Blood & Rust (Lock & Key #4)

by Cat Porter

  “Take a snoozer. I’ll wake you up right before we get home, so you can get your shit together before you walk through the door. Otherwise, there’s going to be hell to pay. Yet again. And I, for one, am not in the mood for Dad’s hard line tonight.”

  Stephan flips on the radio, and I close my eyes. He sings along with Van Halen.

  I groan. “I hate this song. Change it.”

  “Tough.” He goes back to singing. Van Halen segues into Bon Jovi.

  The truck jostles over the rocky dirt road. Nausea rolls through my stomach, and bile rises up my throat. Too many beers, too much vodka, too much adrenaline. My brain swirls and twists in my skull while my stomach does a strange dance. I undo my seat belt and lower my window, leaning my head out, gulping in the cold air. The wet prickles of rain cool my skin.

  I swallow hard, a hand sliding down my chest. “Shit, slow down, would you? You’re taking these curves way too fast, and there aren’t any lights here. So fucking dark.”

  “You think you’re the only Mario Andretti in the family?”

  “I’m not kidding, Stephan. I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Don’t you dare puke in my truck.”

  “Then, slow the fuck down! You bang up my bike that you probably didn’t secure properly back there, I’m gonna have your ass!”

  “We’ve got fifteen minutes. You know how Dad is about our curfew. We’ve already crossed the line a couple of times this month. One more isn’t going to fly. I sure as hell don’t want to get grounded again, especially on account of you.”

  “I love how it’s always my fault. Usually, it’s because you can’t tear yourself away from sucking on your girlfriend, and I’m the one covering for you.”

  “I hate leaving her at the end of the night. You have no idea what that’s like.”

  “Whatever. Oh”—I smack his shoulder—“speaking of which, Jocelyn’s mom is under the illusion that her little princess is still a virgin. The other day, I overheard her tell Ma how happy she was that you two were dating, that you’re so gentlemanly and respectful, blah, blah, blah. Once again, you made our mother proud in ways I never will. But it’s all based on a lie anyway.”

  “Jesus.”

  I chuckle, my eyelids sinking shut. “He can’t help you now.”

  The windshield wipers shuffle faster, doing battle with the heavy thrum of raindrops, lulling me to Groggyville.

  “What the—”

  Stephan jams on the brakes, and the tires scream. My eyes jerk open, my neck stiffening.

  A fox with glow-in-the-dark eyes is glued to the shiny wet road before us. The truck lurches and skids. My eyes shoot to Stephan gripping the wheel. He yells. A hideous, horrible sound.

  My pulse explodes. The truck spins.

  “Stephan!”

  We fly.

  My breath chokes out from me.

  Steel crunches in the black darkness. My head kicks back on my neck, and my lungs crush together. The windshield caves around me, shards of glass slashing my hands, my face.

  I soar.

  Ripping howls.

  Cracking.

  Shouts.

  Mom!

  Blood.

  Mom

  Pain.

  Terror.

  Pain.

  Blood.

  Blood.

  Stephan?

  I TUMBLED.

  “Butler! Honey?”

  Tania’s voice.

  Tania.

  Gasping for air, I forced my eyes to unglue.

  Tania’s dark brown pools of forever held me. “Are you okay? You were having a nightmare. You were calling for Stephan.”

  My head rocked to the side on the pillows.

  The box of a window. The institutional beige Venetian blinds. The curtain hanging around my bed.

  Hospital bed.

  Hospital.

  “Butler?” Her hands swept down the sides of my face, and my muscles eased.

  “Here. Drink.” She held a Styrofoam cup with a straw out to me.

  I raised my head, took the straw between my lips, and drank some water.

  “You want to tell me what that dream was about?”

  “Not really.”

  “Too bad. I think you need to.”

  “It’s ’cause of Wes, I guess.” I licked at my dry lips. “He reminds me of my brother. A little bit of both of us.”

  Tania adjusted my pillows. “What’s your real first name, by the way, brother of Stephan?”

  “Markus.”

  “I like that. Stephan and Markus. So, tell me about Stephan.”

  I blew out a breath.

