Hard Time (30 page)

I held my breath, stunned by that. Stunned because I believed her, that she’d tell. The thing she’d not even been able to confide in the cops, but I heard it in her voice, she’d do it. Take that horrible crime and turn it into a weapon to keep this man from haunting her ever again.

“You heard what I said?” Kris demanded.

He nodded. “Yeah. I hear you. You’re fucking crazy, all you Colliers.” He spat on the salted asphalt. “I’d have to be crazier than all of you to want any part of your rabid-ass family.”

Headlights swung off the main road and into the lot. I froze, and so did Eric’s truck. He’d stomped on the brake between two rows of parked cars, and his door popped open.

Wes muttered, “Fuck,” then asked Kris, “You got a fucking Bat Signal or something?”

Eric was walking in a way that made him look taller than the bar and out for blood. I waved for him to stop, but it was Kris who actually managed the feat.

“Get back, Eric. It’s fine.”

“The fuck it is. What the fuck you doing around my sister?”

“Small world, that’s all,” said Wes. He was playing it cool, but his fear was evident. I didn’t blame him. Eric’s eyes were darker and colder than the winter sky.

“Just here to meet my cousin. Borrow his drill.”

“You get in your truck and you leave,” Eric said, “and you buy your own goddamn drill. Get the fuck out of my town and stay the fuck out.”

The bar’s door opened behind us, the noise inside flaring, light spilling out as two thirtysomething women scooted by to smoke on the other side of the entrance. They were chatting tipsily, but the rest of us had gone silent and somber as gravestones.

“Go,” Kris told Wes.

And he did. He skirted Eric’s statue-still body, limping toward his truck. We all waited in silence until he’d pulled onto the road and out of sight, then our collective postures slumped.

“Oh my
gosh,”
said one of the smoking women brightly. “Eric!”

He looked confused, then spent a moment jogging his memory about whoever she was to him, and they exchanged post-holiday pleasantries. Surreal, but it gave me—and presumably Kris as well—a minute to come down from our adrenaline highs.

The women finished their cigarettes. The one who’d recognized Eric said, “See you around, maybe. You look good,” she added, making my eyes roll. “Real good.”

He said good night and gestured for Kris and me to get in the still-idling truck.

Once he was behind the wheel and buckled in, he dropped his head and muttered, “Fuck.”

“I thought that went real well,” Kris said.

“She handled it great,” I told Eric.

“Didn’t threaten to send you after him or anything,” she said. “Just the whole goddamn rest of the town.”

“And his parole officer,” I added.

“He say anything to you?” Eric demanded. “Either of you. Anything aggressive?”

“Nah,” said Kris. “He’s a real chickenshit, sober. I’d forgot that about him.” She was acting so calm, but I’d heard in her voice, she’d been terrified.

“He say anything to you?” he asked me. “He
look
at you?”

“Not like,
look
at me, no. We did fine. Really.”

Eric sighed mightily, like he was exhausted from having hauled us unconscious from a burning house. “Let’s get the fuck home.”

Kris recapped the encounter for her brother as we drove back to Lakeside. About fifty times he demanded details like, “And that’s what he said, exactly? How’d he sound when he said it?” before he finally seemed like he was calming. If not satisfied, confident enough to believe maybe he didn’t have to stay awake all night, listening for tires rolling up outside his mom’s house.

“He’s not coming around,” Kris said. “I could tell from his face. He’s a coward when he’s clean. And he’s got to be clean, if he’s gotten that fat. Goddamn . . . I’d like to know how a man gets that fat on prison food.”

The joke seemed to relax Eric officially. I could sense his relief for the confrontation to finally be over and done with as clearly as I might feel the sun on my hair.

“Should I tell Mom?” Kris asked.

Eric looked pensive as he parked the truck. “Not tonight, at least. Let’s figure that out tomorrow, maybe.”

Kris nodded and pushed the passenger door wide. She intuited from the way he kept the truck running that we needed a minute, and slammed the door without a word. Once she was swallowed by the light of the kitchen, Eric sank back against his seat.

“Fucking hell.”

“It’s okay, really. I’m okay. Kris is okay.”

“Makes my goddamn skin crawl, to know he even laid eyes on you.”

“I’m
okay.
Really. All those Fridays at Cousins prepped me well. And Kris was careful not to tell him who I was.”

