Keep You (23 page)

             
“Crazy week, huh?” More change digging.

             
“The craziest.”

             
Tam could count on one hand the true conversations he’d had with the guy, and none of them had taken place post-kick-out and post-lecture. The saddest truth of it all was that Tam knew Walt had had grounds to boot him out back then. To get him as far from his wife and kids as he could get him.

             
But Jo had been the low blow.

**

Then

             
Jo was nineteen and she’d grown up into this sucker punch hourglass laced with muscle who could’ve made a burlap sack look like lingerie. She still liked her jeans and sneaks, though, sweatshirts and all things careless, her hair still long and wild and curling at the ends. She had no idea that men tripped over themselves after her. The shiny plastic, glossed and tossed, manufactured kind of sexy that was all about name brands and hooker heels was stocked in every club, every classroom, every singles bar in America. But Jo was the gentle, unassuming kind of sexy that snuck up on you – the same way it had crept up on him when they were kids – until suddenly you were drowning in those eyes of hers and you were realizing she had a body other girls spent good money to acquire.

             
Tam felt like the luckiest bastard in the world most days.

             
“I wish you didn’t have to go.” Her voice was a hot, husky whisper against his neck. Her leg was slung over his hip, her toes wiggling at the back of his knee. Every deep, recovering breath she took pressed her breasts against his chest. They were both slick with sweat, stuck together like the pages of a book on a night ripe with August humidity. On top of the covers in her little twin bed at KSU, in the campus apartment she shared with three other girls, they had more privacy than the family house had ever provided. Her roommates might roll their eyes and bitch about Tam drinking the last of the orange juice, might give Jo hell the next day about the sounds they’d heard through the wall, but they were friends and not family. They weren’t trying to save her from the bad boy. Were sneaking in their own boyfriends routinely.

             
It had to be after midnight and the softest of glows from a security lamp down below on the street filtered through the cracked blinds of her Cracker Jack box room. The sounds of their breathing echoed off the walls, giving him the impression of being sealed in a coffin together.

             
He palmed her ass – it was always just begging for him to touch it – and pulled her in even closer, until he heard her breath catch, just a little hiccup of air and then she was chuckling, her nails biting into his ribs.

             
“I wish I didn’t have to go either,” he said, his lips brushing against her forehead. “But you’ve got class in the morning. And I’ve gotta be at work at eight.” Translation: they’d neither get a decent night’s sleep if he stayed.

             
He had no idea that as he tracked down his clothes on the floor and pulled them back on, Jo sitting up in bed, hair draped over one shoulder, sheet pulled up to cover her naked silhouette, that it would be the last time they went through this little routine. The last time he kissed her goodbye for ten minutes, her tongue playing with the stud in his, his hands pulling the sheet down so he could feel the weight of her breasts in his palms one last time.

             
“You,” she chastised in a bright, sparkling little voice that left him feeling full of champagne, tipsy with bubbles and warmth.

             
He almost fell asleep twice on the drive to Walt’s house, still riding the high of contentment Jo had left him with. One of these days, he wouldn’t have to leave. One of these days, the bed they were in would be theirs. In his mind, he created a fantasy in which she had a diamond on her finger and his kid growing inside her. A little house, a little dog for her, a little make-your-teeth-hurt slice of sweetness that was the future he wanted. One of these days, he’d tell her family and he’d ask her dad and he’d make it all official – when he had more money, when his luck turned around – and he’d never have to leave her to sleep alone again.

             
Walt’s posh new-construction house was dark for the night, only a faint glow of the kitchen lamp creating the softest of ambient glows all the way up to the sidelights in the front. The place would always have a bit of a special place in Tam’s heart, his post-prom night with Jo there stamped in permanent ink on his brain.

             
He parked the Malibu in the turnaround, poised for a quick getaway in the morning, and picked his way down the stepping stone path to the back door off the kitchen, the yard inky and liquid with shadows.

             
On first glance, while he was pulling his key out of the deadbolt and locking the door behind him, stepping out of his shoes so he could carry them up to the guestroom and avoid tracking up Gwen’s floor, he thought the kitchen was empty. The pots hanging from the rack were shadows, the white flecked marble and white cabinets all tucked away for the night. But as he turned, the unobtrusive light from the little lamp over by the table struck a shadow more solid than the others, a man-shaped thing lurking in one of the chairs, and Tam paused, mentally scrambling for an identifying mark, assuming that no burglar would lie in wait like this.

             
“You’re home late.” Walt’s voice floated out of the breakfast nook like the ominous rumble of a hit man in an old gangster movie.

             
He knew something, Tam realized in an instant, but he didn’t know what, and because of that, he had no way to prepare any kind of defense. But whatever it was, as Walt leaned forward, face coming into the light, jaw clenched very much like his old man’s, Tam knew it was damning.

             
“Yeah,” he said, edging into the room, sneakers dangling from his fingers. “Caught a drink with some of the guys from work.” He smiled humorlessly. “Hope that was alright.”

             
Walt reached out and thumped the table with one meaty finger. “Sit.”

             
Tam was grateful that Walt was willing to provide a roof under which to rest his head. And he respected that, as the owner of that roof, he had certain veto powers and authorities. That knowledge was the only thing that kept him from flipping the oldest Walker the bird and going to bed. He sat, not so willingly.

