The Lonesome Young

by Lucy Connors

  “I happen to be the former third grade spelling bee champ, I’ll have you know,” I said loftily, still smiling. “At least until I was robbed at the district level. Just in case you ever wondered, rhinoceros does not end in o-u-s.”

  “You were robbed,” he agreed, and a tingling sensation of warmth circled around inside me, trying to find a home.

  Mickey Rhodale might be dangerous, but he had the most incredible blue eyes I’d ever seen, surrounded by long, dark lashes set in a deeply tanned face that was framed by those too-long waves of silky black hair. He was absolutely, stunningly gorgeous, and I didn’t think he even realized it. Most hot guys acted like they were nature’s gift to women. Mickey had the social graces of a clumsy foal.

  The thought made me relax. I knew more about dealing with horses than boys and, as I’d told Pete, I had far too much sense to fall for the town bad boy.

  Mickey pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear, and my breath caught in my throat.

  Oh, crap, I’m falling for the town bad boy. That kiss . . .

  “What’s going on in that mind of yours?” he drawled, and it took me a few seconds to remember what we’d been talking about, because my attention kept getting distracted by the play of muscle in his arms when he shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “I’m thinking that my family would fall over in a dead faint if they knew I’d skipped class to talk to the most dangerous boy in school,” I admitted, glancing at the door while hiding my shaking hands behind my back.

  Mickey threw back his head and laughed, and I stared stupidly at the column of his throat for a moment before remembering where we were.

  “Will you be quiet? Somebody’s going to catch us in here.”

  He pretended to shudder. “Oh, no, not that! We might get detention.”

  “I know you’re mocking me, and I just want to point out that it’s not really the best way to begin a friendship,” I said, and I could hear how brittle I sounded, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

  A corner of his mouth quirked up. “As you wish. Is that what we’re doing? Beginning a friendship?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Manhandle me at the fire, mock me in class, smile at me, bait me, kiss me—it’s almost like you’re two different people. Which Mickey is here with me? And everybody keeps telling me to stay away from you. I honestly don’t know what to do.”

  “So why don’t we sit and talk and figure it out?” He pulled off the flannel shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt and put it on the step. “A little late, maybe, but so you don’t get your skirt dirty.”

  It was a nice gesture, but without the “as you wish” Princess Bride reference, I might have left him there alone in the stairwell anyway. It was hard to resist a good Westley quote.

  I carefully sat down on his folded shirt.

  “Sorry about coming on so strong. I was running out of ideas about how to get you to talk to me, especially after I kissed you like that,” he admitted. “I just wanted a chance to get to know you—for you to get to know me—without the burden of everybody’s judgment crashing into us.”

  I shrugged, not quite sure how to handle this new, sincere version of Mickey. “They won’t tell me anything about you, you know,” I finally said. “My family. Or at least my grandmother and our foreman. Pete warned me to stay away from you, and Gran won’t even hear your name. What is that about?”

  He laughed, but it was more bitter than amused. “The Rhodale line throws true, my grandpa used to say. We all look the same, and we all grow up to be lawmen or criminals. Hasn’t everybody in school told you about us?”

  “My grandfather sounds a lot like yours.”

  “Really? Did he have to leave the ranch to shoot possums and squirrels to make sure his family got enough to eat?” His sarcasm hung in the air between us, tangible as a slap in the face.

  “No, what I meant was that my Gran told me he talked about how the Whitfield line were all born to be horse people, you jerk. You have to make up your mind, Mickey. Are we going to actually talk to each other like normal people or not? I’m kind of tired of the hot and cold running attitude,” I snapped.

  He narrowed his eyes, but then he nodded and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve heard about the horrible Whitfields for so long that I guess I’ve internalized it.”

  “Ooh, ‘internalized.’ Points for the SAT word,” I said, smiling a little before what he’d said really registered. “Wait. The horrible Whitfields?”

  He returned my smile and nudged my leg with his, and a little of the tension relaxed out of my shoulders. We might be able to have a civilized conversation after all, in spite of the almost painful sparks of sensation that snapped and pulsed along my nerve endings from his nearness.

  “I don’t actually know. I’ve heard Pa mention your father a few times. They never got along, apparently.”

  My head was starting to hurt. “What, like when they were kids? Dad hasn’t lived here since high school. Who cares about that?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. This circular conversation was getting us nowhere, fast.

  “This is Kentucky, Princess. Everybody cares about everybody else’s business and pasts and especially any misdeeds,” he said, dropping his head into his hands.

  The hint of vulnerability in the boy everybody else seemed to think was a monster tugged at me more than if he’d tried to charm me or seduce me.

  “Mickey—”

  “I’d like to get to know you,” he said abruptly, raising his head. “I admit it, I’d like to kiss you again, too, but this is about more than that.”

  Time itself did a little hiccup as I stared into his blue eyes. He raised his hand and touched the side of my face so gently that it was more a whisper of a promise than an actual caress. My hands started to tremble, and I forgot how to breathe for a moment, as the connection between us flared into urgent, electric existence. I thought for a second that he’d kiss me, but instead he leaned back and stretched out his legs, shoving his hands back in his front pockets as if he had to forcibly keep himself from touching me again.

