Fire and Love

by Erin Wright

  His voice broke and he swallowed hard. Taking a hard right, he began following a road up into the mountains, away from Sawyer. It was dangerous for him to be around people right now. He might hit someone and never see it coming.

  “They were taunting me – calling me names. Playing keep-away with the chips. I was just a kid and…I was dumb enough to fall into their trap. Looking back, I should’ve just walked away with my head held high. If I didn’t try to get the chips, then it wouldn’t be any fun, you know? They’d give up and find someone else to torture. But I was hungry and I was a kid and I was dumb.

  “And then there was Moose, wading into the group and knocking heads together. He hit a growth spurt before me, and he was the tallest kid in the class by a mile. He took them all by surprise, standing up to them like that. Of course, he got in trouble – sent to the principal’s office for fighting. We both ended up there, side by side, matching black eyes, almost identical other than his clothes didn’t look like shit and he didn’t smell like shit. His parents actually bathed him every night.

  “The principal called both Rocky and Steve. Rocky came to the school and picked Moose up; Steve told the principal where he could stick his phone and hung up on him. When I got home after school, Steve beat me for causing him problems.”

  His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel, turning white before his eyes. He’d left those days far behind him. He hoped that most people didn’t remember that far back – back to the Levi who didn’t bathe or brush his teeth and whose clothes had more holes in them than not. He’d thought about leaving Long Valley and starting over again somewhere where no one knew his history, but he hadn’t wanted to leave Moose, and he hadn’t felt like he could be disloyal to Rocky after he’d paid for his schooling to become a welder.

  Oh, how times had changed…

  “After that, Moose and I were inseparable. He took me home after school each day and his mom would make us an after-school snack. It quickly became the best part of my day, bar none. That food I ate at their house was quite often the only food I got that day, other than school lunch. I was a bottomless pit, and Linda was kind enough to never turn me down. Knowing what I know now…it must’ve been hell on her, having her husband’s bastard child there every day, always wanting something to eat. But if it bothered her, she hid it well. I don’t know if Rocky truly understands how lucky he is to have her. Most women would’ve thrown this back in his face and divorced his sorry ass.”

  He shrugged, trying to act as if none of it hurt. As if every child was forced to do laundry in the bathtub and collect empties to turn in at the recycling center for a little bit of cash to buy food with.

  That was totally normal, right?

  He let out a snort of laughter mixed with pain. Tennessee took his hand and he squeezed it tightly, hanging onto it for dear life.

  “Looking back on it, I’m not really sure how I didn’t end up starving to death, or in jail. By all rights, I should have. But Rocky and Linda…they saved me. I know he’s a jackass of the first water, but he’s done so damn much for me. It’s all wrapped up together in my head. It’s hard to hate him; not when there were times that he was the only reason I ate anything that day.”

  He pulled over onto the side of the road then, the tears blinding him as they slid, hot and painful and fat, down his cheeks, blurring the world in front of him and he was mortified that he was crying – he was a man and men didn’t cry, for God’s sakes – but still, the tears were coming.

  “I’m not good enough for you, Tennessee,” he whispered, his throat raw and constricted and tight. “How many times have you flipped your underwear inside out so you could wear them another day? How many lawns have you mowed, the bar almost above your head, just so you had money to buy bread at the store?”

  His voice caught and he couldn’t talk and he swallowed hard and tried again. “Speaking of, I started mowing lawns for money, which worked really well until Steve figured out that I was making money. Suddenly, I owed him – I owed him almost everything I made as payment for putting a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my belly. So, I did what any kid in my shoes would do – I started lying to him about how much money I was making. That way, I still had enough leftover to buy food.

  “Did you have to lie to your father, just so you had enough to eat?” He whispered the question and it hung, hauntingly, between them until she finally shook her head no.

  “I’m not good enough for you. I never have been. I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking. Talk about reaching above your station.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Your dad would know better than to let someone like me marry his daughter. My only chance at happiness is if I stab my best friend in the back, and make my girlfriend so angry with me, she breaks up with me anyway. You’re right – the price to pay when making a deal with the devil is too high. It’s just that he never was the devil to me, and that makes it harder than anything else.”

  His voice was flat and dead and he wiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands and then threw his truck into gear. “I’ll drive you home now. I’ll leave the metal wherever you want. I won’t bother you anymore.”

