by R. J. Lewis
“No.”
“He would never let you leave.”
“That’s not your business.”
Reid stood straighter, puffing out a breath as he levelled me with a solid look. “Charlotte, Conor Thames doesn’t change. He will go back to prison. He will hurt you. It’s all he knows. I’ve seen it my whole life.”
I thought of Conor last night, cradling me to his chest, kissing me behind my ear. I thought of his beautiful smirk and glowing eyes and the passion in his lips when he devoured me.
Reid might have been right. I wasn’t going to be delusional about it.
But Conor was like crack to me. The thought of giving him up was unfathomable.
“Then I’ll wait,” I let out, surprising even myself. “I’ll wait for him to get out, and we’ll try again.”
Reid appeared bewildered, then angry all over again. “Don’t be like those girls, Charlotte. The dumb ones that fly back to these assholes and keep taking their bullshit.”
“Maybe past the surface it isn’t really like that.” I shrugged and took a step back, ending the conversation. “Maybe those girls have a reason, Reid.”
I left him standing there, hoping he wouldn’t follow.
He didn’t.
Thames
Whipping the pub door open, Thames stepped in and searched the place. He immediately spotted Jem behind the bar counter, talking to a random customer while watching a game on the television overhead. He was laughing – what a fucker – and Thames felt his palms twitch with irritation. This shit had a lot to answer to.
“Jem,” he growled out, glaring at the asshole.
Jem looked up and his stance went all tight when he found Thames inside his pub looking like he wanted to kick his fucking ass. And he did. Thames wanted to destroy him.
Excusing himself, Jem hurried to Thames with arms up in surrender. Fucker knew exactly what was wrong.
“Conor,” he started, “I didn’t tell you because there was nothing to say.”
“Nothing to say?” Thames retorted. “The fucker showed up at my mother’s house, Jem, and I had no fucking idea he was Charlotte’s stepbrother. She was flipping the fuck out.”
Jem nodded in understanding. He was trying to tame the beast, but Thames was past the point of taming.
“Conor, I didn’t know any of that because Charlotte never went home.”
“You omitted information.”
“Because he’s a seedy little fuck that hangs around the corner, chasing after hookers. What’s there to know about him? He hardly went home, either. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If there was bad blood, I couldn’t find traces of it.”
Thames stormed past him and took a seat in front of the bar. His heart was thumping wildly in his chest. He let out a long breath, trying to contain his emotions, but all he could see was her frightened face and the taillights of a grey car last night.
Maybe he was hyper-focusing. His mind was a broken record with the same thoughts spinning in circles inside his head, tormenting him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right about it all.
Jem rounded the bar and went straight to him. “You want something to cool off?” he offered.
Thames glanced behind Jem at the large selection of liquor and slowly shook his head. “Need to stay off that shit, Jem.”
“Yeah.”
“That fucker showed up last night.”
Now, Jem’s brows came together. “Who?”
“The vampire stepbrother. He was in front of my house.”
Jem rubbed at his forehead. “You confront him, or is he in a ditch somewhere?”
“His car was in front of the house for a few minutes. Then he drove off.”
Jem rested his elbow on the counter and leaned closer to him. “You need to explain, man.”
Ugh. Fuck.
Grabbing someone’s empty mug, Thames slid it in front of him and began spinning it around.
“I got up last night,” he explained. “I had a piss and when I looked out the window, I saw him.”
“And you’re sure it was him?”
“Grey car. Toyota. Charlotte confirmed his car to me this morning.”
“What time was this?”
Holy fuck, what was with the interrogation?
“Jem, what the hell?”
“It would have been dark out, Thames. How do you know for certain it was him?”
Thames went quiet. Fucker couldn’t confirm it was him. See, now he started to second guess himself.
“But what are the chances?” he argued.
Jem shrugged. “I mean, there are a lot of cars, Thames, and that’s a common car.”
Considering his words, he took a deeper breath. Okay, it was possible, he supposed. Maybe he was tired and seeing shit. Maybe it was just any other driver.
Only, his gut twisted apart inside him.
“This fucker is bad news,” he told Jem firmly.
Jem nodded. “Okay, we can do something about that, Conor. If he’s coming around the house, install some cameras. We’ll keep an eye out on him, learn his movements, see if he’s actually a problem. We can’t get our hands dirty every time. We need you here, not in prison.”
This was why he needed Jem. He reasoned with him and never tried to tell him he was wrong. He focused on the next step, while Thames’ idea of fixing the problem was to beat the man out of town.
Thames stared into the mug, at the last few bubbles popping at the bottom of the glass. Then he slid it in Jem’s direction.
“You’re right,” he said on a nod. “We’ll keep an eye out.”
Jem smiled, and Thames spotted his hidden relief. “Good, Thames. It could be nothing, it could be something. We’ll have our finger on the pulse.”
“I want him out of Blackwater.”
“We can do that. Let’s just watch the situation. I’m more interested to know why the fuck he is working for your uncle. Now that shit is coincidental.”
“Probably to do with Reid.” Thames shrugged. “Knowing that smartass little fucker, he would have wanted to get to Charlotte. That’s assuming he knows their history.”
