by Kendall Duke
“Enlighten me.”
“The police are dangerous, law-breaking thieves. And the sky is beautiful, even at night.”
“Especially at night.” He pretended to think over my assessment. “And how do you know I’m dangerous? I’m so nice,” the deputy said, shrugging again, “that I’m letting you insult my baby here and stay at my fabulous mansion. No charge. C’mon, that’s not dangerous.”
“But you agree that you’re a thief?”
“Well, I will be tomorrow when I sell your car to the highest bidder, sure. But as of right now, you are incorrect.” I laughed out loud that time. No hiding it. He chewed on his lip to keep from smiling more, but it didn’t work. We grinned at each other and rode the rest of the way in silence, enjoying the stars… And the company. I liked him. I didn’t want to, but I did.
Maybe more than I wanted to, as well—but that was another matter altogether. And I sure as heck wasn’t going to do anything about it, either.
~~~
Sebastian
She was fun.
A little too fun, actually. So fun that it made me laugh, then made me sad, then made me pissed I was sad, and that made me laugh at myself. I wished for a minute she could’ve met me before it happened, when I was twenty-two, doing the circuit on weekends and so cocky she would’ve wanted to punch me. Young, dumb, and full of… Anyway. I might’ve even let her, right before I tried to talk her into bed. I’m not sure I would’ve succeeded, but I sure as hell would’ve tried--and you never know. We got along now, contrary to her earlier opinion, and back then…
Well, you can never go back. I needed to remember that.
And then forget it again, and just live my life without obsessing over things I couldn’t change.
It was harder than it should’ve been.
But that was just because of her, Sierra Davenport, thousands of miles from where she should’ve been. Who the hell knows what was really in Idaho, but she sure as shit didn’t need to be headed anywhere by herself. There were too many things about her that made it dangerous—the way the starlight caught in her luminescent eyes, for example, put me in mind of the legend of the buffalo woman for reasons that would probably send my mother to an early grave. Or maybe it was the way her smile sparkled like frost under moonlight when she gave in and laughed, a hard laugh, a good laugh, one that came from somewhere deep in her chest… And maybe it was her chest that made the very idea of her cavorting alone across the plains so dangerous. I worked hard not to check her out like some buckle bunny, and her sweatshirt was helping me; all the same, she had the kind of curves that begged to be noticed, even when the rest of her wished you wouldn’t look at all. A dangerous body, a sassy mouth, and those eyes… It was probably a miracle I wasn’t hitting on her like a cocky twenty-two year old with an unfucked-up face.
That might have been the Sheriff’s intention. The thought had a dampening effect.
He meant well, I guess, in that relentlessly macho way of his. My mom had asked him to back off, but since he was nice enough to give me a job after it happened he kind of figured he could do whatever he wanted, and generally speaking, he was right.
And since self-pity is such an attractive trait, I should probably thank him for finding a way to yank me out of it. By the shorthairs, no less—because Sierra was just my type. Nothing makes you want to show off a little bit more than a pretty girl, and as he was always telling me, I had some skills. A couple bragging rights. Only a few, he would say, but a few.
I wasn’t about to start yammering at her about the rodeo though. When he said that, he was usually trying to encourage me to go get a beer with a pretty local; he hadn’t realized that this time, he managed to point me in the direction of a girl that would’ve made me nervous even back then. A girl I would’ve noticed sitting in the stands among a crowd of five hundred people screaming their heads off from the back of a vicious bull.
She was very, very pretty.
And stranded, alone, in a strange place, with someone she resented and was a little afraid of. Hell-bent on running away from something or towards something, and either way it was none of my business if there weren’t any laws being broken—and so far, it didn’t appear there were. So I needed to take my salty attitude, put it aside, and be a gentleman for one night.
I could do that.
