Breathe the Sky

by Michelle Hazen

  “Alabama.” He changed lanes, threw her a glance. “Redneck backwoods Alabama, so it probably sounds worse than what you’re used to.”

  “Or better,” she said, then tensed.

  That was maybe too friendly for the endless sexual minefield of life on a construction site. Or too much like flirting. Neither of which she should be doing with a guy who was kind of her boss and kind of had to take orders from her that he didn’t want to take. It was a precarious situation without adding any sexual tension to throw off that tightrope walk.

  He hadn’t answered, and she couldn’t tell in the low light, but something about his awkward posture hinted at a blush.

  “I like it, I mean,” she said. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Your accent. It’s kind of growly and soft and . . . I’m going to shut up and drink my coffee now.”

  He did not respond. And she did not allow her pre-caffeine self to make any more conversation until they swapped out the tire and put away the new spare using her headlamp and his gajillion-watt flashlight. When they were done, he refilled her coffee cup and gave her a rag to clean her hands on, just as the sun started to peek over the horizon.

  She shivered, and he twitched. “Ain’t you got a coat or something in that truck of yours?”

  “It’ll pass in a minute.” She shrugged, unconcerned. “It gets colder just after sunrise, you know.”

  “Humph. That doesn’t make sense. Sun ought to warm things up.”

  “It does, though. Pay attention, at dawn tomorrow. Happens just like that every day, whether it makes sense or not.” She ducked her head, hugging her arms across her chest with her travel mug digging into her ribs. “Thank you for all this. I’ll pay you back, but you didn’t have to help me, and it’s . . . really nice of you.”

  He glanced at her, then away. “Ain’t nice. Didn’t want you to slow down my whole crew waiting on the damn hippie car pool.” He stuffed the rag they’d dirtied into his back pocket and didn’t wait for her to respond. “There, tire’s on. Now get your ass to work.”

  8

  To Make an Omelet

  The day went quickly despite her super-early start, and Creepy Ricky was waiting for her when she got back to the motel. He tried—for the third time—to invite himself into her room. She managed to dodge both his hands and his implications with grace, so she was feeling pretty darn good about herself by the time she finished the mac and cheese she’d made on her camp stove. She washed the dishes in her motel room, and was headed back outside to grab a new book out of her Toyota when she stopped at the sight of an unfamiliar truck parked next to hers.

  The motel didn’t get much nightly traffic: it was too seedy to appeal to anyone who didn’t need the discount of weekly rates. The truck was tall and dark green, with new tires and a black motorcycle strapped into the bed that looked fast enough to be as expensive as the truck itself. She glanced at it as she passed, and unlocked her own vehicle. It was odd that the motel staff had put the overnighter in the room right next to hers, when she knew good and well most of the rooms were vacant.

  She grabbed a book, turned around, and immediately froze, her brain glitching as it registered a familiar sight in a very unfamiliar place. Namely, the man standing in front of her, at a motel she knew he didn’t stay at.

  “Jack?” Then it clicked why he would be here, and she relaxed. “I still need to pay you for that tire,” she said, before he’d have to fumble his way into how to bring it up politely. “I was going to hit an ATM when I got gas in the morning, but if you’d like, I could make a quick run down to the cash machine right now.” Thank goodness she hadn’t yet mailed most of her last paycheck to the medical bill collections agency. She’d just have to tear up that check and make only the minimum payment. Again.

  “Ain’t here to visit.” He edged past her open truck door and reached into the green truck, hauling out a suitcase.

  She glanced from him to the open motel door next to hers, and back. “You’re . . . moving in?” Her lips twitched. “Couldn’t resist all this luxury, hmm?”

  He scrubbed his free hand over the back of his neck, his expression darkening from Resting Scowl Face to Embarrassed Glowering Face. “I can save more money if I stay in a place like this. Probably that’s why Ricky’s here.”

  “Uh-huh.” She did not try to hide her smile. “That’s probably why you’re both here, huh?”

  She was pretty sure he’d said his company paid for their rooms, which meant they didn’t get a per diem allowance he could save by staying somewhere cheaper. But she still remembered how hard he’d shoved Ricky for making an off-color comment at her. How self-consciously he’d scowled when he brought her a tire he’d magically procured in the middle of the night. And for the first time, she thought maybe she wouldn’t mind having a neighbor.

  He ducked his head to look at the ground, cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m not gonna bother you. You’re not at work, and you don’t need to look after me. But if you need something, just knock. I won’t yell, or nothing like that. You won’t bother me.”

  The warmth in her chest was growing and growing, until she thought he must be able to see it lighting her eyes. “Okay,” she said, very softly. “I understand.”

  * * *

  —

  Mari kind of loved that Jack had moved into her motel to look out for her. Grouchy as he was, sometimes she felt like he was easier to understand than any other person in her life. He was so uncomfortable around other people it almost made her feel confident by contrast. But seeing each other more often had only seemed to make him close up tighter. She thought she might know why—whenever he was near, her skin prickled with an awareness that made it hard to focus on anything else. But she wasn’t sure if he was feeling any of that, or if he was just shy about getting caught doing something nice.

