by Amelia Gates
I couldn’t be quiet and keep my balance. If she hadn’t looked so scared, I would have chosen differently—those cinderblocks made better steps than cushion and I landed with a thud that woke every nerve in my body. I’m sure I chipped more than a few teeth as I bit down a scream. Fuck! That shit hurt. I wouldn’t sit right for a week. I jumped back up before Daisy had a chance to worry about me, and through the pain, I kissed her goodnight.
“I thought you said you had locks on your door.”
She shrugged and smiled weakly at me before turning to the door again. “Get out of here, Kash. Hurry.” I didn’t like it, but I would accept it for the moment. Soon, though, my patience would wear thin. Maybe I would just have to sit the old man down myself and have a heart-to-heart. He might have had his wife and daughter under some fear-bound spell, but not me. After all, as far as I was concerned, he was nothing more than a pile of drunken potatoes.
Chapter 24
I didn’t sleep at all that night, certain that every bump and creak I heard was Dad coming to punish me for having a man in my room. I couldn’t imagine that mom would just ignore the situation. It wasn’t like I’d just invited Kash over for dinner or something. She had to have noticed that his pants were barely above his ankles. And if she’d missed all that, what other reason could I possibly have had for sneaking him into my room in the dead of night?
I was still waiting for my inevitable demise when the sun came up. Still, nothing happened. The smell of coffee filled the house and I heard the washing machine start, and still nothing. I began to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. Or maybe my mother told my father and he had a heart attack. Croaked right where he sat in front of the TV watching the fight. Mom was probably silent about it, in that ‘served you right,” kind of way. After all, he did put his hands on her. If any man slapped me the way my father slapped my mother that night – and apparently, many nights before, I can’t say I would have shed a tear over his heart going still inside his chest. Somehow, I doubted my father was dead.
“Well. Better go face the music, since the music doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to face me,” I told myself.
My heart raced as I dressed. I couldn’t tell if it was from anxiety or exhaustion, but it didn’t really seem to matter. I would be going out there shaky and unprepared regardless. Mom was cooking breakfast. I hesitated for a second, wondering what I should do, before deciding to just slide into my seat like I always did.
“Good morning,” she said brightly.
“Good morning,” I said cautiously. “How did you sleep?”
“Like a baby,” she said. “That new prescription the doctor gave me is working wonders. And you? How did you sleep?” Her brow furrowed with concern and she put a hand on my forehead. “You look sick.”
I shook my head. “Just tired. Didn’t sleep very well. Um—about that—”
She held up a hand and looked over my head, into the living room. “Good morning, David! Coffee?”
He mumbled something incoherent in response and mom turned around to make his coffee. She didn’t give me any kind of look, but she didn’t need to. She clearly hadn’t told him and didn’t seem like she was planning to either. Puzzled and feeling seasick from skipping out on my sleep, I sipped on coffee and frowned at nothing in particular.
“It’s Saturday,” Dad growled. “You don’t have work. If you’re gonna be that grumpy about it, just go back to bed.”
I ignored him. I was too tired to get into it with him, and too groggy to come up with an acceptably neutral answer. Plus, I was still working on biting my tongue. One day, I’d make enough money to drag mom and myself out of this town and away from him. I didn’t care how much she would likely rebel. I didn’t care that somewhere deep down, maybe she really did love him. He hit her. And even if he wasn’t going to pay for it now, he’d pay for it eventually.
I spent the day in a sleepy, anxious haze, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never did.
The next day was even worse; by the end of it, I’d chewed my nails down to the cuticles and had a relentless headache. Mom made no indication at all that she’d even seen Kash, let alone that she’d discovered him in such a compromising position. But she did mention new medication which had me thinking that maybe she went blind.
It wasn’t until Dad left for work on Monday morning that she decided to bring it up. This new job of his had him out the door half an hour before me, so we had a little bit of time to ourselves. She called me into the kitchen and sat me down with a look on her face which straddled the line between stern and nervous.
“We need to talk about Friday,” she said.
Relief burst in my chest. Freaking finally. “Okay.”
She stirred her coffee slowly, looking deep into her cup as if it held answers she needed. “I understand that Kash is your person,” she said. “I expected this. I didn’t expect you to be so reckless about it, though.”
I frowned. “Reckless? What do you mean?”
She gave me a wide-eyed, exasperated look. “Daisy, you had a man crawl into the house through your bedroom window. It doesn’t even matter that it was Kash, if your dad walked in on any man crawling through your window he’d fill him full of buckshot in a heartbeat. You know this.” She pursed her lips firmly and looked back into her coffee.
“Okay, so that was probably a little stupid,” I admitted.
She shook her head. “It’s not just that. Listen, Daisy, I don’t know what you two have been doing. I don’t know if you’ve been out on dates or over to his place, but I hope you haven’t.”
“Why?”
Her eyes were full of the same fear I’d been battling inside myself for months. “Because your dad won’t hold back. If he finds out that you’ve been with Kash, he’ll be out for blood. All the cops in town know the history—if your dad beats the hell out of Kash, the department will turn a blind eye.”