  And with that, he flipped a U and began heading back towards town. He might as well get this over with now. If he was going to be forced to rip out his own heart and stomp on it, he wanted to get it done before he lost all pride and begged her to still love him.

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to her. He loved her too much to destroy her life like his had been destroyed.

  Chapter 37

  Tennessee

  Did you have to lie to your father, just so you had enough to eat?

  The words tumbled around and around in her mind, like a dryer set on high.

  Just so you had enough to eat…

  When she was in high school, she didn’t eat because she’d wanted to stay thin, because she didn’t want to – couldn’t afford to – have an ounce of fat on her when she walked across the stage in a bikini.

  But to not be able to eat because your father didn’t think you were worth wasting money on?

  That was a totally different world than the one she’d grown up in.

  “My parents are poor,” she blurted out before she could stop herself. The shame she felt at saying those words…it gave her just a tiny insight into what life must’ve been like for Levi his entire life.

  “I’m sorry, what?!” Levi hollered, almost running off the road in surprise. He jammed on the brakes and stared at her. He was shaking his head, as if trying to clear his ears. As if what she’d just said was so insanely off the rails, he had to be losing it.

  She sent him a grimacing smile. “Poor as church mice,” she said simply, and then started laughing hysterically. “I know, I know, it seems insane – when I first figured it out, I thought I’d lost my mind. The whole world shifted underneath my feet. There was just no way, right? But all these years, they’ve been basically grooming me so they could sell me off to the highest bidder.”

  She’d accidentally let that slip out once before, and she remembered how frantic she’d become when she’d realized what she’d done. She’d virtually thrown herself at Levi, seducing him, trying to sidetrack him because she didn’t want him asking any questions.

  She’d succeeded, of course. He’d forgotten about it completely…until now.

  “Did you know this?! While it was happening, did you know?” Levi had pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and was staring at her wide-eyed, like she’d just announced she was an alien visiting from Venus.

  “Not during…” She waved her hand around in the air to indicate her entire childhood. “I figured it out when I was moving out of my parent’s house and into Georgia’s. Mom started telling me that Dad had entered into talks with some farmer up in Washington. I was going to marry their son. Yeah…dowries in the 21st century. Who knew?” she said sarcastically.

  “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Levi murmured. “Holy shit. This is like findi
ng out that Santa Claus isn’t real, times twenty. Your dad is the biggest farmer in the county. The chandelier in the foyer of your parent’s mansion is dripping with gold for hell’s sakes. How? How is it possible?”

  “My grandpa,” she said simply. “Everyone knows that when he died, my dad got it all, and my uncle got nothing. My grandpa…I loved him, I guess, but he was very old-fashioned in his thinking. The oldest son was supposed to get everything. The younger son was supposed to go figure out his own life and career. That’s just the way it was. Well, my grandfather liked to play the stock market for fun, and he’d invested in some major companies early on. He made a fortune, or at least, it seemed like he had. It never occurred to me that my parents could spend it all and then some. I’m guessing my parents didn’t think it’d ever run out, either. A farmer can live pretty nice, depending on the year and the crops he’s growing and the price he’s able to get at the market, but not enough to have gold chandeliers and a baby grand Steinway piano. So yeah, my parents were living high on the hog on my grandfather’s estate…and then, it ran out.”

  She ran a hand through her hair, trying to decide what to divulge. She hadn’t even told Georgia the truth. As far as Tennessee knew, her parents, Tennessee, and Virginia were the only people in the world who knew everything.

  But Levi had taken a chance on her. He’d told her the truth about his childhood.

  She had to be brave and take a chance on him.

  “Months ago, the power shut off at home. My mother was pissed. She called Idaho Power and ripped them a new one, demanding an apology for screwing up the payment like they had. When the employee came out to turn the power back on, she yelled at him, too. At the time, I didn’t think much of it – mistakes happen plus my mother is a bitch equals yelling quite often – but when I finally put it all together, I realized that my parents hadn’t paid the light bill. Robert and Roberta Rowland didn’t have enough money to pay the freakin’ light bill.” She shook her head, still surprised after all this time.

  Levi let out a shocked laugh, and Tenny looked at him, at a total loss.