We pulled into the long drive and I got out and opened the gate, then latched it behind the truck and headed down the dirt road towards the house. I was managing a relative’s farm while they worked the oil fields back home in North Dakota; it was just a little one, with a few cows, a couple horses, and more chickens and cats than any sane person would want. Back on the reservation this cousin was known as Jay-Jay, but out here people called him Johnathan Redhorse, very fancy. I liked the few and far between neighbors that filled up this endless country; I liked that people minded their own and generally did what was right, and needed. They were a good group, but very, very spread out; mostly the place was ranchland, my cousin’s small farm being the exception—and it was still on twenty acres. I drove down the long dirt road until we got up to the house and the motion-activated lights turned on, all at once.
“Whoa—what is this?” She blinked up at the fluorescents, reminding me of a deer in headlights again. “This is creepy, Deputy.”
“It’s just the lighting system kicking on because something—meaning us--moved,” I reassured her. “Set up on purpose. Not creepy, I promise—it prevents all manner of creeping, in fact.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding reserved, and I realized I should have warned her. She wasn’t used to the country at all.
“Miss Davenport, we’ll get you set up in your own room inside with some hot cocoa in about five minutes and everything will be just fine, promise.” I opened my door and started to get out. “Come on, I’ll show you where everything is.”
“You make a lot of promises, Deputy,” she muttered, and I caught myself smiling again.
“Get out of the truck, ma’am,” I retorted, trying to keep the laughter out of my voice, and heard a satisfying snort as she opened her door. Her footsteps were light on the ground, and I listened to them as she followed me across the dirt drive and onto the little porch that lead into the kitchen. When I turned on the light, I could feel her relax. It was a nice old house. A very normal, very not-crazy house with very not-crazy vibes. “See? You’re fine,” I told her, “although, as an officer of the law, I do appreciate your cautious approach to new situations.”
“I just didn’t want to sleep in a jail cell,” she said, raising her eyebrow at me, and I had to turn around and get busy finding the cocoa in the pantry to hide what it did to me. Jesus, it’s like the damn thing turned on and forgot how to turn off—I really did feel like a twenty-two year old cowboy, at least physically. I calmed down and brought out the hot chocolate, waved her over to the round table by the window, and started heating a pan of milk. In the silence as I stood by the stove, waiting, I heard the unmistakable sound of a rumbling stomach. “Ma’am, I do charge for hors d’oeuvres, must admit.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “It’s been a while since I had a meal, I guess.”
“That’s alright,” I said, dropping the act. She needed a sandwich more than a laugh right now. “How about a grilled cheese?”
She looked up at me hopefully, and my stomach flipped. That wasn’t lust, I realized, and I spun on my heel and got the ingredients together, hoping we could just go to bed after this before I lost too much more of my damn common sense, but then she said, “so tell me what happened.”
“To what, your car?” It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. The milk steamed; I poured it and turned to look at her. “I was telling the truth—it’s probably in Helena right now. But it’s the middle of the night, practically; nobody’s going to look at it until—”
“No,” she said, her voice as calm as you please. “Your face.” And then she moved her finger in a circle over the equivalent area of my burn on her
very own, very perfect face. “What happened?”
I just stared at her. Was she serious? “Excuse me?”
“Your burn,” she said, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time. “That’s what I do—that’s my specialty.”
I froze.
That motherfucker. “What is your specialty?”
She looked a little confused by my tone. “I’m an occupational therapist, but I work in burn recovery. That’s why I’m going to Idaho.”
Goddamnit. “Did you tell the Sheriff this?”
She looked thoughtful for a minute, trying to remember, and then nodded at me. “I think I did, actually. Why—” And then her face kind of folded in on itself, her forehead crumpling as she realized immediately what the Sheriff had done. Sierra stared down at the kitchen table in silence for so long I couldn’t tell if she was feeling furious or foolish, but either way it gave me a chance to recover. The grilled cheese was ready and the milk had cooled down, so I slid her sandwich on a plate and put it on the table in front of her. She didn’t even look at it. I sighed and sat down across from her, unable to leave her there, feeling upset.
