by Amelia Gates
“Finally came back to see me. You never called.” The goth teenager behind the counter glared and pouted at me all at once. Then she rolled her eyes as if it never mattered in the first place and tapped her long black fingernails impatiently against the side of the register. “Did you lose my number or something? Here, give me your phone.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening. Ring me up for a corndog and a lemonade, will you.”
She raised a brow and leaned over the counter, doing her best to show some cleavage. The uniform collar was high and she didn’t have much to work with in the first place, so the effect was sort of pitiful.
“Is that all you eat, Kash Lawson?” She batted her eyes at me and looked me up and down. I felt like a prey. Really large prey. Like a trophy buck who’s being stalked by a house cat. A relentless house cat.
“Nah. Sometimes I eat ramen. Occasionally I even eat a vegetable, but I don’t see any of that on your menu. $9.95?” I pulled out the money and held it out of her reach, waiting for her to put the order in.
“I should charge you double for being an ass.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and punched my order in. “$9.95.”
I wanted to make a comment about how much she’d owe her own company if they really did charge for being an ass, but I could already see how she would twist that into something sexual and so I let it go. She really needed to get herself a guy her own age, but I understood her frustration. It was slim pickings around here, always had been.
She wrote her number on the receipt again, this time with a little angry face and broken heart. I threw it away in front of her. The flash of hurt on her face almost made me feel bad, but not really. I’d said it straight, I’d said it sideways, I’d said it more than once. If she couldn’t take a nice “no” for an answer, then she wouldn’t get nice.
I managed to keep caring all the way to the door, then forgot all about it as I stepped outside and into the fresh air.
The hazy late afternoon was turning purple around the edges, and any minute now I would see Daisy. I’d have to remember to get her number this time. It had seemed perfectly natural to run her down on foot—old habits die hard I guess. Back then, none of us had a phone. And none of us would get one until we could buy one ourselves—but we were adults now, and it was long past time we started behaving like it.
Which was all well and good to tell myself, but when I saw her walk across the parking lot my heart started racing like a kid with a crush. Maybe some things shouldn’t be grown out of because what the hell is love without that feeling?
I waved at Daisy, but she didn’t see me.
“Daisy! Ah, never mind…” She’d already walked through the doors, and I didn’t think she’d heard me anyway. I considered following her into the store, but that hadn’t gone over real well the first time. Better to play it safe. Should I finish my corndog? I don’t want her to come out when I’m in the middle of a bite. If I eat it fast enough, I’ll be done before she comes out. But then I’ll have corndog breath. Choking was also a possibility. I didn’t feel like having her have to Heimlich Maneuver a sausage from my throat. Though, that would make quite the story. Maybe I could—
“Jeez, man, quit overthinking it. She’s Daisy, for crying out loud. She doesn’t care about that crap.” I shook my head at myself and went back to my meal. Just as I’d expected, I had a mouthful of food when she came back out. I continued chewing as I waved again, but she had her head down and was walking kind of fast, so she didn’t see me. I wondered, for a short second, if she always walked like that, like she was trying to blend into the concrete. It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, Daisy was larger than life, her eyes everywhere, searching for me, or Hunter, or the both of us. The way she walked now was testament to how much times had changed her.
Trying to chew, swallow, and jog after her all at once just about killed me. I choked on my food for a solid twelve seconds, long enough to almost catch up with her, before I finally dealt with it.
“Daisy!” I croaked, completely out of breath by the time I got to her.
She just about jumped out of her skin, flinching and going pale like she was afraid to be hit. I cleared my throat and was just about to make a joke out of it when I saw her pulse racing in the hollow of her throat. She hadn’t just been startled; she was completely terrified.
“Daisy? Sweetheart, you good?”
“Oh.” She laughed weakly and shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. I—I didn’t sleep very well last night, I guess. I’ve been jumpy all day.”
I frowned and tried to meet her gaze, but her eyes slipped away from mine like a couple of front-facing magnets.
