by Harlow Cole
“Ash, you’re being ridiculous. I’m talking about a long weekend. Not a month-long sabbatical. This place will be all right without you for a couple of days. You have Logan. Evan and his crew would even come help. Matt could stay with Nathan. He’s more than qualified to—”
“I don’t know if Nathan is ready to meet Matt yet. I still don’t know how he’s going to react. He’s not done giving me the cold shoulder.”
“Jesus, Ash. You’re babying your brother too much. What Nathan needs is a great big shove in the right direction. And what you need to do is accept my help to save this place and then come to New York with me.” His knuckles cracked at his sides as his voice grew impatient.
“I’ve been taking care of Nathan just fine,” I said forcefully. “And you know I won’t ever take your money. You can’t buy me, Brayden. I’m not for sale.”
“Christ. Are we back to that? Why do you have to be so hardheaded?”
“I have to do this on my own, and this just isn’t a good time to leave.”
“You have mind-fucked yourself into thinking this place is some kind of penance. You’ve made it your own jail.” An angry hand drove through his hair as he glared at me. “This job in New York is what you’ve always dreamed about. What happened to the girl who wrote in that composition book? I’m not trying to buy you. I’m trying to give you back a life. I can give you all those dreams we wrote down, Soot. Every single one.”
Angry silence spread like wildfire, singeing my skin and filling my eyes. I wondered if this was how he’d felt when he turned down offers to pop a pill or chase a line.
“Dreams don’t mean much unless you earn them. Remember the boy who didn’t want to ride on his daddy’s name?” I asked, biting back. “And the girl who wrote in that book grew up and realized dreams have nothing to do with real life. I don’t belong there, Brayden. It’s your dream world. Not mine. I’m needed here.”
His nostrils flared. He turned his back on me and wove his fingers behind his neck, staring up at the ceiling in frustration. “I have to go up there, Ashley,” he said quietly. “I promised Micky.”
“I know. Go. It’s where you belong, Brayden. We both know that.”
He rounded on me again, staring me down with his signature intensity. “I don’t want to go without you.”
“You have another life. Eventually, you have to return to it. Permanently. We both know that whatever it is we’re doing here”—I motioned between us—“can’t last in the long run. Ultimately, you have to go back to being a superhero, and I have to go back to being plain old me. Whoever the hell that is.”
He wiped his palms across his face in exasperation.
I bounced on my toes a little, trying to feel if the glass slippers were already cracking under my heels.
* * *
Brayden
“Thought I might find you here.” Jess plopped down next to me, stealing the lukewarm bottle from my hand. She did this cute thing where she wiped the rim before she took a slug from it.
“Better not let Mom catch you doing that.”
She puckered her lips as she took another sip of my beer. “How you feelin’?” Her chin tipped toward the remaining welt grazing the ribs on my right side.
“Hurts like a son of a bitch.” I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the new futon mattress. I’d replaced half the boards in the loft and had someone come paint and wire new electrical, but I couldn’t face the idea of replacing all the furniture.
“You sure you don’t wanna take something?” she asked tentatively.
She already knew my answer.
She stayed with me all those nights right after my surgery. Including the few where I wanted to bite down on a stick because the thing hurt so bad.
My hand brushed across the scar on my elbow. “Nah. I’ll live.”
“So, I know you’ve had a shit day. Mom told me you and Ashley argued. But I have some news that I think you need to know.” Her mouth quirked to the side. She did that when she didn’t want to tell me something she knew would piss me off.
My sister’s sleuthing skills amazed me. My stepfather ran a construction company. She’d worked for him since she was a young teenager. She had a head for business and an eye for detail.
When I hired her as my personal assistant, I thought it would be a way to help support her move to the city. I figured she’d take in my mail and get my dry cleaning in between her classes at school.
But I got drunk one night, her first month in town, and told her my whole sob story. I woke the following morning to a dossier of information she’d stayed up all night collecting. She’d been buried knee deep in this project ever since.