“It’s kind of funny, actually,” I said, and her eyes snapped to my face. “I should’ve known something was up when you didn’t stare at it.” I got up to finish making her cocoa, and when I was done she was watching me closely, her eyes narrowed.
“People stare?”
“Not as much, now. It’s a really small town and everybody’s seen it.”
She was quiet for a long minute, then took a sip of her cocoa. “People suck.”
For some reason, this made me laugh out loud—I haven’t laughed out loud in ages, but here I was, one loud guffaw that probably woke all the damn cows up. “People are fine,” I said, calming down. She was smiling at me with a bemused expression on her face, like she didn’t understand what could be so funny. “But yes, you’re right. They also suck.”
“So how did it happen?” She nibbled her sandwich and cocked her head. I took a deep breath and chewed my lip for a minute, unsure how to answer her—it wasn’t a complicated story, but I’d managed to avoid having to tell it to almost anyone. The rumor mill got all the details right and I hated thinking about it.
“I’ve only been a deputy for about a year,” I said slowly, then immediately got up and made myself a sandwich too. And a cocoa. Maybe a part of me was hoping she wouldn’t be interested by the time I was done procrastinating, but she was politely waiting for me when I sat down. Didn’t even take another bite of her grilled cheese.
“Okay,” she prompted, and picked up her cup of cocoa. Her eyes were enormous. The dark ring around the chocolate iris swallowing her pupil looked almost violet in color. Her skin was the same hue as a fresh peach. “Deputy,” she said, putting her cocoa down, “I know a polite person would drop it, but I’m not that polite, and I have a feeling you don’t especially value politeness under any other circumstances. So come on. What happened?”
“About two years ago I worked for an oil company back in North Dakota, where I’m from. There was an explosion, and I got burned.” There. That was all true, very efficiently told, now we could move on to—
“Nope, that’s not it,” she said, shaking her head and giving me a shrewd look. “I mean, that might be what happened, but that’s not why you look like that.”
“That is literally why I ‘look like that.’”
“You’re such a smart-ass,” she said, surprising both of us. Now it was my turn to narrow my eyes. “Seriously. I had no idea cops could be such wise guys.”
“Did you just call me a wise guy?” In spite of myself, I felt another laugh bubbling up from somewhere inside. “Are you some kind of 1930s gangster?”
“No,” she shot back, the edges of her smile reappearing as she tried to fight off a laugh too. “Wise guy.”
“I’m going to start calling you Al Capone,” I told her, and we both started chuckling then, nerves and tension and hilarity all mixing together in one strange heap. “Or Buster Keaton.”
“Buster Keaton was an actor,” she said, giggling at me. “Not a gangster.”
“Bugsy Malone.” Now I was grinning at her again, as if she hadn’t just forced my least favorite life story out of me. “Karl Marx.”
She burst out laughing. “You’re terrible at this! Karl Marx was not a gangster—not that sort of gangster, anyway.”
“But Bugsy you’re okay with?”
“No,” she said, giggling. “No I am not.”
“Well, we’re down to Bugsy or Al. You tell me.”
“Marlene,” she said, smiling. “If we have to choose someone from that era, I choose Marlene Dietrich.”
“Also not a gangster,” I pointed out, but she just laughed at me again. “Or one of your options, ma’am.” Her face fell a little, and I couldn’t help the corresponding plummet of my own.
She was too much fun, damn it—far, far too much. It was dangerous.
“You’re right, I’m no Marlene Dietrich,” she said, giving me a sheepish grin.
“Nope,” I said, and I couldn’t stop myself—“you’re way hotter than Marlene Dietrich.”
It just happened. It was out of my mouth before I could stop it, before I could even process what I was thinking. I just said it. Like some cocky cowboy in a crowded bar, someone who never got rejected, never worried about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the right girl. I waited for her to be furious or upset—maybe even creeped out—but a delicate flush rose on her cheeks, the lightest, palest pink I have ever seen.
