Burn in Hail

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “I’ve never had a beer before,” I informed him. “Do they taste good?”

  His eyes sparkled.

  “Try it.”

  I watched him as I used my nails to crack it open, and when I took my first drink and nearly choked on the bitter brew, his eyes were filled with laughter.

  “That’s kind of gross,” I admitted, sticking my tongue out to help get rid of the taste. “Why would you want to drink this?”

  I took another sip and yep, that one was as bad, if not worse, than the first one.

  “Acquired taste,” he said. “Keep drinking, it’ll get better.”

  I didn’t believe him, but took another sip without grimacing.

  “As to answer your question, the kitchen was the one thing that’d been started when I bought the house. I only had to put in the cabinets. The paint color was already neutral, which is what I would’ve chosen as well. The backsplash goes in Monday, hopefully, and it will be followed up by the countertops coming in on Friday.”

  As he spoke, I watched his face, and realized that he loved doing this.

  “Why do you work at the shop with Travis and the Hails when you could be doing this full time?” I questioned him.

  He shrugged.

  “They have insurance.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “I’m sure that’s not the only reason,” I teased and took another sip of the beer he’d handed me.

  It wasn’t as bad that time, but still, I placed my drink down on the counter and started to inspect his work.

  My eyes went to the wall where the wood trim met the wood of the walls. “Is this shiplap?”

  He grunted. “I was doing it before Joanna Gaines.”

  I started to giggle. “I guess you were otherwise occupied when they got famous.”

  He gave me a droll look, then took my hand. “Grab your beer, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

  I grabbed my beer and followed behind him, periodically taking a drink while I took in everything he wanted to do to the place, and everything he was going to leave as it was.

  By the time we’d reached the second floor—and his bedroom—I was in love with the large, old house.

  “This place is going to be magnificent when you’re through,” I told him. “I’d love to live here. Mine is nice, and I’d love to own something similar, but it always seemed like a lot of upkeep, so I’ve never taken the owners of the house up on their offer. I’m not really cut out for doing this kind of stuff.”

  His eyes twinkled.

  “Sure you are,” he said, pushing the bathroom door open and letting me get my first glimpse of the master bath.

  And I fell in love. Utterly in love.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “It’s a clawfoot tub! Is this the original?”

  He nodded his head and followed me inside, taking in the room with a much more critical eye than I was sure that I had.

  “This will be perfect once you get a fresh coat of paint on the walls. The floor is odd, with all that mismatched wood, but I love it.”

  He looked down.

  “This being the bathroom, I wasn’t sure I was going to leave the wood. Wood rots when it gets wet, but my uncle did a fantastic job at keeping the water off the floor in here. The floors in the other bathrooms have already been replaced with tile, but this one is all original.” He scuffed his boot on the floor, and smiled down at it.

  I agreed. This floor was pretty beautiful. The slats of wood were a lot smaller than I was used to seeing as hardwood floors went.

  “I think you should shiplap that wall,” I told him, pointing to the wall that was closest to the tub. “Make this room really pop.”

  He walked over to the wall, with its dark green wallpaper, and reached up to the ceiling—yes, I said the ceiling—and took a hold of the corner of the left most piece, then pulled it down.

  It didn’t all come down in one piece like I was expecting, but what it did do was show me enough that there was already shiplap on the walls behind the paper.

  “Why would anyone want to cover that up?” I mused. “The nerve of some people.”

  He grunted. “They’ll probably say the same thing about us in twenty years when they get a load of what we’re decorating with now.”

  I agreed. They probably would.

  I walked up to where he was standing and started to peel off more of the wallpaper that I could reach. He helped, and in twenty minutes, we mostly had all of the paper off the wall, and I was amazed with what was revealed behind it.

  “It’s like a perfect little farmhouse wall,” I told him. “I wouldn’t do a single thing but maybe sand this to get all the stray pieces of wallpaper off it.”

  He didn’t say anything, causing me to look up at him. When I did, it was to find him staring at me with amusement.

  “What?”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about fixing up your own house?”

  I blushed.

  “I could probably do the easy stuff like this,” I said. “But I’ve never sanded. Never cut a board. Never done much of anything like that.”

  He trailed one of his fingers down the length of my neck, and a shiver stole over my body.

  “I can teach you anything you want to know, little rebel.”

  I huffed out a laugh.

  “Little rebel?”

  He fingered my now very short hair that was now cut and styled around the top of my shoulder. It was much shorter than I would’ve liked, but it did, I had to admit, look cute.

  “Little rebel,” he confirmed. “You’re a little rebel that doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I like that in a person.”

  I licked my suddenly dry lips.

  “We shouldn’t have done what we did,” I admitted softly…hesitantly.

  He knew what I meant, but I couldn’t make myself say any more.

  I didn’t want it to be over with. I didn’t want to admit that we’d taken it too far.

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “But we’re going to do it again.”

  I winced. “We crossed a moral line.”