She stopped and sighed heavily, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “That’s not the worst of it, either,” she said quietly. “He won’t just be after Kash, Daisy. He’ll take your actions personally. He’ll feel betrayed and humiliated by you, and he’ll lash out. I don’t know how, exactly—but it isn’t far-fetched to think that he’d kick you out at the very least. Maybe even—” She bit her lip and shook her head.
“You think he’ll hit me? The way he hits you?” My tone was harsher than I’d intended but I couldn’t help it. I was still pissed at her for letting him get away with treating her that way.
She hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “But I can’t say for sure that he won’t, and that worries me, Daisy. You’re my daughter and I love you. I don’t want you to get hurt, but if your father finds out…at least emotionally, you’ll be in a lot of pain. It’s not worth it.” She glanced at the clock on the wall behind my head and sighed. “You’d better finish getting ready.”
“And what about you, mom? Are you just as opposed to me seeing Kash.”
She rubbed at her temples. “He was convicted for your brother’s murder.”
“A murder he didn’t commit.”
When she didn’t say anything, I could feel the anger boil in my stomach, a hundred degrees of hurt and fury and guilt. “Momma…you know he didn’t kill Hunter.”
She sighed. “I know that, Daisy. Kash was like a son to me. Like a brother to Hunter. I know that Kash could never…but none of that matters, does it? It’s what people think. It’s what the cops think. What your dad thinks. What most of this town thinks.” She paused and went back to massaging her temples. “Go get ready for work, Daisy. It’s getting late.”
I didn’t want to leave the conversation there and I still had several minutes before I had to leave. But she looked so drained, her eyes so hollow and her mouth so drawn, that I dropped the subject long before I was ready to and with no idea whether or not we’d ever be able to pick it back up.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
I kissed her head and left for wor
k, my head heavy with a cyclone of thoughts all spinning too fast for me to capture. The only one to make it through to my conscious mind was that she was covering for me. If dad found out about that, her punishment would be even worse than mine. Not that I would tell on her. I knew my mother. She’d try to defend me and, in doing so, would put her own neck on the chopping block. I didn’t want to be the cause of her pain. I really needed to be more careful.
I hadn’t been at work for an hour before Kash came in. I was re-shelving books in the mystery section, out of sight of the door and the main desk, when he started fake-perusing the slasher books.
“Good to see you alive,” he said under his breath. “What happened?”
I blew out a breath. “She didn’t tell him. She’s as scared about it as I am. I think she thinks if she tells him he’ll assume that she knew about it all along and take it out on the both of us.”
Kash swore under his breath and pretended to read the back cover of a novel. “I knew that was a bad idea,” he said. “What now? Back to sneaking out, or are you ready to rip this band-aid off?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. About the sneaking out, anyway. I definitely don’t think we should tell him. You should have seen how scared she was, Kash. Really. She’s terrified of him.”
His jaw jumped and he glared at the book he was pretending to read. “So are you. If I ever find out what magic he’s using to keep you both in check, I’ll be a god darn millionaire. Seriously!”
I glared at him. “There’s nothing magical about intimidation and violence, Kash. Nothing at all.”
He raised his eyebrows at me, his eyes flashing. “Violence? You told me he hasn’t hit you since you were a kid.”
“He hasn’t,” I said quickly.
“Then what violence are you talking about?”
I stumbled over my words, second-guessing them even as I said them. “Just, you know—putting holes in walls and throwing things and stuff. Violent gestures. It’s only one step over to go from throwing things at walls to throwing people at walls.”
His face was expressionless, and I felt stupid. Of course that wouldn’t sound like violence to him, he’d just spent six years behind bars with people who had hurt people, violently. His definition would obviously be narrower than mine, and maybe his was more accurate. But my father hit my mother and even though she didn’t bruise or lose a tooth, he still hit her. I wasn’t going to say all that to Kash, though.
Embarrassed, I turned my full attention on my work. When I looked back at him, I saw a look in his eye I hadn’t seen in a long time. He was plotting something and it scared the bajeebers out of me.
“Kash,” I said desperately. “You aren’t thinking about selling drugs again, are you? We’ve been over this. It won’t help anything.”
He shook his head slowly as calculations flickered through the depths of his eyes. “No. Not that.”
“Then what?”
An excited grin played around his mouth. “I’ll tell you what it is when it works. I gotta go.”
“Damn it, Kash, promise me it’s not drugs.”
He huffed impatiently. “It’s not drugs, Daisy. I promise. Look, I’m not about to let your old man get away with controlling you forever. I’m also not planning to let that damn PO live up my ass for the next nine and a half years. I’m honestly over it. All of it. Which only leaves me with one option. I’m going to fix it.”
“Tell me how,” I demanded.
He looked around, made sure that we were out of sight, and kissed me quickly on the mouth. “How about I tell you later?” he said. “You’ve got work to do.”
“Kash, wait.”
But he was already gone, slipping through the stacks of books like a sexy ninja. Sighing, I went back to re-shelving books, my brain buzzing with a million suspicions.
I spent the rest of the day distracted and irritable, having convinced myself that Kash would get himself blown up in a meth accident before the end of my shift or shot by the sheriff at high noon. But noon passed without a single wailing siren outside, and the end of my shift arrived before anything blew up in town.
