A small, cold fist of remorse socked him in the stomach. He was a married man, after all, and Janie wasn’t doing so good as it was. He knew he was practically the only thing she still had to live for. Hell, he’d been the best thing in her life even before all the bad stuff went down. It would kill her to know that he cheated.
“Your shot?” The waitress handed him a glass and he tipped it back gratefully, hoping it would burn away the guilt. What Janie didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, he rationalized. And with Janie in zombie mode half the time, it wasn’t like she’d get suspicious and go asking questions. He’d just have a little fun with Luna, just this once, and then he’d go back to being a good husband.
At least, he’d try.
“You gonna do this or what, pal?”
Doug turned to find his buddies practically bursting with booze and excitement. He couldn’t let them down. If he did, they would never let him live it down. Janie or no Janie, he had to finish what he’d started.
“Damn right.” He slammed his shot glass down on a table and started for the go-go platform. “Time to go work my magic.”
“Yeah, Mr. Smooth,” Dwayne agreed. “You do that.”
Doug could hear them laughing behind him and feel the shot still burning in his gut as he approached Luna’s go-go platform. He didn’t have a plan, exactly, but he didn’t think he’d need one. He’d just hop up there, give her the ol’ Varley charm, and she’d be eating out of his palm in no time.
He stopped for a moment, inches from the platform, and stared. Luna was even sexier up close. Her legs were sculpted bronze, her hair a serpent’s nest of color that Doug would find revolting on anyone else, but it was somehow totally hot on her. He could practically smell sex seeping from her pores, inviting him to an all-you-can-eat buffet of pleasure that, to be honest, would probably be the best he’d ever had.
Because, okay, the truth was he’d never been with anyone but Janie. And even though Janie knew what she was doing, she was still just a kid. Luna may not have been any older, but she was a woman: a woman who Doug was pretty damn sure knew how to please a man.
As the song dipped into a hard, driving beat, he placed a hand on the platform and leapt up behind her, ready to grind his way to a home run.
But he’d forgotten about her hoop. It whipped around her head and smacked him across the cheek, making him yelp like a kicked puppy and clutch his face, almost falling off the platform. He could feel his coworkers’ jeers as he struggled to regain his balance, which he found just in time for Luna to turn to him, one hand on her jutting hip.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?” She raised a provocative eyebrow.
“Hey.” Doug spread his hands, hoping he looked bashful and charming. “No disrespect. Just wanted to get to know you a little better, that’s all. Forgot about how hoops . . . well, go around.” He chuckled manfully at his little pun.
Luna cocked her head, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “And how do you propose to get to know me, big guy?”
Doug knew it. He was in. It was all he could do not to turn around and flash a V-for-victory sign to his boys.
“Like this.” He grabbed her hips and pressed his body against hers, moving the two of them to the music as one. Being so close to her was intoxicating. A spicy, earthy scent rose from her skin, and her hips were liquid gold under his hands, making his breath come quick and heavy. “I think we could have a real good time together,” he growled in her ear. “Don’t tell me you don’t want this, too.”
Revulsion flashed across Luna’s face. Clasping her hands like iron cuffs around his wrists, she lifted his arms off of her and yanked him around so he teetered on the edge of the platform, a solid arm’s length away. She was stronger than she looked, he realized, and as her nails dug into his wrists, she fixed him with a gaze sharp and jagged as broken glass.
“How dare you tell me what I want,” she hissed.
“Whoa, baby, hey . . .” Doug started to say.
“That is not how this works,” Luna continued. “You do what I want. Not the other way around. Now are you going to do what I want?”
She took a deep breath, and her eyes fluttered shut. A moment later they flew open, and an indigo light began to hover around her head like a halo, growing until it was larger than the disco ball hanging from the ceiling and twice as bright. Doug felt the light surround him, a cloud of brilliant blue. It dulled the music until there was nothing but the sound of blood pounding in his head, and then he felt it start to seep through his skin like a damp fog, creeping into his mind and burrowing deep in the crevices of his brain.
“You wanted me.” Luna’s voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. He blinked through the indigo fog, and it parted just enough to reveal her standing with her hands on her hips. She seemed bigger than the entire bar then, and brighter than the sun. She was magnificent in a way he was only beginning to understand, and he suddenly felt embarrassed for trying to get with her. Luna was clearly not the kind of girl you got with. She was the kind of girl you worshipped.
“And that means you will do what I want,” she continued. “Understand?”
He nodded dumbly. Her voice tickled the furthest reaches of his brain. He felt it cascade through his veins, running through him like blood. She was inside of him, filling him with her glowing blue light.
His feet were rooted to the spot, his limbs frozen. His mind felt like it was stuck in traffic, with Luna in the driver’s seat, navigating his thoughts. She could see all of him, his past and future, memories and desires, and he was powerless to stop her. Not only that, but he didn’t want to.
It felt good to succumb to her, to be filled with her pulsing, calming glow. With Luna as his navigator he didn’t have to be on his guard, trying to impress his father and the guys from the rig, worrying about Janie and wondering what the hell happened to his buddies from high school. He could take a break from the pressures of the world and just float. Just be.
