Dynamite (Stacked Deck Book 10)

by Emilia Finn

  Jason laughs. “I didn’t know there were two! Sure was a moment of surprise for me when he turned up outside the restaurant.”

  “You are such a pain in my ass.” I roll my eyes. “You purposely taunted him, and I was so self-righteous and demanding that he wasn’t allowed to bite back.”

  “Like I said,” he laughs. “Willpower of a saint. So…” He looks back to my phone. “You gonna take that call?”

  “No.” I flip my phone for just a second, reject the call, then toss the device to the floor. “I’m not ready to not be stubborn yet.”

  “Wow.” Jason learns fast, because his wow absolutely did not mean wow. “So you’re just gonna throw it all away, huh? You find a guy who loves you, Ally. He loves you so much that he’s willing to come out into a deadly storm to find you, he bolts across a parking lot when he sees you fall, he defends you, when so many guys are too cowardly to do so, and he risks prison because he was already in trouble with the law. And you don’t even take his call and say thanks?”

  “I refuse to say thank you for fighting on my behalf. I told him I was not a possession. I’m not something he can own, or fight for.”

  He lifts both brows in surprise. “So you’d rather he’d stayed in that night, and left you to figure it all out on your own?”

  “I’m not a damsel who needs rescuing! I’m a grown woman who deserves respect and independence.”

  “First of all,” he growls, “you sound so much like your mother, it makes me sick. Second, he waited until damn near the middle of the night, which means he was giving you that respect and independence. He trusted you to have your shit under control.”

  “He came looking when I called him.” Mom stops in the doorway and rests against the frame. My gaze tracks over to her, to the tight jeans that make Jason’s eyes bulge and follow, even after all this time. “He was at home when I called him,” she explains softly, “and he said he was worried. And perrrrhaps, I called and ignited a flame.” She grits her teeth and studies my stinging eyes. “I might have mentioned you were out with a guy, and you were slightly concerned about being cut into pieces.”

  “Nice,” Jason grumbles. “You put so much trust in me.”

  “Hush.” Mom steps into my room and sits down on the bed between me and her high school boyfriend. Her attention is all on me, but my eyes jump to her leg, and the hand he places there.

  Quiet possession. An inability to let go now that he’s finally found her. He owns her, even though we’re unownable.

  “Honey, we’ve all listened to the messages he left on your phone. He was worried about you that night, he was asking you to check in and let him know you were okay. But not once did he say you were incapable of taking care of yourself, nor did he say you were doing something wrong. He just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “And then you called and set everything on fire.”

  “I was worried!”

  She thrusts up from my bed and snatches my phone when it begins buzzing again. Before I can bound over and grab it, Mom answers and brings the device to her ear. “Luke, honey. It’s Miranda.”

  My heart surges; he’s right there. She’s speaking to him.

  “No, she’s right here, but she’s still riding her high horse. Yeah, it totally makes her ass look fat.”

  I sit back down, ignore my father’s quiet chuckles, and fold my arms.

  “Nope, she’s still mad too. But don’t fret, she’s mad at herself and women’s oppression. This isn’t about you.”

  “Mom, stop.”

  She pauses and grins. “Yeah, that was her. She’s sitting on her bed doing this thing she used to do when she was four. I should take a picture, then I’ll dig up an old picture from when she was young. This thing she does with her lips… it’s the same. Cranky little brat. Always so serious.”

  She stops to listen for a second, then throws her head back and laughs. “The only way we could make this worse is if we put music on and try to force her to boogie.” She shakes her head. “Nope. She won’t do it. She’ll refuse. But the way her crankiness turns more severe is entertaining.”

  “Mom, hang up. Now.”

  Her gaze comes back to mine, but her smile turns to a frown. Then her eyes shadow while Luke speaks on his end.

  My stomach swishes and dips. It circles and threatens to make me sick.

