by Meli Raine
I really need to talk to someone before I go crazy. Am I imagining Chase’s interest in me? I don’t think so, but how would I know? No one has ever looked at me like Chase did. Touched me like that.
Seemed to know me.
The only friend I have in town is David, the nerdiest guy in school, and even then we only see each other here and there. He’s going away to engineering college in a few weeks. David is the kind of guy who will end up working on bridges or jet planes. After getting beaten up constantly by the jocks at school, I think he’s relieved to just get out of town.
I’m so jealous of him.
Calling David to talk about Chase doesn’t seem like a good idea. Jeff still hasn’t come home from the bar yet. After the bikers zoomed off, I went into the bar and found him with a bruised eye and an angry look on his face. His friends were groaning with pain, though old Zeke had just hidden in the back office for most of the fight. I stayed and cleaned up and Jeff never said a word to me. Zeke gave me a ride home.
So the house is empty. It’s often empty, with Jeff working different hours at the bar, but this is a different kind of empty. I feel like something big is about to happen. My nerves are on edge.
I call Marissa.
“Allie!” she squeals. Music blasts in the background, and I hear people hooting and having fun. It sounds like a party. “I can’t wait for you to meet my roommates!” She says something that sounds like “Morty”, but it’s hard to hear. And then she adds, “We’re having a little par-tay here. I wish you were with us!”
Me, too.
“Is this a bad time?” Tears fill my eyes. I don’t know why. I look at the picture of me, Mom and Marissa that I keep on my bookcase. The one right across from the end of my bed in my room. When I talk to people on the phone it helps to look at their picture. The hard part right now is that Mom isn’t alive, and I feel so alone. Her death hits me hardest when I am alone.
“Never a bad time for my little sister!” Marissa shouts. I pull the phone away from my ear a little. She’s that loud. A giggle bubbles up from my throat and the tears go away.
“Sounds like fun over there.” Over there is more than two hundred miles away. Might as well be the moon. Where I live, nobody leaves town. Nobody except Marissa and, soon, David. But that’s it. Every other person I know who was born here is still here.
I’ve never even left our county. Whenever someone’s heading west I dream about hitching a ride and just disappearing. I could do it so easily. I could take the money I have saved and just pay some nice driver a little gas money to take me to Los Angeles. Marissa would help me find a job. I really could do it. I’m getting closer. So close.
Touching the ocean is a lifelong dream. Right before Mom died, Marissa turned eighteen and with Mom’s blessing, moved to Los Angeles to study fashion design. She’s seen the ocean. Swam in it. Tasted it. I want to float and splash and laugh and be free.
“It is fun! And I can’t wait until you come.” She goes quiet. I swallow, hard, because I know what she’s about to say. She always says it when we talk. “I wish I could help you, Allie.”
All the joy in her voice is gone. The partiers in the background keep going on. I want more than anything to be there, to smile and cheer and dance and live.
“I know you do, sis. And even if you could help me, you know...” I reply. She tried, once. Jeff found the money she sent and never said a word. It just disappeared.
“You saving your tips?” she whispers. A creepy-crawly feeling shoots up my back. Between her words and being alone in the house at night, I feel weird. On alert. Like someone is watching me.
“Yes. And something exciting happened here today!” I say in an airy voice that doesn’t sound like me. Just the thought of Chase takes my breath away.
“Another bar fight?” She sounds cynical. That’s not the Marissa I know.
“How’d you guess?”
“Because that’s the only exciting thing that ever happens there,” she says with a bitter laugh.
She’s right. “Yes,” I say with a sigh. “A motorcycle club.”
She groans.
“But there was this one guy,” I murmur, my mind taken over by the memory of Chase.
“A guy? A GUY? Someone other than David, right?” she screams, the phone filled with happy little noises from her.
“Of course not David. David is like a brother,” I say, laughing. I feel a flush creep across my cheeks when I think of Chase’s arms around me, his body pinning me under him as he protected me. How he watched me when I sucked my finger.