“Still . . .”

“I’m real proud of you,” I said, “holding yourself back the way you did.”

Eric didn’t seem to hear me. He dropped his forehead to the wheel and made a noise of absolute grief and surrender. “Jesus. If anything had happened to you . . .”

I rubbed his back. “But it didn’t. Your sister got in front of me and everything. She didn’t need to, but she did.”

He sat up and met my eyes. “Did she?”

“She was scared for maybe the first minute, then it was all bulldog.” I offered a little smile.

He exhaled, long and loud. I changed the subject.

“Who was that woman who thinks you look
re-e-eal
good, anyhow?”

His nostrils flared with a tiny laugh, telling me I was ridiculous for asking. And that he was grateful for a little ridiculousness just now. “Just an ex of one of my buddies.”

“Better be.”

We were quiet for a time, me watching Eric, him staring straight ahead.

“It freaked you out,” I said, “knowing he was near me.”

“Of course it did. Still does.”

“Why?”

“’Cause of what could’ve happened. You know what he did to my sister . . . the gist of it, anyhow.”

“You afraid you could’ve lost me?”

He dropped his head again. “Annie . . .”

“I’m afraid to lose you, too. If you went off on somebody like him, got yourself hurt or killed, or put away.” I ran my palm over his back in slow circles. “We’re the same, that way.”

“I know we are.”

“I want you to promise me, if something did happen to me—which it won’t—you won’t do what you did for her. Because I’d need you with me, helping me heal, way more than I’d need to feel like justice had been done or whatever. Can you promise me that?”

“I don’t know.”

My turn to sigh, and my hand went still on his back. “I get that you don’t value your own neck the way I wish you did, so I’m not asking you to understand, or to do it for your own good. I’m asking you to do it for me. I
need
you, with me. Safe. And free. I don’t need to feel avenged. I only need your body next to mine when I fall asleep.”

A miniscule nod.

I squeezed the back of his neck. “Promise me.”

He held my gaze with those bottomless brown eyes. “I promise.” He kissed my mouth, then again. He spoke right there, words warming my lips. “I promise. You get me.”

“Good . . .” My heart unwound, chest welcoming a deep draw of air. “Good.”

I kissed him hard, more a fierce mashing of lips than anything sensual or sweet, and my arms wrapped around him, tight as a vise. The most powerful body I’d ever known, yet I held him as though he might be lost in a breath. And he could be. Was this why he’d protected his sister the way he had? Because he knew how much this hurt, to come so close to losing someone? That made my demands selfish, but I didn’t care. His safety and his future mattered more to me than anything I’d ever held dear. A taste of what motherhood must do to a woman. A possessiveness so strong, it ached deep down in the marrow and muscle.

He smoothed the hair from my temples and stared into my eyes. “You’re the most precious thing in my life. If you want me in yours bad enough to demand the stuff you are, I’ll give you that.”

“And I promise I won’t ever say things to your sister again, like the ones I said last night. We talked a lot, at the bar. And I get what you mean to her, too. And it goes way deeper than I’d ever imagined. I understand how big it is, the promise I’m asking of you. Really.”

He nodded once and kissed my temple, then exhaled steam against my skin. “Good.”

For a long time we held each other, until the blood pounding in my ears faded to a murmur. Until my vision ceased hopping in time with my pulse. Until Eric’s breathing went silent, little more than a warm breeze ruffling my hair.

“You want to go inside?” he asked, so soft it could’ve been a thought.

“Not yet. Let’s just enjoy sitting still, for a while.”

He killed the headlights, freed both our seat belts and moved. I waited as he repositioned himself, leaning against the driver’s door. He patted his lap and we got comfortable, legs piled along the long seat, two sets of eyes on the rows of modest homes, a few still twinkling with Christmas lights. His mouth was at my ear, his voice filling my entire being.

“I love you,” he said, and went on before I could return the words. “More than I’ll ever love myself. But I’ll try to do what you want. I’ll try to value what I have to offer, and my own being here—being free—as much as you seem to.”

I swallowed, throat sore. “You better.”

“And I’ll keep writing you letters ’til the day I die.”

I gurgled, the sounds of tears drowning a laugh. “Good. I love your words.”

“You gave them all to me. Every last one.”

