by Dez Burke
Reaching into the refrigerator, Joe pulled out a beer, popping the tab and slamming half the contents down his throat before the door finished closing. Turning, he leaned against the refrigerator. All his weight seemed to rest against the appliance as he watched Avery work.
Her posture had changed from a relaxed fatigue to alert and on edge. Two feet away from her in the small kitchen, Joe put the beer to his mouth, his lips moving in speech before he took another sip. Avery reached into her pocket and took some money out. Placing it on the counter without looking at her father, she went back to cleaning the dishes. She hadn’t spoken to the old man since he entered the room.
I closed my eyes, tried to let the black behind my eyelids wash down the anger rising up inside me. Instinctively, I knew what would come next. The signs were there. Long sleeves on hot days, the occasional scarf knotted around her neck when she was not the kind of woman who added flare to her outfits. If anything, Avery Watkins tried to be invisible.
Chest growing too tight to breathe, I opened my eyes.
Joe had his hand around Avery’s throat, just enough strength in his drunken arms to spin her. Her back hit the refrigerator door and then her head bounced hard against its surface. I stepped away from the tree and into the exposed area of the driveway, only Joe’s truck sheltering me from being seen by anyone out so late.
Somewhere in the few steps I’d taken, my hands had gnarled into fists. They started shaking as the old man’s free hand—the one he wasn’t using to choke his daughter with—went under Avery’s shirt. I staggered from the truck to the side door, losing sight of Avery and what Joe was doing to her as I slid the blade of my buck knife between the door and its frame. The old wood gave way with a quiet groan masked by Joe’s yelling.
You don’t keep money from me, you dumb cunt!
My lips pressed tightly together, my teeth threatening to penetrate the flesh. I wanted to bellow from the doorway, to roar at the old man to get his fucking hands off her. But if he knew I was there, his fate was sealed. I hadn’t killed a man, not yet. But it wouldn’t take much for me to kill Joe Watkins.
I don’t care if you got it down your bra or up your snatch—it’s my money!
Yeah, I could kill him for that alone. If he saw me tonight, he was a dead man. But I didn’t want Avery to see me coldblooded or in a rage. If I murdered Joe Watkins, she would be too terrified to leave with me.
The door between the kitchen and dining room slammed and I heard a small sob break from Avery’s throat. I eased into the dining room from the dark hall and silently pushed the kitchen door open. She stood with her back to me, her shaking hands once again busy with the dishes and beer cans littering the counter.
I crept closer, not wanting to startle her but knowing she might scream when she saw me. As near as I was, I could smell a mix of her flowery scent and the stale sweat and beer of Joe from how he had his hands on her. It was blasphemous for those two smells to mingle.
She hadn’t stopped crying. Her rough breathing and the clatter of dishes and flatware as she rinsed the soap off camouflaged my footsteps and the rustle of my clothing. Without thinking, I quickly reached around and clamped my hand over her mouth.
I expected at least a small struggle, but the knife surprised me.
Avery
Back to dole out more abuse, my dad covered my mouth with his hand, his body behind me. Fresh tears stung my eyes and blurred my vision. It was too much—the words he’d said earlier, the way my throat still hurt from how he’d held me against the refrigerator, and the way his knuckles had grazed the underside of my breast as he rooted around the bottom band of my bra for my tip money. On top of all that, I felt more alone in Thunder Valley than I had since my mother died, maybe even lonelier. Callan was gone, without knowing or caring what I’d done for him.
Every last drop of poison I’d ingested over my life bubbled like acid to the surface of my skin, the hiss and pop rising in a chorus of NO! No, I would not allow the old man to touch me again. No more punches, no hair pulling or slaps or pushing my face into a cushion until I passed out.
No!
My hands searched in blind fear through the water in front of me until my fingers closed around the handle of a steak knife. God help me, I wanted a bigger knife—one like the carving knife with its long blade and sharp point, but that was in the cutlery block a good three feet out of arm’s reach.
