by Lucy Connors
“Wouldn’t be crashing, would it, since the party is for everybody?” He started laughing before I could answer that. “Hey, no worries. We have a different party to go to, and I wanted to stop by and bring you along. Do you good to get out of your head a little bit. Quit being the perfect son and let loose.”
“Perfect son, my ass. I got kicked off the football team, suspended from school, and ordered to spend four days cleaning out the garage.” I swept an arm toward the evidence, all neatly stacked on the lawn next to the garage and covered in tarps.
Ethan whistled. “He never got rid of that busted riding mower? Hell, he had that when I was a baby.” A flash of some indefinable emotion crossed his face.
Anyway, I had plans, and Victoria must be almost to the school by now. It was on the other side of town from the town hall and town square, where the night’s festivities were taking place, which was why we’d picked it as a meeting place.
“I need to get going.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow and gave me the once-over. “New jeans? Nice shirt that actually buttons? You got yourself a hot date, little brother? I know it’s not with Paula, because she already told us she’d be waiting for you at the party, and I told her she was nuts.”
“It’s not with Paula. We were over a long time ago,” I said evenly. “You made sure of that.”
Ethan had warned me that Paula wasn’t faithful, but I hadn’t believed him, too full of myself to believe she’d cheat on me. He’d made sure I walked in on the two of them in her living room one evening. She’d been sitting on his lap. I might not have minded so much if either of them had been wearing shirts.
I let myself enjoy the memory of punching him in the face.
“I let you hit me, didn’t I? And all I was doing was trying to protect you from a cheating slut.”
I pushed past Ethan and headed for my bike. “Right, Ethan. Funny how I’ve never had anybody to protect me from you.”
He stopped me with a hand on my arm. “We need to talk. I have a job that would be perfect for you.”
“I won’t deal drugs for you, Ethan.” I shook off his hand. “I don’t know how many ways to say the same thing, over and over. I won’t do it—not now, not ever. I’m going to college, which will be hard to do if I’m in jail or dead.”
“I don’t want you to deal drugs. I want you to be a kind of procurement manager,” he drawled.
“What? What the hell is that? A pimp? You gonna run girls now, too?” This was more than I had time or patience for right then, but hearing the words “procurement manager” come out of my brother’s mouth had definitely caught my attention.
“No, idiot,” he said, but a speculative gleam came to his eyes. “Although that might be a great idea for the future. Anna Mae has all those empty trailers. . . . No. Forget that. I need somebody fresh-faced and criminal-record-free to manage my supply chain. Everybody’s cracking down hard on the sale of pseudoephedrine.”
“What?”
He grinned, trying to play it casual, but I could see the fear skittering behind his eyes. Something or someone had him running scared.
“I just need you to round up a chain of kids to buy cold medicine.”
Now I got it. Cold medicines contained the main ingredient necessary to cook meth, and there were limits on how much you could buy at one time or in one place. Mom had complained that she’d had to give her drivers’ license at Wal-Mart to get some cold medicine one day, and Pa had filled us in on the reasoning behind the new rules. The stricter the regulations governing buying the cold meds, the smaller the state’s problem with meth labs, he’d said.
Now my brother was offering me a way to get my name on a rap sheet and my fingerprints in state and federal police records.
I was touched.
“Not a chance in hell,” I said.
“You owe me,” he said calmly. “I could have let your girlfriend’s sister get really and truly fucked up that day. I let her go for you.”
“Fine. I owe you one. Tell me when you want me to clean out your garage,” I said impatiently. “I’m not turning into a criminal because you didn’t assault Melinda Whitfield.”
Jeb, apparently bored, smashed his bottle on the sidewalk in front of the garage and wandered over.
“I just cleaned that sidewalk, asshole,” I told him.
He wobbled a little—I guess that hadn’t been his first beer of the evening—and glared at me. “We heard you stood up for that Whitfield girl at school after her pa fired all the Rhodales, and we’re here to tell you that you’re on your last fucking chance with us.”
I looked at Ethan. “What’s with all this ‘we’ and ‘us’ shit? Does the drunken idiot speak for you now?”
Before Ethan could answer, Jeb took a swing at me that didn’t come close to hitting me. “I’ve had enough of your holier-than-thou bullshit, Mickey,” he shouted.
“Whatever, Jeb. Why don’t you go climb inside another bottle?” I turned away, but Ethan’s warning sound stopped me.
“Jeb, put the gun down,” Ethan said calmly.
I slowly turned around, no sudden movements, and discovered that Ethan and Pa weren’t the only Rhodales going around strapped. Jeb had a Glock in his shaking hands, and he was pointing it right at my stomach.
“Say you’re sorry,” he demanded.
“I’m sorry,” I said instantly. Only a damned fool would argue with a drunk with a gun.
“You better be sorry,” he blustered. “You better—”
“He said he was sorry, Jeb,” Ethan said. “Give me the gun.”
Jeb moved the gun so now it was pointing at Ethan. Since Ethan was standing only two feet away from me, this didn’t reassure me at all.