  Or so I imagined. Hoped?

  “But—”

  “I know, I know. It’s a bad idea. Your family told you to stay away from me. My family will probably tell me to stay away from you.” He glared at the WILDCATS RULE, TROJANS DROOL graffiti that somebody had scrawled in purple marker on the wall, and I waited for him to continue. I wasn’t going to ask about the rumors again.

  I’d wait for him to volunteer the information. I wanted to explore the fragile beginning of whatever was between the two of us without being affected by what our families would or wouldn’t say.

  Finally, he quit staring at the wall and looked at me. “Well? Do you want to get to know me, too, or not?”

  I started to laugh. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re pushy and obnoxious?”

  “Maybe a few times,” he admitted. “Are you going to answer me?”

  Talk about a loaded question. Did I want to get to know him? Of course I did. He was gorgeous and mysterious—every ounce of my teen-girl DNA was practically programmed to want to get to know him.

  But there was more to it than that.

  Mickey Rhodale, for all of his dangerous, bad-boy exterior, had a hint of damaged vulnerability about him that I was pretty sure he didn’t let anybody else see, and he’d shown it to me.

  Something inside me, in a very small voice, was saying, Yes, of course. Finally. Here you are.

  And it scared me to death. But I had to face it head-on.

  “Yes, I want to get to know you, too.”

  “So give me your phone,” he said, holding out his hand.

  I handed it to him and then watched as he added his name and number to my contacts. He smiled a little bit smugly when he handed it back.

/>   “So I have to call you? Don’t you want my number?”

  “I have it from when you called the station,” he said. “So now when I call you, my name will pop up, and you’ll know it’s me.”

  His admission that he’d deliberately kept my phone number almost made me forget what I’d been thinking about—that I needed to know more about him.

  I tried again. “I do want to get to know you, Mickey. But—”

  “But you need to know the truth.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, yeah, it’s true. I beat the living shit out of three guys and put two of them in the hospital. I have anger management problems. I’m a nightmare waiting to eat your dreams and swallow you whole,” he said bitterly.

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I just waited. There had to be more.

  Finally, he sighed. “They were hurting my sister. She has—had—a bit of a reputation as a party girl. She has two kids by two different guys, and I guess they thought, like a lot of people thought, that she was easy.”

  His hands kept clenching and unclenching, as if some kinesthetic memory of the fight were controlling them, and I had to force myself not to flinch away.

  “She’s not. Easy, I mean. She just has a big heart and wants to be loved.”

  “I can understand that,” I said quietly. “Don’t we all want to be loved?”

  He shot a sharp glance at me, but then he continued in a low, rough voice. “I was watching her girls one night, and these assholes waylaid her at the door to the apartment building. I guess they figured they’d bring her upstairs and rape her in front of her kids. Hell, I don’t know. They were drunk. They probably weren’t thinking at all.”

  Nausea rose in my throat in a hot rush, and I had to take a long, slow breath to force it back down.

  “I can’t—how—I’m so sorry.” I put a hand on his arm, and he covered it with his own hand and squeezed my fingers tightly.

  “Why were you the one who got in trouble for it? I mean, if that part is even true, if you, well . . .” I stopped stumbling around the thing and just came out with it. “Did you really go to juvie? For this?”

  “Yeah, I went to juvie. My family isn’t rich, like the families of the guys who attacked Caro.”

  I recoiled at the bitterness in his voice, but it still didn’t make sense to me. “But your dad—”

  “Is only the sheriff, an elected official. Whose money do you think buys elections? It’s sure as hell not ours.”

  “Mickey, I’m so sorry,” I said. “For what happened and for judging you before I knew what really happened. You should let people know all this, so they quit thinking you’re some kind of lunatic ready to explode into violence at any minute.

  He still held my hand, and his fingers tightened on mine for an instant, but then he let go entirely.

  “Yeah, well, I’d do it again in a heartbeat, so maybe they’re not wrong.”

  The bell rang, and he stood up. “This was stupid. You should stay away from me. No matter how much I wish things were different, they never will be. This is Whitfield County, after all.”

  He shoved the door open so hard I thought it would crash off its hinges, and then he was gone, leaving me wondering what had just happened, and why I wanted so badly to rush after Mickey and comfort him.

  Why it suddenly mattered to me so much.

  I stood up and realized that he’d left his shirt behind, and I shook it out, folded it, and shoved it down inside my backpack. I’d give it to him later.

  I’d have to see him to give him his shirt, right?

  CHAPTER 10

  Mickey

  I spent the rest of the day ignoring my teachers, ignoring Derek’s questions, and thinking about Victoria. The powerful feeling of instant connection between us ran too deep to be pleasant, or even casual. But where I was mad at the world, she was compassionate as she confronted the demons of a guy she’d been told to avoid and even fear.

  She deserved better than to get tainted with my reputation, however undeserved, so I tried to stop myself from studying her across the cafeteria as she laughed with Denise and some other girls. I tried to stop watching for her in the halls with a determination that bordered on obsession, like I’d done every school day for the past two weeks.