Thames’ jaw ticked at the thought Reid knew more about it than him. Charlotte was closed down last night at the mention of that fucker, and he was too rattled to press for information because he would have flown off the handle if he knew she’d been hurt by the asshole.
“I’m thinking he’s abusive,” Jem speculated, frowning. “He smiled at her the way an older sibling does when they’ve gotten away with something. Maybe he bullied her at home.”
Maybe.
Or maybe he’d physically hurt her too.
“Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out,” Jem promised.
That pacified Thames. Letting out a long breath, he hopped off the stool. Withdrawing the car keys from his pocket, he rested it on the counter. “You need your car back.”
“No, man, you can have it for a while longer. I’ve got a Corvette out back that mostly collected dust before I took it out. You enjoy the truck.”
On that thought…“I’m thinking of doing a re-build again.”
“No way.”
“Yeah, my dad half-finished a Jaguar E-type. It’s been sitting in the garage, dying.”
“What year?”
“1973.”
“Holy shit, Thames, that would be fucking great to sink your teeth into a project. You can flip that fucker too. Big market for classic cars.”
Thames nodded, a bubble of excitement racing through his blood. He had always loved putting shit together, especially a beautiful engine. His entire childhood had been spent on the hood of a car, watching his father expertly repair cars and rebuild them.
“I want to open up a shop too,” he found himself saying. “Nothing to do with our shit. Just something for myself on the side.”
Jem nodded. “I like that, Conor. Maybe you can run your uncle to the ground. He charges an arm and a leg at his auto shop, and don’t get me started
when he talked about selling the place once upon a time. The price would give you herpes.”
“That’s just his ego hyper-inflating the worth of that place.”
There was only so much you could sell an auto body shop for in a small town like Blackwater. Though Thames would have given anything to have it back, it wasn’t for income purposes. It was strictly sentimental.
“I’ll go for a browse,” he said. “See what’s out there.”
“How’s your girl doing, by the way?”
The question was so random, Thames paused. “Why you asking?”
Jem shrugged, looking uneasy. “I’ve got this weird fucking feeling in my chest that I didn’t know she had qualms that bad for her stepbro.”
“That feeling is called sympathy.”
“I don’t like it.”
Thames smirked. “She’s alright, I think.”
He hoped.
“What are her plans? She’s finishing school. Is she going to college next?”
Thames frowned. “I didn’t ask.”
Shrugging, Jem replied, “If she needs a job that pays more than that coffee shithole, she can come work here. Would be better if we all kept a bit of an eye on her, in light of what we’re speculating about her brother. But don’t tell her I offered. Let her come around and ask, and I’ll play hard to get.”
Now Thames’ heart wasn’t thumping so bad anymore. Whatever adrenaline was threatening to poke through the surface had died. Jem was a good guy. He was hard, sure, but he would do anything for Thames.
“I appreciate it, man. I’ll let her know.”
As he left the pub, he realized he hadn’t stopped to consider what Charlotte’s plans were. It seemed a given she’d be kicking around Blackwater, otherwise she would have mentioned something. If he got rid of the stepbrother, made the house a sanctuary and gave her good experiences in Blackwater, she would find no reason to leave. He was certain of that.
He jumped into the truck and drove to the nearest phone shop. He was starting from scratch yet again, and this time he had to make sure he wasn’t going to wind up back in the slammer.
Chapter Thirteen
Charlotte
The last day of school had me sitting on the swings of a nearby park, flipping through my report card during lunch hour. I looked over the important stuff. Math was equivalent to an A-. English was B+ (bet that hurt Landry’s soul to grade). Physics was a clean A. And the rest were filler classes to finish off my credits.
Not bad.
Dad would be proud.
When I went back to the city, I’d swing by his grave and have a word to him. I’d come to Blackwater broken but angry. If he hadn’t been drinking behind the wheel, he wouldn’t have crashed into that tree – in front of me.
I could still hear the echoes of screeching metal, the big boom that followed and haunted me for months, until I learned to suppress that day. It helped I didn’t see his body flung out of the windshield, lying lifelessly on the road. I’d known better to keep still, even though impulse wanted me to rush to the scene.
“Hey, bitch.” Laura’s voice broke through my thoughts.
I turned my head, smiling at her brightly as she took a seat on the swing next to me. She wasn’t in uniform. The last day was dress-down day. Everyone had worn their best outfits. I was in black tights and a white sporty crop top. Laura was wearing tight jeans and a gothic style shirt with slashes across the front. I could see her pink bra poke through, along with a lot of questionable red marks on her abdomen. I wanted to ask what they were, but I didn’t want to pry.
“Where’s Jamie?” I asked, scanning around us.
“He was talking to his school counsellor, last I checked. He was trying to figure out what he wanted to study, which I think is stupid.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think any of us know what the fuck we want to do at this age. I feel like we’re being forced out into the real world with all this stress hanging over us. I don’t know what I’m going to want to be in five years-time. What if it changes? Then I’d end up going to work hating my job while having to pay off a cunt ton of student debt, and because that shit is traumatizing enough, I don’t think I’d be able to afford to study something else and go through that whole grind again.”