It did not improve the situation.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “That was way out of line.”
“You’re fine,” she said softly. “I mean, if we’re dropping insults and moving on to compliments, it’s good of you to let me know.” She blinked at me from under thick black lashes, and I felt my heart skip a beat. “I want to be able to keep up. You’re a wise guy, after all.”
“Nice,” I said, nodding at her, and she grinned up at me. “I see what you did there.”
“Like I said,” Sierra said, and bit her lip. I will not describe the effect it had on me. “I want to be able to keep up.”
“Pretty sure you’re ahead of me,” I told her, and I meant it. Because something was clearly changing in my head that I wasn’t in control of. Something about Sierra Davenport was dangerous—and not to her, not to the exquisite, curvaceous twenty-one year old occupational therapist driving alone across the country in a mobile death-trap. Something was very dangerous to me, the has-been rodeo circuit rider with the fucked-up face. There was no way in hell Item A would be interested in Item B… Right?
“So, come on,” she said, and the seriousness of her tone pulled me right out of my reverie. “Seriously. I understand what you mean—I’m sure those were the events that caused the burn, mostly… But what happened? Why do you—”
“If you say ‘why do you look like that’ I swear to God I’m driving you back and locking you in the cell.”
She laughed so hard she snorted, and it was painfully cute. Achingly, heart-squeezingly cute. “Fine,” she said after she finally recovered, splaying her hands out on the table and taking a deep breath. She finished her cocoa, but her sandwich was only a quarter gone. I pushed it towards her and she took a bite before putting it down and wrinkling her forehead. “You appear to have some… Personality quirks… That might have to do with your burn.”
“Nice,” I said, waving my hand. “I thought we were moving on to compliments?”
She shook her head at me, her smile still visible under the more serious expression. “I just… You look a lot like my brother did, when he got back from Iraq. And I don’t just mean the burn.”
Oh. “Your brother’s Sioux?”
“Knock it off—”
“Wise guy, yeah yeah,” I said, shrugging as I kicked my legs out under the table and tucked my thumbs in my belt. I was comfortable, and uncomfortable, and wanted to talk and also wanted to run ou
t the door at the same time. “Alright.”
“IED,” she said, watching me. “He’s got hearing in one ear, can smell and eat. No vision. The right side—side with the bad ear—got it pretty bad.” She moved her hand in a long arc from her neck down to her hip, indicating the size of the burn with the same gesture she’d used to describe mine.
Fuck. Alright, well, that made her question much less… Whatever it was. “How old is he?”
“Twenty-nine. He’s doing great. He got a job with the police, actually—IT, not in the field. He loves it.” She grinned at me. “And he’s completely obnoxious about it, particularly since he just got engaged to another officer. Cop talk, all the time.”
“He’s not a wise guy, though?”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “Strictly a straight shooter.”
“Like you,” I said, and I wasn’t joking. She nodded.
“It’s kind of an affliction in our family,” Sierra said, and bit her lip again. “I hope I didn’t offend you earlier. I didn’t even think about it—it’s just not a big deal back in our house.”
“It was a little strange,” I said, shrugging, “and maybe a little, teeny-tiny bit rude. Just a tad.”
“Sorry,” she said, taking a bite of her sandwich and not appearing that sorry at all. “You never answered the question anyway, though.”
“What question?”
“What happened?” Sierra put the sandwich down again and glared at me. “Deputy, sheesh. Pay attention, will ya?”
“Sure thing, Al,” I said, and she snorted into the sandwich. We were quiet for a minute while she chewed and watched me and I wondered what the hell I was doing. “Somebody made a mistake, is all. Really nice guy, four kids back in Utah. Very tired—you wouldn’t believe the shifts you pull out there. Money’s good, but… Damn. Anyway, he made a mistake. It happens. I tried to get him out…” I couldn’t finish. Not yet. I didn’t need to, anyway; I could tell Sierra knew exactly what I was saying. “I guess… I got off easy, really.”