Cold Hard Truth

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  “I never thought it was.” Max stopped walking and clicked the key fob in his hand. The headlights on a jeep flashed, and the doors unlocked. “Now hop in.”

  Emmie glanced over the jeep. It was black. It was awesome. Of course it was awesome. It was Max Shepherd’s.

  “Why are you always so nice?” she asked when he opened the door for her.

  “I told you when we were outside the restaurant. I think you’re the good thing that’s come my way.” He slipped her backpack off her shoulders and held it while she climbed in. Emmie marveled at how he could say something like that without it sounding completely cheesy. It was like he…like he meant it.

  “You’re wrong.”

  He handed Emmie her bag as if it were weightless, but it landed heavily in her lap.

  He hadn’t responded to her warning, so Emmie gestured in the direction of her car and then to herself. “You can see how big a mess I am. I’m not a ‘good thing.’”

  “Messes I understand,” he said with a shrug. “It’s the people who’ve got it all figured out that confuse me.”

  Max walked around the front of the jeep, and as he did, Emmie was thinking: What is this life I’m living? Because this moment was clearly not meant for her. He was a beautiful person—not only to look at, but in the way he cared what happened to her. She hadn’t had such beauty in her life for…maybe forever.

  Max unsnapped his letter jacket and started the ignition.

  “It’s a defense mechanism,” Emmie said. “Me pushing people away.”

  Max made an amused sound and pushed his knit cap off his forehead so it slouched off the back of his head. “Now you sound like my therapist.”

  “You have a therapist?”

  “You don’t?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

  The surprise in his voice got Emmie’s back up, and she mustered up as much sarcasm as she could. “Should I?”

  “I’d say so. Now where to? Exactly?”

  Emmie groaned, then gave him directions, all the while wondering if he’d ever use them again. She couldn’t imagine why he would. It wasn’t like Jimmy or Frankie could trash her car twice. Though…if they could make her pay twice for what she did to Nick, she knew they would.

  “Okay,” Max said. “Let’s go. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Emmie sucked in a breath, startled by the unbidden memory of Nick Peters saying those same words as he jumped into the car, bulging bag of stolen money in hand.

  Let’s go, let’s go! Why are you still standing there? Pigeon, get going. We gotta get the hell out of here.

  With the heels of her hands pressed to her forehead, she forced away the memory. When her mind was clear, she glanced in Max’s direction and allowed herself the luxury of looking at him while his eyes were trained on the road.

  She liked the way his dark hair was always rumpled-looking on top, and the way it curled around his ears and up at the back of his neck. She doubted he ever combed it. She liked the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, and she liked the bent line of his nose. But most of all, and particularly right now, she liked how he made her feel safe and how he took her mind off the fact that her car was headed for sheet-metal heaven.

  When Emmie’s eyes made it to Max’s mouth, she found a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Like what you see?” he asked.

  Emmie jerked around to face front. “Shut up, Shepherd.”

  “You’re going to call me Shepherd now?”

  “Only when you look so smug.”

  Emmie pointed to her house, and Max pulled up along the curb. Her father wasn’t home from work yet and wouldn’t be for at least two hours. Two hours to figure out an explanation for why she was home without her car.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Emmie said as she opened the passenger door, but she froze in her seat when she spotted the tiny grass skirt, crisp as springtime against the snow-dusted sidewalk. She’d recognize it anywhere. It was the hula girl from her car. Or at least…part of her.

  All the blood in Emmie’s body rushed out of her head and down her arms, leaving her with a cold chill that had nothing to do with the weather. They were here. They know where Dad lives.

  “What is it?”

  Emmie’s voice shook. “I think I’m in trouble.”

  Max reached toward her, but she was already getting out of the jeep and slamming the door behind her. A second later, Max’s door opened, then closed. He caught up to Emmie just as she was picking the tattered plastic grass from the snow.

  “Emmie?” he asked, snapping up his letter jacket against the cold.