“Whew!” Marissa says. We share a laugh. It feels good to laugh, to be accepted. To have someone to talk to. I miss her. I don’t wish she were here, though. I wish I were with her in LA.
I will be. Soon.
“What’s his name?” she asks, urging me on.
“Chase Halloway,” I say. “He came into the bar today.”
“Chase? Never heard of him.” The song in the background changes to an old Rolling Stones number. The beat is strong and I find myself moving in rhythm to the music. My hips sway in rhythm and it feels so good to move.
“He’s awesome. Interesting and nice.” Nice is probably the wrong word, but my mouth is dry and my heart flutters in my chest suddenly. Talking about Chase really does make him more real. If I keep going, I wonder if I could make him appear. I close my eyes and see him, clear as day.
He’s right on the tip of my mind.
“Interesting and nice? Sounds boring. What’s he look like?” she asks.
I keep my eyes closed. My memory is crystal clear. A sly smile twists one side of my mouth. It feels good to share my story. “Blonde hair. Amber-speckled brown eyes. Tan. Really tan, with thick, muscled arms and long legs that—”
“Allie!” she yells. “You got yourself a boyfriend! I’ve never heard you talk about a guy like this. Ever!” I hear her turn away from her phone and shout to the crowd that her little sister finally got herself a man. People clap and wolf whistle. It seems kind of lame, but feels really good. Even a crowd of strangers hundreds of miles away can cheer me up right now and make my life feel more solid.
The line starts to break up. “I—meet—careful,” Marissa says.
“I love you!” I say as clearly as possible, then push “End” on the phone Jeff lets me use. The room is still. Too still. I don’t want to be alone now. I want to be okay. Better than okay. I want to be part of a group of friends. Warm and eager inside, like I matter. I count. Like I can be part of something bigger than myself. For a few minutes I felt connected to Marissa. To the outside world.
To Chase.
Chapter Four
I pull back the covers and slide into bed. The cold sheets feel almost like a hug. A comforting hug. I need one right now, because I feel scared. Excited and scared and weird, all at the same time. How can I feel so many conflicting emotions at the same time?
Chase.
“Chase,” I whisper. Now I can say it aloud in the dark, empty house. Oh, it feels so special to say his name like that. To release it into the air in my bedroom. For his name to be spoken in a place I can’t leave.
To say it like a chant. A talisman.
A spell.
Maybe if I say his name three times he’ll appear. I giggle at the thought and figure, why not?
“Chase. Chase.” I snicker in the night, amused by my silliness.
“Chase.”
Silence greets me.
The night is so hot. Jeff won’t let me use air conditioning unless it’s more than ninety degrees in the house. He says it’s to cut down on bills, but he runs it when he’s home alone. Once Mom died, everything changed. He treated me like he owned me. Like I was a burden, but one he wanted to keep for some reason he wouldn’t share. A ball of white-hot rage fills me.
Once Mom died. Two years ago, she and Jeff went for a hike in the desert. Mom wasn’t the hiking type, but this is the story Jeff told the police, the news stations, all the people in town.
They were in the desert and climbing big rocks when she slipped and fell down a two-hundred foot chasm. He told everyone her body fell so far he couldn’t see her.
It took search crews more than four months to find her remains. They found her because of a small wildfire that got out of control and burned a few hundred acres. Charred bones are all we have of my mom. All they found. But they did find her, and we buried her.
And then Jeff tried to make Marissa move back home. She refused. She tried to get me out to LA, but Jeff refused to let me go.
Everyone got a choice except me.
I turned eighteen a few weeks ago and the only thing stopping me is money.
The white-hot rage is for Jeff, because so many unanswered questions make you burn. Burn for what isn’t right. Burn for answers you know are out there. Burn so the memory of Mom won’t get snuffed out like a candle in the wind.
I don’t know what to do when I feel like this. The ball of anger has a mind of its own. I feel all my heat pour out into the sheets, making me feel trapped. My bed is an oven. The ceiling feels like it’s pressing down on me. I can’t breathe.
