One Last Chance: Small Town Second Chance Romance

by Amelia Gates

  A goddamn zippo. Not just any zippo, either. This one was etched with a dolphin who wore a tiny emerald fleck in one eye—a gift from Hunter. Bejeweled dolphins were his signature gift, always had been. Hell, I had a jacket somewhere with a dolphin on the back. Our “gang” tattoos, if you could call them that, were dolphins. He loved the damn things and claimed his inner circle with them.

  There was only one person he’d ever loved who would carry a zippo. Only one person he had this zippo designed for. I remember it like it was yesterday, how excited he was when he wrapped it. I even remember the wrapping paper and the cheesy blue bow he tied on top. The truth hit me like a freight train and I had to bury my hands in the earth to keep them from throwing the goddamn thing as far as I could. It was the evidence I needed. I still didn’t know if the cops would buy it, but I didn’t care. I knew the truth. Heart jumping in my chest, I leapt to my feet and picked the zippo up in the hem of my shirt, careful not to touch it. An even worse realization had occurred to me.

  David was with the killer, and he was pissed.

  I barely remember the drive back to her place. Panic, fury, and adrenaline filled my being, narrowing my focus to two points: keep the Zippo safe, and get back to Daisy.

  I tossed the lighter in the glovebox and slammed on the gas as soon as I crossed that cattle grate.

  I wouldn’t be too late.

  I wouldn’t.

  But if I was, I would kill him with my bare hands.

  Dust flew around me as I screeched to a stop in front of Daisy’s house. The front door opened just a crack and I took my chances, barreling out of my truck and into the house without even pausing to slam my door.

  David was on the other side and I shoved him backwards, ready to take him apart for what he’d done to Hunter.

  I expected Daisy to yell at me. I knew she was there, I’d seen her out of my periphery when I came in, but she didn’t. As David caught his breath, I looked at her. Her left eye was swelling fast as a fist-sized purple bruise spread around it. Rage doubling and tripling, I turned back toward David.

  “You sick son of a bitch,” I snarled. The words were barely out of my mouth before I went after him.

  Nobody tried to stop me, not even Sandy. He threw a punch or two, but he was off-balance with a belly full of beer. I knew exactly how he would fight; I’d danced through those clumsy footsteps an hour before. But even if I didn’t, the fucker wasn’t exactly hard to take down. Not with my rage. Not with me no longer giving a damn that he was Daisy’s father, because he was much more than that now. Something bad, horrendous, despicable.

  My fist shot forward and I caught him in the ribs, feeling them bend and crack beneath my knuckles. David gurgled in pain, but that did nothing to quell the anger in me. I balled my fists even tighter this time and sailed them hard one after the other right into his gut, spinning out of the way as he vomited. The slight distance gave him the few seconds he needed, and he whipped his phone out of his pocket and smashed the emergency call button with a nasty grin on his face.

  “You done fucked up now, boy,” he growled as the phone connected.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  “That killer, Kash. He’s…he’s…he’s in my house tryn’a finish the job,” David howled. “He hit me and my daughter and now he’s after my wife! Hurry! 696 Poplar Court! No, Kash, please stop, I--!”

  He cut himself off and ended the call. He shook, his grin a wavering toothy worm over his blotchy, bruised face.

  “There,” he said breathlessly. “You gonna go back to prison, now. Hope you liked that meatloaf, because it’s the last damn home cooked meal you’re gonna get for a long, long time.”

  The sirens were two minutes away at most. I didn’t say a word to him or to Daisy, just turned around and went back out to the truck.

  “You can’t run, boy! They’re already here!” His voice and his footsteps followed me within a few feet of my truck.

  I jerked the glove box open and grabbed a paper napkin from the floorboards. I wrapped the zippo carefully and held it tight.

  Holding my freedom tightly in my hand, I stared David down.

  Chapter 27

  When the flashing lights lit up the trees lining the road, David tossed himself dramatically onto the ground and started his howling again. If anything, it made me want to punch him even more. Maybe even stomp his head into the floor with the heel of my running shoes.

