His Secret Heart (Crown Creek)

by Theresa Leigh

  “What do you want?” Livvy asked, gesturing to the chalkboard sign listing the drinks. “Don’t worry about getting something too fancy. It’s Claire’s turn to pay and she’s the only one of us that has a job with actual medical benefits.” She raised her voice as she said this so that Claire could overhear from the front door.

  “I miss when you worked here and slipped me free drinks,” Claire complained, hugging Livvy hello. Before I knew it, she’d crushed me to her in an aggressive hug. “What we need is for Ethan to have a cousin posted at every hangout in town,” she mused, once she'd released me. “It’d be so much more economical that way.”

  “You tell him to get on that.” Livvy had a mischievous glint in her eye. “I’m sure if you asked him, he’d make it happen ASAP.”

  I hid my snort behind my hand as Claire tossed her head. I’d only been hanging out with them for a little bit. Bu even I could see that Ethan and Claire were madly in love with each other.

  “He’s a pain in my butt, though,” Claire sighed obliviously. She scanned the chalkboard. “Oh man, they don’t have the Red-Eye anymore, that was my favorite.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “Hot chocolate with a shot of espresso. My brother turned me on to it before - .”

  She caught herself. Then started complaining about the mountain of work waiting for her tomorrow morning. I wouldn't have noticed she'd changed the subject, if I didn’t know who she was talking about.

  But I did. Her espresso addicted, hot chocolate loving brother.

  Claire ended up ordering for all three of us while Livvy and I searched out a free table. We found one back in the corner, far away from the counter and sat down to wait. I shrugged off my jacket. It was warm enough that I welcomed the blast of wind that hit us every time someone opened the door. "Claire is sure taking her time," Livvy sighed.

  “Ugh, sorry,” Claire groaned as she hurried over and set down our drinks. “I got waylaid by the barista.”

  Livvy and I both craned our necks. “Wait, is that -?” Livvy asked.

  “Don’t say it -.”

  “Nose-boy?” Livvy finished with an evil laugh.

  “Who is Nose-boy?” I asked, clueless.

  Claire buried her face in her hands. “You’re new in town, so let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t try to date here. Unless you’re a masochist, maybe. Then you’re set for life.”

  “Claire is attempting to date for the first time,” Livvy explained. “And it’s not going well.”

  “But why is he Nose-boy?” There was nothing strange about the barista’s nose that I could see.

  Claire glared at Livvy. “Don’t even say it.”

  “You tell it better anyway.” Livvy made a ‘go-ahead’ gesture.

  “Ugh.” Claire straightened up and shook her head at me. “He brought me home the other night, and went in for a kiss.”

  “And?”

  She shuddered in revulsion. “He missed.”

  “What?” I burst out laughing.

  Claire groaned. “His tongue went right up my nose! Oh God, I can still feel it.”

  “What did you do?” I leaned in. The barista kept glancing our way. “He’s watching you like a little boy who lost his balloon,” I informed her.

  “Ugh, I told him that I don’t like kissing.” She buried her face in her hands again while Livvy laughed and laughed. “Can you believe it? I just froze up! Instead of saying, ‘you kiss like a fish with a nose fetish,’ I told him I ‘don’t like kissing.’ So now he thinks we’re going out again, and everything will be hunky-dory so long as our lips never touch.” She picked up her coffee cup. “What I wouldn’t give for this to be alcohol right now. I swear, you guys, this is why I never dated before.”

  “No, you never dated because your brothers wouldn’t let you,” Livvy corrected.

  “What changed?” I asked Claire. “You’re allowed to now?”

  She swirled her coffee cup around. “Well, the brother who had the biggest problem with it isn’t around at the moment.”

  A little frission of something I didn’t understand made me sit up straighter. “Where is he?”

  Claire looked at Livvy. “Who the fuck knows?” she attempted to laugh.

  “Claire’s brother has been missing for a few weeks now,” Livvy explained gently.

  “Missing? You mean you don’t know where he is?” I searched my mind, dredging up a passing mention Finn had made to a note. He’d left a note. Yes. He’d told them. Right? “What happened?”

  Claire licked her lips and looked down. The usual fierce gleam in her eyes was gone, replaced by the glint of tears. “He just… disappeared. Took the guys’ tour bus and…” She blinked rapidly.

  My breath was coming faster now. Instantly I was back in the trailer with Finn. “Why do you think you’re better off without him?” I’d shouted at him. “He’s better off without me!” he’d yelled back.

  We’d been talking about his brother, his twin. But here was his sister, blinking back tears in front of me, clearly showing how wrong Finn had been.

  What do I owe him? He wasn’t here. And Claire was, with her anxious hands and the worried bags under her eyes that I finally knew the cause of. Finn had been my friend. But now Claire was too.