“Well here,” I said, reaching for the beer she carried. “If you’re that tired, let me help you.”
That seemed to alarm her more. “No!” she said, her voice sharp and clear. She clutched the box and twisted it out of my reach then frowned. A deep breath in and a long exhale out, she shook away some of the nerves that had been holding her hostage. “No. But thanks for the offer, Kash.”
She moved and I moved with her. “Did something happen, Daisy? I thought we had a good time last night.”
Her eyes flew wide and darted around. “Hush! I don’t want to talk about it. You know how gossip moves around here. Just pretend I told you off and go sulk at home.”
I stepped in front of her, forcing her to stop. She still wouldn’t look at me. It was starting to piss me off—not at her, but at whoever put the fear of God into her.
“Okay, now I know something’s up. You’re not tired, you’re exhausted. You look like you’ve been crying all day and you can barely handle that box. What is going on?”
Her lower lip trembled, and it broke my heart. She pressed her mouth into a thin line and swallowed hard. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper.
“Kash, if people see you helping me like that everybody’s going to say I’m screwing my brother’s killer.”
I winced like she’d slapped me with the back of her hand instead of her words. Her eyes flicked to my face and away again, and she bit her lip so hard I thought she would draw blood.
“We talked about this,” I said, my voice coming out hoarse.
“I’m not saying I believe it,” she said.
I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t saying she didn’t believe it either, but who was I to split hairs.
“But that’s what everyone else is going to say. They’re going to say it loud and often and my dad will hear about it before the end of the day and he’ll come after you.” She paused to swallow hard and take a breath. “Somebody will get hurt. I can’t be seen with you, Kash. Now please move.”
I had plenty of arguments at hand for this situation, but as I cycled through them, I realized they all hinged on the assumption that her dad wasn’t much of an actual threat. Daisy clearly thought otherwise, and any argument I made would essentially be telling her that I thought she was full of it. Which wasn’t the case—I was sure she believed everything she was saying—but I knew what I was capable of, and I had a pretty good idea what a twenty-year drunk was capable of. As far as I was concerned, there was no contest.
Or maybe it was an excuse. Maybe she’d just been telling me what I wanted to hear, or she’d been caught up in the moment and temporarily forgotten her fears. Maybe I wasn’t standing on solid ground with her after all. I wanted to know. I wanted to make her talk until she told me every layer of every thought in her pretty little head.
But I stepped aside and let her pass without me. The look she shot me was one of pure gratitude, which didn’t give me a whole lot more to go on but made me lean more toward the former explanation than the latter. If she was secretly scared of me, she wouldn’t have looked at me at all after getting her way. So, assuming that prying eyes were really her biggest concern, I turned and walked down the alley beside the store.
A few shortcuts and a lot of fence jumping later, I was at the bend in the gravel road which was out of sight of b
oth the main street and the trailers. The secret little spot had served us well as kids when the sheriff was out looking for curfew breakers or one of us was grounded. For seventeen yards, a person could be completely invisible. No one, but Daisy, me, and Hunter ever really traveled these roads, so I decided that it posed the least risk of getting caught. If she wanted privacy, she could have it here.
Just like I’d thought, she came around the bend and saw me but didn’t react at all until she was well inside the safe zone. Then her pace quickened, and her eyes burned directly into my soul.
She shook her head as though she couldn’t believe I had the nerve to follow her. “What did I just say to you, Kash?” she asked.
I held up a finger. “You said you didn’t want anybody to see me helping you. So nobody will see me helping you. Let me carry the box for you and tell me what’s really going on.”
“I told you what’s going on. If my dad so much as thinks that you and I are together, he’ll lose his shit. He will come after you and it won’t be pretty. Not for me, and not for you. You know he has a temper.” She’d gone pale again. It ignited a fury deep inside me which bubbled up to the surface as sarcasm.
“Of course he has a temper. Doesn’t everybody? I have a pretty good temper. I’m easy going—unless somebody threatens someone I love.”