I knew it would be weird for her to finally meet Ashley face-to-face. Other than the unexpected intro, she’d handled it like a champion.
She tugged at her long blond ponytail as she tucked her legs underneath her and scooted a little farther away from me. Whatever she had to say wasn’t gonna be pleasant.
“Let’s have it.”
“She posted these online this morning.” She pulled a folded sheet of paper from the back pocket of her shorts. For Sale ads from an online marketplace.
Mrs. F purchased both those boats the summer before Nathan and I started tenth grade. She let us smash bottles of champagne over the hulls. We stole sips from them first, when she wasn’t looking.
“Buy them.”
Her brow raised.
“Before someone else does.”
She nodded and started to fold the paper again, running her fingertips across the crease as she considered her words.
“There’s more?”
She bit down on her top lip and nodded. “She had visitors this morning. Assessors. The bank is moving forward. These guys will submit a report that could let the county rezone it for . . .” As her words trailed off, she stared at me in confusion.
Clearly, my expression wasn’t what she’d expected from this bit of news.
“You knew?”
I took the bottle back from her and drained the rest of it, washing down the guilt and avoiding her measured gaze.
“Oh God. What did you do?”
I rubbed a hand across my chin. “I’m done playing. I needed to put some pressure on her. This was the only way.”
“Fuck, Brayden. She must be freaking out right now.”
“Yeah.” I nodded and exhaled a shaky breath.
Once again, my actions would cause her more tears. I really fucking hated that part. My hand pressed against the center of my chest.
“Of course, it backfired ’cause it didn’t scare her enough to give in to my offer.” I sighed and slammed my head back against the mattress a couple of times. “I need you to call Jacobs.”
Her eyes grew wide.
“You’re serious? You know that will seriously piss her off. And things with Nathan? How do you think he’s gonna take—”
“They’re gonna know the truth soon enough. I need to make sure everything’s in place before that happens.” I tried to ignore the pounding in my chest. “And call Vincent. Find out where the hell he is. I need an ETA.”
“He checked in yesterday. He had to hole up there longer than expected. He’s hoping to leave early next week. Said it might be slow-going though. Doesn’t sound like things are going as smoothly as he hoped.”
I exhaled against my frustration. The timing had to be right.
“Make sure he knows I want to see him first. We need to get our story straight.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Her tone teetered between skepticism and pity. “I really like her. I don’t want her to hate you.”
“Her mother said, if I had to, I could fight like hell. It’s time to get a little bloody.”
19
Bullets & Blood
Brayden
The door slammed back against the wall. Good damn thing he hadn’t locked it. I didn’t want to deal with broken glass.
He levered himself up on the bed, o
bviously startled. “What the hell?”
My hands gripped both sides of the barrel, just like the dudes in the movies. I fought off a smirk as I waved the gun in his direction.
Not gonna lie; the cold metal made me feel like a total badass.
“What the fuck are you doing with that? Have you lost your ever-loving mind? Put that shit down, Brayden.”
“You’ve got exactly two minutes to get your ass up and get yourself in that chair.” I used the gun to motion toward the wheelchair, carefully positioned beside Nathan’s bed. Straps hung from the ceiling, leverage to help him get up on his own.
“Ashley!” he shouted, trying to look around me toward the door.
“Go ahead and holler like a little girl. No one is gonna hear you. Ashley’s not here. I waited at the end of the street till she left for work.”
“You had this all planned out, huh? What are you gonna do, big shot? Put a cap in my ass? We both know you could never even hit a squirrel with that thing. Is it even loaded?”
I stared down at my weapon, refusing to let his words tarnish my buzz.
My grandmother never knew about the gun. The summer before freshman year, we got Bobby’s older brother to drive us to the sporting goods store in Easton to buy it. A Smith & Wesson 686 revolver. The mack daddy king of BB guns. I hid it in an old shoebox, tucked on the top shelf of the garage. In the middle of my sleepless night, it dawned on me I’d find the damn thing still hidden there.