“Funny, when they all felt so exactly like gifts.” Gifts I’d unwrapped with a thumping heart and shaking fingers; in my own driver’s seat, in the bar, on my couch, in my bed. I’d wrapped those secret pages around me like satin sheets and dreamed that the man who’d written them could be so good, could even be real. And here he was, wrapped around me himself. Warmer than my jacket. Warmer than the August sun beating on his bare skin. Hotter than the female eyes that’d watched him then, torn between fear and curiosity.

“When I met you,” I murmured, “you were an incarcerated felon. And yet you’ve only ever lied to me once. And that was so you could hit on me.”

I felt his soundless laugh behind my shoulders, then a kiss on my ear. “Guilty.”

“The most honest man I bet I’ve ever known, and I met him in prison.”

“The nicest woman
I
ever knew, and she took up with a convict. What on earth would your mother say?”

I smiled at that. “I look forward to finding out.”

I’d be telling my parents soon. It was time to stop protecting them—time to stop trying to make amends for the pain I’d never allowed them to share with me.

“My dad might have a stroke,” I said, “but they’ve already seen the changes in me, since I met you. The way I’ve come alive again, for the first time in years.”

“Amen.”

After a minute’s peace he said, “I think we better head home after breakfast, tomorrow. I’m kinda ready to get the hell out of Kernsville.”

“Sure.” I squeezed the hands clasping my waist. “Maybe we could get up real early and drive out to your lake. Watch the sun come up over it. Grab some donuts on the way back to your mom’s.” Watch as that watery winter sun rose at its cranky January speed, the sky turning from navy to slate to the periwinkle of my mom’s hydrangea. Let the light banish the last of tonight’s scarier memories from my mind, fill the gaps with another taste of this man’s favorite place in the world.

“That’s not my lake, like I said. It won’t be my lake again until the spring’s here and the water’s blue, and my feet are in the sand.”

“I’d still like to. And we’ll come back, again, when it’s warm.”

“Maybe even then . . . Maybe it still won’t be the same. Everything’s so different now, from the last time I swam there. I’m so different.”

“We’ll come back, anyway,” I whispered, “and find out.”

I felt him nod, then he kissed the back of my head. “Yeah. We’ll come back.”

The heat of his words seemed to linger in my hair, but others drifted from my memory, swirling like snowflakes.
I’ve never been to the ocean.

I’d take him there, someday, when his parole allowed. To South Carolina, to the coast. To the feet of those restless, lapping waves that stretched out beyond comprehension, under a sky bleached palest blue by the summer sun. To the very end of the land, caged by sand and water and air. No concrete, no steel. A place that seemed to promise that winter would never come again. A pretty lie you didn’t mind falling for, not when the lips that delivered it tasted so sweet.

“I hope your sister likes me,” I said quietly. “Or at least gets me, some.”

“Doesn’t matter what they think of you, Annie. Doesn’t change what I think, anyhow.”

“I know. But I want her to think maybe I’m strong, a little. Not as strong as her or you, but enough that maybe she’ll think I’m up for this. For being with you. I know I shouldn’t care, but they’re your family.”

“You care about whatever you need to,” he said lightly. “Just know that I’m not worried about it.”

“Okay.”

Eric bade me to sit up. “Let’s get inside.”

Before we exited, he curved a broad, gentle hand along my jaw, pulled me close. His kiss was soft as snow landing, warm and slow as summer.

We left the heat of the truck, crunching over slate toward the light of the kitchen. His hand closed around mine, strong and possessive. The hand that’d done unspeakable things in the name of brotherly love. A hand capable of the tenderest acts of intimacy and affection. The hand that had penned the most breathtaking letters, for my eyes alone. I’d hold it tight as we went forward together, sure as I clung to it now. Tight as I’d ached to hold it, back when such a thing had been forbidden. I’d never let it go again, no matter where we ended up . . .

Somewhere warm, someday.

Somewhere that belonged to the both of us, far away from the hard cinderblock of Cousins. Out of the cruel cold. Into the light and hope and the excitement of our future, whatever it might look like. Into the bright promises of spring, when the entire world wore green.

Keep reading for a special preview of Cara McKenna’s exciting new Desert Dog series

LAY IT DOWN

Available August 2014 from Signet