in the face, I split my daydream time between Henry Cavill, Channing Tatum, and my bed—and the men weren’t the majority of my fantasies.
I could only assume whoever was calling me must have lost a limb or literally been on fire because anyone who knew me understood not to interrupt my sleep time.
Two seconds away from screaming myself into a full-on tantrum, I wrenched the blankets off my body, and with eyes still closed and fumbling hands—knocking shit onto the floor in the process—I grabbed my phone, held it to my ear, and let fly with my best guess. “Georgia, I swear to God, if this is you, I will kick your husband’s big dick so hard he won’t be able to spend his nights banging you into the headboard.”
A chuckle filled the receiver, but it wasn’t of the female variety. It was deep and throaty and one hundred percent male.
When no words replaced his laughter, I sighed, pulling my comforter back over my head. “Seriously, dude. If you don’t tell me who the fuck you are and why you’re calling me, we are going to have some serious issues.”
“What kind of issues?” he asked, amusement evident in his voice.
“My-foot-up-your-ass kind of issues,” I snapped back.
He chuckled again. “Maybe I’m into that kind of kinky shit.”
“All right, you deranged psychopath,” I said, irritation highlighting my tone. “I don’t care what kind of kinky shit you get off to. You could enjoy jerking off with cream cheese smeared on your schlong, and I wouldn’t care. What I do care about is the fact that you’re calling me at two in the morning.”
“Cassie,” he responded, still sounding irritatingly amused by fucking up my sleep. “It’s Thatch.”
“Thatch? I don’t know a Thatch,” I lied. I knew it was him, and more than that, I’d known before he told me. That voice had been rooting around inside my brain for a while now. Fucking Thatcher Kelly. He’d wiggled his way into my thoughts and hung around for-fucking-ever, seemingly quite the parasite.
Hopefully, if I continued to feign confusion, he’d let me go back to sleep.
He laughed again at that. “It’s the guy you’ve been finger-fucking that perfect pussy to for the past month. Don’t you remember? We were in a wedding together. I helped you find Walter after you lost him. You even called me from Key West because you missed me so much.”
“None of this is ringing a bell.”
And I didn’t lose that goddamn cat. He did.
“I even let you feel my dick. Which you fucking loved, by the way.”
“I did not fucking love feeling your dick,” I retorted. “It was hardly memorable, if we’re getting down to the real details.”
“How big is it?”
I was this close to fucking answering.
“Why are you asking me so many goddamn questions?”
He chuckled again.
Yeah, the whole Jolly Green Giant nickname was right on the money, wasn’t it?
But seriously, if he laughed again, I was adding “Kill Thatch” to my to-do list for Monday morning.
“Why are you calling me? Couldn’t it have waited until, I don’t know, the sun is up and I’m not sleeping?”
“Sorry,” he responded, clearing his throat. His breathing was muffled as though he was moving around. “But this couldn’t wait. I’m in a bit of a bind, and I could really use your help.”
“My help?” I asked, sitting up on the bed. “Right now?”
“Yeah.” He started to say more, but he was cut off when someone in the background shouted, “Your three minutes are up, Kelly!”
My eyebrows scrunched together
of their own accord. “Where are you?” I questioned, highly suspicious. “And who was that?”
“Oh, that was just Sheriff Miller,” he answered, his tone nonchalant. I could almost picture him shrugging as he said it.
“Sheriff Miller?” I repeated his words, having a pretty good idea where this conversation was headed. I mean, I was still kind of half asleep, but it didn’t take a genius to deduce the basic details. “Tell me you’re not calling me from where I think you’re calling me from.”
“Yeah, about that…” He trailed off, voice uncertain. “Have you ever been upstate before?”
“For fuck’s sake, Thatch,” I muttered, rubbing sleepy irritation from my eyes.
“Listen, Cass, I know I’m a pain in the ass.”
“I’m gonna put a fucking pain in your ass, all right,” I grumbled, voice thick with sleep and exasperation.
Thatch forged on, unfazed. “But I kind of got arrested tonight and I was hoping you’d be a sweetheart and come bail me out,” he said, just as a robot-like voice warned that the allotted time for his call would be ending soon.
“Kind of got arrested?” I spouted back. “It sounds like you are arrested, motherfucker.”
“So you’ll do it?” he questioned, sounding far too hopeful.
“What about Kline? Or Wes? Or a fucking family member? How the fuck did I end up being your one fucking phone call?”
“I’m starting to realize fuck is your favorite word.”
“What?” What was he even talking about?
He laughed again, and I wanted to reach inside the phone and strangle him.
Go ahead and mark the time as 2:35 a.m.
Kill Thatch is now number one on my to-do list for Monday.
“You say it a lot. Any variation.”
“And?” I snapped when he didn’t elaborate further.
“I fucking like it, honey.” I could sense the smile in his voice.
“Are you hitting on me? In the same conversation where you just asked me to bail you out of jail?”
