Return (Coming Home #1)

by Meli Raine

  The door to the garage opens and I hear footsteps in the back. Must be Daniel, Mikey’s brother, coming in. He’s my age and Amy told me he’s a mechanic in town. Mikey mumbles something to his mom about how one card is bent at the corner, the Queen of Hearts.

  And then a voice that makes heat fill my belly instantly asks, “Room for me?”

  Chapter Five

  Mark?

  What is Mark doing here? Elaine gives me a sidelong look and a sinking feeling fills me. Matchmaking. The entire time Mark and I were dating she practically planned our wedding. Appointed herself my mother stand-in. Used to say she didn’t have a daughter but I was close enough. She couldn’t wait to go flower shopping and pick the perfect centerpieces for our wedding.

  I never told Mark any of this, because it felt like I’d jinx it.

  When I came back I figured she would try to get me back together with Mark. I thought she’d give me more than, oh, two hours of being home before setting us up.

  As I turn and catch Mark’s eye, I see bewilderment. Then he tilts his chin and his jaw tightens, his eyes on Elaine. She’s suddenly up and busy at the kitchen counter, rearranging the perfectly-neat spices or something.

  “Mark!” Brian says loudly. “Good to see you! How’s number four working for you?”

  Number four?

  I groan suddenly. I can’t help it. It hits me. I know what “number four” means. The fourth cottage out back.

  Mark looks at me when I make the sound, and his tongue starts to roll in his cheek. He’s suppressing his anger, and I can’t blame him.

  Neither one of us chose this.

  Man, does he look good. Not that he didn’t look fine in the rain, wet and rescuing me like I was a damsel in distress. But now he’s wearing jeans that look like he’s poured into them. A grey Henley shirt, short-sleeved, his biceps pushing the edges of the sleeves out as he crosses his arms over his chest.

  A chest my own ear has rested against for one hundred days. I had memorized his heartbeat.

  Mark’s hair is blown dry and sandy blonde again. The ends of his hair turn up, no longer curling from the rain. He looks like he is on edge and relaxed at the same time. Not many people can do that.

  Mark can.

  Mikey looks at Mark like he’s a god. Cops do that to younger kids, I guess. But then again, Mikey isn’t a kid any more. The air in the room shifts. Tension returns.

  It’s my fault.

  “The cabin’s great,” Mark answers Brian, but his eyes are on me. I won’t look at him. Won’t give in. My hand reaches for another chip from the bowl like it’s attached to a different Carrie. One whose dad isn’t dead, who didn’t leave in disgust three years ago.

  Who didn’t leave ashamed.

  Who wasn’t betrayed by the very man staring at her right now.

  “Your tire okay?” Mark finally says to me, taking a step forward and pulling out the dining chair right behind where Brian is sitting. That puts him and Mikey together as a team, and me and Elaine as the other. Good. I can read Elaine’s nonverbal hints like the back of my hand. You play Euchre all your life with someone, you figure out all their secrets really fast.

  “My tire is fine,” I say tightly. “Thank you.”

  Elaine’s turn to narrow her eyes and watch us with suspicion. She can feel the tension between us. I hope my arousal isn’t obvious. Mark is triggering feelings I haven’t felt in years. I put those feelings into a box in my heart. I scribbled “The Past” on it and stuck it in storage.

  I don’t want to feel attracted to him. I don’t want my body to respond to being in the same room with him. I don’t want to think about how he tastes when he kisses me.

  Seems like that box is coming off the shelf a little too fast.

  “Good. Just be careful,” Mark says with a frowning half-grin.

  Mikey turns over the card that determines the suit that is trump. Trump means that suit—hearts, clubs, spades, diamonds—is the power suit, and those cards beat other suits. The Jack has all the power in this game, this seemingly unimportant nobody in the royal family. He comes up from behind and bam! He’s suddenly more powerful than the queen, king or ace.

  Go Jack.

  And spades is trump, which makes the Jack of Spades the true king. Jack of Clubs isn’t too shabby, either.