  “It might help.” She took my hand and stroked it.

  My head sank back into the pillow. “My brother was a year and something older than me. More responsible than I ever was. Stephan was a great football player. So great that he was being courted by several top schools for a full ride. It was huge. Dream-come-true huge.”

  “Did you play football, too?”

  “I did.”

  “Were you good?”

  “Yeah, but not great. Stephan was great, and he really loved it. I didn’t have the ambitions my brother did either. Didn’t see it as a way up or a way out of our mediocre lower middle-class existence. Stephan had the steady girlfriend and the good grades. But I was the pretty one. I was the player, Mr. Easy Come, Easy Go. It all came easy to me, whatever it was—picking up girls, learning my way around a bike and a car at my dad’s shop, studying for a test the night before and getting a good enough grade. But Stephan was different. Special.

  “This idiot at school who was real jealous of Stephan had tried to get him in trouble with the principal by implicating him in a cheating scandal, but it was all lies. Stephan was so worried about his record, so stressed out. So, I challenged Austen Taymor—I still remember the shit’s name—to a bike race by these bluffs we had in our town.”

  “A duel?”

  “Yeah. Stephan had told me to ignore him, but I couldn’t. I had to do something, stand up for him somehow. So, I did what I did best. Speed.”

  “You won?”

  “I whooped his ass in front of the whole school—him on a brand-new bike, me on the old bike I’d rebuilt with my dad. I won a lot of money that night, and I stomped on Austen for the whole school to see. He was supposed to retract his bullshit to the principal the next day.

  “Stephan heard about the race and came. I hadn’t told him about it because I knew he’d stop me. It started raining, and it was really dark. He was rushing, so we’d get home in time for our curfew. Then, some animal appeared on the road, a small one, and he tried to avoid it. He lost control of the truck. We flipped over. I wasn’t wearing my seat belt ’cause I’d been drinking and felt sick. I ended up getting thrown clear of the truck.”

  “And Stephan?”

  “Stephan was trapped in the truck, and the truck caught fire. I tried to get to him, but I couldn’t. The firemen and the cops got him out, but his spine was broken, a leg smashed, and he had burns. Everything stopped then. The football, the scholarship, the girlfriend, the future. The health insurance. All his plans, his dreams, my parent’s dreams. Everything. My parents blamed me, and they were right. It was my fault for racing, for getting wasted, for Stephan picking me up.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “They were right.” My eyes met Tania’s. “Then it turned into, Why Stephan? Why not you? My parents started seeing right through me, like I was invisible, like I was nothing. I didn’t exist anymore in that house. There was a lot to do to take care of Stephan, bring money in, double mortgage, and all. I pulled my weight, but no matter what, I was invisible. They had to put Stephan in a state-run facility, and a few months later, he died from pneumonia and a hundred other complications. It was horrible, it was a relief, it was a nightmare all over again. The blaming and the, We didn’t do enough. We should’ve done more, started back up again.

  “I couldn’t stay in that house. I had two months to go to finish my senior y
ear, and I dropped out. Got on my bike, and didn’t look back. Headed further north, up the coast, and just bummed around. I surfed, got odd jobs, sold weed and whatever else I could get my hands on. I convinced myself I was living the good life.

  “The Jacks were out west on some run and were joyriding up the coast a bit before heading back here. I tagged along, figured, What the fuck else did I have to do?”

  Tania’s head slanted. “It was more than that, wasn’t it?”

  “Ah, Scarlett.”

  “Tell me about meeting the One-Eyed Jacks for the first time.”

  “What I remember most is looking into those golden brown eyes of Dig’s and wanting to be like him. Confident, full of purpose, no shadows hanging over him, and not giving a fuck. And Boner? Oh, man, that cat didn’t let anything touch him. The epitome of a free spirit. Totally in the moment, as if he had no frame of reference for anything but what was right there in front of him. I envied that. Boner played it cool and easy, but I could also see the hard glint in his eyes. Dig’s, too. It was startling. They were just a few years older than me, but they had lived, and they were living. I was just hanging out, waiting for shit to happen and bumping into it as it did. I didn’t know I could want things out of life.

