Burn It Up

by Cara McKenna

  He had told her those things, hadn’t he?

  And actions don’t lie. People could. Words could. But not months and months of kindness. And not the things his body had told hers, any of the times they’d come together in her bed.

  She tailed him into the bar’s back lot, heart feeling like a jumbled heap of too many questions.

  “Home sweet home,” Casey called as she stepped out of her car.

  “For now, anyhow.” She glanced up at the windows of the second floor, wondering what it would be like, staying with her boss and former boss. Casey was her boss as well, of course, but it had never really felt that way. Raina had been fair, but a hard-ass. And Duncan was . . . Duncan. Nice enough, but also stiff and stuffy and a touch overbearing when it came to rules and order. Nothing compared to my dad, though. Still, she’d be very mindful of keeping her and Mercy’s stuff from cluttering up the common rooms.

  “You’ll find your own place soon,” Casey said, reading her mind. The back door was unlocked, as promised, and he picked up a cinder block from beside the Dumpster to prop it open wide. Abilene got the baby out, seat and all, carrying her up behind Casey, who had a suitcase in each hand.

  They found Duncan in the kitchen, finishing what looked like a plate of salad. “Oh good, it’s not burglars, then.”

  “Nope, just your new tenants,” Casey said dropping the bags. “Here, watch this.” He took the car seat from Abilene, setting it on the table.

  Duncan’s eyes widened. “I’m due to open the bar in—”

  “We’ll be quick,” Casey said, halfway to the door.

  “Does it . . .” He eyed the baby, then Abilene. “Does she need anything?”

  “No, she’s fine. If she starts crying, I’ll be back up in a minute.”

  “Right. So I just . . . let her cry?”

  She smiled. “She’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.”

  She passed Casey on the stairs, flattening herself against the wall as he slipped by with the crib panels under his arms.

  “He’s completely terrified,” she whispered.

  “Excellent.”

  She headed back out into the sunshine, smiling genuinely for the first time in days, it felt.

  They had the cars empty in no time, and back upstairs, Abilene told Duncan, “Thank you. And good job—you’ve officially babysat now.”

  “You’re welcome.” He stood, seeming eager to escape, as though she’d left him alone with a wolverine.

  “Gosh,” she said, carrying Mercy into the spare bedroom, where Casey was reassembling the crib. “I think he’s, like, literally afraid of babies.”

  “Perfect for Raina, then.”

  She set the seat down and sat on the edge of yet another temporary bed. “Thanks again. For helping me move.”

  “Anytime.”

  Anytime, indeed. Anytime she’d needed him these past few months, he’d been there.

  “Don’t hesitate to ask,” he added, crouching with the screwdriver in hand. “Just because you and I couldn’t be . . . you know. That doesn’t mean I’m any less fond of you. Either of you,” he said, nodding to Mercy.

  “That’s awful nice.”

  He shrugged, eyes on the task. “Apart from the bar, and my mom, what else have I got to do with my time? It’s my pleasure.”

  “No,” she said, smiling. “It’s not.”

  He looked up.

  “Your pleasure? All those nights when she kept you awake, shrieking? All the nights you stayed up to stand guard, worried about my ex?”

  “Well, it was my honor, anyhow.”

  His honor . . . He did have that, in a way. And not long ago at all, he’d had her respect, her admiration.

  And I still have his, if only because he never got to find out about my own mistakes.

  She knew he was hurting, from how she’d rejected his past. Maybe he’d feel just a little better if she shared her own mistakes with him now. A little relieved, like maybe he’d dodged a bullet himself. It wasn’t as though he was the only monster. She was far from perfect.

  “Listen. Sit a minute.” She patted the bed. “If you can spare it.”

  He sat and she did the same, facing him.

  “You told me about your past,” she said. “I still owe you mine. Maybe it’ll help you understand why it is I need everything in my life going forward to be on the up-and-up.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, but I’ll listen all the same.”

  “It’s . . .” A ragged breath hijacked her chest, but she forced out a long exhalation, calming some. Damn, one word in and already she was a mess.

  “You don’t need to say it if it’s only going to upset you.”

  “No, I do need to. Because I . . . I’ve made such a train wreck of my life.” She raked her hair behind her ears with her fingers, struggling for composure.

  Casey moved closer and put a hand on her knee, rubbing. Such a familiar gesture. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re not the first girl who got knocked up by the wrong guy, you know. And you won’t be the last.”

  “It’s not that.” She sniffed loudly and sat up straight, wiping her nose on her sleeve’s cuff.

  “Hang on.” Casey got up and grabbed a box of tissues from the dresser. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She honked her nose and he waited patiently.

  When her breathing had slowed some, he coaxed, “So if you’re not talking about the pregnancy, what?”

  She laughed miserably. “Where to begin? The baby’s just about the only thing I’ve managed to do even half-right, these past few years.”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “The beginning . . . God. Okay. Well, I guess everything first started going wrong when I was fifteen. I got into a relationship with . . . with my preacher.”

  His eyes grew round, belying his calm voice. “All right.” Between those two words were sandwiched a few others, to the tune of, Okay, so that is a little fucked.