  “Get him!” David howled. “Before he kills my daughter!”

  I stood still. The two cars pinned my truck in as they parked, and the cops stepped out with their hands on their holsters.

  “What’s goin’ on here?” The sheriff said.

  “This crazy boy’s trying to kill my whole family!” David screamed. “He already killed one of my kids, now he’s after the rest of us!”

  The sheriff looked at me. I met his eyes calmly.

  “David killed Hunter,” I said flatly. “I’ve got the evidence right here.”

  David’s eyes locked on my closed hand. He stood, weaving on his drunken feet, then lunged at me. I stepped out of the way and he crashed into the truck.

  “I hit him because he did that to Daisy,” I said, nodding toward where she stood in the doorway, her face blooming petals of red and blue.

  The sheriff raised his flashlight to her face, and she winced.

  “These two can’t agree on who hit you,” the sheriff said to her. “Maybe you can clear it up for me, Ms. Daisy.”

  She pointed, her fingers unmistakably in the direction of her father. “My dad did,” she said.

  David lumbered to his feet and shook a finger in her direction. “You provoked me, you little slut! Screwing around with this felon behind my back and telling me to shove my head up my ass! Nobody talks to me that way, especially not my own damn kid!” He huffed and shook his head at her. “When’s it ever been a crime for a man to discipline his own damn daughter? Huh? Huh?”

  “Is that why you killed Hunter?” I asked. “Did he talk back to you too?”

  In the distance, I heard a moan rip right through Sandy and had just enough time to catch the shock in Daisy’s eyes before David swung at me. Unfortunately for him, he was off-balance and a little bit too far. The deputy caught his wrist and twisted it behind his back, snapping handcuffs in place without really getting down to the nitty gritty of what was happening here. But I guess even if he didn’t like me, even if I’d made a bad name for myself in this town, he was smart enough to know that in this situation, I wasn’t the damn enemy.

  “You got the wrong guy!” David shouted. “I didn’t kill my kid for talking back!”

  “Then why did you?” I held the evidence up, reminding him that I had it.

  “David. No!” Sandy screamed. She was taking strides toward him now, pushing right past the cops. “That’s not true. That’s not true. You would never…”

  “He wouldn’t hit Daisy either,” I reminded Sandy, “and yet…”

  She glared at David, her gaze so powerful it was like she was attempting to exorcise the truth out of him. Seemingly, she saw just what she needed to in his eyes and in one quick motion thrust a slap so hard against his face it made the cop flinch. Sandy was screaming now, crying, fighting off the cops who were trying to stop her from hitting her husband. Eventually, they won over and calmed her down, but the tears still fell. “No. No. No,” she moaned and Daisy pulled closer to her side, hugging her mom with a tightness that was likely to snap the older woman in two.

  David gave up looking at his wife and glared at me, his jaw jutting out so that beer-stained drool dripped out from the gaps in his teeth.

  “Give that here,” the sheriff said. “Right in the bag, don’t touch it. You wanna tell me where you found this?”

  “Close to the murder scene,” I told him. “Somewhere only Hunter and I were supposed to know about.” I turned to David. “What happened, David? Killing your kid got you off so hard you had to stop and take a smoke to celebrate, you si
ck fuck?”

  “You shut the fuck up, Kash! You don’t know shit! You don’t know how much money that little punk was hiding from me. We were broke! Look at this place, it’s trash. He was just sitting on all of it, refusing to give me my rightful cut!”

  “So you’re saying this is your zippo?” The cops asked.

  David fell silent, but Daisy did not. “It’s his,” she agreed. “He used to have that thing with him all the time, like it was an extension of him. Hunter gave it to him for his birthday.” Her voice broke and she flashed a gaze to her father and shook her head.

  I fell silent as the sheriff snapped cuffs on me.

  “Wait,” Daisy said to the sheriff. “Do you really have to arrest him? Please, he was just protecting me. He knows he shouldn’t have done that—”

  “The hell I shouldn’t,” I interrupted.