  “It’s from the hula girl that used to be in my car.” Emmie looked up at her house and hesitated. “Would you come inside with me?” Her whole body was trembling now, and she pushed one hand against her chest to steady her shallow breaths.

  “No, you stay here,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”

  Max got halfway up the driveway on the side of the house before Emmie realized she couldn’t let him go alone. She ran up behind him, and even though he swung his hand out to stop her, she reached the steps that led from the driveway to the kitchen first.

  It was impossible to miss the arms. Two slender, plastic limbs, hands delicately posed, crisscrossed on the top step like an X that marks the spot. Max cursed under his breath.

  Emmie scooped up the arms and put them in her pocket with the grass skirt. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, but after what Max said to her in the school parking lot, about liking how she wasn’t a wimp, she wasn’t going to let him see her cry. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  Emmie fumbled her key out of her bag, but it wasn’t necessary. The mere pressure of her hand against the handle allowed the back door to fall open. Max pushed around to get in front of her, like he planned to be some kind of human shield. Emmie stepped into the kitchen and peered under his arm. The hula girl’s severed head was sitting on a glass pie plate in the middle of the floor.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A LITTLE BIT OF GLUE

  Before Max even had the chance to ask, Emmie said, “I can’t tell you.”

  Her knees swayed like they were about to give way, but that was the only sign she was even remotely affected, and she had herself under control a second later. Max heard her voice in his head, right after she was nearly crushed at the Goodwill. I’ve never seen freaking out do anyone any good. How did she do it?

  Max pulled her in to him, circling his arms around her. It was instinct. If he had thought about it, he would never have done it. She’d never given him any indication that this was something she wanted him to do, in fact, far from it. But this time she didn’t pull away.

  The unexpected intimacy shocked him. He didn’t understand her obvious aversion to physical contact—even the most trivial, like a handshake—but he’d seen it often enough: the flash of fear in her eyes when nothing else seemed to scare her, the stiffening of her shoulders, the straightening of her spine. As if a hand could burn her.

  The fact that she now lay so calmly against his chest was huge. Important. He didn’t want to do anything to ruin this perfect moment. Still, he couldn’t help but tighten his hold as he puzzled out his own feelings. If he had to name them, he felt like a little boy with a broken toy. Just as sad, and looking for a bit of glue. Wondering who was going to put it back together for him.

  But Emmie wasn’t a toy, and deep down he knew that whatever was going on with her, it wouldn’t be that easy to fix. Even though he was holding her close, he felt the familiar panic of needing to get to someone who was just out of reach. He closed his eyes and willed the memories to stay at bay. He pushed them like the ice under his skates. He pushed at the memories until they were far, far behind him.

  Emmie abruptly pulled away from Max and turned her back. She picked up the pie plate and set it on the counter.

  For a second, Max wondered if Emmie’s hot-cold reaction had something to do with the baby rumors Katie and Lauren had told him about, but that didn’t seem to lin
e up with whatever seriously scary thing was happening to her now. Unless…maybe…the guy hadn’t wanted Emmie to give the baby up? That was possible. Was all that was happening retribution for that?

  “Please tell me,” he said. “How do you keep yourself together like this? Any normal person would be freaking out.”

  “I’ve never seen freaking—”

  “I know. You’ve said that before. You’ve never seen it do anyone any good.”

  She took a deep breath and bowed her head as if she was considering something. Max held his breath, afraid even the tiniest noise would change her course.

  “Last year…” Emmie looked up. “Last year, this guy I knew, B. J…He was shooting up.” She paused, maybe to judge his reaction. Max kept his face blank, and he tried not to think too hard about Kyle’s words: I didn’t know she ran with that crowd.