“You better get the hell out of my house, or I’m calling the police.” He reached for the cell phone beside the bed.
“Don’t bother. I already called them.”
Dillan took a step through the door. I’d told him to wait out of sight but to listen in, in case I needed backup.
Or in case I accidentally shot the motherfucker.
Nathan was right; my aim sucked. I could put a white ball within millimeters of a target sixty feet away, but I never could shoot down a tower of metal cans with this damn gun.
“You’re in on this, too?” Nathan asked, glaring past me toward the good deputy. “You always were at the ready to suck his dick. What the fuck, Dillan? He banging you on the side, too? You know he’s got a supermodel girlfriend back in New York; she might not like sharing.”
Dillan marched forward, looking twice the badass in his full uniform. He had starched khakis, a big ol’ metal badge, and a very real service revolver strapped to his hip. He rounded the other side of the bed, closing in on Nathan.
“I wasn’t actually planning on helping him. I just came to make sure you didn’t kill one another and force me to do a whole lotta paperwork. But, now, you’ve pissed me off, so I’m all in.” He unclipped the shiny star pinned to his chest and slipped it into his breast pocket. He looked up at me with a short nod. “Grab his other arm.”
We both lifted a side, thrusting him up from underneath his armpits.
“What the fuck . . . get off me . . . what the hell?”
Nathan kept protesting as we hefted his dead weight off the bed and into his chair. He awkwardly slumped over when we settled him into it.
We tried to readjust.
“Get the fuck off me. I’ve got it.” He pushed Dillan’s arm away and used his forearms to lever himself up to a better position. “Mind telling me what the hell this little ambush is all about? I thought I’d made myself pretty damn clear, Ross. I didn’t think I had to spell out that I didn’t want to ever see you again.”
“I’ve thought of a million ways to do this. This finally seemed like the best option. You were never going to come willingly.”
“Come where? I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Just listen to him, Nathan. This is for your own good.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dillan. Don’t you have a cat to go save or something?”
While his head was turned away from me, I pressed the gun back under the waistband of my shorts and leaned forward.
Breaking all the rules today.
Might as well go for it.
I punched him. Pretty hard. Right in the upper thigh.
“What the actual hell? Did you just hit me?” Nathan looked down at his leg in astonishment. “Did you really just hit a cripple? Jesus Christ. What’s wrong with you? Are you high?”
“You flinched.” I couldn’t fight back the smile. That shit just broke out all over my face, spreading around like jam on toast.
“What?” He scowled at me. A little pissed off but also a little worried. “Are you on drugs again? Do you have a mental problem?”
“When I hit you, you flinched.”
He blinked. Rapidly.
Then, finally, he turned toward Dillan again. “I want to file assault charges. And breaking and entering. And trespassing. And find out if you can charge him with brandishing a firearm or some shit like that. I want the whole book thrown at this bastard. If his daddy hadn’t paid off the whole damn town, his ass woulda been in jail years ago.”
“How much of it did you feel?” I asked, my voice determined.
I knew I was right. I had to be.
He slowly turned back to me, visibly exhaling. “I don’t know what you’re yammering on about, half-wit.”
“I’m yammering about the feeling you have in that leg. You felt something. How long have you had the tingling?”
His jaw flexed back and forth as he ground his teeth together. His cheeks flamed. “You have lost your fucking mind,” he murmured.
“Did it start right after the surgery, or did it take a while? The stem cell grafting is so new, no one knows how long it takes for the nerves to heal after they remove the scar tissue. There have been such varied results with the patients in the study.”
“How the fuck do you know about any of that?”
“Because I’ve been to St. Louis. I’ve talked to Dr. Hildebrand. He’s a brilliant man. You were very lucky to have him as your surgeon.”