  Claire twisted her straw wrapper in her fingers. “Yeah, so anyway,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m finally free to fuck around Crown Creek.”

  “Oh please, you’ve been out with like two guys,” Livvy scoffed. “And one of them is Nick.”

  “And he has the tiniest head,” Claire finished, dissolving into relieved giggles that the subject had changed. “So he only counts as half.”

  “Does he count as half everywhere?” Livvy pressed with a waggle of her eyebrows.

  “Olivia!” I joked. “You're filthy! My own cousin! I had no idea.”

  The girls laughed along with me but inside, I was waging a war. Should I tell her now? What if he wasn’t even at the camp any more?

  I looked away. Like the answer to what I should do was hiding somewhere in the coffee shop. I scanned past the people at the tables. Caught the eye of the barista who still gazed longingly at Claire. Averted my eyes from his...

  And froze.

  My panic about Claire and Finn vanished instantly, replaced with an entirely new panic.

  “What’s wrong?” Livvy asked me. She twisted in her seat to look where I was staring. “Who is… oh…” She trailed off and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “What?” Claire whipped around, more obvious than anyone in the world. “Who are we looking at? Oh fuck!”

  I wanted to scream at her to be quiet and get her head down. But the man at the counter had already turned towards us. His dark, slashing eyebrows made his scowl look all the more fierce as he scanned our table

  He looked at Livvy, then Claire. “That’s not good,” Claire mumbled.

  And then his eyes landed on mine.

  It was like looking into a mirror. It was like looking back in time to the worst day of my life. He’d stood up from comforting his sister and stared me down with those eyes as I stood near my father’s coffin and felt my world drop out from under my feet. Eyes the same shade of blue as my father's. And mine.

  His expression changed abruptly. Without a word, he snatched his coffee and stormed out. “Hey!” called the cashier after him. “Asshole! You forgot to pay!”

  “Fuck.” I took a deep breath, but I couldn’t stop shaking and I had no idea why. Livvy reached over and rubbed soothing, mindless circles on my hand.

  Claire leaped up. “Let’s move,” she ordered us. “Here!” She waved a twenty-dollar bill and slapped it on the counter. “For J.D.’S bill and ours.” She turned back to my cousin and me. “Let’s get out of here. I have a bad feeling.”

  I did too, so I was only too happy to leap up and follow my cousin and Claire. I was too confused, too scared to say anything, but I listened as they discussed me.

  “Do you want to go
to my house?” Claire asked as we piled into her Jeep. I sank gratefully into the back seat, happy we weren’t in Livvy’s car. Claire’s felt less… vulnerable.

  Livvy thought for a moment and then shook her head. “No, your parents have enough to worry about.”

  “My dad could use a new project though,” she commented as she swung out of the parking lot and on to the road. “He’s been getting weird since Finn... you know.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her about Finn. But the rev of a motorcycle engine made my spine tingle. I sat up straighter and looked out the back windshield.

  There was a chopper right behind us. Another one was further behind us but gaining fast. “Is that him?” I squeaked.

  “That’s not J.D.,” Claire said, shaking her head. “I’d much rather it was, though.”

  The light changed ahead of us. I held my breath as we rolled to a stop.

  The two motorcycles veered apart. One pulled right up to the back window, and the other along the driver’s side. Livvy squeaked in fear.

  But Claire wasn’t having it. “Seriously asswipe?” she shouted as she rolled down the window. “You really want to go there, Rocky?” she challenged the Knight brother next to her. “You really want me to sic my brothers on you?”

  Whatever that meant to Rocky, it seemed to have the desired effect. He pulled back from Claire. But the Knight by my window wasn't done yet. He braced his bike and leaned so far in that his helmet visor tapped the glass. I reeled back. "Don’t you hide,” Claire hissed at me. “Don’t let him win.”

  I nodded and sat up straighter. Then I lifted my chin at my brother.

  “Atta girl, see that?” Claire roared. “You see that Maddox? Keep going, fucker! You’re not scary!”

  The light changed and the two Knight brothers gunned around us, forcing Claire to slam on her brakes. “Fuck you!” she shouted at their taillights.

  My throat felt like it was closing. Livvy twisted around. “Sky? You okay?”

  I pressed my palms to my knees to keep them from shaking. “Yeah,” I said through clenched teeth. “Can we go home?”

  “Yeah. Of course we can.”

  Claire drove us back to Livvy’s house, where my cousin immediately went for the liquor cabinet and poured me a shot. Claire fired off a string of text messages and one by one the Thursday night crew arrived.

  I sat in my cousin’s kitchen and let my new family take care of me. But I still could not shake the fear of my real one.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Finn

  It had been eight days since Adam and Esther left, and by now I was used to the knocks coming in the middle of the night.

  I jolted up, fully awake, the dream of Sky floating away before I could dwell on it too long and hurried to my trailer door.