  But fighting the compulsion meant that when I did catch a glimpse of her, the feel of seeing her was heavy and strange, and it ripped at my insides like a jagged-edged triangle being jammed into the unyielding square corners of my life’s expectations. Something stronger than want waged a battle against my common sense and instinctive wariness; the pressure built up all afternoon until I finally escaped to my motorcycle, forcing myself not to look for her in the spill of students leaving school for the day.

  I fired up my bike, but I didn’t have a destination in mind, really. Coach had given us a rare day off practice, it was my day off work, and I wanted nothing more than a little solitude to try to figure out what was going on in my head over Victoria. I didn’t feel like heading for home, though.

  When I pulled to a stop at the light, my phone buzzed, and I answered it without thinking.

  “Mickey. Ethan. Get your ass over here.”

  “I don’t take orders from you.” I deliberately revved the bike, so I missed what he said next. “Sorry. Didn’t hear you.”

  “Get over here now, or else.”

  The phone clicked off, and I resisted the urge to smash it into the ground. I knew damn well that “or else” could be any of a number of highly unpleasant consequences, and we’d all learned over the years that it was generally easier just to give in a little bit sometimes when Ethan started up.

  Choose your battles, Mom always said, with that tight-lipped expression she only got when the topic was Anna Mae or Ethan. Something told me I had bigger and tougher battles ahead of me, especially when he found out about my interest in Victoria Whitfield, so I turned left, past the flower shop, instead of right, past Junior’s Pizza, and headed for Anna Mae’s compound.

  • • •

  Everybody called it “the compound” instead of Anna Mae’s place, or Ethan’s place, or “that place where Sheriff Rhodale’s discarded first family plots their criminal enterprises.” I pulled up to the front gate and waited for the scuzzy-looking guy carrying the shiny new shotgun to open it for me. I’d been invited, and I was family—at least half of me was—but nobody went into the compound without getting past one of Ethan’s guards.

  The place consisted of several weathered, gray outbuildings loosely grouped around the main house, plus assorted scattered sheds and trailers. All told, Anna Mae owned thirty-five acres her pa had left her, and this had been the house she’d grown up in, raised her children in, and never left.

  My pa had said once that living there as her husband had been like running into the angry ghosts of his wife’s disappointments on a daily basis. It was the closest he’d ever come to saying anything poetic, and he’d been halfway through a bottle at the time, but I’d understood instantly what he’d meant. Anna Mae had worshipped the ground her daddy walked on, and nobody but Ethan, her firstborn son, had ever lived up to her ideal of what a real man was.

  Whatever her ideal was, it involved guns and power.

  “Ethan’s up at the house,” the guard said, taking time to spit a stream of tobacco juice on the ground next to him. He grinned, displaying a mouth full of stained, broken teeth. “Heard you got a little girlfriend.”

  I fought back the urge to punch him in the mouth. If he’d used her name, I probably would have. He was a flunky, and I shouldn’t give a shit what he thought, but I’d had more than I could take today. Also, it was a sign that Ethan’s rats had been busy. I’d always known that he kept eyes on me when I was at school, but I’d never cared about that before Victoria came to town.

  I parked the bike in front of the house and took the steps two at
a time. The hound under the porch lifted a sleepy head and then went back to dreaming about rabbits. One of Ethan’s prized champion gun dogs growled at me from the corner of the porch, where she lay in the sun on a cushion with her pups.

  I knocked once, then pushed open the door and entered the huge, homey kitchen where Ethan, as always, held court at the old farm table and Anna Mae, as always, stood at the stove, stirring something that smelled really great. In all the years I’d known her, she’d never once offered me anything to eat, but she was always cooking.

  Pa’s ex-wife was a sight to behold. She’d supposedly been the great beauty of the county once, before life, my father, and her father—him by dying—had all disappointed her. Now she was nearly three hundred pounds of manipulation and bitterness packed into a rat-gray housecoat. Today, she shot me a scowl that was so poisonous you’d think I’d killed her best friend.

  “Heard you been consortin’ with Whitfields, boy,” she said before Ethan could speak. “You’re gonna stop that right now, you hear me?”

  I’d always tried to be courteous to her, especially in her own place, but her high-handed command set my blood to a slow boil.

  Ethan stood up and patted her shoulder. “Shut the hell up, Ma,” he said, but there was no real heat behind the words.

  She smiled at him like he’d complimented her cooking, and I was struck for about the hundredth time by just how damn strange my entire family was. I bet Victoria didn’t have to deal with weird relatives. The Whitfields probably all sat down together for tea and crumpets right about this time of day and complimented each other on their awesomeness. I grinned, imagining what Victoria would have to say to me about that, and unfortunately Ethan saw me.

  “I don’t think you have much to laugh about,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “I heard about you and the Whitfield bitch. I want you to stay away from her.”

  I glanced down at the pistol tucked casually into his waistband, and wondered how many parole violations he committed on a daily basis.

  “I don’t actually give a damn what you want,” I said flatly. “If we’re going to talk wants, I want you to quit dealing drugs, and people in hell want iced fucking lattes, but we get what we get, right?”