  Emmie inhaled and continued. “A little bit later, he wasn’t moving. When we realized what was happening, everyone started yelling that he’d OD’d. No one knew what to do. This one guy, Nick…” She swallowed hard as if his name was a jagged pill. “Nick didn’t want a dead guy in his kitchen, so two of the other guys carried B. J. to a parking lot across the street. They just left him there. There was all this panic and fighting. No one was thinking straight.”

  “I’m sure not,” Max said, urging her on, though his mind was racing. Was Emmie into drugs? She didn’t seem the type. Hell, he’d somehow gotten the impression she didn’t even drink, and now she was talking about shooting up? Without being obvious, he did a quick scan of her body looking for…He didn’t know what. If she was into that, there would be some kind of physical sign, right?

  Emmie nodded. “No one called 911 or anything. I finally did, but only when Nick wasn’t paying attention, and not until it was too late. As it turned out, B. J. wasn’t actually dead. At least not in Nick’s kitchen. He ended up dying of hypothermia in that parking lot. If I’d called earlier, he’d probably still be alive. It’s my fault.”

  “Emmie…” Max said her name slowly. Softly. Was this why she was on the work crew? Had she been charged with something as serious as…He couldn’t even think the word.

  “If I could go back and do things differently, I seriously would. Freaking out didn’t help any of us. I never let myself lose control after that.” She looked up then, her eyes wide and her face pale. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

  Max stepped closer, wanting to touch her, as if that could make everything better. It was a dumb thing to think, but it was all he had. She winced, and he pulled his hand back.

  “Forget I told you all of that.”

  “Not likely,” he said. He reached toward her again and let the backs of his fingers brush against her arm. Testing her before he got any closer. “Why do you think any of that was your fault? At least, more than that kid’s own fault. Or those other guys who left him?”

  She swayed again, and Max wrapped his fingers around her elbow to steady her. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing you can do. Except maybe stay with me until my dad gets home?” Her breath heated his cotton T-shirt, and she tentatively wrapped her arms around his waist.

  Max’s stomach muscles tensed, and his lungs inflated with a quick intake of breath. She turned her head to the side, pressing her ear against his chest. Max wondered if she could hear how fast his heart was beating.

  “But I can’t tell you anything more than that,” she said. She inhaled, then released a shattering breath.

  There was more then. Katie must have been right about the baby thing. That had to be what Emmie was referring to. Max didn’t know how that would make anything she’d already told him worse, and he felt compelled to assure her of that.

  “I already heard about the baby, and I don’t think anything bad of you for it.”

  Emmie stiffened, and Max hoped it wasn’t exactly the wrong thing to say. He hoped his words wouldn’t break the spell, because this whole moment felt like something out of a dream. Both the good kind that left him warm and tingling and wishing he’d never woken up, and the bad kind that left him sweating and tearing at his sheets.

  Emmie tipped her head back and stared into his eyes, her eyebrows pulling together in confusion.

  Max kept his hands on her shoulders but stepped back so they could look at each other better. “I heard about the baby, and it’s okay. It was brave of you to give it up, and I don’t judge you for it. I don’t understand how getting pregnant has anything to do with all the other stuff, and you don’t have to explain that part if you don’t want to, but tell me why that guy—”

  “There’s no baby,” Emmie said with an exasperated eye roll.

  “I know. Katie told me how—”

  “I never had a baby.”

  “But people—”

  Emmie tossed her hands up as if she didn’t want to talk about it anymore and turned away. “They can think that. It’s easier that way.”

  “You mean…What are you saying? Lying about a baby is easier than what?”

  As soon as the question was out, Max wished he hadn’t asked it. There was a tightness around Emmie’s eyes that told him he’d taken a step too far. That was okay. He’d back off. He was glad his assumptions about that sleazy guy in the lowrider were wrong. The thought of his hands on Emmie…

  “Can I sit?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  Max sat down in a wooden kitchen chair. Emmie walked closer. Did she miss their physical contact too? Max wanted to take her hands in his. The hug before had been spontaneous and necessary. Holding her hands now would seem too deliberately intimate. He knew Emmie well enough to know that would be more than she’d allow.

