Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel

by Laura Trentham

  A sob cracked through the phone, the girl’s desperation and fear palpable.

  “Everything is going to be fine.” Monroe’s words tripped over each other belying the mature calmness she was trying to project. She slipped on flip-flops and stumbled on the way out, banging her hip on the porch banister. “Tell me where you are. I’m coming to get you.”

  “The Rivershack Tavern.” Kayla’s voice was barely a whisper.

  The bar was a local gathering spot on the Louisiana side of Cottonbloom. Not seedy, but hardly high-class, it boasted dartboards, pool tables, and a bar stocked with ice-cold beer and mid-shelf liquor. But Kayla wasn’t even eighteen and shouldn’t have been allowed to step inside the bar.

  “Are you with Dylan?”

  Kayla had never been the most attentive or engaged girl in her program, but over the last month all she’d done was distract everyone else by gushing about her new boyfriend. Monroe hadn’t gotten the impression he was any older than Kayla.

  “I’m scared.” She sounded close to collapse. “Oh, God, he saw me.”

  The phone disconnected.

  “Gosh darn it,” Monroe muttered at the blank screen.

  She called Kayla back and squeezed the phone between her cheek and shoulder to start the SUV and throw it into reverse. The carefree, chipper voice asking her to leave a message was in stark contrast to that of the scared, tearful girl of seconds ago.

  Monroe tossed her phone into the passenger seat and hit the gas. Every red light in town caught her, and she banged her fists on the steering wheel, muttering more colorful curses at each one. Her phone rang when she was two minutes from the bar, and she nearly bobbled it to the floorboard before answering.

  “Are you okay? I’m almost there, sweetie. Hang on.”

  “What the hell is going on?” A deep voice slid through her.

  Considering his radio silence the last couple of days, the fact that Cade was calling seemed a figment of her imagination. She checked the screen to confirm. “Sorry, Cade, thought you were someone else.”

  “Obviously. Who?” His voice bordered on angry. What right did he have to be angry with her?

  “I don’t have time to talk. Kind of have a situation to handle.” She pulled into the Rivershack Tavern’s lot and parked on a section where the pavement had started to crumble into gravel.

  “You have thirty seconds to tell me where you are and what’s going on.”

  She chafed at the autocratic command. “The Rivershack Tavern. One of my girls needs me.”

  She disconnected, jumped out of the SUV, and called Kayla. Voice mail again. The phone vibrated, and Cade’s name flashed on the screen. She ignored him, slipping the phone into her back pocket. He didn’t need a physical therapist to deal with a bruised ego.

  A bouncer occupied a stool outside the door and scrolled through his phone. A cigarette defying gravity dangled from his bottom lip. He looked up as she approached, his gaze sliding down her body suggestively, making her wish she’d taken two minutes to change out of her black short shorts and scooped-neck red tank top into something that was less “Buy me a drink and you might get lucky” and more “Mess with me and I’ll kick your ass.”

  He took a draw of the cigarette, the smoke still in his lungs when he asked, “Got your ID?”

  The bouncer’s head looked like it sat directly on his shoulders, his short neck the same width as his head. The man must invest hours a day bodybuilding to achieve the bull-like shoulders and thick arms straining the T-shirt with the Rivershack Tavern’s emblem across the chest.

  She glanced toward her SUV, seeing her purse on the side table in her foyer in her mind’s eye. She tried an ingratiating smile. “I’m nearly thirty and only here to pick up a friend of mine.” She took two steps toward the door, but he grabbed her wrist, his hand hammy and damp.

  “Not without an ID, sweetheart.”

  His use of the endearment wasn’t charming; it was denigrating. She twisted her arm out of his hand with ease. His jaw fell, the cigarette landing at her feet. She stamped it out with a twist of her foot.

  “The friend I’m picking up is underage, has been drinking, and is somewhere in your establishment crying while you waste my time. Now, how did she get in if you’re so diligent about checking IDs?”

  The man pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and chucked his head toward the door.