  His eyes felt like they were lasering into me as he said, “Do I look like a man that gives a fuck about moral lines?”

  I bit my lip.

  “You, maybe not. Me? Do I look like a woman that doesn’t care about moral lines?”

  His hand curled around my head—yes, I do mean my entire head…he had big hands—and he pulled me to him until I was inches away from his mouth.

  “How about you let me worry about your morals for a little while?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t want you to go back to jail.”

  It was purely selfish. The reason I didn’t want him to go back to prison had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. I knew that I wouldn’t like not seeing him.

  Sure, I’d be worried for him if he had to go back, and honestly, that was pretty big too.

  However, I just plain didn’t want him to go, because I would miss him.

  “Not going back to jail, sweetheart,” he told me bluntly. “Got out on good behavior. Saved a guard from getting himself dead. Trust me when I say, I’m not going back.”

  I pursed my lips. “If you weren’t going back, what’s with all the business of anger management with me, or the fact that you have to see the parole officer?”

  He pulled me in closer—which I didn’t think was possible—and spoke only millimeters away from my lips.

  “Bureaucratic bullshit,” he admitted. “They have to play the part. The man I saved, though? He was someone important. Didn’t know it at the time, but now I do. We’re talking the nephew of the goddamn president important. Why he was working in a prison, I still have yet to find out, but whatever. I was seriously minutes away from getting pardoned completely when I told them I didn’t want the easy way out. They gave me this.”

  “But why?”

  The thought of him getting ou
t, completely unscathed, for something that he’d done was appealing. Who wouldn’t want to be pardoned? That was like getting a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I’d have taken it in a New York minute.

  “Because that’s cheating,” he admitted. “And I’m no cheater.”

  I bit my lip and looked at him.

  He was so close my eyes almost had to cross to see him clearly.

  However, the only thing touching me was the warm, huge palm of his hand that was still curled around my head, and nothing else.

  Just as I was about to reach out and touch him, he stepped away, dropping his hand from my face as he did.

  “I talked to your father.”

  And that was the one true way to turn everything off inside of me.

  I looked away from his intense gaze. A gaze that was taking everything about me in, and missing nothing. Not one single thing.

  He saw the flinch that I couldn’t stop.

  He saw the way my face paled, and my forehead instantly broke out in a sweat.

  He also noticed the way my hand automatically went to my hair—or where my hair would’ve once been.

  “How many times did he cut your hair like that when you were younger?”

  I shrugged. I’d lost count.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “A few.”

  A lot.

  But who was counting?

  “I can count eleven instances,” he said. “And that was when I was home.”

  I started to study the planks on the wall, trying to think about anything but what he was saying.

  Eleven.

  I wanted to laugh.

  It was more like forty-five, but again, who was counting?

  Not me. No, sir.

  I was a lying whore.

  I knew the exact number of times.

  I looked down at my arm.

  I remembered sliding that cool piece of metal over my wrists.

  I’d never broken skin. No, but I remembered the slide. The slight sting. The way there was a red mark there for days as it slowly faded to nothing.

  “Then I started to think about the times that you weren’t at church, or with your father when he was out and about in town,” he continued as if he weren’t breaking my heart. “I remember that time at the town Christmas tree lighting when you were a senior in high school. I’d seen you that morning. I’d said hi. You’d told me how much you were looking forward to watching the tree lit up…then you never showed. I looked for you.”

  That time…yeah that had been a bad one.

  I remembered seeing Tate that day. He’d been wearing a green long sleeved Carhartt t-shirt, brown boots, and faded blue jeans that were dirty as hell. He’d been working on his car or something, because he’d had grease all over every available surface of his clothes.

  He’d been home on leave, and I’d been so freakin’ excited to see him that I could barely keep the excitement out of my voice.

  What he thought was excitement for the tree lighting ceremony had actually been excitement at seeing him home, healthy and whole.

  “Then I thought about all those times that Krisney went to dances, football games, and such. When people would ask her where you were, she’d tell them that your father was strict, and wouldn’t let you attend school functions…or any functions where he couldn’t be there.”

  I pursed my lips.

  My father hadn’t allowed me to go to those. In fact, he hadn’t allowed me to go to much of anything unless it was the grocery store—because who the hell could get into trouble going there?

  Apparently, I could.

  That same day of the tree lighting, I’d gone to the grocery store, which was where I’d seen Tate. My father had allowed me to go to the grocery store by myself, but being the evil bastard that he was, he’d followed me there.

  He’d always been suspicious. Things that I thought were normal—like saying hi to a man that had been deployed and had come home—were not normal to him. What they were to him, were immoral.

  I’d been talking to a man. I’d been having lustful thoughts about a man that he’d hated.

  Hence why he’d beaten me so badly that I could barely stand for a week afterward.

  Luckily, it’d been Christmas break, allowing me to hide in my house for weeks and heal instead of going to school and having to explain away my stiff gait.