             
“We had a guest drop by for dinner,” Walt began, making a tent of his fingers on the table that threw a long, skinny shadow across its surface that looked like a church steeple. Walt the Divine. “Hank showed up looking for you.”

             
Every nerve in Tam’s body snapped to immediate attention. He hadn’t seen his father in over a year. The house had been sold, Melinda living in an apartment in Kennesaw now, at least when she wasn’t in the hospital. Unless she’d been reaching out to her ex-husband when Tam wasn’t around – which was a possibility – then there was no casual way their lives could have collided. Hank, desperate, in need of cash to fuel his drinking habit, must have resorted to espionage. Tam racked his brain for memories of cars sliding around corners too close behind him, of strategic, newspaper-covered men at restaurants watching him. Somehow, Hank had figured out that he was staying with Walt and Gwen. It didn’t seem like the sort of detective work the old motherfucker was capable of.

             
“That’s not possible,” he said, and watched shadows form in the corners of Walt’s mouth.

             
“It was almost dark but it was so warm. Gwen and the boys were in the front yard.”

             
Tam shut his eyes and didn’t want to hear the rest, his hands tightening into fists on his thighs beneath the table while controlled rage continued to get pumped into Walt’s voice.

             
“He was driving some old piece of shit truck with the back window shot out. Drove up on the lawn. Ran over the mailbox.” The white mailbox Gwen had hand-painted with ivy leaves, foxgloves planted at its base. “He was halfway across the yard when I made it outside, yelling for you. ‘Tell him to come outta hiding, you cunt’ he told my wife, in front of my children.” Tam’s eyes popped open and in the dark, he could still make out the shadow cast by the vein that protruded in Walt’s forehead. “He had a gun.”

             
“Jesus, Walt.” Tam could hardly breathe. “Holy Christ, I had no idea, I’m so sorry, I - ”

             
A thick hand sliced through the air between them, cutting him off. “Your father came to
my home
, threatened
my family
…you can’t
apologize
your way out of this.” Walt’s voice was awful, not just rattled, but full of hate.

             
“I’ll go.” Tam started to rise, already imagining Jo stirring from sleep, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she answered her cell. “Gimme ten minutes and I’ll - ”

             
“Wait.”

             
One word, and it zipped through the room, ricocheted off the walls, as shocking and obscenely sinister as a gunshot in church. There was a smug power to it. Tam felt a shudder go rippling down his spine like cool water as he turned back toward the table, a hand on the back of the chair he’d been in for support.

             
“There’s another thing,” Walt said, and the grin that spread across his face was all wrong. He reached behind his chair, into the shadows, and came out with a bundle wrapped in plastic. The light was poor, but Tam knew the shade of blue, the slick satin of the fabric, even beneath the cellophane garment bag the dry cleaners had put it in. “Two years ago, we came back from little Becca’s christening and found this hanging over the shower door in the upstairs hall. It was all wet, but it still smelled like Betsy Johnson perfume and cocoa butter body lotion.”

             
Tam swallowed. His nose was veeeeery familiar with that scent combination. He’d never touched the prom dress, but he’d bedded the girl who’d been wearing it that night.

             
“It smelled a lot like you do right now. Betsy Johnson and cocoa butter.”

             
Busted.

             
There was such satisfaction on Walt’s face, it made him want to fly across the table at him. A fierce, feral instinct swirled to life inside him just as sure as if Jo had been physically threatened.

             
“You’ve been fucking my sister for two years and you don’t even have the balls to tell any of us.”

             
The red came down behind his eyes, the rage becoming a tangible, living thing that was clawing to get out. “I’m not ‘fucking’ anybody,” he said through his teeth. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

             
Walt’s grin vanished. “I know that it’s only a matter of time before your old man’s at her dorm with his gun, calling her a cunt and asking for money.”

             
Tam’s heart stuttered.

             
“Then what’ll you tell her? You think that goddamn piece of jewelry in your tongue will get you out of that one?” he pressed. “What if he pulls the trigger? What if he
shoots my baby sister
?”

             
When Tam’s pulse picked back up, it was at triple speed, blood pounding through the veins in his ears. He could see it unfolding in his mind: Jo walking from the parking deck, fumbling her keys among her purse and backpack and the work outfit slung over her shoulder, the hood pulled up on her sweatshirt blocking her peripheral. Her saw those turquoise eyes he loved go saucer-wide when she felt the muzzle of the gun dig in between her shoulder blades.

             
The only thing that could sober the fire coursing through his veins was the vision of his girl between him and his old man’s gun. There were not words for the black hole he’d tumble headlong into if anything should ever happen to Jo. To think that she might be in danger because of him, to think that someone he loved so much…

             
All the righteous adrenaline fled his system, leaving him weaving on his feet. He wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. He wanted to go back to Jo’s apartment and slide under her sheets, wrap himself up in her and stay there. He wanted to put his fist through Walt’s face. He wanted to turn that gun around on his father. He wanted…he wanted…

             
He fell into his chair, boneless, his hands spearing back through his hair.

             
“You get out of my house,” Walt hissed across the table, “and you break things off with Jo, or I tell her everything.”

**

Now

             
“Dylan and I are gonna catch a few holes of golf,” Walt said conversationally, like he hadn’t swung a wrecking ball through Tam’s life four years ago. “You interested?”

             
Tam turned away from him, headed for his room. “No,” he tossed over his shoulder.