  The room was awash in people. Men and women in factory uniforms mingled with those dressed in going-out kinds of clothes—sundresses and miniskirts for the women, nice jeans and golf shirts for the men. A smoky haze haloed the lights. Unlike on the Mississippi side of Cottonbloom, Sawyer hadn’t managed to get a smoking ban to pass, which had only increased business, drawing people from both sides of the river.

  Monroe might have enjoyed the welcoming, eclectic vibe if she hadn’t crept into a dozen bars too much like this one to cajole her mother home. Sometimes she was a happy, compliant drunk. Sometimes she was a sad drunk, crying and huddled at a corner table. And occasionally she was a mad drunk, bitter at the hand she’d been dealt. Those nights had been the hardest.

  Monroe was no longer the girl who felt inadequate to the task, and this bar wasn’t filled with strangers. She slipped through the crowd, scanning for Kayla. A hand wrapped around her upper arm and forced her to a stop.

  Sam Landry. He held a cigarette and hard-liquor drink in the same hand. Judging by his flushed face, he was at least three drinks in, maybe more. “Hey there, pretty girl, don’t ever see you around the Rivershack. Your mama with you?”

  Another set of worries tightened a vise around Monroe’s lungs. She broke his hold with an upward rap on his forearm, a simple technique. “Mother’s not hanging out at places like this anymore.”

  “Is that what she’s been telling you?” He guffawed. “She’s still an attractive woman, and I never did get her out of my system. Now that Carla’s dumped me, I need someone to keep company with.”

  “You are a pig.” She didn’t try to mask her disgust.

  “Darlin’, she’s the one who was all over me last weekend wanting to rekindle things.”

  While Sam might have been baiting Monroe, she feared more than a nugget of truth lay in his declarations. Should she have told her mother about that night so many years ago? Now it was too late.

  “Leave her alone.” Her voice came out weaker, childlike, and she was frantic to shore up her defenses.

  “Or what?” Hostility simmered on his face.

  Confusion seeped through the cracks in her confidence. A couple of years after that September night, Sam had married and moved to Georgia. In his absence, she could almost pretend nothing had happened. But he was always waiting in her nightmares. When he’d moved back to Cottonbloom after his divorce and reopened his insurance office, old doubts had edged into her anger. Had she exaggerated the danger of the night in her memories?

  The bar noise faded to nothing. Squatting in her memories, her terror of him reared up. “Or I’ll tell Mother—everyone—what happened that night.”

  His expression flipped as if his face had two sides, like a coin. A nonchalant smile replaced the burning animosity, the change jarring. “What night? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You had the biggest crush on me. Do you remember?”

  He either lied to add to her confusion or believed the lie. Did it matter? She wasn’t here to face her own screwed-up past; she had to find Kayla.

  “I don’t have time to waste on you, old man.” She walked away and scanned the room. Every second that passed notched up her anxiety.

  “You looking for a pretty, dark-haired girl? Young?”

  Monroe spun on her toes. A man had swiveled around on his stool at the very corner of the dark, scarred bar top, a beer bottle hooked between his fingers. Corn-colored hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and a snake tattoo trailed out of the sleeve of his gray T-shirt and down one forearm. More colored ink peeked from his other sleeve. He was a stranger.

 
“Maybe.” Her tentativeness was born of mistrust. For all she knew, this could be Dylan. “Have you seen her?”

  “She’s been in the bathroom for a while now. Seemed upset.”

  Already on the move to the back corridor, she called over her shoulder, “Thanks.”

  She bypassed a half-dozen women to get to the women’s restroom door. A middle-aged woman with smudged eyeliner and a too-tight T-shirt at the front of the line blocked her access to the door with an arm. “Hey, we all gotta go. No cutting.”

  “I’m here to pick up my friend.” Monroe dropped her voice to incur some sympathy. “She’s had too much to drink.”

  The wrinkles around the woman’s liner-smudged eyes smoothed. “I was wondering. Poor thing. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?” She waved Monroe into the cramped two-stall bathroom. Colorful graffiti decorated the walls and wooden stalls. A woman emerged from the right stall, so Monroe tapped lightly on the left.

