Wild Card

by Karina Halle

  “I’ll throw your fucking ass in jail and you’ll never come out,” Errol seethes, blood pouring from his cuts. My knuckles throb, scraped raw from his face. “You hear me? You’ll fucking rot in there, pretty boy.”

  The cuffs shake in Zimmer’s hands.

  I’m fucked.

  Completely fucked.

  “Unless,” Errol adds slowly, “you can do me a favor.”

  I try to swallow but can’t. I look to Zimmer but he’s paused, waiting, looking just as confused as I feel.

  I don’t want to do this man any fucking favors.

  “I’m not doing shit for you,” I tell him. “I know what you did. I’ll make sure the whole damn world knows it.”

  “No one in this whole damn world would believe you,” Errol says. “Not Zimmer over there. Not any other cop, or cheap lawyer in this town. Not even my own wife. No one.”

  He can’t be right. That’s not supposed to be how this turns out. He doesn’t just win because he’s a cop. He doesn’t get to get away with it. With all the sick and terrible things he’s done…

  “Now, I won’t repeat myself again,” he says, and he fucking sounds like a man who’s holding all the cards. “But I need you to do me a favor. And I won’t press charges. And Zimmer here will pretend like he never saw a goddamn thing. Ain’t that right, Zimmer?”

  “Uh, yes sir.”

  “Good.” His eyes peer at mine, hate coming from a place I would never dare explore. “If you break up with my daughter and I never see your face around here again, I’ll let all of this slide.”

  I balk. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “Because I’ll put you away for good. Take a good look at me, boy. Hey, Zimmer, you take a good look, too. You came here to murder me and I’m pretty sure that if Zimmer hadn’t stepped in, you would have finished the job.” He spits a lump of blood onto the floor and then smiles at me with missing teeth. “I think Zimmer deserves a promotion for saving my life.”

  I look over my shoulder at Zimmer. He’s standing up straighter, and like most simple cops in this town, he would love nothing more. But he’s still confused as to what’s going on.

  I’m not, though. What Errol is asking me to do is not the better alternative than jail.

  And that’s why he’s asking it.

  Because it would destroy me even more.

  He’s seen me around his daughter, day in and day out since we were both nine years old. We have eleven years of history together, eleven years of love. He knows that giving that up will destroy me, destroy her.

  “You don’t have much time to think,” Errol says, sounding weaker. “Don’t be a martyr. If you go to jail, you’ll be sent up to prison in Kamloops. Your daddy and grandfather will lose a hand on the ranch. Your family’s reputation will be ruined, I’ll see to that. And you’ll leave your precious Rachel all alone. You hear me? She’ll be all alone…and small towns can be cruel.”

  My heart thuds slowly in my chest as I try and grasp what he’s saying. If I go to jail, she has no one. Her only alternative is to move, but would she? Not unless I push her away. If I break up with her, if I push her away, she’ll leave this town for good. I know she will. It’s all she’s been talking about for years. She’s only staying here for me.

  I’m not worth it. I never have been.

  And her father isn’t a stupid man. He knows if I go to jail, there will be talk over what I did and why. People love to find the motive, especially when it comes from someone like me. I might be a wild card, but attempted murder is not something that people would see coming. They’ll want to know. And people will talk. Maybe even Rachel and Vernalee will come forward.

  Or I can break it off with Rachel and tell her to leave. To go. The only thing is, that poor girl loves me. She won’t go easily. If I slip for even a second about what’s going on, she’ll stay.

  “Time is ticking,” Errol says, slouching into the kitchen chair. “What will it be?”

  13

  Rachel

  Some things never change.

  One of those things is the Bear Trap pub.

  The moment I turned nineteen and could legally drink, this damn pub became like a third home to me (I say third because Shane’s was my second). I was here almost every night, not drinking to get wasted, though that sometimes happened when I had too many Jaeger bombs, but just having a beer or two and enjoying the company of my friends.