  “And I should tell you, my name wasn’t Abilene back then—it’s not even my legal name. My real name’s Allison Beeman. And I’m twenty-two, not twenty-four.”

  He nodded, not looking completely surprised. “Raina said once she wondered if your ID was fake.”

  She met his eyes. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Well, I got the fake one when I left home, and started lying about my name and birthdate. But if you ever saw my medical records, they have my real information on them.”

  “That why you wouldn’t let me pick up your mail for you?”

  She smiled her apology, feeling shady in an instant.

  “And why you wouldn’t let me come inside the hospital with you, after the baby was born?”

  “That’s why.”

  “You’re not evading the law, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t even know how to, like, get a fake social security number or anything like that. I really only changed my name because I didn’t want people plugging me into Google and finding out why I left my hometown—it made the papers, after all.”

  “What did, honey?”

  Honey. She’d missed that name more than she’d realized.

  “My preacher, he was about forty-five,” she said. “And married. And I’m from, like, the quaintest little God-fearing town in Texas you ever saw. Church was everything, and everybody adored him. So did I.”

  “And he took advantage of that.”

  She offered another sad, sheepish smile, and Casey’s expression changed—from concerned to surprised in a beat.

  “You approached him?”

  “Not exactly. But I wanted him, in a way, and he could probably tell. You have to know my family for it to make sense, maybe . . . My dad was a retired colonel—I mean, he still is. My parents are still back there, alive and married and probably trying real hard to pretend I never existed. Anyhow, they’re both hyperconservative Evangelicals, and it was just implied that I’d wait until I was married to have sex.”

  “R
ight.”

  “But I was always curious about that stuff. I was precocious, was how my grandma put it. Anyhow, my preacher seemed so . . . I dunno. He was handsome, and he was holy, so it felt like the attraction wasn’t as sinful as it could have been, somehow. I got completely infatuated with him. And he must have known it.”

  “And eventually, he exploited that?”

  She shrugged, not knowing the answer. “I couldn’t say. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want it, and it wasn’t like I ever told him no. Quite the opposite. I was fifteen, and so suppressed by my parents and the church . . . I know it seems like, oh, of course, it was the adult who’s to blame.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “He was only human. We both were. He was weak, and I was curious. I only wanted the attention, and to know what sex was like, and to feel wanted by a father figure, maybe, because my dad was so cold and strict.”

  “But he was still the adult,” Casey said. “The one with enough years and sense to say no.”

  “You can make that argument, but I wasn’t the innocent one in it, either. I have that energy that does something to certain men—makes them want to save me. And even at that age, I knew it.”

  He nodded grudgingly, letting her know he knew what she meant but didn’t like it.

  “It attracts both savior types and also some real creepers.”

  Casey smiled. “Which am I?”

  She eyed him, curious. “I’m not sure. You tell me.”

  He replied after a long moment’s consideration. “For me, it was never about that. It was partly about you being as pretty as you are, but I mean, when we met, you weren’t exactly an easy target—you must’ve turned me down two dozen times. I think it was just your smile, or your eyes. Both. And how you laugh. Wanting to make you laugh. It was never about thinking you needed saving or protecting.”

  “Or corrupting.”

  He shook his head. “Nobody winds up in Fortuity because they’re innocent. Well, almost nobody.” He glanced at the baby. “But anyhow, what happened with you and the preacher?”

  “We carried on for six months or more, and I got in real deep with him. I thought I was in love, and maybe I was. It’s hard to know, at that age. I was so caught up in the feelings, I started losing track of my values—and I was a God-fearing girl, let me tell you. But I got this idea in my head that he’d leave his wife and we could run away and escape my stupid hometown and all those awful, small-minded people, but of course he told me that was impossible.”

  “So?”

  “So I told his wife. In my imagination, I thought that would drive them apart, and he’d have no excuse not to be with me.”

  “But what actually happened?”

  “She went a little crazy. I think she meant to just sweep it under the rug, but then she lost it in the middle of the Sunday service during a sermon he was giving about temptation. She stood up and screamed to the entire congregation what had been happening. The whole town was there.”

  “And you ran away because you were humiliated?”

  “Not entirely. I ran away after . . . I ran away because a week later, his wife killed herself.”

  Casey’s face fell. “Jesus.”

  She nodded, tears welling anew. “I’d felt awful after she told everyone—like everybody was either looking at me as a slut or a child-abuse victim. With pity or contempt. But after she committed suicide, I realized, in this massive, suffocating rush, how selfish I’d been. And reckless.” She paused then, registering what she’d just said. Selfish. Reckless. Those unforgivable crimes she’d been holding against Casey. “I realized how blind I’d been, when all that time it had felt like some big romantic drama. She’d never been a real person to me. A real person trapped in the same oppressive community I’d grown up in, with a real life I was destroying.” Her voice broke, shoulders beginning to shake.

  “Hey.” Casey touched her arm, rubbing it softly, up and down. “It’s okay. You were fifteen. We’re all sociopaths at that age.”