Her expression froze for a fraction of a second, but it was long enough. My fury deepened.
“Daisy, did he threaten to hurt you?”
“No.”
“Did he threaten to hurt me?”
“Repeatedly.”
I laughed at that. A low grumble that didn’t have much to do with humor. “Do you really think he could?”
She shrugged and then nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Look, Kash, I know we’ve had this—whatever it is—relationship in various stages forever, but we have to put it on ice. At least for now. It’s more than just not being seen together. If I’m not home and in bed by eight o’clock every single night, he will come looking for you. If he sees a mark on my body or smells cologne, he will come looking for you. And he won’t stop. Not until he finds you. Not until he’s sure that we’re not together. And…well, we’re not together, but…God, the point I’m trying to make, Kash, is that we need to leave this alone. My father’s not in a good place right now and you don’t need to put yourself on the receiving end of whatever his alcoholism.” She inhaled shakily and met my eyes full on. “He’s hurting, Kash. He’s hurting real bad. It’s not fair that you’re alive and his son is dead, that’s how he sees it. You know what he’s like when he’s hurt, like a mountain lion or a wolf, he’ll take your hand off as soon as he looks at you.”
“I’ve handled a wounded animal or two in my time,” I said. My natural confidence rose as hers waned.
“Yeah, a bunny rabbit. And still you had to get eight stitches and a rabies shot!”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Touché. But I handled it, didn’t I?”
She pressed a palm to her temple. “The bunny is not the point, Kash.”
“You brought it up.”
“The point is that it is too dangerous for me to see you right now.”
“I disagree.”
“Then you’re wrong.”
I ground my teeth. “You know, I’m starting to think this isn’t about your dad at all. What is he now, sixty?”
“Fifty-four.”
“Close enough. Fifty-four years old, drunk every day for the last twenty. He’s a pushover on a good day. So what’s really going on, Daisy? If you can’t handle the gossip and the stigma…well, I mean, I’m kind of disappointed in you to be honest, you never were the kind to give a shit what other people think before.”
She raised her chin and her eyes flashed defiantly. “I still don’t.”
“Hm. Maybe. Well if you don’t, then I figure the most logical explanation is that you just don’t want to see me and you’re running out of ways to tell me that. It’s my fault for not picking up on it sooner, honestly. You shouldn’t feel bad, I’m kind of slow.” I was getting angrier the longer I talked, but I didn’t know whether it was at her or myself.
“Shut up.”
“See, and that. You’ve told me to shut up about a dozen times since I got back. For all your talk about wanting answers, you sure don’t want to hear me much. Am I wasting my time here? Am I the idiot living in a dream world thinking that you could possibly, actually want to see me?”
“Of course I want to see you!” She dropped the case in the dirt and stormed up to me, coming within a millimeter of my face. “Why do you think I was up all night, Kash? I can’t stop thinking about you. You live in my head, you always have, and it’s only gotten worse since you got back. I spend every waking moment thirsty for your presence and I dream all night about reaching out to touch you, but never quite making that connection. It’s torture!”
“So I’m torturing you?”
“Now you’re just being deliberately obtuse.” She crossed her arms and glared daggers at me.
A smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Deliberately obtuse, huh?”
“Yes! Deliberately obtuse.”
“You know your vocabulary grows about three times its normal size when you’re pissed? I always noticed that about you. It’s why you could never convince anyone you were angry when you weren’t.” My own anger was fading, at least the part of it that was directed at her.
She blinked at me, then sniffed. “Maybe I just don’t have the patience to dumb myself down when I’m pissed,” she said.
“You saying you dumb yourself down for me? I’m hurt. I thought you knew I was a genius.” I grinned, but she only rolled her eyes. I brushed my fingers against the back of her hand and leaned my forehead against hers. “I’m sorry, Daisy. It’s been weird, coming home like this. Everybody I used to know either hates me or admires me for something I didn’t even do. That second one disturbs me most.”