  Tonight, it looks the same as it ever did. Back then, Del worked here too, only she wasn’t the owner and manager of the bar like she is now. But there were still peanuts in the little yellow bowls, the shells casually discarded on the floor, and the lighting was still dim (combined with beer goggles this place was quite the hook-up spot), and the walls dark and covered with faded mountain memorabilia. There’s even Old Joe, still in his regular booth.

  It’s Old Joe who actually bought me the beer I’m drinking right now, though Fox promised to get me the next round. He’s sitting beside me at the bar, such a giant hulk of a man.

  “Cheers,” Fox says to me, raising his beer and clinking it against mine.

  “Cheers,” I say, taking a sip.

  “You didn’t look me in the eye,” he teases. “You know what that means. Seven years of bad sex.”

  Del snorts from across the bar. “Hogwash.”

  “Hogwash?” Fox repeats, his dark brows raised. “Since when did you start saying hogwash, Del?”

  “Since I started dealing with people who say hogwash on a daily basis. You two are the youngest people I’ve had in here in a while. I know the Bear Trap is supposed to be for the locals, but how come the locals have to be so damn old?”

  Fox laughs. Fox doesn’t laugh much. In that respect he’s a lot like Hank and Shane, though he’s a lot more brooding. But tonight he’s been laughing and smiling at pretty much everything Del says.

  “Is it me?” Del says, looking down at her tiny faded ringer tee with the bar’s logo on it, which her boobs are stretching to the point of being illegible. “Maybe I should dress fancier.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Fox says, sitting up straighter, bouncing his foot on the rung of the stool. “Don’t you ever change, unless your clientele starts having heart attacks. Those breasts are pretty dangerous.”

  She scrunches up her wet rag and throws it at his face, but he catches it one-handed. “Nice try, baby,” he says.

  “You’re a pig,” she volleys back, but she’s smiling.

  I can’t help but smile, watching the two of them like I’m watching a TV show. I have a hard time believing that these two haven’t slept with each other yet. It has to have happened at some point. Then again, there’s too much sexual tension between them.

  “Uh oh,” Del says under her breath, her eyes trained on the door.

  I look over my shoulder to see Shane walk in. He’s wearing dirty jeans and a white thermal that’s too hot for this weather but nonetheless makes his taut muscles look fucking fantastic. He stops in his tracks when he sees me and Fox.

  “Sorry, Rach,” Del says under her breath.

  I just wave her off. “It’s fine. We’re fine.”

  “Fucking hell you’re fine,” Fox mutters under his breath.

  “Hey,” Shane says, hovering at the bar. He nods at me and Fox. I haven’t seen him since we buried the raven and rode back to the ranch in complete silence. That was yesterday, and I’ve been grappling with what happened since then. The feel of his abs through his sweaty shirt, my legs pushed against his, the smell of his skin, the look in his eyes when he told me he dreamed about me every night. The sound of his voice when he told me he misses me.

  I felt it. I shouldn’t have, but I did. It worked its way past the lock on my heart and buried itself inside until I realized just how badly I’ve missed him too.

  And the awful part is that it’s too late. We had our moment in the sun, we had our young love. Whether he regrets it or not, he pushed me away and we broke apart, and you can’t go back and chang
e that. You can’t change the past any easier than you can change your feelings.

  Now I’m a fucking mess, knowing that I have to stay mad at him, then getting mad at myself as if that’s the only big reason we should be apart. The reason why he shouldn’t touch my skin like he did, setting off fireworks in my chest. There’s Samuel, my boyfriend. We may not be head over heels in love with each other but that has to come with time—it has to, and I can’t tarnish that potential just because being around Shane stirs up all those old feelings, just because he has such a pretty way with words.

  But they were honest words. You know it. They were the most real words you’ve heard in years.

  I suck back on my beer and try to pretend it’s okay that Shane’s here, but it’s not. It’s why I’m at the damn bar to begin with.