  “Um…” She swallows while he speaks. Nods, but it’s less about agreement, and more about acknowledgment. “Okay. Right. I’m sorry about this, okay? It’s just… yeah. You understand?” She nods again. “You’ll take care, won’t you? Maybe call me sometime. We can catch up. Maybe my daughter doesn’t—” She stops again and sighs. “Right. But I still want to know that you’re doing well. Tell your mom I said hey, and your dad too. He’s a sweetheart.”

  She pauses for a moment while Luke speaks. But I don’t need to hear the words to know he’s saying goodbye. Not the ‘We’ll chat tomorrow’ farewell that he’s given every single day since I left town. But the ‘Have a nice life’ sort.

  “Alright. Good luck at the tournament, I know you’ve got that coming up—” She stops, and frowns. “What? That stinks! I should come over there and talk to that—”

  He says something that cuts her off.

  “But it’s not f—”

  And again.

  “Fine, I’ll stop, but—” Mom growls, and she so rarely does that. “Fine. Call me sometime, okay?” She nods and draws a deep breath. “Alright. Goodbye. You too.”

  She brings my phone away from her ear, ends the call, and tosses the device to my mattress. Then glaring at me, she spins on her heels and storms out of my room. “You are an asshole, Allyson Moore. He deserves better anyway!”

  Wow.

  Luke

  Goodbyes

  I was once ordered to complete twelve weeks of therapy to help deal with my anger, and was tasked with fixing the old pier at the lake. All because I got into a fight with a poor little rich boy.

  On my tenth week, I got into a fight with a guy who, turns out, might have been my father-in-law in another lifetime.

  Fuckin’ called that wrong.

  My court date was… rough.

  Judge Abram wanted to sentence me to sixty days in lockup; not a big sentence, in the grand scheme, but long enough to teach me what incarceration feels like. More importantly, long enough for me to get to know guys who are in there for life, and to learn from their mistakes, to learn the consequences of brash actions and short fuses.

  Luckily for me, Douchebag-Jason declined to press charges, and Jessica Bishop is a good fucking lawyer who got me off with six more months of therapy, and five-days-a-week volunteer work teaching kids martial arts.

  Which, in reality, is my day job. But the catch is, I first have to build a community center in the middle of town. A space with engineer-approved columns, rafters, shade for the summer, but light and walls for the winter. I need to get an electrician in to install power. And the space must be equipped with barbecues that operate for free, and have mats on the floors that are maintained and replaced as needed – for life. On my own bank balance.

  I’m to host classes five days a week for low-income children who can’t afford membership at my family’s gym, and though it’s only an hour a day – seeing as how I have to fit my actual job in, plus therapy, plus all of the moping I like to squeeze in for Ally – I then have to train and grade these students… completely for free.

  Belts, equipment, time, and mentoring. Free, free, free.

  The kids love it, and I can admit it’s kind of fun, training outside with a bunch of dipshits who can hardly balance on one foot for more than twenty seconds. But at the end of the day, I still have to eat dinner with my family, and endure their bad attitudes; I’ve essentially just opened a competing gym, and because it’s free, they’re giving me shit for stealing business.

  Basically, I’m the fucking goat. Not the Greatest Of All Time kind of goat, but the scapegoat kind who has to defend his free sc
hool for poor kids – which is ironic, really, considering it’s the kind of school that might have made a difference for people like my dad back in the day.

  Everybody loves a solid case of irony. Everyone except the goat, that is.

  Engineering plans take time, then county approval, then coordinating builders and equipment, so on top of everything else, I’m now a project manager too. Not a skill I ever thought myself capable of, but architectural drawings now litter the kitchen table that often doubles as a poker table, and is sticky with liquor and wrought with memories; many of which include a laughing Ally.

  And thinking of those memories makes me think of Chester, the missing llama.

  Where is he now? Who has him, and why have they remained utterly silent on it?

  It’s not like I want to snitch on the thief, but hell if I’m not dying to know who town’s most dastardly criminal is. But I guess that’s another thing I’ll never know. Another thing I’ll never have. Because sometimes, life just fucking sucks.