  David laughed and fixed Daisy with a snarl. “If I told you once I told you a thousand times, I brought you into this world and I can take you out! It’s my right! It was my money paid for that stupid tattoo, my money paid for that stupid safe, my money and he kept it from me!” The idiot. Relieved as I was, I was also a little shocked that he fucking got away with it for as long as he did. That he didn’t open his yap sooner when the beer got too much.

  “All right. Let’s all calm down,” the sheriff said. “We’re all gonna go downtown and cool our heels until everybody sobers up. Dante, read these two their rights.”

  Dante launched into his spiel, trying to talk over David, who was still going.

  “You’da done the same goddamn thing, Jefferey, don’t think you wouldn’t! If your kid was makin’ a million and you were bustin’ your ass to keep the lights on, you woulda taken your cut, no buts about it! Look at you in your damn uniform, lookin’ all superior and shit. You think I forgot about high school, Jeffery? How you bullied that kid so bad he damn near killed himself? Oh yeah, I got stories. All the stories, worse stories than that, and everybody’s gonna know ‘em!”

  The sheriff just stood, staring at David until the deputy finished reading him his rights, then said, “I suggest you listen to Dante, David. You’re diggin’ yourself a hole here. Blackmailing law enforcement is a federal offense.”

  “You ain’t federal! You ain’t shit. Can’t keep teenagers from sellin’ crack all over town, can’t solve a damn murder, can’t keep your own brats in line, don’t you dare tell me how to raise mine!”

  The sheriff raised his brows and looked at me. “You heard that?”

  “I heard it,” I said.

  He nodded. “What you mean, I can’t solve a damn murder?”

  David stopped talking, confused. “I—well—you let him out, didn’t you? Kash is the killer! Kash bashed him over the head with that wrench, Kash cut that goddamn expensive dolphin out of his shoulder, then Kash stood there and got drunk talking to the corpse! He’s crazy, I tell you, crazy! Now he’s after my daughter, look at her eye!”

  Daisy frowned at him. “You did that, Daddy.”

  “It was my right as a father to take what was mine!” He screeched. “That little cumstain owed me money!”

  “Get him in the car, Dante,” the sheriff said. “I’ve heard enough.”

  Daisy blinked a few times, then paled. She sank to her knees as the truth hit home, and all I wanted to do was put my arms around her. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of how her heart must have broken when they told her it was me who killed her brother.

  The sheriff ran a hand over his face and sighed. He looked around at all of us; shell-shocked Daisy, the surprisingly calm Sandy, and me. I met his gaze respectfully, waiting for him to read me my rights and put me in his car. Even if I had managed to clear my name, I’d still broken the law. Breaker would have a field day with this.

  The sheriff nodded slowly and stepped back over to me. I heard the click of steel on steel behind me then my hands were free. I rubbed my sore wrists, asking him a question with my eyes.

  “Now, look son, I usually don’t abide redneck justice around here. Circumstances being what they are, though, I think I’m gonna overlook this little transgression. Between you and me—” he glanced over at Dante’s car. “—the old man had it comin’. Besides, I figure you’ve done your time already.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah…” He blew out a heavy breath and swept his hat off his head, scratching his scalp. “I’m gonna need statements from all of you. Y’all heard what he said. More witnesses we have, the better. Dante had his camera on. Either way—best seal this case up tight. Don’t want no more surprises. Makes my office look bad.”

  “You’re sure he did it?” Daisy asked weakly.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said. “There were things we didn’t publish. Like the murder weapon. Kept it vague, blunt object, but he knew what it was. And that bit about the tattoo—we didn’t tell anybody that, not even Kash here.”

  She sobbed once, then quieted. I helped her to her feet and she wrote her statement with a steady hand, her eyes looking glassy and faraway. Sandy was just as quiet as she wrote out her own statement.

  As the cop cars pulled away, the three of us hovered close together. Silence reined until long after the taillights had faded, and nobody seemed to know what to do next. So we stood and gazed off into the darkness, waiting for the next step to reveal itself.