  “I got on my fucking bike and came back here with them, prospected, and you know the rest.”

  “Yes, I know the rest.”

  “I was Wes once upon a time. I had what he had in the palms of his hands—School, football, and the cover-boy looks to make it all real sweet, but I let it go. Stephan was the good one. Stephan followed all the rules, and it actually bothered him if he ever fell short. Not me. I didn’t have that kind of conscience. He did, and he kept me on the straight and narrow, pulling me back in between the lines whenever I strayed.”

  “Which was often?” she asked.

  “Pretty much. Without my brother, I felt lost. In the end, my wrongs, my badness, my unworthiness were all that was left. So, to let all that go, I let everything go.”

  “Did you ever tell your parents that the accident wasn’t your fault?”

  “They wouldn’t have listened, Tania. It just didn’t matter at the end of the day. It wouldn’t have changed that Stephan wasn’t ever going to get better, that he was gone. Their grief was so deep that they couldn’t see straight, and so was mine. If it made them feel better to have someone to blame, what the hell?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tania murmured.

  “Almost lost Wes on that road. Because of me. Almost lost Wes. When I saw him spin out. When I heard the gunfire. I saw Stephan again. I saw Caitlyn. Almost lost Wes…Almost.”

  “But you didn’t. You protected him and he protected you. Both of you, together.”

  “I was a good brother. I was,” I breathed.

  Stephan grinned at me from inside that truck of his, and a shudder passed through me.

  “Yes, you were.” Tania’s hand stroked the side of my face, and something heavy detached inside me, crumbling.

  My body trembled, a cold sweat prickled over my skin. “I was a…g-good brother.”

  “Yes, Markus, yes, you were. You were a good brother.”

  She pressed a red button on a cable by the bed.

  “I was. I was.”

  Is that my shaky voice?

  “Yes, honey.”

  Tania took me in her arms and held me as I finally mourned for Markus and Stephan.

  THE DRAMATIC SOUNDTRACK to On the Waterfront blared from my television set as the credits rolled on the screen.

  “The music in this film is amazing, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s the one time Leonard Bernstein composed for film.”

  Since I’d come home from the hospital a couple of weeks ago, Tania and I had been spending almost all our free time together. Tonight, I was cooking us dinner while we watched one of my favorite Marlon Brando films on DVD.

  “I liked how it ended. Hopeful.” Tania put her feet up on the edge of my old coffee table.

  I scoffed as I stretched out next to her on the sofa.

  “What? You don’t think so?” she asked.

  “This is the Hollywood version, baby, where Terry Malloy—the has-been boxing contender, the young underdog under everybody’s thumb—is finally able to step up and do the right thing, be the best Terry Malloy he could be and forge a new future for his community. Doesn’t end this way in the original.”

  “You’ve read the book?”

  “One of my favorites. Waterfront by Budd Schulberg.”

  “How does it end in the book?”

  “In the true ending, last time we see Terry, his pigeons have been massacred after he testified against mob boss Johnny Friendly, and he’s saying good-bye to the girl.”

  Tania sat up on the sofa. “Wait, she leaves in the book?”

  “Yeah, she decides to go back to her Catholic boarding school after all. But she’s concerned about Terry, hoping he’ll escape the hell of their mob-ridden town, too. He’s pretty upbeat though about a new beginning, and he’s feeling all these emotions for her when they say good-bye.”

  “They say good-bye?”

  “Oh, yes, my little romantic,” I said, squeezing her leg. “She leaves, and he goes missing. Weeks later, a barrel washes up in a Jersey swamp. It’s filled with lime and a mutilated corpse with a load of stab wounds from an ice pick.”

  “No!”

  “Yep. Terry Malloy ends up being just a bunch of ripped up body parts, never formally ID’d, never claimed by anyone.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yes, yes. Sucks, huh?”

  Tania pouted. “You just ruined my high. I feel an ugly cry coming on.”

  “Go back to believing in the Hollywood fairy tale. Think of Brando and Eva Marie Saint. Go ahead. Go back to that image of her cheering for him on the wharf, their rosy future ahead of them.”