  The game, which had been so important to me, is now trivial. Other games are more critical. The potato chip I like, a local brand you can’t get in Oklahoma, sticks in my throat. All I can see is Mark. He’s changed into warm, casual clothes, and his bare arms make my heart race. The tiny bit of stubble on his jaw feels intimate. So do his eyes.

  They’re not looking at his cards.

  I’m melting into the chair under his stare. So many questions fill my heart. If only I could ask them. If only Mark would tell me the truth.

  That is the problem. If I ask, and he lies, what little sliver of hope I cling to will die.

  Like my father.

  Mark’s eyes roam over me and I wonder what he thinks. I’ve filled out in the three years I’ve been away. Always known for my big chest, I now have curves everywhere. Nice ones that men like. “Hot mama!” they’d cry out when I walked down the street on my way to work. Construction workers loved to ask for my number. Or beg me to do things to them that made me blush.

  The way Mark traces my new body sparks a fire in my belly.

  And below it.

  As I play a ten of clubs without thinking, I remember. The nights I spent in my rented room in Oklahoma City, sharing a place with seven other girls, were filled with Mark. They could probably smell him in OKC. I carried that much of him with me. Three years of working midnights as a check processor and visiting my father in the prison they moved him to was what it took to drive away the imprint of Mark’s hands on me, his lips on mine.

  My soul didn’t want his branding any more, but that was harder to wall off. You can’t make something burned deep in you disappear.

  Scars might fade, but they never go away.

  “Took that hand, and with a ten!” Elaine says, standing to give me a high five. I imitate her and as I reach up, my shirt lifts and shows my belly.

  Mark and Mikey stare.

  Mark shoots Mikey a look of death. Elaine hides a smile.

  I fight to hide mine.

  The game continues. Our words are few. Everyone is pleasant, but it’s weird. Creepy. I want to beg Mark to give me an explanation. Something that makes what he did make sense.

  When your boyfriend turns your dad in to the feds on trumped up drug charges, you’d like to know why.

  Trumped up. Oh, I’m a real comedienne tonight, huh?

  Dad tried to tell him. Brian, too. He wasn’t the one with the meth. Wasn’t making it or dealing it. The shady chemistry professor at the university was the one who masterminded everything.

  But Mark had bills of lading proving dad had ordered all the chemicals and the special equipment to make the meth. The DEA busted the largest meth lab in the history of the state.

  Grant funded, too, it turned out. The federal government had paid for tens of millions of dollars worth of meth, all created in a lab where thousands of chemistry students passed through every day.

  Higher Education at its finest.

  Dad was dealing, they said. A professor in the chemistry department gave the police and feds a ton of evidence proving it. Allegedly proving it.

  Claimed Dad was the kingpin of a huge drug network. That he sold meth on campus through his job on campus.

  Lies.

  All lies.

  Dad couldn’t prove anything, but worse? His lawyer couldn’t disprove anything. As the head of facilities, he ordered what the professors asked. How do you prove you didn’t do something?

  A clip that made the evening news for other a week runs through my head. Dad is red-faced and furious, his eyes wild. “It’s not like I was ordering stuff to make a bomb!”

  He made CNN. MSNBC. FOXNews. Even Tosh made fun of him.


  My dad became an Internet meme.

  And I became The Daughter Who Must Have Known.

  “Carrie? You got anything good?” Mikey kicks me under the table and I look around. Elaine is asking, waving her cards.

  I look down. “Pass.”

  “Is that ‘pass’ or ‘paaaaaassssss,’” Elaine jokes. If I say the word slowly, it’s a hint that my hand has something halfway decent but not enough to overpower all the other cards.

  I just shrug.

  “See, Mom? Carrie won’t cheat like some people,” he says, sticking out his tongue. “She’s honest.”

  Now I see the fourteen year old in him. It makes me happy again.

  Until I look over at Mark.

  His jaw is tight, and those eyes are speckled with anger. He reaches for a chip and stops himself, taking a deep sigh. Mark plays a card. As he pulls his hand back it brushes against my glass, almost tipping it. Like the gentleman he always is, he grabs it and diverts the fall, letting my water pour into his lap and not mine.