  Dinah was there in her puffy jacket, her breath steaming in the cold night air. "Where?” I asked her, already pulling on my coat.

  "On the road," she said, keeping her voice low even though there was no one around overhear us. "He’ll know it's you if you flash your lights three times." I let the door slam behind me as I followed her out. “You got your phone? In case anything goes wrong?”

  “Right here.” I patted my pocket to show her I still had the burner phone she’d given me last week. "Is he staying?" Our shoes crunched on the frost covered gravel as we hurriedly worked out the plan.

  “No, he needs a bus ticket,” Dinah explained. “I already placed the calls. His aunt in California knows to look out for him."

  “A bus? Don't you think a plane ticket would be better?"

  Dinah stopped short and put her hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t see her eyes in the dark, but I knew she was looking at me with that same mixture of understanding and exasperation she always wore. “Finn. Don’t forget. This child has barely ever been in a car. I think a plane might be too much for him. Don't you?"

  I swallowed down my rebuttal and nodded. After all, she was the boss and I was the muscle in this little two-person Underground Railroad.

  I’d learned about the Underground Railroad from a book about Harriet Tubman. One of the books I’d bought right after Sky left. I’d told Dinah that’s what we were and she liked it so much that’s what she was calling it now. The Chosen Underground Railroad.

  Dinah was afraid that her station wagon had been spotted last time we used it for a pick-up. So I took one of the cars our mysterious ‘secular’ benefactors had dropped off, and headed out into the night.

  It was dark, the kind of total darkness that can only come right before dawn. I drove the empty miles through the black, watching the odometer tick over every tenth of a mile.

  Exactly eight and four tenths of a mile down County Road Twelve, I pulled over to the shoulder and flashed my lights three times.

  A skinny shadow shot across the road and yanked open the door. The second he was in, I started driving again.

  I knew by now that conversation with these kids was impossible until I’d gotten them far enough away that they could breathe easy. So I drove through the night in silence, not even looking at my passenger’s face. He’d been taught his whole life to be afraid of people like me, so I really didn't want to scare him.

  Each person I picked up was different. Some needed a house, furnishings, a way to stand on their own. Others, like this kid, just needed someone to open the door for them and tell them it was okay to walk through it.

  "Who's meeting you?" I asked after I put enough miles out between us and the compound that he started to relax.

  He made a startled noise, but quickly pulled himself together. “My aunt."

  "Was she in too?” I asked, glancing over at him for the first time.

  He had the body of a man, but the voice of a confused, scared boy. I wished I could turn on the light and see his face, but I knew that would scare him. “No, she’s secular,” he answered me. "She's been trying to get my mom out for a long time. I guess I’m the next best thing?"

  “Do you know her?"

  He didn’t answer. I could feel the fear coming off of him. “Hey listen,” I said, launching into the story I’d told so many times now it was becoming a script. “Did you know Rachel Walker?”

  “Yeah?” The familiar name made him sit up straighter.

  I nodded. “She’s out too. And she’s family. She going to be my sister-in-law.”

  The kid was nodding. “She’s marrying that rock music guy?"

  "That's my brother.” Another one of those guilty pangs. I pushed it down. "She's doing good, kid. So good. She's happy. And free.” Of course, I didn't know any of this. For all I knew everything had gone to shit since I left. "She's got a new life. Just like you're going to. You've got people, they'll help you." I reached into my pocket as I pulled into the well-lighted bus station and peeled off a couple bills in my wallet. "Take it," I said, shoving it at him. "Your ticket is waiting for you right there. Under the name Finn Prince.”

  "Is that your name?” The streetlights lit enough of his face that I could see his hopeful smile. “I’m Gabriel."

  The name sent a shock to my system. "That's my brother’s name. My other brother, I mean. I have three of them. And a sister, too."

  "You guys are all secular?"

  Rachel had called us that too. "Yeah, Gabriel. We're secular."

  He looked me full in the face. "So why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?"

  "It's a long story.” I lifted my chin. “Go on. I think that's your bus right there."

  He rushed out, then turned like he wanted to embrace me. I looked at my hands on the steering wheel.

  They tried to do that, these people we spirited it out in the middle of the night. They tried to find a way to stay in contact. Even for the briefest moment in time that we were together, they still wanted to hold on to me.

  I didn't want that. Not from any of them, and especially not from Gabriel. I didn't want him feeling obligated to me. He’d never know it, but I needed this way more than he did.

&nbs
p; "Get going," I barked at him.

  He looked frightened, and ran off. And I hated myself for having to scare him to get him away. They did this too, these people we helped. They always hesitated right before leaving. I never understood why. Because I knew, that if I were in their situation, I would rush for freedom and never look back.

  That's what I told myself as I drove back through the night.

  But the sun was coming up. And the darkness, which had hidden my surroundings from view, was lifting.