The steak knife would have to do. I jerked it from the water, quickly transferred it to my right hand and flipped it so the tip pointed at me. Before I could jab at my father’s arm, he captured my wrist.
“Damn it, Avery,” a masculine voice growled low in my ear. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
My fingers went numb, either from Callan’s hard grip or the realization that it was him.
Crap, I’d almost stabbed him!
The knife dropped into the sink. I started to shake, my body’s reaction as violent and exaggerated as if I’d had gallons of ice water dumped on me or fallen in the lake mid-winter.
Removing his hand from my mouth, Callan spun me then wrapped his arms around me. He pushed my face against his chest, muffling any chance I had of screaming had I wanted to.
“Just listen to me,” he whispered. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, I’ll go.”
I nodded against his chest, his hand still pinning my head to his body. He relaxed slightly, his fingers knotting in my hair as a precaution. The decrease in his tension didn’t stop my shaking. If anything, I shook harder.
Callan probably had the entire Gypsy horde out looking for him and he was in my house.
Why?
“Shh,” he soothed. He released his light grip on my hair to run both hands over my back.
I pressed closer to him. I clutched at his t-shirt. I tried to say something, to ask him why he was there, but my lips quivered too much to shape the words and I knew I couldn’t control the volume of my voice. Anything I said would come out as a shout and potentially draw my dad into the room if he was still conscious.
Callan grabbed my face and forced me to look at him. “I would never hurt you. But if he comes in here, he’s dead. So you have to calm down.”
I nodded again, still not trusting myself to speak. Rage burned in Callan’s eyes, showing me the danger to my dad’s life was real. My cheeks heated as it dawned on me why Callan was threatening to kill him.
“You saw?” I whispered.
“Saw...yeah.” His hands gripped my head a little tighter, scaring me for a second before he dropped them to his side. “Heard him, too.”
His gaze cut toward the kitchen door. Seeing the anger that reddened his skin and narrowed his face, I had a moment’s vision of Callan grabbing the carving knife from the block and going into the front room. He was at the tipping point of losing it, the assault he had witnessed just one component of a day that would send anyone else over the edge.
Reaching up, I placed my palms flat against his massive chest. “Forget him. Tell me why you’re here.”
His eyes softened when he looked back at me. His mouth opened, then closed in reconsideration. I could see him talking to himself inside his head, maybe rehearsing what he wanted to say to me.
“Please,” I prodded, my hands lightly rubbing at his chest. My body had stopped vibrating but the tension of needing to hear why he was standing in my kitchen would quickly prove too much for me to bear. I could feel my body starting to wind up again, the violent shaking just a few seconds away if he didn’t speak. “Tell me.”
Callan backed up a few feet, pulling me with him so that we were out of view of the windows and door into the dining room.
“You called the cops out to Freya’s, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” I gripped the collar of his shirt, wanted to rip it from him to ease my frustration. If this was just a “thank you and good-bye,” I might take the steak knife to him after all. When he said nothing, I pounded one impotent fist against his shoulder. “Bolo was going to kill you. I h
eard Little Red talking to Weaver and the others. He said ‘We have to take Callan out,’ and that Bolo was back from Atlanta to take care of it.”
“If they don’t know it’s you already, they will soon,” he warned. “They’ll get someone in the sheriff’s office to make a copy of the 911 call. Little Red is hot enough for you that he won’t have any problem recognizing your voice.”
I blushed at the reference to Red. There was only one man in Thunder Valley I wanted hot for me and he was standing right in front of me, his body like a granite mountain and his brain almost as dense.
“Yeah, they’ll know it’s me,” I acknowledged.
His gaze went wide, like I was the dolt in the room. “You know what they’ll do to you, don’t you?”
Wanting to hide my fear, I looked down at the sliver of space between our bodies. “Kill me, I guess.”