Nathan’s eyes widened. Behind us, Dillan cleared his throat. Neither of us responded. We were far too engaged in a staring contest.
That shit’s only fun when you’re thirteen.
When you’re an adult, it means serious business.
“About six weeks after.” His voice stayed small. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
I didn’t get it. How could a person not be shouting that from the rooftops? I balled my hands up at my sides to prevent myself from doing a full-fledged fist pump.
And from shaking the shit out of him.
If Matt was right—and Matt was always infuriatingly right—this stood a chance of working.
“You need to be in intensive therapy. You need daily massage, hydrotherapy, robotic training. You should have monthly MRIs. There’s a doctor in Texas who’s seen amazing results with—”
“You don’t think I know all that, asshole? You don’t think I know how this works? They’re my fucking legs! I know all the research. I know all the cutting-edge therapies.” He held out his arms. “Look around. Does it look like I can afford that right now? Does it look like my family can take one more hit?”
“You don’t have to pay for a thing.”
“I’m not taking your goddamn blood money. I won’t let you buy your way out of what you did to me, motherfucker.”
I shook my head and groaned. “You and your sister are singing that broken record like Donny and Marie. It’s starting to seriously piss me off. I’m not taking no for an answer anymore. And you don’t have to go anywhere for therapy. I brought the best in the business here. Funny, as it turns out, you need daily therapy, and so do I. So, we’re gonna be gym buddies again. We’re gonna push each other. We just have to get you out of this fucking room first.”
His eyes narrowed, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Now, you gonna wheel yourself out, or do you need the town’s finest here to give you a good push?”
His nostrils flared. Dillan reached forward to grab ahold of the handles.
“Get the fuck off me, man.” Nathan turned to sw
at at his hands. “I don’t need your help.”
“You do need our help. And you’re gonna smile and take it,” I added. “Now, wheel yourself out there and let us help you in the car. Dillan drove. I figured you wouldn’t want to get in a car with me.”
He snickered, as he pushed his chair past me. “You got that right.”
“If you shut up and behave, Dillan said he’d turn the lights on and take the long way around town.”
* * *
Ashley
There were fifteen seconds of eerie quiet before the muffled shouting began, and the car doors slammed shut. My brother offered up a colorful series of curses, and then he and Brayden tumbled through the kitchen door, just like they had a thousand times before.
My breath caught as I saw them silhouetted there, side by side, against the soft gray glow of evening sky. I could almost hear my mother’s voice calling them in for dinner and their jeers and good-natured taunting as they tried to settle on the final score to whatever game they’d been sparring at out back.
Those kids were still here.
Buried somewhere beneath new facial hair and old history.
My brother rolled past me, angrily pushing his chair right up to the refrigerator so one wheel hit the cabinet beside it. A permanent groove marred the wood.
“I guess Dillan got ahold of you?” Brayden asked me, still standing in the doorway. He swiveled his ball cap around backward, unveiling eyes labored by a long day’s exhaustion.
The fridge door slammed. I turned back toward my brother.
“Oh. So, you were in on this, too? You knew he came over here and kidnapped me at gunpoint?”
“Gunpoint?” I asked, sending Brayden a curious look.
He ran the pad of his thumb across his bottom lip with sheepish guilt. “Kinda a long story,” he murmured.
His eyes met mine and then trailed down the length of my body, soaking in my after-work attire of a braless T-shirt and gym shorts.
“Oh, good Lord. I’m still in the room, dipshit. Stop looking at my sister like that, and get the fuck out of our house. You’re not the lost little puppy we’re gonna take in and feed anymore.” Nathan popped the top on a soda and turned to wheel himself out toward the family room. “But, speaking of food, is there any chance we’re gonna eat anytime soon, Ashley Jane? I’m fucking starving. This asswipe had a ready-made drill sergeant over there, kicking the shit out of me all day.” Nathan’s voice trailed off as he exited the room.