  Fox gives me the side-eye and gets up. “I’m going to go put some money in the jukebox.”

  “What can I get you?” Del asks Shane after she watches Fox walk off.

  Shane gives her a half smile. “Why do you even ask?”

  She rolls her eyes and grabs a bottle of beer from the fridge, passing it to him.

  Then Shane turns to me. “Mind if I sit down?”

  I shake my head, unable to find the words, and Shane takes the seat on the other side of me.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he says to me before he takes a swig of his beer. “You’re looking beautiful.”

  And I didn’t expect for him to say something like that right out of the gate. Things were left so awkward between us and yet he’s moving on without skipping a beat.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. I guess I did go out of my way to try and look good tonight instead of that sweaty dirty farmgirl mess I’ve been lately. I put on a strappy, tiered cornflower blue maxi dress that matches my eyes, my hair loose around my shoulders, even though I keep brushing it back in a loose braid to keep the heat off my neck, and just the tiniest bit of mascara.

  He leans in closer and I try not to freeze. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the other day.”

  I give him a funny look, moving my head back an inch. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  He stares at me, deep into my eyes, with so much intensity that it renders the next thoughts in my head to dust. “I just want us to be friends.”

  Oh. I wasn’t expecting him to say that.

  I glance up at Del who immediately turns around and busies herself at the bar, pretending like she’s not listening. I call hogwash on that.

  Friends. Well, I guess I can do that. It’s how we started anyway.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Friends it is.”

  But do friends know what it’s like to kiss each other, to fuck each other, to give each other over and over again in the name of love?

  “Friends, it is,” I say again, as if I’m convincing myself that I can do this. Fuck, even ignoring each other has become incredibly hard lately. There’s rarely a minute that goes by when he doesn’t occupy my head. Everything here reminds me of him because everything is him.

  “You need another drink,” he says to me, nudging my elbow. He looks at Del. “Two whiskies.”

  “Cherries in mine,” I tell her.

  He gives me a smile that I feel in my core, a sweet flash of heat. “You still love your whisky and cherries.”

  I shrug, conscious of how he’s leaning into me, as if we’re trading secrets, conspiring to be the people we used to be. “It makes it sweeter.”

  He nods, palming his beer. “I remember you used to love that Jaegermeister shit.”

  “I was, like, eighteen,” I tell him. “Every underage drinker loves that. Except for you. You were an old soul even then. Drinking your whisky or rye straight, sipping from the glass, just like your dad and grandpa.”

  He seems to think that over, staring at the bar for a moment, at the condensation gathering at the bottom of his bottle. “I know,” he says gravely. He exhales heavily. “I wanted to be like them. I knew I’d be working on the ranch. I knew that’s what I was born to do. Fox, Mav, they got to run free, scale cliffs, jump out of airplanes. And I stayed.”

  Something prickles at the back of my throat and I try to swallow it down. “Did you ever want a different life?”

  He turns his head toward mine, eyes just inches away, more amber in color than his red ale. To anyone else it would look like we’re having an extremely intimate moment. Maybe because we are.

  “I told you I’d run away with you,” he murmurs, his voice so low it sends faint shock waves through me. “I meant it. I would have gone anywhere with you. I would have tried any other kind of life, so long as it was with you.”

  This stuns me. Completely. I always thought he was paying lip service with empty promises.

  “But you love being a rancher,” I say softly.

  “I do now,” he says. “I really do. But I knew growing up that I was expected to be the one to take it over, to help out, to become one of them. When I say I was born to do this, I’m being literal. Fox and Mav did their own thing, and it was up to me to pull the ranch together, to keep the ranch going. And maybe…maybe I felt I owed it, you know. Because of my mother. Because I had to do something to make up for…that.”

  Fucking hell. I don’t want my heart to break for Shane all over again, but it does. It is. All through the years I saw him grapple with those demons and I had no idea how serious and life-changing they turned out to be. He stuck with the ranch because he felt he owed it to his own family, just for being born.