  Like right now, in December, just a few days before Christmas. It’s the first day of the annual Stacked Deck tournament, except I’m court-ordered not to attend. That judge legitimately banned me from stepping foot on the tournament’s premises for an entire forty-eight hours before the start of, and an additional forty-eight hours after the end of, this year’s event. She says it’s to curb my lust for violence.

  A joke, really, considering she has no problem with me teaching other kids how to fight.

  What it is, is segregation. It’s about making me miss out on something fun, like I’m a child being sat in the naughty corner. And that is an effective punishment for someone like me, with my personality and the need to be at the center of all things adrenaline-fueled.

  My family tried something new this year – to fuck with me, I suspect. Instead of selling spectator tickets to regular folks, like they do every other year, they gave them away for free – to my students. So here I am at my sort-of school, where we’ve already poured concrete foundations, and the installation of flooring – a timber deck – has begun, but there are no walls or a roof yet. And I’m all alone, in the fucking snow, drilling screws into the new timber flooring that no one will ever actually see, because once I’m done with this shit, rubber mats will be laid down.

  Joke’s on me.

  My punishment has nothing to do with reform, and everything to do with scolding the noisy little shit who just can’t stop fucking around in class. But what’s worse than all that is that Ally refuses to take my calls.

  Perhaps she’s in cahoots with the judge; maybe she’s on board with the ‘Let’s leave Luke out in the cold’ bullshit, just like everyone else. And it’s working, because being without her is a special kind of torture I had no clue existed until she came along and made it so I had something to lose.

  Maybe I know now how Jason felt to have been separated from his family for more than half of his life – except it’s only been a matter of weeks for me. I still have so much life to go, so much loneliness left to endure. And maybe now, I kind of get why he was a taunting prick toward me, and why he gave zero fucks about what I thought, or about backing away when I told him to.

  I belted my potential future father-in-law.

  Kinda makes sense that she’s not throwing herself into my arms.

  Halestorm plays through the speakers of my phone, tinny and barely loud enough to beat out the soft breeze and snow. Add in the way my beanie covers my ears, and the loud whirring of the drill in my hand, and I can barely catch much sound at all, but still I let it play, because if I work in silence for a minute longer, I might go insane.

  The lead singer croons about going unseen by everyone except her one. I move my lips, sing along in my head, but I don’t make noise.

  “I started this essay differently.”

  A soft voice brings my spine straight with a snap. Like a hound on the scent, I lift my face up, then around, as my eyes search, search, and stop on radiant beauty.

  Ally stands on one of the corner foundations of my platform, on the edge, so her feet create a V, and her toes point outward. She wears jeans that are so tight, they may as well be a second skin, but over them, she wears boots that come to her knees, a sweater, and a coat over top. White, fluffy gloves cover most of her hands, but not her fingertips, and a matching white beanie with the poufy ball on top covers most of her head. Her red hair that isn’t really all that red splays over her shoulders, and her lips, cherry red from the cold, tremble – from the cold, or nerves?

  I place my drill on the deck, pat my hands on my thighs, and rise to fully standing.

  Ally’s eyes follow my every move, but after a moment, she jolts, like something surprised her. Her eyes whip back down to the papers in her hands, and clearing her throat, she begins again. “Um, I intended to start this essay differently, but by the time I got to the end, I realized I’d completely missed the point. So I went back to the beginning and started again.”

  She glances up from her paper, perhaps to check that I’m still paying attention, then looking back down, she continues reading.

  “Summer is usually a time for adventure, for exploration,” she explains. “And so, this year, I dedicated mine to finding out who I am outside of college life, away from my mother’s eye, away from the only home I’ve ever known. I’ve led a sheltered existence, not because of overbearing parents, but rather, the opposite. My mother was so free and wild that I felt the need to overcompensate and choose safety every time. I never reached out,” her voice cracks, “I never took risks, so this year, my twenty-second, I chose to visit a place that felt like home, despite the fact I’d never before stepped foot over the train tracks. I got to know a woman I’d heard about but never met, and by doing so, I got to see where I came from. Where my mom came from.”