  For the next few days, when they crossed paths, he’d jerk a nod without making eye contact. Unless Ricky approached her, trying to chat her up when she was cooking on her tailgate, or attempting his usual method of trying to invite himself in when she was going back to her room. Then Jack would appear within seconds, either to pull Ricky aside to snap something work related or—rather less tactfully—to bark at him to stop bugging the bio in her off time.

  It was nice, and it felt like he was on her side.

  Except that nesting season was starting.

  “It’s covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and state law,” Mari explained, for the third time that week. “Every bird’s nest with eggs in it gets a buffer zone, and we can’t work inside the buffer.”

  The first nest she found meant they couldn’t drive by on the road, and had to take an hour-long detour to get to their tower site. The second nest that appeared meant they could only use one half of the normal construction site to put their tower together. That required a whole lot of gymnastics to make it work and, she was pretty sure, took two years off Jack’s life expectancy. At least if the shade of purple his face turned was any indication.

  The third nest, however, was going to block out this entire tower site.

  “Damn nest ain’t even on the site!” he protested. “Eggs are fine. Ain’t touching the fucking eggs!”

  Mari glanced away, wetting her lips. The first two nest arguments had been stressful enough, but now his volume was really starting to climb.

  The rest of the crew was grouped up on the far side of the trucks. On the other side of the construction pad. Very pointedly not getting into the discussion. She wished she could join them.

  “The birds get disturbed by the noise and activity on the site, and sometimes the parents will abandon the nest,” Mari explained, hoping more information would win him to her side, like it had before.

  “How the hell long do birds nest for, anyway? When can we work?”

  “A few weeks, maybe more. Until the babies can fly.”

  “Christ.” Jack stalk
ed away a few steps, whirled back around, and surged back toward her.

  She didn’t flinch, not like she once would have. Jack wouldn’t hit her. But his anger was a palpable thing, beating at all the edges of her. She hated upsetting people, hated not being able to find a compromise to smooth over the fight.

  “What the hell kind of bird is it, anyway?” He flung a hand out toward the nest she’d found in a low-slung bush. “A golden-plated peckerbill?”

  She winced. “Black-throated sparrow.”

  “A fucking sparrow?” he exploded. “There’s a million of those in the desert! I hear them all morning long.”

  For once, she wished he knew a little bit less about animals. She took a breath and tried to think of another approach.

  In the early years of her marriage, she’d argue with Brad when he blew up at her. The first time he hit her, she’d slapped him right back. But the harder she fought, the angrier he became, and after a while, it was easier to just give in. To get small and quiet and go away in her mind until it was over.

  This nest thing had Jack worked up worse than she’d ever seen him, but this was the law and she simply wasn’t allowed to give up.

  “Do you want to talk to my boss?” Her throat was ratcheting ever tighter. Her whole life, she’d been making people lose their temper. Her stepdad, Brad, now Jack. She just wanted to disappear somewhere in the middle of the desert in her truck, alone, where she couldn’t set anybody off. “Maybe you and Marcus could work something out.”

  “Don’t want to talk to that asshole with his fancy clipboard.” Jack turned his head, spit on the ground. He glared at the empty concrete anchors where the tower was supposed to go.

  Mari glanced out toward the nest. It was impossibly tiny from this distance, just a bundle of sticks the size of an orange. She thought of the little eggs inside. She had to stand her ground, no matter how furious Jack got at her. No matter if he moved out of the motel and left her alone with Ricky, no matter if he complained to Marcus and demanded a different bio. Those birds didn’t have anyone else to fight for them. Rajni or Hotaka would both be better at it, but all these birds had was her. She drew in a breath.

  “Look,” she said, her voice as steady as she could make it. “I understand that you’re frustrated, but it’s not a negotiation. We can’t work here. So call in and get a new tower assignment and we’ll move on to there.”

  “I don’t think you get it,” Jack said. “This is the last tower in this section. If we can’t build this tower, they can’t string this line. They’ve already got wire-pull crews coming from the union, helicopter time booked for the pull. You know how much that shit costs? All those people, all those budgets, they’re waiting on one thing. Me.” He smacked a hand against his chest. “Trust me, one foreman ain’t worth shit when you stack me up to the bunch of zeros on that bottom line. If I can’t build it on time, they’ll get somebody who can.”

  Anger sparked in her chest, breaking through the aching fatigue that had been dragging at her through this whole argument.

  “No, they can’t. It’s the law, Jack. It’s not your fault, and not even your boss could blame you for this, because it would be the same for any foreman trying to build a tower here.”

  He stared at her, his eyes harder than she’d seen them since they first met.

  “You don’t know my boss.”

  Her lips tightened. “Well, tell your boss he can call me directly if he thinks he can just assign another crew to this tower and ignore state law.”

  She didn’t care how many nerve-racking arguments she had to force herself through. That jerk Rod wasn’t going to kill baby birds on her watch.

  Jack scoffed. “Yeah, right. I’ll give him Marcus’s number, maybe. Gonna be a bloodbath.”

  Her back snapped straight and she took a breath to insist that she could handle it, but it was already over. He was walking away, dismissing her. And why wouldn’t he? She’d spent half that argument wilting into the ground. Until the very end.