“If you’re lucky, that’s all they’ll do.” Grabbing my shoulders, he pushed me further away from him until at least a foot of space separated us. Then he cupped the underside of my chin and forced me to look up at him.
A gaze as green as a country meadow danced with so much light I couldn’t keep looking. I squeezed my eyes together, fresh tears spilling from their corners. “Yeah, they’ll do more than kill me, but I had to call.”
“I know. You don’t have it in you to let someone get hurt if you can stop it.”
I shook my head. The confession might be stupid, certainly I’d regret it later, but right then I had to tell him. “I don’t think I’m that good a person, Callan. I wasn’t protecting just anybody—I was protecting you.”
There, it was out. He could make of it what he would.
He reeled me toward him, his hands suddenly on my waist and pulling me fast and hard. My body crashed into his and then he had his fingers threaded through my hair, controlling the tilt of my head as his mouth covered mine. His tongue, when he sought to part my lips, met with no resistance. I opened to him, surged up, licked in return when he stopped to allow me a short breath.
I wanted to devour him in that kitchen, to take him in small and big chunks, my legs and arms wrapped around him. Ragged moans raced past my lips and into his until he had to spin me around and clamp his hand over my mouth once more to silence me.
He lifted me onto the counter, his hips pushing my knees apart. “You’re coming with me. Now.”
From the front room, my father bellowed.
“Bring me another beer, girl!”
Callan tensed against me, his body moving like he was throwing it on a live grenade and I was the explosive. Knowing it was my turn to calm him down, I wrapped my legs around his waist. I sheltered his ear with one hand as I bellowed in return.
“On my way.” Lowering my hand, I brushed my cheek against Callan’s rougher one and whispered, “He’ll pass out before he can finish it. And then we’ll leave.”
A growl vibrated through Callan’s throat, but he didn’t forbid me from taking another beer out to my dad. Cautiously, I pushed him from me and stared into his face. The gaze was fierce, but I couldn’t tell if the passion burning through them was anger or something carnal. Moisture flooded between my thighs and I knew what I wanted it to be—pure, unadulterated lust.
He’d opened just enough room between our bodies that I could slide to the floor, my breasts and thighs rubbing against him on my way down. One of those moans I had shoved down his throat earlier bubbled back at me and I had to hide my smile. If I didn’t know better, I would think Callan, like Little Red, had been nursing a case of the hots for me.
I broke the seal on the refrigerator and reached in for a cold beer. In the hour we’d been home, my dad had already plowed through five cans. When I backed up, it was into the hard body of Callan Tilley. A sharp thrill raced through me and I wondered how the hell I could have mistaken him for my father when he first clamped a hand around my mouth.
“If he touches you—” Callan warned.
“I know,” I answered softly. “He’s dead.”
**********
I took the beer out to my dad. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. I handed the can to him, the tab already popped. He pulled it slowly to his mouth, his eyebrows lifting like they were attached to his top lip and that was the only way he could get his mouth open enough to pour anything into it. He slurped some in, swallowed, then let out an exaggerated sigh as he melted into the ratty old recliner he’d had since before I was born.
“I’m sorry about what I said.” He pushed the beer can between his thighs so it wouldn’t spill, and then he patted aimlessly near his chest for the pocket holding his cigarettes.
“I know,” I answered and leaned forward to pluck a cigarette from the pack. Knowing he was too drunk to light it on his own, I struck a match and puffed on the end a few times before handing it to him. “I’m gonna throw on a jacket so I can take the trash out.”
If he hadn’t been two sheets to the wind, he would have wondered why I wanted a jacket when the temperature hadn’t dropped below sixty all month. Instead, he nodded as if it made perfect sense. Surprising me, he captured my wrist and gave my arm a little jiggle.
“You’re a good girl, Avery.” Letting go of my wrist, he reached for his beer. “Not at all like your mom.”
I thought I was done crying for the night, but fresh tears swam along the bottom rim of my eyes and threatened to escape. He rollercoastered like this depending on where he was in his drinking cycle. Before tomorrow afternoon rolled around, I would once again be a worthless bitch.