I sit up straight and gasp, remembering everything I’ve lost. I can’t be like this. I need to make it all stop. If I think about Chase, if I go outside and see the moon, maybe it will all just go away.
The image of his hand on my arm, the feel of his hot body against mine are what I need. If I can’t have him here, he can be in my thoughts.
That has to be enough for now.
I crawl out of bed and throw on my sneakers, not bothering with socks. An old sweatshirt of Mom’s is hanging off my desk chair, so I pull it over my head, halfway down the hallway before I shove my arms through the sleeves.
As I open the front door, a loud, rusty creeeeeak sound cuts through the night. Jeff’s complained about needing WD-40 for ages, to oil the rusty hinges. But he never does anything about it. That’s Jeff. Why do something when you can just complain?
The moon helps me. When I look up at it and wrap my arms around my waist I feel like I have a friend. A big, shining face that listens. Sometimes I actually talk out loud to it, but one time David found me telling the moon a story about my mom and he thought I was losing it.
Now I just think my thoughts instead of confessing them to the sky.
No one wants to hear what I have to say, anyhow. Not here.
In Los Angeles everything will be different. I’ll have friends, and a great job, and Marissa and I will share an apartment. We’ll throw parties and she’ll become a famous fashion designer. We’ll spend our days off at the beach and run in the ocean and play on the Santa Monica Pier. What’s it like to rollerblade on the sidewalks and eat ice cream as you watch the sun set?
I’ll find out.
Soon.
It’s so quiet out here in the desert. Hot and quiet. I don’t really need the sweatshirt out here, but I like to pretend I can still smell my Mom when I wear it. I don’t even wash the sweatshirt, not ever, because it feels like wiping away the last little bit of her I have.
A crackle of footsteps makes me jump. Then I freeze. The moon glows in the sky. The stars feel so close on this clear night that I could reach up and stroke one. Every sound thunders through my ears. I hug myself closer. Coyotes aren’t uncommon here, but I’m only a few feet from the front door. I’m not in much danger from animals.
The sound isn’t coming from an animal, though.
“Who’s there?” I call out.
I see the outline of his body as he steps into the light from the porch lamp. My heart skips a beat and my blood pounds through me. It’s Chase, and he’s walking toward me like he has all the time in the world.
Like he’s known me forever.
“Hey, Allie.” His voice is like whiskey poured over silk. My body starts to buzz and a frantic feeling takes form. It combines with my ball of anger inside and I need to move. Run away. Do something. Do anything to make this feeling make sense.
Stop myself before I jump into his arms and kiss him.
Chase decides for me. He walks so close to me that I can feel his own heat radiating out, drawing me closer. I take one step toward him. His hand reaches out to take a strand of my hair and pull on it, gently, like a line that tethers me to him. We’re connected and I’m buzzing, wanting more.
“What are you doing here?” I rasp. My voice betrays me, because even I can hear how much I like him in my words. I’m clumsy and don’t know what to say. No guy has ever come to my house before, or touched me like this. A cold chill floats down from the base of my neck to my waist.
He flashes me that half grin again. My knees turn to liquid. He lets go of my hair and reaches for my hand, the one with the worst of the glass cuts on it. When he touches me, it feels like dipping my whole body in the ocean.
“I want to make sure you’re okay.” The moon seems to shine brighter, Chase’s eyes smoldering, glittering with emotion. He penetrates me with his gaze, nailing me in place. I came outside because I needed to get away from my anger, needed to feel like I could breathe again.
And here I am with him. Like I conjured him.
Maybe saying his name three times really did make him appear.
Maybe I have more power than I thought.
When he reaches to stroke my arm, I let out a giant sigh and realize I’ve been holding my breath. “I’m okay,” I murmur.
“I’m not. I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day. Worrying about you. Wanting to see you,” he says in a husky voice.
The butterfly in my chest turns into one hundred of them. “Thank you,” is all I can think to say.
He just nods. “That was a tough scene.”
“What was that about? Jeff’s never done that before,” I ask. All my questions come pouring out. I can’t ask Jeff anything. “Why did your biker club fight with Jeff and his friends?”