  It was bad enough that Krisney assumed she knew what was going on. Though, she always assumed something much tamer than what was actually going on.

  Krisney thought that I just had a strict father—one that thought I should have short hair.

  What she didn’t know was that on any and every occasion that my father saw fit, he’d teach me what he thought was the way of God. Thou shalt not lust after a man. Thou shalt not have impure thoughts. Thou shalt not curse, lie, or steal.

  The one and only time that I’d cursed had been in the kitchen when I’d slammed my finger in a drawer. It’d been the word ‘crap.’

  My father had heard it, and had come barreling out of his office while ripping his belt from his belt loops.

  “The day that you wore those pretty clothes at the church picnic,” my stomach clenched. That time had been one of the worst that I’d ever experienced.

  Giving him hours to stew, to think about what he was going to do to me as he waited for the church picnic to be over, had been one that I never wanted to think about ever again.

  I started to lift my shirt, yanking it up and over my head as I stared at him with a challenge in my eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I told him.

  Then I started in on my pants.

  I knew that a man could be distracted by sex, and that was what I needed—a big distraction.

  I knew that my body wasn’t beautiful.

  Hell, it wasn’t even cute.

  I had stretch marks on my hips from my hyperactive growth as a child—at least in my mind’s eyes.

  I was five foot seven. If I had heels on, that was.

  Five foot four if I didn’t.

  But apparently growing from four foot eight to five foot four in six months was enough to make my hips hate me forever.

  Then there were my boobs.

  They were too big for a short girl like me, and it was hard as hell to find anything to fit them that didn’t look completely at odds with my small stature.

  My hips were round, and my thighs left a lot to be desired.

  They would never not touch, no matter how much I may want them not to.

  And my arms—well the fat on them would always swing in the wind if I had the windows down.

  But for some reason, Tate seemed to like my body.

  He seemed to find the things I hated most, attractive.

  “We’re not done talking about this,” he said as he watched me work on my pants. “Not to mention I didn’t invite you over here to do that.”

  I froze with my pants halfway over my ass.

  Then I felt stupid.

  Bringing them back up into position, I started buttoning them.

  I was going to cry.

  Literally, tears were stinging my eyes, and I wanted nothing more to do than go home and put this god-awful, shitty day behind me.

  Tomorrow, I’d start over.

  Tomorrow, I might very well look for a job somewhere else.

  I knew better than to come home.

  Stupidly, I’d let Krisney convince me, though. She didn’t know about all that went on with my father. I should’ve told her. Maybe then she would’ve encouraged me to go to a different city.

  Maybe then I’d be living the dream somewhere else, without my father breathing down my back, or the allure of a man that I knew didn’t really want forever with me.

  Tate wasn’t a forever kind of guy.

  Not that I didn’t think that he wasn’t capable of giving me forever, but because I knew he didn’t want forever. If Tate Casey didn
’t want something, then he didn’t do it. It was as simple as that.

  I wasn’t sure if I could ever move on from him…

  A mouth slammed down onto mine, and I took a deep breath in through my mouth, gasping in surprise at the ferociousness of the kiss.

  “Get.” He pressed another hot kiss to my mouth. “Out.” Another, this one even deeper. “Of your head.”

  I moaned and felt my knees get weak.

  I’d kissed men before, sure. But kissing men, and kissing Tate? That wasn’t a comparison I was willing to even entertain putting a number to.

  Tate wasn’t in a league with other men. Tate was in a league of his own, one that only he could compete in. Honestly, it was unfair.

  He had the power to take everything I had to give, and I wasn’t sure he was willing to give anything back.

  Did that stop me from threading my arms around his neck? No.

  Did that stop me from pressing my breasts into his upper belly? Again, no.

  Did that stop me from spreading my legs when his hand went down the gap in the back of my jeans? Hell no.

  I was his puppet.

  He could do anything to me that he wanted, and I’d do everything in my power to make it easier for him. Why? Because I was a whore for Tate.

  Other men, no. Tate? Hell fucking yes.

  “Don’t like to see your face lookin’ like that,” he told me, pulling back so that I could see his eyes.

  My eyes were likely dazed, and I knew that he knew what he did to me.

  Again, I did nothing. Said nothing.

  “This look, though?” he grinned that devilish grin. “Fuckin’ love it.”

  Hearing ‘love’ come out of his mouth was damn near debilitating.

  In fact, my heart was now pounding even harder, even though he’d done nothing but say a simple word.

  I swallowed thickly when I felt the tip of one large finger swirl around the wetness of my entrance.

  My eyelids grew heavy, and I bit my lip as I held my breath.

  Everything inside of me screamed for me to urge him on, tell him anything to make him give me more.

  But I knew better. Tate did what he wanted when he wanted. He didn’t work on anybody else’s time table but his own.

  So when he just kept teasing—kept swirling that finger—spreading my wetness further and further out in broadening circles, I did nothing but spread my legs wider. I gave him what he asked for without actually asking.