  Chapter 28

  I swear my insides froze over like the pond in winter. I remember the police leaving, unable to believe that my dad was gone with them. I remember being back inside, unable to see anything but the holes in the walls and the carnage in the kitchen.

  Kash and mom were talking, but their voices were muted and alien in my ears as my brain refused any and all new information.

  Dad killed Hunter.

  Dad.

  My dad.

  Killed his own son.

  My brother.

  My best friend.

  HIS OWN SON.

  I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but after a while I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in years. Mom was singing. I’m still not sure why, but it snapped something inside me and I lit up like a freaking glow stick.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I shouted. My breath was coming too fast, my mouth working on its own. Every filter between my brain and my mouth was out of order. The torrent was coming and there was nothing I could do to stop it. “This makes you happy? This?! Your husband killed your son! How can you be happy at a time like this?”

  She smiled at me and it just made my rage fly higher and hotter. “Smiling! You never smile! You’ve been living with a killer for six years! Sharing a bed with him! Letting him run your life and my life and—he could have killed you! He could have killed me! Mama—he killed my… Hunter!” My scream split me in two and I was on my knees again, screaming and crying as if Hunter had died all over again.

  The rest of the night was barely even a blur. I said things I don’t remember. Broke things and punched things and nobody stopped me. I don’t know when I finally burned myself out, all I know is I woke up on the sofa in the morning, full of an empty calm. Kash’s chest was my pillow and mom curled around behind me, her arms wrapped firmly around me.

  Emotions spent, I spent several minutes just breathing and cataloging the events of the night before. All things considered, this was really a good thing. I never had to question my instincts about Kash ever again. Mom was finally free. I was free. Hell, with Kash’s innocence sealed, he must be free too. We could all live happily ever after—that is, if either of them could forgive me for the night before. I winced, remembering. I’d sounded like my dad. I must have looked like him, too.

  Kash roused then, kissing me on the top of my head before his eyes were all the way open. “Good morning, sunshine. How do you feel?”

  “Terribly guilty,” I said.

  He sat up, shifting the whole pile of us, waking Mom. “What? Why?”

  “Last night,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be like him.”
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  Kash wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, letting my tears spill over and stain his shirt.

  “You’re nothing like him,” he said. “In all your fury, you never hurt anybody. Your anger was selfless and justified and honestly pretty harmless. You snapped, that’s all. Completely understandable, considering…”

  “He’s right,” Mom said, stretching. “It was a lot to take in all at once. Which is why I saved this for the morning.” She got up and started toward her room. She looked back at us over her shoulder. “Well? Come on. I have something to show you.”

  Curious, I followed, towing Kash behind me. I hadn’t been in her room in years. It felt weird to be standing there, surrounded by Dad’s stuff, especially with Kash wrapped around me.

  “Several years ago, I noticed that your dad had started going into the shed every few days. I knew his pay rate and our bills hadn’t changed, but all of a sudden he had beer all the time. Used to be, he couldn’t afford more than two cases a week. That changed overnight. So, of course, I was curious.”

  She opened her closet door as she talked, then pushed her clothes to one side. “Imagine how surprised I was when I found one of my good containers, filthy and damaged, sitting there on the shelf! I grabbed it to take it inside and clean it, but it was really heavy.”

  Kash’s embrace had tightened around me and I could feel his heart beat fast against my shoulders. I frowned, confused. Mom’s eyes were sparkling.

  “What was in it?” I asked.

  “Money,” she said. “Loads of it. I don’t know exactly how much. I don’t think your father knew how much was there, either. At least I didn’t think he did. I took a handful and shuffled it around, then kept an eye on him. Every day he went out there, I’d go out after he was gone and take another handful.”

  I was going to ask her what she did with it, but then she pushed on the back of her closet and popped a panel out. She slid the panel aside and reached into the hole. Kash’s grip around my waist grew even tighter until I had to wriggle to get him to loosen up.