  She stops, glances up, and swallows. “Turns out, Sonia Rivera is the perfect blend of me and my mother. She’s independent and strong, but without the rigidity. Wild and free, but without the spontaneity. She’s perfect,” and then she forces a smile, “the perfect foundation for the women who would later exist because of her.”

  Swallowing, she looks back down to her paper. “I wrote nearly ten thousand words about another man, I studied him, tried to truly understand him, but then I had to stop. I reassessed what I was doing, went back to the start, and began writing about you instead.”

  She glances up, so I catch a twinkle of emotion in her eyes. “When my essay began, it was founded on the things I felt for you. I was obsessed with understanding what makes you tick. I explored your possessiveness, and your spontaneity. I analyzed our every interaction, and though we kissed during many of them, and flirted during all of them, whenever I felt exposed and vulnerable, I was able to slip behind my mask of professional analysis. It was a shield I used often and freely. Then along came Jason Donnerson, and he spoke of his Maria.

  “In my mind, my analysis became a blend of you both. You were both possessive and passionate. You were both all-in, unafraid of falling in love and risking it all. Except, I knew how Jason’s story would end. Well…” She chuckles and clears her throat. “I thought I knew how it would end. I figured his Maria was gone, and that was all I needed to know. I had grown up knowing my mother’s heartache. She’d lost the man she loved, my father, and again when she lost Stan, and though she often kept her grief on lock, my love for her meant I could see it. It was my first lesson in not giving someone my all, because when they’re gone, I would never be whole again.”

  She pauses for a moment, before continuing on. “My mother has always been braver than me, wilder, freer. So even knowing the pain of losing her first love, she went and did it again. She loved Stanley with abandon, because she’s literally incapable of holding back. And that’s another essay in itself that could keep me busy for months. But then…” Her eyes come to mine. “Even after giving her all, again, she lost him. Two for two; it seemed she was doomed to always be alone.”

  “You were afraid.�
�� My voice cracks, and my heart skips when the sound reaches my ears.

  Ally nods but refuses me a glimpse into her soul. She sends her gaze back to the paper to keep me out. “I came to this town to learn about myself, my past, my present and future, and while I was here, I allowed myself my first and only slice of wild abandon. I allowed myself an affair with a guy who seems to be quite literally the human embodiment of wild and silly.”

  “Well… uh…” I clear my throat, smile, and take a step in her direction. “Thanks, I think.”

  “So my analysis began with your recklessness. What makes a guy act the way you do? How can you feel so safe and content that you’re able to make those choices? And then with Jason, why was he able to love his Maria the way he did? They were so young, it seemed silly. Perhaps a fantasy that years apart had fueled. But he believed, he remained devoted and so purely in love that I moved past how crazy it was, and into how? How does one give so much of themselves? And why, after all these years, did he continue to give, when it was certain he would never get her back?”

  “I know how.” I take another step forward. Twelve or so feet remain between us, but slowly, I take one step, then another. “I know how he loved so hard.”

  “But how?” She drops her hands and argues on a cry of anguish, “How could he stand that kind of pain, year upon year, decade after decade? Wouldn’t a man give up for the sake of his sanity?”

  “Is that what you’re wondering about me?” I take another step. “You’re worried I’ll eventually give up on us?”

  “I’m asking why you’re not afraid to lose a part of yourself. How can you possibly be so brave?”

  “Are you looking for an actual answer?” I take another step forward. “Or is this still part of your speech?”

  “Um…” She sniffles and wipes away a stray tear. “Both, I guess. I need answers, but I know you, which means I know you’ll have something on standby. A justification that brushes away how serious and soul-breaking this whole thing is.”