  “Kayla? It’s Monroe. Are you in there?”

  The lock jangled and the stall door creaked open. Kayla’s eyes and nose were red, any makeup cried off. The girl pulled her shoulder-length dark hair forward and played with the ends. The motion only drew Monroe’s attention to Kayla’s left cheek.

  Women moved behind Monroe, from the toilet to the sink, but she was focused only on Kayla. Very slowly, Monroe reached forward and tucked Kayla’s hair behind her ear revealing a nearly perfect red handprint on her cheek.

  Fury, hot and wild, churned in Monroe’s belly, sending fire through her body. “Did he touch you anywhere else?” She whispered through clenched teeth.

  Kayla’s chin wobbled and another tear slipped out. “He thought I was flirting with one of his friends. I wasn’t, I swear, but he … slapped me. I called you, but he saw me and grabbed me up hard.”

  Her face fell, her hair swishing forward like curtains closing. Monroe brushed Kayla’s hair back, barely touching the light finger-shaped bruising on her upper arm. It would look worse come morning. “You did the right thing by calling me and going somewhere safe.”

  “He didn’t mean to hurt me. He only gets like this when he’s had too much.”

  The implications of Kayla’s justifications for her boyfriend’s behavior filled Monroe with equal amounts frustration and despair. Everything she lectured about week after week hadn’t changed Kayla’s outcome. Was she fooling herself into thinking she was making a difference?

  Monroe tightened her focus to the situation at hand. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket. “I’m going to call the police. You can press charges.”

  “No! I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  Monroe recognized the shame. She was still covering up her mother’s drinking for the same reasons.

  “I’ve had a few drinks, too.” Kayla’s voice was tentative. “Won’t a bunch of people get in trouble if the cops come?”

  A bunch of people deserved to get in trouble—the bouncer, the bartender, Dylan—but that wasn’t Monroe’s priority. Her priority was to get Kayla somewhere safe. “Is your mom home?”

  “Working second tonight.”

  The stream of women into and out of the bathroom hadn’t abated. Monroe put her arm around Kayla’s shoulders and guided her through the gauntlet at the door. Kayla stumbled a couple of times and leaned into Monroe.

  She hesitated outside the bathroom corridor. The length of crowded bar they’d need to navigate seemed overwhelming. Somewhere in the crush was Dylan. And Sam.

  A hand cupped her elbow and she startled. “Take her out through the kitchens.” The blond man had come up beside her, and she allowed him to guide her back down the hallway, past the bathrooms, and into the kitchen.

  He was taller than he’d appeared on the stool, his body lean. In the bright lights of the kitchen he looked younger, too, although life’s experiences had etched a maturity on his face she was familiar with.

  “The walking a-hole she was hanging with … You want me to keep him from following you?” He had to raise his voice over the music pumping from a grease-splattered stereo system sitting on a counter.

  If Kayla weren’t clinging to Monroe, she would have given the stranger a hug. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would be forever grateful.”

  The man’s gaze skated to Kayla, and he nodded once. “Back door?” he asked the fry cook.

  The cook pulled a basket of fries out of boiling oil and nudged his chin toward racks of supplies. An industrial-size garbage can marked the exit. Monroe pushed the heavy metal door open, glanced over her shoulder to see the blond man disappear, and stepped outside.

  A weak finger of light from a dimmed spotlight hanging on a gutter lit the alley. A Dumpster blocked one end while empty crates and liquor boxes were stacked in a makeshift wall in front of a line of pine trees.

  The warm night exacerbated the smell of rotting food and skunked beer. Kayla lurched away, fell to her knees in the gravel, and threw up next to an empty keg. Monroe squatted next to her and stroked her hair back. Sweat dotted the girl’s forehead, and her pale, clammy face served to emphasize the handprint.

  Monroe rubbed small circles on Kayla’s back as the girl’s dry heaves settled. She tried to keep her voice from reflecting her inner jitters. “Kayla, sweetie, I need to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

  Kayla nodded and Monroe helped her, sliding an arm around her waist. Before they made it a dozen feet, a twentysomething man with shaggy brown hair turned the corner, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his slouchy jeans.