He takes a long, deep breath. I regret my questions. His sigh is hard to read. Is he annoyed? Weary? Worried? Or, worse, angry? Chase’s shoulders rise, his chest expands, and he’s so muscular and intense. “I know part of the reason, but it’s a long story.”
He sounds like he’s just tired.
I smile and spread my arms upward. “I have all the time in the world.”
Chase starts wrapping his arms around my waist with a slow, strong grip. My chest is pressed against his ribs, his belt buckle digging into my belly. Every part of me is racing at light speed, all toward Chase. I have never touched a guy like this in my life. Being held in his arms feels like heaven. I never knew that so much of my skin could sing simply from being touched like this. By Chase. He makes me light up, turns on all the heat and need in me.
“I can think of plenty other things I’d rather do with all that time of yours,” he says darkly. His eyes look at me with the same expression he had back at the bar parking lot, when I licked my finger.
Like he wants to taste me.
Me? Why me? I wonder, and open my mouth to ask the question as he bends down and takes my mouth with his.
Oh!
The kiss shocks me, his lips so soft and warm. He tastes like mint and grapes, the scent of him a mixture of sweat and heat and dust and musk that I can’t name. If it had a name, it would just be Chase.
My thoughts jam up, jumbling together as his hands slide up my spine, sinking into the hair at my neck. His fingers travel from the nape down halfway through the strands, then he makes a fist. It’s like he’s using me as an anchor.
“Allie, I don’t know why I’m here,” he murmurs against my ear. “I saw you today and couldn’t get you out of my head.” His lips kiss the soft skin under my earlobe. I shiver, inhaling so sharply it’s like I’ve taken all the air in the world into my lungs at once.
I feel the same but can’t say a word because Chase goes back to kissing me. All I want is this. His lips are so soft, the scent of him is so male, and I’m transported somewhere so much better than anything I’ve ever known.
I don’t know what to do,
but my mouth wants more. More of everything. My hands sit on his hips, right at his belt, and the feel of his skin under his shirt makes me yearn to touch him, bare. I hear a low grumbling noise and a creaking sound.
His tongue slides along the crease of my lips and parts them, so warm and inviting, exploring and taking as a wellspring of emotion inside me bursts through. All my anger is gone, replaced by a desire to touch and be touched that I didn’t know was possible.
And then: “Get your fucking hands off of her right now.”
We turn, startled. I pull away, but Chase pulls me closer to him. Two different instincts. Both make sense, but I like what Chase is doing more than what my own impulse tells me to do. Jeff is standing there, eyes hard and dead.
The rumble of a motorcycle engine cuts the night air.
A spray of dirt and rocks coats the side of Jeff’s car as Chase’s dad comes to a fast stop on his Harley. How could we not hear them both approach? Galt jumps off his bike and walks at a slamming pace toward Chase, who tenses but doesn’t take his hands off me.
“Of all the chicks you could want to bone, you have to pick this one,” Galt mutters, grabbing Chase’s arm. Chase shakes him off, furious, but doesn’t let go of me. They look like two boxers in the ring, ready to destroy each other. My body tingles with the force of their mutual fury.
“I can do whatever I want, Old Man,” he barks at his dad.
Jeff and Galt both make raspy snorting sounds. They look at each other in surprise, then scowl. It would be funny if I didn’t know what they were capable of. All I have to do is think about the bar and all those guns.
“Not when you’re about to become the vice president of Atlas. You don’t get to chase your cock—no pun intended—when you got responsibilities.” Atlas? What’s Atlas? Wait. Atlas Atlas? The motorcycle club? Oh, my God. I feel so stupid.
Chase stops breathing. His body goes hard, like he’s a big, six-foot tall slab of rock with blood coursing through it. “Don’t you talk about me or her like that.” The look he gives his dad makes my heart skip a beat.
Galt’s back swells, like a cobra about to strike. “I made you, son. I can talk to you however the fuck I like. And when you put everything at risk for a nice, tender piece of virgin ass—”