  She swallowed and headed back to her truck to get flagging so she could mark the new buffer zone around the nest. At least she’d done her job. Probably all the other bios could have done it better, but for now, the birds were safe.

  Even if it might have cost her whatever fragile friendship she and Jack had begun to build.

  * * *

  —

  Jack had a hard time going to sleep. Rod had been all over his ass about the nest, just like he expected. He needed to find a way to build that tower, and his boss had made it clear that it was Jack’s issue to solve.

  It’s just a fucking bunch of eggs, Wyatt. What’s your problem? You and the girl are the only ones who’ve seen them. So if they just . . . go away . . . it’s your word against hers. And who’s going to believe some bleeding-heart environmentalist bitch?

  That would have been enough to make him lose a night of sleep anyway, but there was also the matter of Mari, who was avoiding him after their argument. She’d stayed well away the whole rest of the day, like he’d strangled her puppy. Or like she knew what his boss had asked him to do about the nest problem and she already hated Jack’s guts for it.

  He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said during their argument about the nest buffer zone, but he’d probably been an asshole. He wondered if it would help to apologize, or if she’d still be mad.

  Probably she’d still be mad. Leroy used to apologize, after he’d break Jack’s toys during his sleepless drug benders. As a kid, Jack hadn’t hated him one bit less after those apologies.

  Mari didn’t understand, though. All she saw were those eggs. She didn’t know that Rod was buddies with every major contractor in the industry and had a couple of union reps in his pocket, too. If Jack got fired from this job, it’d be his last job. Back home in Alabama, there were plenty of guys like his daddy who lived in busted-down trailers, bitching about how there wasn’t any work.

  He was painfully aware that this job was the only thing keeping him from being just another one of those guys.

  He’d lain awake until two or three a.m. and barely dozed after that, so when the scream sounded, he bolted out of bed without a hint of confusion. He knew where it came from, and he figured there was only one thing in this world that made a woman scream like that.

  Another scream ripped apart the silence, coming through the wall between his room and Mari’s. The doorframe of his motel room cracked dangerously as he jerked open the door before the dead bolt was fully retracted. He charged out to Mari’s door and hit it with both fists.

  “Ricky, YOU SACK OF SHIT!” he bellowed. “OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR RIGHT THE FUCKING HELL NOW!”

  Rage blasted up through him like wildfire smoke, the sound of his yelling hurting his own ears. He’d never hit that volume in his natural-born life, but right now it felt like her whole door might shiver and wilt away just from the force of what was inside him.

  “NOW, DAMN IT!”

  This was Ricky’s last chance to surrender, or Jack was putting both fists straight through that door, and screw the consequences.

  “Boss?” The crane operator’s voice was both quieter and farther away than he’d expected. Ricky stepped a little farther out of his door at the end of the motel row, rubbing his eyes and wearing nothing but a yellowing, sagging set of tighty whities. “What’s going on?”

  Jack did a double take. If it wasn’t Ricky who’d gotten into Mari’s room and was making her scream like that, who was it? He changed gears in an instant.

  “Ricky, get your ass over here and help me break this door down!”

  He rammed it with his shoulder without waiting for his employee. The weak wood shuddered and made a satisfying cracking sound, but didn’t give way.

  He backed up to take another run at it, Ricky coming to stand confusedly next to him. Before they could coordinate their efforts, the door swung open to rev
eal a wild-haired Mari squinting out of her dark room.

  “Jack? What on earth?” She tugged at the bottom of her T-shirt, like that would cover the miles of long, toned legs and the flash of deep blue that must be her panties.

  He felt light-headed with relief that her panties were still on. Maybe he’d gotten there in time.

  He darted past her and into the room, throwing on the light and already winding up a punch, his muscles flexing with a battering thirst for violence.

  The room was empty, but the sheets on the bed were a storm that made him sick to look at. Literally sick, so the nausea choked greasily up into his throat. He slapped open the door on the bathroom—the only other place in the room for a person to hide—and wondered if he’d have to stop his search long enough to puke into the conveniently located toilet. After which he’d use its porcelain lid to smash out the teeth of whoever had made Mari scream.

  But the bathroom was deserted.

  He threw back the shower curtain with a rattle of rusted metal rings. Nothing. Turning around, he came back into the main room, his eyes narrowed, sweeping every corner.

  Still no attackers in sight. Ricky loitered in the doorway, stealing glances at Mari’s legs in between eyeing his boss with more than a little wariness.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Jack growled at him.

  “The fuck, man?” Ricky said under his breath, but turned to leave, scratching his butt through his threadbare underpants.

  Jack looked at Mari. “Where’d he go?” The bathroom window was too small. There was no way anybody could have gone out the back.

  “Oh my God, Jack. I’m so sorry.”

  “Are you hurt? Why are you apologizing?” His stomach flipped over again. “Do you need . . . I don’t know, a doctor or a . . . another woman or something? I could call . . .” He tried to remember the names of any of the other female bios. There was one who worked with his crew before Mari came. Dark hair, skinny. Cried all the time. Jack had no idea what her name was, much less her number.