Caught Up in the Touch (25 page)
Propping his shoulder against the window sash, he slouched and took a bird’s-eye view of Main Street. From here, it looked like a picture-perfect slice of Americana. No sign of the roots buckling the concrete or the weeds growing out of cracking foundations. A pervading sadness leaked from his heart.
Jessica walked into the picture, moving down the sidewalk with purpose, sun glinting off her fiery hair. He stood up straighter and laid his hand on the thick pane as if he could catch her attention. A vibrancy seemed to shimmer around her, filling him with warmth and sending his sadness into retreat. She disappeared from view. He’d promised her time. He hoped she’d put the last four hours to good use.
“I’ll catch you later, Darcy, Miss Jane.” He left Darcy sputtering and hit the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The door at the bottom of the stairwell opened, and Jessica made it to the first landing before spotting him. Breathless, she said, “Hey, I was coming to find you.”
Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was artfully messy. While he loved her pencil skirts and heels, she looked just as sexy in short-shorts and flip-flops. But if he was really comparing, her best look was definitely naked in his bed.
Probably grabbing her up for a quickie in the library stairwell wouldn’t go over well with her or the librarians, so he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall, attempting nonchalance. “What’s up?”
“I ran into Stephanie Larkin at the boutique down the street. Logan, she has a serious shopping addiction.”
“I know.”
Some of her excitement morphed into surprise. “You do?”
“Everyone does, but no one talks about it. Well, they talk, but not openly. Stephanie is a bored, neglected housewife. Ben’s priorities are the bank, his son, and football. Not necessarily in that order.”
“You don’t think her shopping has anything to do with Scott?”
“Directly? Nah. It’s been going on for too many years now.
“Indirectly?”
He shrugged, not the best judge on how badly a parent’s failing could screw up their kid. “Brian’s going to handle Adaline’s tonight. Last night proved I’m too much of a distraction. Anyway, I need to talk to Scott. And track down Hunter.” Closing his eyes, he ran a hand over his jaw. The urge to drop everything and head into the woods was strong.
He slit his eyes open at the first press of her curves against him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, sliding fingers into his hair. At the touch of her lips on his cheek, he banded his arms around her and nuzzled her temple.
Breathing deeply, a sense of peace surrounded him. Maybe he would throw her on the back of his ATV and take her with him. “I don’t want to push you. Have you had enough time?” Even as he asked, he squeezed her tighter, not sure he could let her go if she said “No.”
“I’m a confused mess, Logan,” she warned, but one of her hands fisted his hair.
“So am I,” he whispered. “How about after I deal with part of my current mess, we can discuss yours?”
They disentangled. “Sounds scary, Mountain Man, but I’ll be waiting.”
Her promise settled deep inside of him, a well of strength to draw on later. It was all he could do not to pull her along with him, but he needed to handle this alone.
Logan shifted on his feet in the deep shadows of a tree at the end of the street. He hated skulking like this. Like he was the guilty one. The happy bark of a dog carried on the slight breeze, and he pushed off the trunk. Scott shuffled down the sidewalk, his gaze on the ground, kicking pebbles to skitter onto the street. A small brown border collie tugged the leash, wanting to go faster.
Logan pulled his brim lower and stepped into the dusky night. The streetlights had yet to turn on. “Scott, I need to talk to you.”
Scott froze. The dog whined at the jerk on its neck. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Logan held up both hands in front of his chest as if surrendering. “I’m not here in retaliation. I’m here because I’m worried about you.”
“Yeah, right,” Scott muttered with teenage sarcasm. “You want your job back.”
Logan took a breath to deny it but couldn’t. “Of course, I do. I love the game, love coaching, but football is not my life. I’m more worried about you than I am about me.”
Scott looked over his shoulder as if measuring the distance back to his front door. “I’m fine. I’m back on the team.”
“For now.”
Scott pulled the leash, and his dog yipped. “Are you threatening me? I’ll have my daddy—”
“I’m not threatening you.” Logan ran a hand down his face, cocking his hat back on his head. “Dammit, Scott, those drugs are banned for a reason. You could be doing serious, lasting damage to your body. And for what, a scholarship? Your parents can afford to send you anywhere you want to go.”