  I grab some napkins from a stack on the table and start mopping up the water, dabbing at his...

  Oh, God! I’m gently patting his crotch!

  Elaine bites her lips and turns away. Brian is oblivious, watching television. Mikey’s mouth keeps opening and closing like he’s a fish.

  And Mark looks down at my hand, which has come to a complete stop on his jeans button, the napkins shredded and falling into little white clumpy bits on his...

  Wet spot.

  I freeze, my muscles finally stopped by my mortified brain. Don’t look up! I tell myself, backing away like I’ve just run into a hungry lion.

  I kind of have.

  Mark looks at me as I catch his eye. The air changes. Everyone else in the room fades. It’s just me and Mark, and my hand is on his growing bulge.

  I snatch my arm back and start to say, “I’m sorry,” but all that comes out is a gasp. The way he watches me makes a slow smolder build in my skin. My nipples feel hard against the soft cloth of my shirt. My nub warms and flares to a fire I haven’t felt in three years.

  And my heart? It starts to sing.

  “Enjoying yourself?” he says with a crooked smile, the look sultry and inviting, as if he wants me to touch him again.

  I’m sure he does.

  “I’m so sorry!” I choke out. Elaine and Mikey have magically disappeared. Brian sees nothing, engrossed in his show.

  Mark reaches for some fresh napkins and dabs himself clean.

  “It’s just water,” he says, starting to laugh.

  It’s a sexy sound, a deep rumbling in his chest. The kind of sound a man makes after he kisses you with fire and longing.

  Except we haven’t kissed.

  Oh, how I want to. He didn’t do anything wrong, technically. Right? He was just the arresting officer who had to get my dad and turn him in.

  But he never told me. He could have shared that tiny little detail that would end up ruining my life.

  His anguished voice from three years ago fills my head. “I couldn’t tell you,” he’d said. “It made Joe a flight risk if I told you. I was doing my job.” His voice had broken after that, and the first sign of bright tears had been in his eyes as he’d held my numb hand. Mark had apologized so many times that the words “I’m sorry” stopped making sense. They sounded like word glop after a while. Eyem Sar Eee. Eyem Sar Eee.

  The memory fades and so does the heat in my body. I can’t turn off how he makes me respond, but I can control how I react. Maybe my skin, my belly, my nipples, and my sex have a mind of their own.

  But I can choose what to do.

  “You can blot my crotch any time, Carrie,” Mark jokes, and the spell is broken. He’s released me.

  I couldn’t release myself after all.

  “Enough about crotches. We’re not playing strip poker. Ready to finish the game?” Elaine calls out from the other room. She then contradicts herself. “Sweet Mary, Jesus and Joseph, it’s eleven o’clock! Mikey, you have school tomorrow. Game over!”

  Mark narrows his eyes and looks at me like he’s sizing up a perp. The change in his attitude puts me on edge. It’s a one-eighty turn, and I don’t like it.

  “See you around, Carrie,” he says and walks into the kitchen to give Elaine a hug, then saunters out the back door like he hasn’t just upended my life and turned my insides to butterflies.

  We both watch him disappear into the darkness.

  “He still loves you, Carrie,” Elaine says quietly. She doesn’t look at me as she washes the coffee pot for the thousandth time. Mikey’s long gone now, and Brian’s snoring lightly in his chair.

  The show he’s watching isn’t even over.

  Somehow, in under an hour, everything I’ve run away from came roaring back, right in front of my face.

  Elaine leaves the coffee pot and walks over to me, her arm around my shoulders. We both stare at Brian. She just shakes her head slowly, but with a smile.

  “That man.” And then she frowns. “I’ll show you the trailer...” Her voice goes soft. “I feel so bad sticking you in there. But Mark took the last cabin.”

  That makes my eyebrows crawl into my hair. “He what?”

  “About a month ago, he moved in. His apartment building is going through renovations or something.” She waves her hand in the air like waving away the details. “We had an opening and of course we welcomed him. Nothing like having a police officer on the premises to feel safer.”