“You shut up, too! I’m tired of taking orders from you, like you’re the big damn king of the world,” Jeb shouted.
“You’re right,” Ethan said reasonably, and Jeb faltered in his tirade.
“What?”
“You’re right. Screw it, we’re brothers. We should be nicer to each other. Let’s go get drunk and leave Mickey up to whatever junior high bullshit he’s into tonight.” Ethan said. He took a couple of slow steps as he talked, so Jeb had to turn a little to the right to keep an eye on him, and then Ethan moved three fingers against the side of his leg in a signal we’d worked out when we were kids playing pickup games of football in the neighborhood.
Go for the interception.
Ethan started talking about how Paula’s older sister had the hots for Jeb, which distracted him enough that he lowered his arm a little, and I tackled his ass, making sure I got the gun before it hit the ground and accidentally discharged.
“Good job,” Ethan said, but when I tried to hand him the gun, he wouldn’t take it.
“You keep it. Consider it an advance on salary.”
Jeb moaned and slowly worked his way up off the ground, and I tensed for a fight. Ethan knocked Jeb out with a fast, powerful, right hook, and then gestured to his flunkies to pick our unconscious brother up and put him on one of the old lawn chairs I’d cleaned and set out to dry.
“He can sleep it off,” Ethan said grimly. “If he’s lucky, I won’t kick his ass later for this.”
“Take this gun, Ethan, or I’ll give it to Pa,” I warned him. “You’ll be out hundreds of dollars and in a world of hurt, because we both know this is not registered.”
“Do what you need to do, Mickey. We’ll talk more later,” Ethan said, glancing at his watch. “I’m outta here.”
He and his thugs took off, leaving me standing there holding the gun. I hid it in a dark corner of the still-untouched part of the garage, stared at it for a while, thinking, and then changed my mind and took it with me. No time to change my now grass-stained and ripped-at-the-knees jeans for my date. Victoria would have to take me for who I was, and it was sure as hell no squeaky-clean, cou
ntry club Biff.
If she hadn’t already given up on me because I was late.
When she didn’t answer her phone, I broke the speed limit all the way to the school.
Chapter 29
Victoria
He was fifteen minutes late. No, seventeen.
He wasn’t coming.
After everything it had taken for me to get out of the house, I couldn’t believe it. I started the truck, because neither my wounded dignity nor my pride would let me wait for him to be twenty minutes late.
Mickey roared into the parking lot before I could put the truck in drive, taking the turn at a breakneck speed that left me gasping. Before I could even turn the ignition back off, he hopped off his bike, strode over, threw the truck door open, and pulled me to him. Then he kissed me until I melted against him and had to cling to his shoulders just so I didn’t fall out of the truck.
“I—what was that?” I was feeling as dazed and breathless as I sounded, and I looked up into those beautiful blue eyes for some kind of explanation.
“You waited for me,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Would you like for me to drive, since I know where we’re going?”
I liked that he didn’t automatically think he was driving my truck, just because he was a guy and I was a girl, but I was happy to have him drive. I slid over to the passenger seat, and I caught his gaze on the top of my thighs, bared almost up to my panties when I scooted.
I yanked my skirt down, and he closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath that sounded oddly like “forget it, Biff,” but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. I was having a hard enough time breathing after those kisses, and every time I stole a glance at him, so darkly delicious in his navy blue shirt, my pulse raced, and I realized again that I might be in over my head with this boy.
We headed out, and he kept turning to look at me.
“You’re not even bruised?”
I touched my cheek. “I am, but the arnica and ice helped, and Melinda—well, she’s a genius with the magic of makeup. I think all the times she had to hide a hangover made her an expert.”
He looked at me again, this time for so long that I started to worry.
“Hey! Watch the road, or I’m going to drive.”
“How do you expect me to watch the road when you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen?”
In anybody else, it would have been a line, but from Mickey, the words had such fervent sincerity that I melted a little bit more.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I feel beautiful tonight—I love this dress.”
“It’s a great dress. I’m trying really hard not to stop the truck and take it off you,” he said bluntly.
“Mickey!” My face felt like it was on fire.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Victoria. I’m not smooth, or much of a gentleman. You make me crazy, and just looking at you in that little dress makes me want you more than I’ve ever wanted any girl in my life. I’ll try to be more delicate about saying stuff to you, but I’m not sure how much success I’ll have.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d tried very hard not to think about what sexual experience he’d probably had, with pretty much any girl he wanted, especially since I hadn’t had any. This was definitely not a conversation I’d thought we’d be having in the first ten minutes of our first date.
“I don’t—”
“Maybe you’d be better off with Biff,” he said savagely, and I blinked.
“Who the heck is Biff?”
By the time he explained about Biff and Chad, his imaginary rivals, we were both laughing, and the tension level in the truck had ratcheted down about a hundred degrees. He flipped on the radio to a station I never listened to, but I recognized the singer.
“That’s Blake Shelton. I like him,” I said.