“But, Daddy won a championship at Alabama, and I want to play there too.” The little-boy desperate quality in Scott’s voice tugged painfully at Logan’s memories. He knew all about going to extremes to please a father.
“Look, if your dad is forcing you to—”
“He’s not! Don’t drag him into this.”
Logan’s intuition blared like a tornado siren. “Well, we both know that I didn’t give you those drugs. So who did?”
Scott whipped around and left at a jog, the dog bounding ahead, thinking it was a game and not a retreat. Logan stood long after he heard the front door slam. The buzz of the streetlights warming up broke his concentration, and he walked down the street under a purpling sky to his truck.
Logan sat behind the wheel and considered his next move. Rick had questioned Hunter Galloway and had gotten nowhere, although Logan suspected Rick hadn’t earned a smidgen of trust from the kid over the years.
Off the record, Logan hoped Hunter would confide in him. He steered his truck across the proverbial tracks and into a section of town starkly opposite Scott’s neighborhood of manicured lawns and three-car garages.
Hunter lived in one of a collection of mill houses, built in the 1950s when textiles were the South’s bread and butter. But the mills had closed or moved overseas a decade or more ago, and the neighborhoods fell further into poverty every year.
He slowed his truck while a group of kids playing basketball moved out of the street to let him pass. Older people sat on porch chairs and swings enjoying the cooler night. Although some houses had shingles hanging loose and sagging porches, most people tried their best to maintain their homes. Just because they were poor, didn’t mean they didn’t take pride in the little they owned. But crime rates were higher in this part of town, and rumors of gang-related violence circulated.
The sky was turning black when Logan turned on the dead-end street where Hunter lived. Logan parked on the grassy edge, next to the root-buckled sidewalk. A group of young black men loitered across the street under a tree.
No one answered the door at Hunter’s house even though Logan could see the flash of a TV from the front window. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he crossed the street to the gathering of boys.
“Hey, Coach. Looking for a job?” A short, squat boy in the front piped up when Logan got within six feet, inciting snickers.
“What’s up, Tater Tot? You offering?” Logan shot back.
Laughter erupted along with some high-fives from the boys in the back. Tater Tot did not look amused, so Logan directed his next question to a tall boy with a grin squinting his eyes. “Have you seen Hunter Galloway tonight?”
“He’s working a night shift at Huck’s.”
Logan chucked his chin but didn’t turn away. “You know his brother?”
The group collectively took a step backward, leaving Tater Tot out front as their spokesman. “Everybody knows Will Galloway these days.” Fear edged into the automatic defensiveness in the boy’s voice.
“You running for him? That why you’re out here?”
Tater Tot adjusted his pants, covering the few inches of plaid boxer showing, and looked over his shoulder, but his buddies had stepped even farther away. “Nah.”
The boy was lying.
“All of you get on home. Right now.” He used his most intimidating coach’s voice, and they sang out a chorus of “yes, sirs” before scattering into the shadows. Logan couldn’t save them all, but he would do what he could—which would never be enough.
He pulled into Huck’s gas station and convenience store less than five minutes later. Hunter was stocking chips, alone in a middle aisle.
“We need to talk.”
The boy startled, dropping a bag of chips. His dead-eyed boredom flashed into wide-eyed worry. “Don’t have nothing to say.”
“I don’t believe you.” Logan kept any sort of anger or recrimination out of his voice.
Hunter swallowed, retrieved the bag, and acted like stocking chips required all his mental facilities. He didn’t glance up.
Logan didn’t want to be an intimidating jerk. He had a feeling Hunter took enough crap without him piling on more. “Look, we both know you lied, but I’ll do my best to protect you from the fallout.”
Hunter’s hand clenched a bag, crinkling the cellophane. Logan could tell he was weakening and pressed further. “You’ve managed to keep your nose clean and have a chance at a college scholarship if you keep improving. Don’t screw that up to protect Scott.”
Hunter bit his lip and cast his gaze all around their feet as if searching for an excuse. He deflated, his knobby shoulders drooping. “It’s my brother.”
The whisper sent a surge of adrenaline through Logan, but he kept his voice bland. “Is he in trouble?”