My head bounced in acknowledgement while I searched for my voice. “I know, dad.”
I fled upstairs as quietly as I could. No dummy, Freya made all her waitresses wear yoga pants on duty. No skirts, no jeans, just a well-hugged and high lifted ass that left nothing to the imagination. I stripped them off, shoved a clean pair in my backpack and slid on some jeans and a worn pair of low-heeled boots I’d purchased second hand. I slid a denim jacket over my t-shirt, tossed a few more tees into the bag, a pair of slip-ons, some panties and one bra, although I had so little up top I could get by without one. On my way into the bathroom, I stepped into my dad’s room. He’d trashed my room any number of times to see if I had hidden any cash. He never thought to check his own room, didn’t know about the loose board under his dresser or how the little space beneath held almost eight hundred dollars of my money.
One hairbrush, toothbrush and a tube of paste later and I headed downstairs.
I peeked around the corner to find my dad passed out, his body miraculously upright in the chair. The cigarette I had lit for him five minutes earlier hung from his lips. Without him puffing on it, it had a few more minutes of life before it died out. I crossed the room, my backpack over one shoulder. I leaned forward, ready to gently remove the cigarette so I wouldn’t wake him and have to explain the bag.
My hand hovered, waiting for me to decide whether I would take the cigarette and extinguish it or let it burn down. I dropped my hand to my side and turned, unsurprised to find Callan watching me. Like my hand, he’d been waiting to see whether I would protect the old man from himself one last time. Seeing that I hadn’t, approval lit his gaze and he gave a small jerk of his head toward the hallway that led to the side door and the driveway beyond it.
Outside, I waited to see which direction he would take, but he opened the truck door for me.
“Climb in.” He waited while I obeyed, then softly shut the door. Instead of walking directly to the driver side, he went to the trashcan next to the back of the house, lifted the lid and scooped out a grocery store bag. He peeled the bag off to reveal another store bag wrapped around what looked like a brick.
“Put this in your backpack.” He opened the driver-side door and handed the bag across to me. “Then get behind the wheel and put it in neutral.”
Not asking what the bag contained, I did as I was told. My heart thumped hard against the back of my ribcage as I zipped my backpack shut. The brick was about six inches high and as wide and
long as a dollar bill. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t drugs and the idea made me nervous.
“This old heap can’t be trusted to go more than five miles at a time,” I warned as I scooted along the bench seat.
“Only taking it a few blocks,” he answered then nodded at the gearshift. “Get it in neutral then steer while I push it out of the drive. I want the front facing Monroe Street.”
Mashing my lips together, I forced the memory up of how to work the transmission. No one had been willing to teach me and I only knew a little from watching my dad and a couple of YouTube videos I had dug up while using one of the computers at the library.
Stepping on the brake pedal with my right foot and the clutch with my left, I coaxed the gearshift into the spot I figured was neutral. Not only was it dark inside the pick-up, but the letters on the knob had worn off long ago. I just knew that when my dad picked me up from work, he never turned the truck off because half the time it would take an hour and a lot of tinkering and swearing under the hood for him to get it started again.
Standing at the front of the truck, Callan chuckled. “Take your foot off the brake, Avery.”
Heat fanned across my cheeks, making me glad that the inside of the cab was darker than where Callan stood and he likely couldn’t see the embarrassment coloring my face. Slowly, I eased off the center pedal. The weight of the truck and the driveway’s incline did the rest. The truck started to quickly roll toward the street.
My eyes went so big as the truck picked up speed that I couldn’t focus for a second. Then I heard the pounding of Callan’s boots on the drive and him laughing as he gave me directions.
“Counter-clockwise, baby girl.”
I jerked the wheel a hard left, almost panicking as the back wheel hit the curb and the truck bounced hard. Now I was on the street. The incline was even steeper and it only took a second before the truck started rolling forward in the new direction.