  She shook her head. “Yes, but my actions killed somebody, Casey.”

  “If you want to blame yourself, you have to blame the whole goddamn town, too—the sort of culture you guys all lived in. People don’t just end their lives because their marriages fall apart. She had problems of her own, I promise you.”

  “It’s hard to see it that way.”

  “You can argue it all you want, but I could just as easily argue that your preacher seduced you. You have to cut yourself some slack. You were a kid, wrapped up with what sounds like some seriously messed-up adults. He was the one who should have known better. He was the authority figure, and three times your age, too.”

  She heaved a sigh, the noise catching on sobs.

  “Anyhow, we could argue about it all afternoon, but I don’t want to. Just tell me how you got from fifteen to twenty-two, and here.”

  “I was sixteen by then,” she corrected, and blew her nose.

  “Hey, you want a beer?”

  She glanced up with raw eyes, frowning, unsure. Alcohol had never given her trouble like heroin had. She’d always hated the taste of it.

  Casey didn’t wait for her answer. He disappeared and she heard the noises in the kitchen, and when he returned, he had the necks of two bottles pinched between his fingers. But he stopped on the threshold, frowning, and promptly turned around like he’d changed his mind. When he next appeared he held two clinking glasses, whiskey on ice to judge by the amber color.

  “Cheers,” he said, forcing a tumbler into Abilene’s hand.

  “To what?”

  “To everybody messing everything up, all the time. Everybody.” He tapped her glass with his. “Now, go on. You’re sixteen.”

  “I was sixteen . . . My parents were talking about sending me away to a boarding school or maybe even this Christian place, a religious mental ward basically, because I hadn’t stopped crying in days. I heard them talking about it. I’d just gotten my first car that summer, and I packed a load of clothes in the middle of the night, and I drove away. I had some money I’d saved from babysitting. I got the ID in Fort Worth, and I stayed there for a little while . . . I won’t lie, the next few years weren’t good.”

  “How so?”

  “I had a tenth-grade education, and I didn’t want to use my real name, since I didn’t know if my parents were looking for me. I sort of doubted they were. There was never an Amber Alert or anything.”

  Casey frowned, heart twisting. “Really?”

  She shook her head. “Knowing my dad, he would’ve been relieved to have me gone. When I say he was tough, and hard, I don’t just mean strict. I mean, like, after that, I was dead to him. I’d humiliated them. I looked myself up once, a few months after I left. There were local news stories. They said that I’d gone to live with relatives, but nothing about where. There was even a quote of my mom saying how, like, their daughter felt terrible for what had happened and needed a chance at a fresh start, in a new community. Like they were respecting my privacy or something.”

  “That’s so incredibly shitty.”

  She made a tell me about it face and sipped her drink, wincing at the sting. She hadn’t tasted liquor in ages. Not since before she’d met James. Not since Lime. She set the glass on the edge of the dresser, done with it.

  “So what was really happening?” Casey prompted.

  “I was all over, crashing on people’s couches. Working menial jobs sometimes. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “But it was easier for me to rely on men. And I don’t mean I was selling my body. I mean I’d date older guys, the types who’d take care of me, let me stay with them, lend me money.” Sugar daddies was the term, but she refused to speak it aloud.

  “Some of them treated me fine. Maybe they were a little creepy, with me being so young, but they didn’t exploit me any more than I was expecting or willing to be exploited, you know? Others weren’t so good. I got smacked around a little.”

  Heat flared in Casey’s eyes.

&n
bsp; “I left those guys as quick as I could. I’d spent so much time feeling controlled by my father, I only wanted that stuff on my terms. With guys I felt like I had some control over.”

  “Sure,” he said, looking a touch nauseous. “So how did you wind up in Nevada? And with Ware?”

  “Things took a bad turn when I moved to Arizona with a guy. We fell apart, and I wound up dating a friend of his. That was a bad scene, and I was in a bad way. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. Like there was no home for me to run back to. I even wrote to my mother one time, about two years after I’d left, and asked if I could come and see her—just her. She told me no. That my dad was having heart issues and he couldn’t handle it if he found out. She also told me my grandma had passed away. I loved my grandma, so much. I took her last name—my mom’s maiden name—when I ran away.”

  “Price.”

  She nodded. “And she lived in Abilene.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “It broke my heart, hearing she’d passed. And worrying maybe the stress I’d caused everyone might’ve had something to do with it. After that letter, I just had to accept, I had no home to go back to. Nobody. This was about three years ago. I went into a really dark place, and I started to just . . . drift. I worked on and off, and I . . . I tried heroin, then. For the first time. And not the last.”

  Casey’s fist squeezed his glass—she could tell from the way his knuckles blanched. He’d not expected drugs, she thought. The possibility had never crossed his mind, and she wasn’t surprised. Junkies weren’t meant to be shy, or liable to blush at cuss words, or indeed chubby. She didn’t fit the bill.

  All he said was, “Jesus.”

  “It was bad. It was really bad. It started slow. I worked and used and mostly functioned for a year and a half. I wound up in Lime, through somebody who knew somebody, who knew somebody.”