  “But,” he goes on quietly, chewing on his lip for a moment. “After a while, it stuck. I started to like it, I started to love it. I drank the whisky like my dad and granddad because I wanted so badly to be like them, to prove I had what it takes to do what they did. The drink stuck, everything else stuck. And now it’s my life.”

  I watch him, taking him all in. The cut of his jaw, his lips, the pull of his eyebrows as he frowns at his drink. He’s changed so much and yet he’s still the same boy I fell in love with. The boy who was my protector, my savior, my world.

  Friends. I’m supposed to be friends with him?

  The man might still have most of my heart.

  “But are you happy?” I whisper.

  He stares at me for a moment, his gaze resting on my lips in such way that I know what he’s thinking.

  And I want him to think it.

  “Almost,” he finally answers. “What about you?”

  I should give him the stock answer I give everyone. The answer I give myself.

  But I can’t lie to Shane anymore.

  I give a simple shake of my head. “No. I’m not.”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Fox says, suddenly appearing behind us. He rests his hand on my shoulder and gives it a meaty squeeze that brings me back to reality. “Rachel, I’m going out for a bit to see a few friends. I’ll be back later if you need a ride home.”

  “Not drinking tonight?” Shane asks him.

  “Nah, I might be sent out tomorrow, so I need to be in good shape. See you in a bit.”

  Then he leaves. I watch him go because it gives me time to get myself in order, to put some distance between what was just happening with Shane and me. I don’t even know what that was, but it was getting dangerously close to something I’m not sure I could pull back from.

  So I drink instead.

  I finish my whisky and cherries.

  Shane finishes his.

  We have two more.

  Then two more.

  And then Waylon Jennings “You Ask Me To” comes on the jukebox and Shane springs to his feet, nearly knocking over his stool. He grabs my arm and pulls me to the dancefloor which is already crowded with people.

  He slips his arms around me and starts singing into my neck. “Let the world call me a fool but if things are right with me and you…”

  I sing the rest of the chorus back to him, laughing as I go. It reminds me of our high school grad party, drinking moonshine my father confiscated, sitting
on bales of hay outside the dance and having our own private party via a tiny speaker. This song came on and Shane started singing it to me, every single word done in a dead-on impression of Jennings.

  I fell in love with him even more that night.

  Just like the nights before it.

  Just like the nights after.

  And it never, ever stopped.

  “Come with me outside,” Shane whispers into my ear, the warmth of his breath shooting right through me to my toes, bathing me in a helpless warmth.

  I nod, letting him steal me away. I can feel Del’s eyes on me and I don’t care.

  I don’t care about much right now except the man holding onto me.

  His hand meant to meld with mine.

  Shane leads me into the parking lot until we’re standing beside his truck.

  “You’re too drunk to drive,” I tell him.

  But that’s all I get to say.

  In a flash, my face is cupped by his large, warm hands and his mouth is enveloping mine and every single bad part of me flees my soul. It’s replaced by his lips, soft and hungry against mine, his tongue, the way his hands grip me, holding me in place, possessive and strong.

  I struggle to have thoughts. I can’t find that hard place inside me from which to push back from. I succumb to him because it’s so fucking easy to give myself to Shane Nelson.

  My hand goes to his waist, tentative at first, then aggressive as our kiss amplifies, turns frenzied. All these years, all these years.

  He moans into my mouth.

  I grab the back of his head, feeling the heat on his neck.

  He pushes me back against the truck door, the handle digging into my hip, but I don’t care.

  His lips go for my neck, sucking and kissing and licking as if he’ll never get his fill and I’m digging my fingernails into his shirt because I’m afraid to let go, afraid to see what lies beyond this moment the minute we stop.

  I don’t want to stop.

  I’m wet already, everything is throbbing, aching for him. He’s always had that ability with me and now it’s on ten-fold, rendering me completely powerless in his throes.