I smiled at her. “You’re reading my mind.”
Kicking the sand under her boot, she shrugged again. “Maybe it’s better we don’t jump into it.”
“Go to a regular job, you mean.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t want these next few years to be about exams and student poverty.”
I took her words into consideration, pondering them. “But what if we wind up at a regular job and the more time that passes, the less motivation we have to do something else?”
“You’re assuming we only have this window of opportunity.”
“That’s what they’ve been shoving down our throats, isn’t it?”
She bunched her lips to the side. “Yeah.”
This had been weighing on me the last couple weeks. Not particularly the studying part, but more that I was going to leave Conor behind, and I didn’t know if I should do that. I tried to work out how we would work. The city was a four drive away. It wasn’t that bad if you had a car, but I wasn’t even driving yet, and I didn’t want Conor to make the trek just to see me.
The last two weeks had been nothing short of bliss. He was calm and affectionate. He’d bought me flowers last week saying, “You like pink flowers, right? Girls like pink shit.”
The adrenaline fuelled side of him had been absent. It would be given how many times he’d fucked me. Every day, twice a day, sometimes in the middle of the night too, though I wondered why the hell he was up that late.
Just the other day I’d woken up early in the morning and found the bed empty. I’d heard grinding coming from outside, and I walked the short distance to a decent looking workshop in the backyard. I’d found him in dirty overalls, hunched over an old black car with machinery laying around.
“What’s going on here?” I’d asked, smiling.
When he saw me, he broke out with a huge smile. God, he always looked so beautiful when he smiled that big. It reminded me of the photo in Megan’s house of him on that bike. That same dimpled grin with a boyish edge to it.
“I’m putting my dad’s last project together,” he’d explained, looking chuffed. “He was halfway done. I’m thinking I’ll sell it when I’m finished, and maybe we can go away for a bit this summer with the proceeds. Consider it mad money. I’ll get you a skin-tight dress, the type that makes your ass poke out when you bend over.”
I was red from laughing. “What’s the point? You’ll end up tearing it off.”
“I’ll keep it on, then. We’ll make it lingerie.”
My eyes slowly trekked down his body. “Then we’ll make your overalls lingerie too.”
“You like a dirty man, Charlotte?”
“So long as that man is you.”
He came to me, his hands filthy with grease and oil. I didn’t care, though. I was wearing his “after fuck” clothes anyway. He had wrapped his arms around me and pulled me firmly to his front and into his hard abdomen. He smelled like metal and musk, and for some crazy reason, my ovaries went wild and my centre tightened.
“You drive me crazy, Charlotte,” he’d murmured, kissing my lips softly.
If he only knew what he had done to me.
“You got a weird look on your face,” said Laura. “You thinking of Thames?”
I hid a smile and kicked the front of my flats into the sand. “Is it wrong I can’t stop?”
She laughed. “If I had a guy like Conor Thames in my life, I wouldn’t be on a swing looking over my report card. I’d make sure he was balls deep in me.”
I laughed so hard my ribs hurt. My forehead pressed against the swing chain as I fought for breath. “You’re naughty, Laura Thomas.”
Laura smiled broadly. “I think someone as manly as h
im could bring out the naughty side of a nun.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes. “I think you’re right. You know, all the chicks at school are suddenly being so nice to me.”
“Cool by proximity. They want to get close to Thames and think they can only do it by getting close to you. Is it working?”
I scoffed, offended she was even asking. “Fuck no. I mean, there are nice girls that never gave me a hard time and we’ve been chill, but people like Millie can kiss my ass.”
“Is she still being a bitch to you?”
I shook my head. “No, she complimented my hair last week.”
“What’d you do to it?”
“Nothing. My hair hasn’t changed once.”
“Sneaky Millie.”
Turning to her, I leaned my swing in her direction and squeezed her arm. “You’ve been the only person that’s been there for me, Laura.”
Now she looked away, a timid blush forming in her cheeks. “I’m glad you think so, Char. I hated what they did to you. You know, I thought you were one of those bitches at the start of the year and that your niceness was fake, but after what happened, you never changed once. You never tried to impress anybody. I knew you were genuine.”
Now it was my turn to blush. “Look at us, complimenting each other.”
“That’s what girls should do. We should be picking each other up, not tearing each other down. It’s a shame St Helen’s was filled with a bunch of vain, shallow bitches.”
Every time I heard the word shallow, I thought of Max Locke. I hadn’t seen him since that conversation in Megan’s house. Conor mentioned he was a workaholic, and he was vague about it too, like he didn’t want to discuss just what it was exactly that Locke did.
Of course, it was illegal.
I resisted rolling my eyes.
“Hey ladies,” Jamie said, approaching us.
We smiled at him. He was wearing a salmon coloured button up that made his tan skin glow over faded jeans. His hair was brushed to the side and his aviators were the perfect added touch. I suddenly wished it had been dress-down day every day.
“Did you get what you needed sorted?” I asked as he sat on the final swing on the other side of me.