Mickey gave me a skeptical look. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a country music fan.”
“I’m not, really, but I used to watch The Voice with my roommate, and Blake’s cute and funny.”
Mickey drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a while. “I can be funny, but I’m definitely not cute,” he said, sounding disgruntled.
“Maybe you should tell me what happened to put you in this state,” I said.
He’d taken us back out to the Buckeye Diner. I sighed a little and prepared to climb down out of the truck, but he stopped me.
“No. I just have to pick something up.”
He was back in a few minutes with a large, heavy-looking picnic basket.
“I couldn’t think of any place that would let us take up a table on a Friday night for as many hours as I’m going to want to be with you, so I paid the diner to pack us a picnic.”
My heart fluttered. Bad boy Mickey was intriguing, but sweet, thoughtful Mickey was charming me beyond anything I’d ever expected.
“That’s a great idea. Where are we going?”
He laughed. “Well, it might be a great idea, or I might be an idiot. It’s warm enough now, but Mr. Judson just told me that rain is forecasted for later this evening.”
“I hope not,” I said, my mood dimming. “My family went to the Founders’ Day party. I hope it doesn’t get rained out for everyone. I think Gran was going to be giving a speech, and she looked happy for the first time since . . .”
Mickey glanced at me as he backed out of the parking spot. “It’s okay. If we try to avoid every land mine in the conversation, we’ll be dancing around subjects all night. Why don’t we agree that we can be completely honest with each other?”
“I think that’s a great idea,” I admitted. “I can’t really talk to anybody else about all of this.”
“Okay, I’ll start. Your pa fucked up,” he said flatly. “That mass layoff really fired things up again.”
I felt my face getting hot as I instinctively wanted to defend my father. “Well, he had provocation. The truth is—”
Mickey made a sound like a buzzer, and I broke off. He was right. Why was I denying it?
I sighed. “You’re right. He messed up.”
“Score one for honesty,” he said. “But don’t worry, we have enough fuckups to go around in our families. My brother Ethan wants me to run a ring of high school kids to buy ingredients for his meth business, my brother Jeb almost shot me tonight, I hid Jeb’s almost certainly stolen Glock in my garage, but then . . .”
“But then what?”
He hesitated. “Nothing. Oh, and Jeb is lying unconscious in a chair on my lawn.”
“What? Are you joking?”
Mickey signaled a turn and pulled off one back road onto another, this one a dirt road that looked like it headed straight up a massive hill.
“No, I’m not kidding. Would I make up something like that?”
Blake ended his song, and Carrie Underwood started singing about how she’d let a tornado carry her scumbag father away, and I experienced a moment of total empathy. Carrie wasn’t the only one who wanted horrible family members to disappear.
I stared out the window into the thick trees bordering the uneven road as we climbed up and up, trying to process.
“Ephedrine?”
“Yeah. It’s hard to buy at stores these days,” Mickey said. “He’s nuts. I’m not doing it.”
He told me what had happened at his house, and even what I suspected was the very abbreviated and toned-down version he gave me was enough to scare me to death.
“Interception? Are you crazy? You could have been shot!”
“Calm down. I’m fine.”
“Calm down? Calm down? What kind of life do you live, where people calm down after their brothers—”
“Half brothers.”
“—after their half brothers almost shoot them and ask them to ru
n the procurement part of their drug rings?” I could hear my voice getting hysterical.
“At least it wasn’t hookers.” He laughed, but I didn’t find any of it funny. At all.
I forced myself to take a deep breath, and then I twisted in my seat and turned to stare at him. “This is crazy, Mickey. All of it. It’s completely out of control. It’s like we’re living out the plot of a really horrible movie, where the bad guys are always going to win.”
He slowly and carefully drove the truck over a small bump and then around a final corner, and pulled to a stop. I looked out the windshield and actually gasped. We’d reached the top of the hill, and a panoramic vista of the entire county lay spread out in front of us. The glittering lights of Clark shone like a diamond pendant centered in velvety darkness and surrounded by the scattered jewels of other homes and businesses.
“Oh my gosh, that’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“Yeah. Beautiful.” Mickey’s voice was husky, and I turned my head and saw that he wasn’t looking at the scenery at all.
He was looking at me.
Chapter 30
Mickey
Hey,” I said as my blood and probably my brain cells drained out of my skull and down into a more painful part of my body. “If we stay in the truck, I’m going to kiss you again. If I kiss you again, I might have a hard time stopping. So maybe we should walk around outside and have our picnic.”
She studied my face, biting her luscious pink lip, and I had to clench my jaw against the urge to offer to bite it for her.
“I want to walk around and eat and I want to kiss you, too, but I think we have to talk first,” she said.
I groaned and let my head drop back against the headrest. “Nothing good ever came out of those four words.”
“I want to kiss you? Wait. That was five.”
I grinned at her so she’d know I was joking. “No. ‘We have to talk.’”
She folded her arms in front of her, drawing my eye to the scooped-out neckline of her dress.
“Mickey. I don’t have much experience.”