“You’ll do what I want?” she asked again.
“Yes,” he found himself saying. He would do anything for her. He felt closer to her than he’d ever felt to Janie, to Trey, even to his mother while he was still in the womb. Luna owned him completely, and it felt so good to let her be in control, to simply let go.
Luna raised her head to the DJ booth. “Cut the music,” she called. The bar quieted instantly, and Doug felt every head turn to look at him, sensed the mirth in their eyes. But he could only look at Luna, squinting into the indigo light to take in all of her, his retinas refusing to focus anywhere else. He’d be perfectly content to never look at anything else again.
“I have an announcement to make.” Luna’s voice was harps and angels. “This young man is going to lick my boots.”
A tidal wave of laughter crashed through the bar, the loudest hoots and hollers coming from Dwayne and the boys. He heard it, but it meant nothing, the way everything meant nothing, everything but Luna. She was his whole world now, a bigger and more beautiful world than anything he’d experienced before.
“Well,” she said, releasing his hands. “What are you waiting for?”
One of the busboys brought over a barstool, and Luna perched on top of it, above the crowd, where everyone could see. She stuck out her foot, sole facing Doug, as the cheering grew louder.
There was no question in Doug’s mind. This was what Luna wanted, and it was what he would do. The indigo light guided him to his knees, and he cupped her ankle in his hands as reverently as if it were the Holy Grail.
Luna’s boots were weathered imitation leather, the rubber soles two inches thick and molded into deep treads that seemed almost designed to trap dirt. Small gravel pebbles and even a cigarette butt poked out from the grooves, and the treads were worn in places and caked with grime, a graying wad of pink chewing gum winking at him from the left heel. As he drew his head closer he
smelled oil and industrial cleanser, urine and dog shit.
“Lick it, lick it, lick it!” the crowd chanted, egging him on. But it wasn’t for them that he stuck out his tongue and gave her foot a long, slow, thorough lick from heel to toe. It was for her.
He was aware of the bar’s collective gasp, could hear the exhalations of disgust and even a few gagging noises, but they meant nothing. His tongue was on her heel again, wiggling into the crevices between treads, scraping against the detritus left there. He licked her soles over and over again, as enthusiastic as if her grimy boots were triple-butterscotch ice cream. It wasn’t that he thought they tasted good—he knew they didn’t. It was simply that his taste buds, his body, his soul no longer mattered. Every cell of him existed only to serve Luna, and this was what Luna wanted.
He realized dimly that the chant had broken off, and an uncomfortable silence hovered in the room. Even Luna, whose eyes he checked between each long, slow slurp, looked unnerved.
“Okay, you can stop already,” she said with a small, silvery laugh. She yanked her feet away from him, looping them around the legs of the stool, and the indigo glow that had surrounded her abruptly vanished. Doug felt the light leak out of him, leaving him sick and dizzy, blinking rapidly into a crowd that was looking at him very differently than when he’d approached the go-go platform just minutes before.
He looked down and saw that he was on his knees, then looked up to find Luna smirking above him. She no longer exuded sex—in fact, she looked like she’d been sculpted from ice. His desire for her congealed into a clammy, unappetizing film that coated his skin like something you’d find inside of a Tupperware forgotten for months in the back of the refrigerator.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked, his face reddening.
Luna shrugged. “You wanted to clean my boots with your tongue. And, hey, thanks for that. They were actually pretty gross.”
“What the fuck?” Doug stumbled back, off the platform and into the crowd, searching for his friends. But everyone he passed averted their eyes, and some turned their backs to him entirely, sniggering behind cupped hands.
“Dwayne.” Doug approached him, stumbling a little, and held out his hand to steady himself on his friend’s shoulder. “What’s going on, bro?”
But Dwayne shrugged him off angrily, leaving Doug’s arm swinging in empty air. “Don’t touch me, you freak,” he muttered. He turned and stormed out, the rest of the Varley rig roughnecks hurrying after him.
As Doug watched them go, a leaden revelation sank in his stomach. He still wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, or why. All he knew was that he’d been humiliated bad—and in a way that a small town like Carbon County would never let him forget.
15
DADDY WASN’T HOME YET.
Daddy went out a lot at night. He liked to go to a place called the bar after he hung up his sheriff’s hat and took off his uniform. He liked to spend time with women who painted their faces like clowns, with big red lips and too-blue eyes and shiny shoes that looked like they hurt.
But he always came home before sunrise.
Now the sun was up, and the big daytime trucks chugged up and down the road leaving whorls of dust in their wakes, and Daddy still wasn’t home.
Charlie’s body made a warm pocket of air under the blanket, but outside it was cold. Colder than it had been the day before, even with the sun peeking out from behind a pair of dirty gray clouds. He wanted to stay under the blanket and curl into the warmth––and since there was no Daddy around to tell him not to, that’s exactly what he did.
He had just started to drift off again when a knock came at the door. He poked his head out from under the blanket and slid down off the bed, shivering when his toes touched the floor. Then he padded in his Tommy the Tank Engine pajamas to the front door.