She sighed and let her eyes flutter closed. “I know it’s hard for you. I feel bad about it because it isn’t fair. But damn it, Kash, I need you to hear me when I talk. I want to be with you. I would love to be with you. But it just isn’t safe.”
Reaching up, I slid my fingers through her silky hair. Everything about the motion hurt, knowing that moments like these couldn’t be imprinted in my mind forever. I didn’t just want to remember having touched her. I wanted to be able to touch her whenever the hell I pleased.
I sighed. “What if I could make it safe?”
Her chuckle was full of bitterness. “How? Are you going to catch the real killer and turn him in?”
“Maybe,” I said with a grin. “But let’s say that’s a next week sort of project. Right now, all I want to do is see you.”
She shook her head, but I already had it figured out. It was stupid simple, tried and true. I lifted her face in my hands, turning her eyes up to meet mine, and smiled down at her.
“I have an idea,” I whispered and pressed my lips against the spot beside hers.
Not the full thing.
Not crossing lines.
Not breaking boundaries.
Just close enough that she could almost remember what it was like to taste me.
Chapter 11
“Did you drop this? There’s dirt everywhere! You’re really going to make your mom clean this up?” Dad glared at the thin film of dust on the table which had fallen off the case of beer when I’d set it down.
“Or you could do it,” I muttered under my breath.
He shot a flinty-eyed look at me. “What?”
“I said, ‘or I could do it.’” I smiled benignly at him and went to the sink for a rag. Spinning the tap, I dampened it and rung it out before returning to the table to clean up the mess my dad could have taken care of his damn self.
He watched me warily as I worked, lifting his beer to wipe away whatever dirt might have gathered underneath the carton. “What’s the matter with you today?”
“Didn’t sleep much, that’s all,
” I said. “Probably going to go to bed early, since I have to be in my room by eight and all.”
His thick brows drew together over his sharp, sober eyes. He’d only been home from work for half an hour—long enough to eat and start feeling the pinch of withdrawal. I always worried that there would be a day when he would decide that the discomfort wasn’t worth it, and he’d end up taking booze to work with him and fall off a ladder or something.
“Right. Eight. I told you that.” It came out as half a question. I saw an opportunity, but I didn’t take it. I had bigger fish to fry.
“Yes, you did. For my own good, I believe was what you said.”
He shifted his gaze back and forth for a moment, trying to remember the specifics. He’d get all caught up as soon as he was drunk, and when that happened, I knew I’d better be in bed. After all, Kash’s plan relied on my obedience—at least temporarily.
“Right,” Dad said. “Well, you need the sleep anyway.”
“Yes, I do.”
It took him about four hours to remember everything that went down the night before. I had been in my room for two of those, listening to music just loud enough to block out the sounds coming from the living room, and reading my book—which turned out to be largely disappointing, but I was glad for the opportunity to decide that for myself—when he slammed my door open without warning, releasing a cloud of alcohol-soaked BO into my bedroom.
I put the book down and raised my eyebrows at him, fighting the bile that rose in my throat. “Hello to you, too.”
He glanced around the room. “Anybody in here with you?”
I frowned at him. “Just me and my book, Dad.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and stomped in. It was more than just an invasion of privacy, it was an invasion of trust. Not that I’d had any reason to trust him, but I didn’t exactly have reasons to distrust him either.
His drunken steps carried him deeper and deeper into my room. A heavy thud landed him on his knees as he checked under my bed, which wasn’t even tall enough to hide a cat underneath. Grunting and groaning, he pulled himself up and stumbled his way over to my closet. His grip slipped a few times as he tried to cup the handle of the door, which resulted in him cursing at the bloody thing. When finally he got the door open, he was, once again disappointed. Eyes narrowed on mine, he slammed it shut. Finally, he checked the window, opening it and sticking his head out to look in the flowerbed below. The screen had broken off the window years before, and he’d never bothered to replace it. At least he couldn’t say I’d done it on purpose.