“Will be if Scott rats him out.” The door jingled, and two teenagers strutted through the door, one white, one black. Hunter grabbed the crate of chips and moved down the aisle, ignoring Logan.
Pretending to read the nutritional label off a bag of Cheetos, Logan whispered, “Take a break. I’ll wait out back.”
Logan nodded to the middle-aged lady smacking gum behind the register on his way to the door. He circled around the building and propped his shoulder against the redbrick wall. The smell of rotting food and skunked beer wafted from a Dumpster.
A long-slung car with a booming bass drove down a side street, and Hunter rounded the corner not two minutes later, thumbing over his shoulder. “Sorry. Friends of my brother.”
“I heard tell that your brother is dealing. True?”
Hunter paced and pulled at one of his already sparse eyebrows. Finally, he stopped and faced Logan. “I can’t … we’re twins.”
Hunter’s desperation sprung the promise out of Logan. “I won’t turn your brother in. Look, I’m not out for vengeance. I genuinely care about you and Scott. PEDs can screw you up for life. Liver problems, diabetes.”
“I’m clean, Coach. I swear.” Hunter’s voice broke, and his gangly earnestness made Logan want to give the kid a hug.
“I believe you.”
“My brother started dabbling in weed last year. Word got around. Scott told me to get him some HgH, or he was going to the police about Will. First, I told him to fuck off. But he came to the house and cut a deal with Will. I stayed out of it. But when you found the syringe…” He shrugged and pulled at the other eyebrow. “Will was worried you’d go all CSI and get the prints lifted. Scott and Will told me what to say. I’m really sorry you lost your job.”
Logan looked up, the stars barely visible. “What about your mother? She know what’s going on?”
Hunter ran hands down the front of his jeans, bitterness flavoring his voice. “Hardly ever see her these days. She’s working a twelve-hour night shift.”
“She works to make things better for you and your brother. You know that, don’t you?”
Hunter looked to the brick wall, grime blackening the mortar. “I know she’s not around to make dinner or when gangbangers come by or when my brother gets so fucked up he can’t walk straight.”
Logan swallowed. Had he been so different from Hunter’s brother? Not dealing drugs at sixteen maybe, but buying and using. The euphoria of those first highs had been a siren’s call, a salve for the hormonally amplified pain of adolescence.
“I promise I won’t say anything, but this stuff has a way of coming out. Go to your mother. Go to Coach Dalton. Tell them what you know. Protecting your brother is not the same thing as helping him.”
All he got was another weak shrug. He left Hunter in the back and slid behind the wheel of his old truck. The inertia of a lie was difficult to break, and deep down, he knew Hunter wouldn’t tell anyone. Logan didn’t see a path to clear his name that didn’t involve collateral damage to Scott’s and Hunter’s families.
Maybe he should suck it up, accept his position of town pariah. Or maybe he should call Reginald Montgomery and take the job. Lord knows he’d be making more money than he’d ever dreamed of.
Mistakes and decisions he’d made in his past seemed closer than they had in years.
The past is never dead; it is not even past.
The quote haunted him. Logan rested his forehead on the steering wheel and started the truck.
He drove aimlessly through the town he’d been born and raised in, the town he’d longed for while choking on the dust of Afghanistan, the town he loved. But a darkness hid behind the cheery yellow bricks, the manicured lawns, and the flowering magnolia trees—the lies, struggles, and desperation of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
Even though Darcy bone-deep knew him, understood him, he found himself in front of Hancock House. He wanted—he needed—Jessie. Complicated, strong, vulnerable Jessie.
The front porch swing swayed as if she’d been waiting for him. She stood as he climbed the steps.
“Will you come with me?”
“Where to?”
“Trust me?” Although, he asked the question lightly, he meant the words in the most serious way possible. He held out a hand, everything in his body turning static.
Her gaze moved from his eyes to his hand and back. Finally, slowly, as if she sensed the momentous change, she took his hand. His lungs expanded, heaving oxygen back into his starved body. He wanted to tuck her against him but settled for linking their fingers together.
She tucked her short hair behind her ear, having not lost the self-conscious gesture with her haircut. “Do I need to change?”