  That makes my throat swell up. Having a cop in my life made everything harder.

  I don’t say anything as she leads me out the door. The rain has stopped, leaving the night balmy and misty, with raindrops stuck to the tree leaves like hanging diamonds. They glisten in the moonlight.

  The tidy walk between the front door and the nineteen foot trailer is lined with colorful succulents and cacti that must look gorgeous in the daylight. Everything is shades of grey right now, though.

  Everything. Especially my feelings for Mark.

  Elaine pulls a key out of her pocket and opens the padlock that secures the trailer’s front door. “Brian installed this today,” she explains. “There’s no easier way to make sure you’re safe.”

  “You want me to padlock myself in?” I ask, my voice going up high.

  She laughs. “I thought it was crazy, too, but Brian insisted you need to feel as safe as possible. You can crack the door a little, attach the padlock, and then you have enough room to fit the key from the inside to unlock it. You’re a young girl out here, all alone.”

  “I’m twenty-two. Not a young girl.” Not quite a woman, though, I think.

  As she opens the door, she turns to me with a wistful expression. “You’ll always be a sweet little girl to me, Carrie.”

  I can’t. I can’t let myself feel what she wants me to know. The idea that so much love could be waiting for me, the unconditional parental love that everyone wants so badly, makes me ache.

  I used to have that.

  Mark took it away.

  Chapter Six

  I take a step up and enter the dark trailer, fumbling for the light switch. When I called Brian a few weeks ago to ask about renting from him, he mentioned the trailer. Clean, dry, with full septic and water and electric. “I can’t let you live in there for free, but if you can manage three hundred dollars to cover utilities, it’s yours for the school year,” he’d said. That was enough time to get established. To save up for first, last, and security on an apartment.

  “You use it to go hunting, though!” I’d argued. “I can’t take it from you.”

  “We don’t go on hunting trips like that anymore, Carrie,” he’d said sadly. I hadn’t asked why. Something in his voice told me not to.

  “And,” he’d added, answering my unspoken question, “we were about to sell it.”

  Oh. I knew that when dad was arrested the feds took the entire bar and tried to claim it was all run with drug money. Brian had suffered.

  Living in h
is trailer made me feel a little better. I’d argued him up. “Four hundred a month, and if the utilities get too high, you tell me,” I had declared. My voice had wavered, but I wasn’t going to back down.

  I’m not a charity case. My new job pays well enough for me to pay four hundred a month and will help me to kill off my student loans and dad’s funeral expenses if I can hold on for two years.

  I managed in Oklahoma City all alone, seeing Dad when I could, picking up extra shifts at the bank where I worked, living in a crowded house to cut expenses. All those lawyer fees...

  Including mine. Once the district attorney sank his teeth into the case, he opened it up to investigate everyone. I had turned eighteen a few months before and was in my second year at Yates. My first year I had doubled up, doing a year of high school and a year of college at the same time. The special program that admitted me paid for everything but books.

  Dad had beamed with pride when I got in. His heart had nearly burst when I received a full scholarship to finish up.

  But here’s the thing: when the DA comes after you on drug charges and you’re eighteen and in college, you freak out. No dad to help because he was behind bars. No mom because she was dead.

  Brian was investigated, too, so he and Elaine had their own mess to manage.

  The arrest happened two days before the deadline for getting student loans, so guess how I paid that eight-thousand dollar lawyer retainer fee?

  Yep. And with nothing left for tuition, I had to drop out. I left a mess behind to go to OKC and face an even bigger mess.

  “Carrie?” Elaine whispers. Blinking hard, I realize I spaced out. My hand is on the light switch and I turn it on.

  A low glow fills the small trailer. I guess the thing was built about the same year I was born. The couch is all shiny grey and mauve and beige, in a swirling pattern. The wood accents are scarred and gouged, but the trailer smells clean.

  And it’s all mine.

  No noisy roommates, no strange men to run into in the bathroom at three a.m., no roommate Janie begging me for condoms I didn’t have at one in the morning because she and her booty call ran out already.