Outside, standing on the faded welcome mat, was a fairy. Or maybe she was an angel—Charlie couldn’t quite decide. All he knew was that she wasn’t an ordinary lady. Ordinary ladies didn’t look like this.
A swirling white skirt danced around her feet like snowdrifts. Stray sparkles caught the light around her eyes, and her lips were parted in a wide, sunny smile. Her hair was every color of the rainbow, full of toys and trinkets that jingled as she spoke.
“Charlie?”
He nodded. Her voice was like the high notes on a piano.
“I’m Luna.” She knelt so they were eye to eye. “Do you know what happened to your daddy?”
He shrugged. “He went out, and he’s not back yet.”
“That’s right.” She nodded seriously. “Your daddy’s going to be gone for a little while, and he asked me to take care of you. How does that sound?”
A twinge of fear made Charlie’s tummy turn. “Where did he go?” His voice sounded small.
Luna took his hand. Her touch was warm and soft, and there was something about her that made the air around them look like it was turning blue. “He had to go on a trip,” she said gently. “He might be gone a long time. But I promise I’ll take very good care of you and not let anything bad happen to you until you get to see him again. Does that sound good?”
Charlie’s stomach unknotted. He relaxed into the blue, a blue as pretty and easy as Luna herself.
“That sounds good.” He thought for a moment. “Are you going to come live here?”
“No, honey.” Luna gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “You’re going to come stay with me. But I’ll make sure you have lots of friends, and you’re never left alone, and you can have whatever you want.”
“Okay.” Charlie liked the sound of that. There was nothing he hated more than the nights his daddy left him with only sleepy old Eunice from next door for company.
He thought for another moment. “Are there chicken nuggets where we’re going?”
She tilted her head toward the sky and laughed.
“Not yet. But I’ll get some,” she said when she was done. “Just for you.”
“Okay.” He liked her eyes and the sparkles around them. She looked like someone who should be in a cartoon.
“Is there anything you want to take with you?” she asked. “I can help you pack a suitcase.”
Charlie thought for a moment. He thought about his toothbrush, and his Tommy the Tank Engine books, and his stuffed octopus with the big blue eyes. He thought about his socks and his blankets and the picture of Mommy on his nightstand and his little nightlight that was shaped like a soccer ball. He thought about all of that, but when he looked up at Luna he felt like none of it mattered. She was a fairy, and there were toys in her hair and sparkles on her eyes and music in her laugh. She would be enough.
“Nah,” he said.
“Beautiful. You’re a free spirit, just like me.” Luna stood and held out her hand. “We don’t need things to make us happy, right? We just need each other.”
“Right,” Charlie said. He slipped his hand into hers, letting her long, warm, fairy tale fingers wrap around his. With his other hand he reached behind him and tugged at the door, pulling it shut against his house, and all of his stuff, and the memories of Mommy and Daddy, and the life he was leaving behind.
16
THE KNOCK WAS GUNFIRE-QUICK, rattling the trailer’s walls.
“Now who could that be?” Karen rested her wooden spoon in the bowl where she’d been mixing pink frosting and wiped floury hands on her apron. “Probably someone from the church, wanting something. They always do.”
The knock came again, a gale-force demand.
“I’m coming!” Aunt Karen called, shaking her head as she ran to the door. The kitchen counter was covered in ingredients for the cupcakes she and Daphne were baking for the church social that evening, and the trailer was a warm oasis of butter and sugar in the unseasonably chilly afternoon.
A draft of cold air rushed in as she opened the door, making Daphne shiver
into her hoodie. A pair of police detectives stood unsmiling on the doorstep.
“Ma’am.” The skinnier of the two detectives nodded grimly. He was gaunt and hawk nosed, sporting a five-o’clock shadow that dotted his face like old coffee grounds. “I’m Detective Fraczek, and my partner here’s Detective Madsen.” He indicated a pale, towering hulk of a man with limp blond hair. “Is Daphne Peyton home?”
“Why, yes.” Aunt Karen’s smile trembled, then faded. “But—well, can I ask what this is all about?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step aside, ma’am.” Detective Fraczek’s voice was cold as he brushed past Karen and into the trailer, his massive partner at his heels.
“What is it?” Daphne joined Karen at the door, putting a protective hand on her aunt’s shoulder. She didn’t like the rough way the cops spoke to her. “What do you want from me?”
“You’re Daphne Peyton?” Both detectives looked surprised, like they’d been expecting someone else.
“Yes.” She put her hands on her hips. “I am.”
“Then you’re under arrest on suspicion of manslaughter.” Detective Madsen whipped a pair of handcuffs off his belt, the icy metal jangling in the air.
“What?” Karen sucked in the word like a gasp, her hand flying to her heart. “We’ve already been over all of this. It was self-defense!”
Daphne’s heartbeat slammed in her throat as the huge blond man turned her around and slapped the cuffs on her wrists, their edges digging into her flesh. She flashed back to her arrest in Detroit, the exhausted city cop accusing her of committing murder against her abusive stepfather, Jim, and a twisted sense of déjà vu knotted her stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that when she opened them again it would all turn out to be a joke. But a moment later, the two unsmiling detectives were still there.
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