by Mary Lindsey
She sniffed loudly and stepped away. “Thanks. It always seems to catch me by surprise.” With an awkward half laugh, she shook her head. “Just when I think I’ve got myself together, bam!” She sniffed again and pushed some hair back behind her ear that had come loose from her bun. “Lynn was such a part of me, you know? The same soul in different skins. We lived in that house together our entire lives until…”
Until I came along. Yeah. His mom told him over and over how he’d screwed up her life. She’d omitted to mention her twin, though. And the fact his dad was not a one-and-done, like she’d called him so many times. This was his bike. He’d been involved with his mom before she left New Wurzburg. She’d said they’d met and hooked up at a bar in Houston, and she never saw him again. She’d lied. Why? “Tell me about my dad.”
Ruby looked startled.
“Please,” he continued. “I guess I’m just looking to make sense of things. She never mentioned family. Said she didn’t know my dad.”
Ruby walked to the shed and pushed the door closed. “She knew him all right. Everyone did. Roger Blain moved here our senior year in high school, and as you’ve discovered, new people are novelties in a town this small.”
She had that right. He felt like something squished flat enough to see clear through on a microscope slide every time he set foot in the school. And it had been worse at the hardware store.
Ruby pulled the cinderblock out of the way and swung the door shut. She put the lock in place and snapped it closed, then returned the key to its place under the concrete block. When she turned back to him, she seemed more composed. “I don’t know why Lynn lied about Roger—or me. The three of us were best friends for almost a decade.”
“What happened?”
“Life happened, Aaron. Sometimes stuff just…happens.” She grabbed the handlebars of her dirt bike and flipped the kickstand up with a boot. “But you know all about that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
Her blue eyes met his. “Let’s let the past be past. You’re here now, and we’re family. That’s what matters.”
A small lump formed in his throat.
“Welcome home, Aaron.”
The lump grew to golf-ball size, and his eyes stung.
She cleared her throat as she fiddled with the brake lever. “Well, we’re gonna lose daylight if we don’t get started now, and these really need to be run. It’s been a while, but Gerald took care of them for me last week before you arrived.”
“The guy who can’t operate a stapler?”
Her smile made his chest feel warm inside. “The only things Gerald can do right are motorbikes and tractors. He came out here, cleaned and tuned them up, and put in all new fluids. They should run great. You ready?”
“I don’t know how—”
She straddled her bike and turned the key. The thing roared to life. “S’easy. Just do what I do.”
After copying her every move and following instructions, he found himself speeding down a long dirt road next to her, and for a moment his heart pinched. He was riding his dad’s bike next to his aunt, who was laughing like she was flying. If only his mom had chosen this way to fly instead of the drugs and booze. If only…
No. Ruby was right. Let the past be the past. New town. New start. He had a great place to live, the hottest girl he’d ever met had agreed to go out with him, and now he even had a job—probably a shitty one but still a job. When Mrs. Ericksen had come out and offered him a position at the store, she’d seemed almost normal. Maybe he’d misunderstood the conversation through the wall. Maybe it wasn’t Freddie they were talking about at all.
Yeah, and maybe he was the Easter Bunny. Something weird was going on at that place. Weird shit was going on everywhere, including whatever Freddie had been up to in Mrs. Goff’s barn. Shit that clearly had Freddie rattled, too. And one way or another, he’d find out what all of it was about. But for now, he’d just enjoy the feel of the wind and setting sun on his skin and the hum of the bike under him.
Enchanted Rock loomed ahead several miles in the distance, powerful and primal. Like Freddie. Like him.
Moth had said he liked the streets because they offered freedom. But he was wrong. The streets were an intricate prison. This was freedom—simple, pure, and absolute. For the first time in his life, Rain had hope—not the pie-in-the-sky far-fetched kind of nonsense he’d dreamed of as a kid but something real and tangible and possible. Maybe, just maybe, he’d finally found a place where he belonged.
Nine
At first, Rain thought the tapping was Aunt Ruby at his bedroom door, but when it happened the second time, he realized it was coming from his window.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he checked the time on his phone. Two fifteen in the morning.
Tap-tap-tap.
He slid out of bed, wrapped the sheet around himself, and grabbed the baseball bat that he’d found in the back of his closet the day he moved in.
Tap-tap-tap.
With a jerk, he pulled aside the heavy curtains to find nothing other than the narrow street glowing blue in the bright moonlight and the houses across it.
Then he saw the pale eyes just below the windowsill.
From where she crouched in the bushes, Freddie gestured for him to open the window, then shot a glance behind her as if looking for someone.
He flipped the lock and pushed up, but the window didn’t budge.
Again, she scanned over her shoulder. Between the tall hedge outside his window and her curtain of hair, he didn’t have a clear view, but it was obvious she was naked again. What the hell?
He tried the window once more but realized it was sealed shut with multiple coats of paint. It probably hadn’t been opened in his lifetime.
Go to the front door, he mouthed, pointing in that direction.
She shook her head.