Restless and anxious, I took the long way home, winding through the shabby shacks near the defunct railway station rather than taking the main roads like I would usually do. But I needed more than anything to clear my head and it was a heck of a lot easier doing that without the distractions of cars and people.
My phone interrupted my anxious thoughts and with a groan, I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at the screen. It was Dad, because…well…because of course it was. I sighed, and for a moment, debated on whether or not to answer the call. Deciding that I wasn’t really up for a fight and that that was exactly what I’d get if I went home and left the phone unanswered, I pressed it to my ear.
“Hello?” I said, my heart beating anxiously.
“Bring beer home,” he said shortly.
I rolled my eyes and altered my direction so that I was no longer walking amongst the silence of the trees. I headed toward the route that would intercept the store before hitting my street. “Isn’t it a little early for beer?”
“Tell that to the stupid supervisor at that stupid call center,” he growled. “He’s the one who decided to cut my damn hours.”
I sighed. “What happened?”
Dad started ranting about how stupid technology was, but I could barely hear him over the sounds of a fight which had broken out in one of the houses next to me. Before I could say anything to Dad, a door slammed. My attention shot to the direction of the sound and my jaw just about hit the damn concrete as I saw the back of a person heading down the step, as though he was superman without the cape, flying backwards. With a thud that shook the earth, he landed on the concrete. It took another two seconds for me to realize just what – or rather, who – I was looking at. Kash!
“You like that, big boy?” A man growled and I straightened. He wasn’t talking to me, but still, his voice spoke to me.
That voice.
I knew that voice.
To my horror, I watched as that balding drug dealer—Danny? Dave? Dayle, that was it. Dayle launched himself out of the front door, landing on Kash’s chest, and started throwing fists.
“Kash!” I screamed.
Dayle paused, looking up at me with something dreadful in his eyes. I should have taken a hint then and bolted in the other direction. Instead, I ran over there, forgetting all about my phone.
While the man was distracted, Kash lobbed a jab at his face, snapping his head back. He was back on his feet in a flash, but the other guy was faster.
“You fight like a bitch,” Dayle shouted. “Just like that idiot Hunter.”
My heart sunk. My stomach sunk right with it. I felt pain and anger and everything in between as I drew nearer, still hearing my brother’s name in Dayle’s voice long after he’d insulted him.
“You keep his name out of your goddamn mouth,” Kash growled, kicking at the guy’s feet and swinging at his face. “At least Hunter didn’t smoke out of his own damn stash, you piece of shit.”
“Which is why he got his ass kicked into the ground,” Dayle said, lacing his fingers into a single fist and raising it above his head. “Just like you!”
“Stop!” I shouted and shoved my way between them. By the grace of god, I managed to push them apart, bracing for impact. Dayle didn’t touch me. Instead, he just backed up with a leering grin at Kash.
“Look at you, with your very own guard bitch,” Dayle said. “Hey, sweetheart, why don’t you stay out of my business before you get yourself hurt?”
“Kash is my business,” I snapped.
He raised his brows and chuckled nastily. “Oh, I see. I hear Hunter was your business too. Look how that turned out.”
Kash exploded. “Because of you, you sack of shit!”
Dayle’s grin faded and he growled. “Listen here you little prick. You’re barking up the wrong damn tree. I didn’t touch your little boyfriend. Sure, I took advanta
ge of his absence—I’m a businessman, not a murderer—but you listen to me and you listen clear. You better step off before I decide to expand my horizons.”
Kash flinched like he was going to hit the guy again, and I put my hand on his chest. “Kash, let’s go.”
“Get out of here, Daisy,” Kash said. His voice was shaking with fury. “I’m gonna finish this.”
Dayle chuckled. “Listen to your girl, Kash. She seems to be a heck of a lot smarter than she looks.”
Kash tensed and I pushed him firmly back, locking my gaze to his. “Kash. You’re bleeding, let’s go.”
Kash frowned at me for a moment, then wiped blood away from his mouth. “You don’t understand, Daisy. Go home. Let me handle this.”
I glared at him silently until he relented. As I dragged him away, he pointed back at Dayle. “This isn’t over,” he said.
“Keep up with the threats and it’s your funeral this town will be celebrating next,” Dayle said carelessly.
I almost stepped on my phone as we walked away, having forgotten that I’d dropped it. I picked it up and slid it into my pocket, more focused on the blood pouring out of various gashes on Kash’s face and body than I was on the phone.
There was a little convenience store on the corner, and I made Kash wait outside while I ran in for first aid supplies. When I came back out, he was sitting on the curb with his head in his hands.
“Let me see,” I ordered.
He looked up at me with a resigned expression. I cleaned the blood off of his face and chest, then taped him together as best I could. He had one deep cut on his cheekbone which ended just before it reached his temple. His lower lip was pierced with a jagged slice which matched his teeth, and he had scratches all over his chest which were just barely deep enough to bleed.
“Someone’s gonna see you,” he mumbled around my fingers as I superglued his lip back together.
“I’ll worry about that when the bleeding stops,” I said, taping gauze over my handiwork. “Now sit still.”