  “Can’t there be good endings for the battered and bruised?”

  I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “You know, in the book, they barely kiss. They only have that one dance in the beginning. A couple of minutes at best of being in sync, of them feeling those feelings. But he felt something, and he knew how good, how special, those feelings were. He knew, and it was the best thing for him. It comforted him, gave him confidence. And that’s as close as Terry Malloy got to happy in his whole fucking life.”

  Her eyes filled with water, and something pinched in my gut. I leaned in and brushed her lips with a gentle kiss, and she softened underneath me. That tender feel of her. Vulnerable. Open to me. A volcanic pulse went off inside me, and I stilled to feel it all.

  This is a real high. So damn good.

  “A few rays of happiness here and there make life worth all the dull pain. Terry Malloy recognized it and appreciated it in that one moment,” I murmured against her forehead. “That’s a kind of victory.”

  “I want more than a moment. I want—”

  I pulled back from her. “You want Hollywood?”

  Her big dark eyes searched mine. “I don’t want a Hollywood fantasy. I want real.”

  “I used to think that the fact that I was still alive was good enough for me.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t do that. Please don’t do that. Don’t be fooled by good enough. I made that mistake. I lived good enough for what felt like a hundred years. And it’s not enough. It barely skimmed the surface. Good enough hangs you out to dry.”

  She pushed away from me, but I grabbed her arm, pulling her back in against me.

  “Hey, hey,” I said softly. “What is it?”

  “When are you going to see that you deserve a happily ever after? A real big juicy one? That it’s possible? That you can have it?”

  The oven alarm beeped. My roast chicken and potatoes were ready.

  Tania sank back against the sofa. “Saved by the bell.”

  I planted a quick kiss on her mouth and went to the kitchen. I tapped the timer off and opened the oven door. “Looks good.”

  “It smells really good. I’m s
tarving.” She wiped at her eyes and went to the fridge and took out the cabbage salad that she’d made earlier. She brought the bowl to the small table.

  I sectioned up the bird. “White or dark?”

  “I’m a leg and thigh girl.” She winked at me.

  “Hmm. Good to know.” I placed the meat on her dish and scooped up the golden potatoes with the lemony juice over them. She brought the dishes to the table, and we sat.

  Tania put a forkful in her mouth and blinked at me. “Butler, this is really good.”

  “You like it?”

  “No”—she chewed and swallowed—“I love it. How did you do it?”

  “At that one rehab I went to, I hung out with this older woman—”

  “Of course you did.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. Gini was about twenty years older than me. She had a problem with pain meds. Gini and I had a lot to talk about. Pain meds were my old pals, too, after the accident with my brother. She was a loner and liked watching cooking shows whenever we had TV time. She used to roll her eyes at the others watching soap operas or talk shows. Very no-nonsense lady. I liked her.” I let out a sigh. “I was getting my appetite back. It was a strange new world to me. And I’d never watched shit like that before. I was all animal and nature shows, the guys that live in the swamps, those Alaska shows. Gini turned me on to Bobby Flay grilling, this little Italian woman who was a total powerhouse, that English guy, Jamie Oliver, and a couple of others. Anyway, Gini told me that everyone should know how to make a roasted chicken, a basic, standard classic.”

  “I have to agree.”

  “I’d never thought about it before. My ma was not a good cook. No creativity. Made the same shit all the time, and it all blended into one tasteless series of lumps. Meatloaf baked with ketchup on top, dried pork chops with stiff mashed potatoes from a box and a side of frozen peas and carrots, mushy and crusty noodle casseroles with soup can sauces, hot dogs and beans. All insanely predictable, each one assigned to its own day of the week. Over and over again.”

  “Poor baby!”

  “But listening to Gini go on about her family dinners and holidays with such nostalgia and in such loving details, made an impression. She made me see that food could be this connector to good memories of family, friends, big moments in your life. That’s something I never had, had no awareness of. I didn’t grow up with those flavors, that color, but Gini had, and she’d given it to her family while she could. She showed me how food—good food—could help make memories stick, help you touch that joy in high and low times, then helps you recreate it later on. A celebration.”