Shit. Sheet still clutched around his waist, he grabbed his jeans from the floor and dug out his pocketknife. She glanced behind her several times as he sliced through the paint all the way around the wooden window frame. She was definitely evading someone. Finally, the window budged, opening an inch or so but no more.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
“Go to the front door,” he said.
“Can’t.” She appeared shaken, just like she had in the barn. She stood, slid her fingers under the opening, and pulled up, giving him a full view.
Holy shit. This was the kind of thing that happened only in dreams. Really good ones.
“Don’t just stand there,” she whispered, tugging hard on the window with dirt-covered hands. In fact, she had dirt smeared in several places on her body and leaves in her hair. “Help me.” He pushed from the inside and the window broke loose all at once, slamming against the top of the frame with a bang.
She instantly dropped into a crouch in the bushes and placed her forefinger to her lips to silence him. “Keep your room light off,” she whispered. “Walk out the front door. Act like you’re looking for what made that noise. Be obvious.”
When he stepped onto the porch, he flipped on the light. “Anybody here?” he said, still clutching the sheet to his waist. “Hello?” His voice sounded super loud in the stillness.
“Hey,” Ruby answered from a bench hanging from chains at the far end of the porch, nearly making him drop his sheet. She popped a chocolate in her mouth from a box on the seat next to her. “Having a toga party?”
A dog whined, then howled nearby. Another answered in the distance.
“What are you doing up?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Oh, um.” He scanned the street but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “I thought I heard something. Guess it was you.”
“Sounded to me like your bedroom window opening.”
Damn. “Yeah, I opened it to check things out.”
“Probably just the dogs,” Ruby said, popping another candy. She lifted the box. “Want a chocolate?”
“No, thanks. Dogs
?”
She swallowed and nodded. “Yep. It’s not uncommon in the country for a wild pack of dogs to form up. I’ve never seen any, but I’ve heard them, and sometimes livestock gets killed or goes missing. We get calls at the station about them occasionally.” She popped another chocolate in her mouth. “Sometimes it sounds like there are dozens of them over near Enchanted Rock. I used to think it was coyotes, but people swear they’ve seen big dogs. Some even say they’re wolves, but those don’t live around here.” She shrugged.
Why, he wondered, was he on the porch talking about dogs when Freddie was in the bushes outside his room? “Well, since it’s nothing to worry about, I’ll just go back to bed.”
She nodded, mouth drawn in a line.
“You okay, Aunt Ruby?”
“I will be. I always am. Good night, Aaron. Kill the light on your way in, okay?”
He felt terrible leaving her out there, clearly unhappy, wallowing in a chocolate binge, but Freddie had something going on, and that was more pressing. On more levels than he cared to think about.
When he got to his room, the window was shut and the drapes pulled together. Through the closed bathroom door, he could hear the shower running.
Yeah. Again, like a really great dream.
The water cut off. He pitched the sheet on the bed and pulled on his jeans, heart pounding.
The front door closed. Ruby coming back inside, no doubt. Maybe she’d open up to him one day. Tell him what caused that worry line down her forehead that was in complete opposition to her older, deeper smile lines.
A drawer opened and closed in the bathroom as he pulled his shirt over his head.
But first, he needed Freddie to tell him why she had been in that barn last night and outside his window tonight. He wasn’t one to gamble, but he’d bet most anything it had to do with those three guys in calculus class.
With the drapes closed, it was dark. So dark that he could barely make out the bookshelf and desk on the far wall.
He shuffled over to the desk and sat in the chair, thinking it a wiser choice than the bed considering…well, considering.
His body tightened and his heart pounded in his ears when a shaft of light from the bathroom sliced through the darkness, then widened as Freddie pulled the door open all the way. She’d raided his closet while he was on the porch and now wore his red Nike shirt and a pair of his track shorts, which made her legs look even longer. She’d wrapped her hair in a towel wound up like a turban. In her fist, she clutched his comb.
She sat on the foot of his bed, and for the longest time, they simply stared at each other in silence as steam wafted from the bathroom, dancing in wispy tendrils through the shaft of light between them.
He wanted to ask her a million questions but knew it was better to wait her out. To let her tell him what was going on when she was ready.
Finally, she spoke. “So, you’re not going to quiz me?”
“No.” It was all he could do to sit still. Like when he used to feed the squirrels in the park, he remained quiet and unmoving, hoping to gain her trust. And since she’d sought him out tonight, he believed he’d made a good start.
“Thanks for…well, you know.” She looked toward the window and shrugged. “Letting me in.”
He sat in silence while she unwound the towel from her head. Her hair tumbled down her back in a wet tangle.
She scooted back a few inches on the bed. “Made myself at home in your bathroom. Didn’t think you’d care.”
Oh, he cared. He cared a lot, but he certainly didn’t object. She was in his room, which was awesome and scary as hell at the same time. Fascinated, he watched her methodically untangle the bottom few inches of her hair with his comb.
“You’re weird,” she said.
“In what way?”
“In that you’re not interrogating me. The boys would be firing questions left and right.”
He assumed she meant the three guys from calculus. “I’m not one of the boys.”
Comb mid-pull, she paused. Then met his gaze directly. “No. You’re not.”