  “That guy Saturday morning,” Max said, already forgetting about his resolution to back off. “The one in the car,” he added as if she didn’t know exactly which one he was talking about.

  There was a long pause. Emmie took a deep breath, then blurted out, “Jimmy and I were friends with that guy Nick I mentioned before. I had to testify against Nick in court for some other stuff. Now Nick’s in prison, and there’s a no-contact order. Nick’s not allowed to call me, so he had Jimmy deliver a message. Hence my car.”

  “Hence?”

  “Hence.”

  Max’s head went blank for a couple seconds, incapable of thought. Then the image of Dan, bristling when that guy Jimmy had pulled up in his car, flashed across his mind.

  “How bad a guy is Nick?” Max asked, feeling more and more separated from her, despite the closeness of their bodies. She’d lived a life he’d only seen on TV. It was a hell of a lot scarier in real life. He tried to look strong, but what Emmie was telling him made him feel weak in comparison. Like he was flattening into one of those action-hero cardboard cutouts that were propped up all over the movie theater.

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  “And you testified against him because…”

  She closed her eyes, then looked up at the ceiling before she walked past Max to the other side of the table. She sat down in a chair, facing him.

  “It doesn’t matter why,” she said, keeping her hands under the table. Despite the fact that there was no way for Max to hold them now, he took a little satisfaction in that he was starting to understand how they worked together. He’d press, she’d hide, he’d give her some time, and she’d give a little.

  “It does matter. Someone trashed your car and left a broken hula girl to make sure you know that they know where you live, and that they know how to get inside. Someone needs to make this right.” I need to make this right. Max shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans so Emmie wouldn’t see his fingers trembling.

  “Nick asked Jimmy to shake me up. Message received. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Max couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Assuming that’s all Nick asked of them, yeah, that’s all. Shit. I’m going to have to tell my dad about my car.”

  “Of course
you’re going to have to tell your dad. Your car is trashed. You’ll have to tell the police too.”

  She leaned forward and rested her forehead on the table’s surface. Despite her earlier explanation, Max still didn’t understand how she kept herself so controlled.

  Emmie sat up, lips pressed together, and reached into her coat pocket. She laid the hula girl’s disembodied arms and tattered skirt in the center of the table. She stared at them for a few seconds, then asked, “What do you think they did with the rest of her body?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LET ME TOUCH YOU

  Max’s temper flared, and his face felt hot. He was about to say that he had no effing idea what had happened to the doll’s body when he heard the hitch in Emmie’s voice and the subtle, unspoken meaning behind her question.

  He didn’t know if she was speaking about the past or worrying about the future, but someone had hurt Emmie. Hurt her body. There was no way anyone was going to touch her again. Not in that way, at least. Never with violence.

  If Max could be a force field around her, he would. If Emmie would let him, he would be there for her like he hadn’t been there for Jade. Guilt and shame had been gnawing at Max’s heart for a year now, but Emmie offered the chance to banish the beast. If he could help Emmie out in the process, then this was his shot at redemption.

  Emmie reached one hand across the table and gave his a squeeze. “Please don’t tell anyone about any of this.”

  Max looked down at her small hand on his. She was in her giving mode again. He didn’t know what she was specifically referring to when she told him not to tell. It didn’t sound like she’d done anything wrong, nothing that would deserve community work service. And she hadn’t told him that she’d been actually…hurt. As far as he was concerned, she was brave as hell for testifying against that asshole in prison. She hadn’t told Max what the guy had done either, but it had to be bad.

  Right now, in the midst of all this crazy, she’d chosen to open up to him, and Max was proud that she was letting him past her sharp corners. Right to the center. Was that because it was just the two of them here without the rest of the world looking in? Slowly but surely, the pieces of the Emmie jigsaw puzzle were falling into place for Max. She liked her privacy.