  Kayla turned from compliant into panicked. She grabbed Monroe’s arm and pulled her back toward the kitchen door. The man was focused on Kayla. He was big, at least six feet tall and close to two hundred pounds.

  The kitchen door had a pushbutton key lock on the handle. Kayla yanked on the handle and beat on the door. No way was the fry cook going to hear them over his booming music. Monroe accepted their fate before Kayla did. Dylan was already within ten feet of them. Monroe stepped forward and put herself between the man and Kayla. Like a missile acquiring its target, his focus remained on Kayla.

  “I need to talk to my girl over there alone, so you need to get on, lady.”

  She wasn’t weak like her mother. She was strong. She would protect Kayla. Her pep talk couldn’t completely stamp out the fear. Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, she tried to ready herself, but her mind blanked.

  “Move it before I’m forced to take care of you, too.”

  I told your mama I would take care of you. Words that haunted her dreams blurred into a monstrous reality. Something dangerous cracked open in Monroe.

  “Yeah? Well, that’s not going to happen. You must think you’re a real tough guy, pushing women around.” Sarcasm poured into her voice, concealing any trembly note.

  He shifted his feet apart and pulled his hands out of his pockets to crack his knuckles. If she weren’t afraid to take her eyes off him for a second, she would have rolled them at his clichéd intimidation tactics.

  “You’d best keep outta my business.”

  “When you hit Kayla, your business became my business.”

  “You want some of what I gave her?”

  Monroe attempted a calming breathing technique, but all the extra oxygen did was shoot aggression through her muscles. “Kayla is only seventeen. She shouldn’t even be here.”

  “She was looking to screw my buddy, so I’d say she’s old enough. And who was that blond dude? Someone else she was looking to hook up with?”

  Kayla’s tinny voice barely carried across to them. “I’d never cheat on you, I swear.”

  Dylan pointed toward Kayla. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, slut.”

  Fury obliterated any caution. Monroe took two steps forward and shoved him in the shoulder as hard as she could. He fell on his butt; either he was drunker than he appeared or the adrenaline had given her strength. Rocking on her feet, she waited for his move. A mistake.

  His scramble up was
faster and more agile than she expected. Before she could react, he grabbed a hank of her hair and yanked her forward. A hundred needles jabbed into her scalp, bringing a sting of tears to her eyes.

  Her training had been sterile and safe. She’d never had to actually fight someone off in an alley. Had never had to fight her own instincts to run, save herself.

  His movements were like watching a video in slow motion. He raised his arm, ready to backhand her. Without consciously planning to, she blocked his punch. The contact was jarring and numbed her forearm and hand, but after hours of repetitious training her body knew what to do next.

  She popped him on the bridge of his nose with the heel of her hand. He released her hair to cover his nose. Throwing her weight into his body, she swept her leg around his. The move dropped him to the ground again. His hand flailed and caught her jaw. She reeled backward into the brick wall. She was breathing hard, and the pain in her face edged stars into her vision.

  Now was the time for flight. She grabbed Kayla by the wrist and pulled her in a run-walk toward the corner of the building, hoping for more light and more people. Crying, the girl stumbled along. Monroe barely stopped herself from yelling at her to move faster, faster. She risked a glance behind them. Dylan was up and weaving in their direction, his hand cupped over his nose. Her SUV was in the far corner of the crowded lot. They would never make it.

  A man appeared, limping slightly and with his big body backlit. His face was shadowed, but of course she knew. Cade. She couldn’t summon any sort of resentment at him being here. All she felt was relief.

  Cade didn’t say a word, didn’t even make eye contact, as she and Kayla slipped by him. His face was hard, the ferocity a revelation. Monroe stopped behind him and supported a trembling Kayla around the waist. The danger had passed like a storm, and as her adrenaline seeped away her muscles quivered under Kayla’s weight.

  She was safe with Cade. The knowledge was something she understood without question. Like the sky was blue or the Earth was round.