His vision had adjusted to the darkness, and he could see her face more clearly now. The smears of dirt were gone, and her pale eyes looked like colorless, clear glass in the dim light. Long lashes cast slanted shadows across her skin. Beautiful.
“I know you came from Houston. Did you live there all your life?”
“We moved around a lot. Mostly in Houston, yes.”
“Why are you in New Wurzburg?” She resumed her detangling. She’d made it about six inches up now.
Ah, so she was going to interrogate him instead. “Court order.”
Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “What did you do?”
I existed. “My mom died. Ruby’s my only relative. The judge ordered that I live with her until I’m eighteen.”
The surprise clouded with something else. Sadness? “Sorry about your mom.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug.
She tugged on a particularly stubborn tangle. “Your name is Aaron. Where did Rain come from?”
“It’s sort of an inside joke.” Not a funny one. “Mom always said that from the moment she got knocked up, a rain cloud followed her around—a storm of trouble and ruin. She called me her little rain cloud, and Rain just stuck.”
The tangle broke free, and she moved to one higher up. “And your dad?”
“Never met him. Died working on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf before I was born. Mom said she didn’t know the guy—it was a one-night thing—but she said she saw his picture in the paper and recognized him.” Which he now knew was a total lie.
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
For a long time, she worked her way up her hair, clearing tangles without talking. He noticed the scratches on her arm weren’t as deep as he’d originally thought.
He leaned back in the chair. She seemed more at ease with him now. “Tell me about those guys you hang with. Who are they to you?”
“Jealous?”
“Maybe.”
She pulled the comb through her hair from the part to the ends on the left side. “It’s complicated.”
“Everything is. Welcome to life.”
Her eyes shot to his, and she opened her mouth as if to speak but closed it, sliding the comb through her hair farther back.
He rolled the chair closer to where she sat on the foot of the bed. “Look. Clearly, the four of you grew up together based on the way you interact.”
“Yeah. We’re cousins.” Evidently surprise showed on his face because she spoke more quickly. “I have a really large family. Almost everybody at Haven Winery is related in one way or another.”
“That’s your home?” There were tons of vineyards and wineries around this part of the Hill Country.
“Yes.”
“Thomas doesn’t act like your cousin.”
“We’re third cousins a billion times removed or some such thing.”
As long as she was being honest, he might as well go there himself. “I don’t like him. And I don’t like the way he talks to you—like he owns you. Are you dating?”
“No.”
“Let’s be honest with each other.”
“I’m not lying.”
Maybe not, but she wasn’t being totally honest, either. “The one named Merrick seems frightened of you, but you appear afraid of the other two.”
She snorted. “The day I’m afraid of Thomas and Kurt will be the day hell freezes over.”
“Then why are you hiding from them in my room right now?”
“Not because I’m afraid of them.”
But she was. He knew fear, and that was what he’d seen both in the barn and outside his window. Pure, undiluted fear. Rain scooted the rolling desk chair even closer, to where their knees almost touched. He could feel the heat from her through his jeans.
She went back to slipping the comb through her hair. “In class, you said I could trust you. I needed a place to hang out for a whi
le.”
“Why?”
“It’s a game. A twisted game.” Her voice was strained and fractionally higher. She was lying.
The chair creaked when he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. His knees touched hers, but she didn’t pull away.
“Sort of like hide-and-go-seek,” she added.
“Naked?”
“Like I said, twisted.”
God, she was pretty. Even lying through her teeth she was pretty. “How often do you play this game?”
She set the comb on the bed next to her and pulled her sleek, damp hair over the front of her shoulder. It was so long, the ends folded in her lap. “Not often. I…” She wrapped the hair around her hand and closed her fist. “I don’t like to lose. I can’t lose.”
Running around naked with her cousins in the middle of the night made no sense to Rain, but that he understood. “I don’t like to lose, either.”
When she drew a deep breath in through her nose, he realized he’d leaned in and so had she. She inhaled again, as if smelling him. Then she made a rumbly sound that shot adrenaline from his chest to his fingers and toes and everything in between in a hot, buzzy wave.
Instinct deep inside him warned him to back away. Something else, something stronger and more primal urged him forward. He placed his hands on her thighs, just above her knees. Her breaths quickened and her pupils expanded to push the pale irises to the edge. Neither moved. Neither spoke.
Beneath his palms, her smooth skin heated, and his entire body hardened. Hesitant to move and break the moment, he could only stare as his heart tried to chisel its way out of his rib cage.
Her gaze dropped to his lips, and she covered his hands with hers, giving approval to his touch.
He slid his hands higher over her smooth skin and leaned in, bringing their lips within an inch of each other. Heads tilted. Breaths mingling. He’d never felt like this—like he was on fire from inside out.
Then she closed the distance, and when their lips met, it was like a match hitting kerosene. No gentle, polite, getting-to-know-you first kiss from Freddie. She all but consumed him, wrapping her arms around his neck and digging her nails into his skin. Hot. Demanding. Perfect.
Before she broke the kiss, she’d managed to crawl into his lap on the desk chair that he was certain he’d never be able to do homework in again without needing a cold shower.