  “I know, right? Like…this just can’t be true. And then I realized that my mom was always giving me new credit cards to use. She’d tell me that the new one had better points or some sort of incentive that made it worth it to switch. I didn’t ask questions – I didn’t really care. Whatever my mom wanted me to use, I would. As long as I didn’t get declined at the cash register, what did it matter? And then I started the shocking habit of reading books on being frugal, and it all came tumbling down. I realized that my parents were moving credit card balances around, robbing Peter to pay Paul. I have no idea how much my parents owe on that house, or on the farm. I’m guessing they took out loans against the equity a long time ago, but your guess is as good as mine. I was raised in the kind of family that it probably would’ve been more acceptable for me to ask about the shape of my dad’s penis than it would’ve been for me to ask about the finances.”

  Levi let out a strangled laugh at that and Tenny shot him an unrepentant grin. “It’s the eyes,” she said blandly. “No one ever thinks that I have a naughty or inappropriate thought in my head when I bat my eyelashes at them.”

  “I used to think that I couldn’t swear around you because you looked like an angel,” Levi admitted, “and it just wasn’t right to swear in front of angels.”

  “I promise, you wouldn’t be the first one to use that metaphor,” she assured him with a small laugh. “It’s kinda nice on the one hand because no one ever suspects me of anything, but on the other hand, it can be exhausting to be perfect all the time. I’m not perfect, Levi. I’m not an angel. I’m a real human being with foibles and thoughts and opinions and parents who are ready and willing to sell me off to the highest bidder. To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised my parents haven’t kidnapped me yet and stashed me away in the basement. No doubt they’re hoping that I’ll fail out in the real world on my own, and will willingly crawl back home. They’re just delusional enough to believe that I might do that.”

  Levi put the truck into gear and pulled back onto the road. He took a right at the next intersection and began wandering the backroads towards Franklin. “Do you think Rocky knows?” he said into the silence of the cab.

  “What – about my parents being poor?”

  “Yeah,” he said, tugging at his lower lip thoughtfully. “Do you think that’s why he’s pushing me so hard to change my last name and take over the dealership? Then I can marry you, Rocky can pay Robert the dowry, Robert gets enough money to keep afloat for a while, and Rocky gets to have his son taking over the family business. Everyone wins.”

  “Maybe?” Tennessee said doubtfully. “It’s possible. I just…my parents have stupid amounts of pride. That theory would require them to admit to someone just how broke they are. They hid it from me for 26 years and even with me, I had to figure it out myself. Knowing my parents like I do, they would’ve done everything in their power to hide the truth from Rocky. They probably approached it like they would any business deal. The difference is, most business deals don’t include the sale of your daughter.” She let out a grim chuckle at that, and they collapsed back into silence again.

  After a while, she looked at him seriously. “The reason I let the family secret out of the bag wasn’t just to share malicious gossip, though. I told you because you need to know that you’re not the only one coming from a poor background. It’s true that I wasn’t raised knowing I was poor; it’s true that my parents have done everything possible to hide this reality from the world. But whether they want to admit it or not, it’s true. My family having wealth or not having wealth…it doesn’t matter. After all, I just told you that my parents are probably a hairbreadth away from bankruptcy. Do you love me less?”

  “Of course not!” Levi exclaimed, obviously surprised by the stupidity of the question. “I don’t love you because of how much money your parents have…” He trailed off and shot her a baleful glare. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” he asked dryly.

  “Pretty much!” she agreed with a cheerful laugh.

  “But…but…” he sputtered, “my dad – Steve…he only cares about me if I bring him beers, and my biological dad wants me to be an asshole to the one person in this world who has always stood by my side.”

  “And my parents want to sell me off to the highest bidder,” she countered swiftly. “C’mon, another one. This is fun.”

  His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out but some sputterings. He looked like he’d just been poleaxed.

  Tennessee wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easily, though. It was like kicking someone while they were down, and she hated to do it, but he had to understand. He needed to understand.

  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – you’ve got to pull your head out of your ass, Levi Scranton. Yeah, you had a really shitastic childhood. Yeah, Steve is an asshole. Yeah, you’re a literal bastard. But everyone has problems in their past. You like to believe that you’re the only one who’s struggling. I know I’m being blunt here, but that attitude has got to stop. Someone else having money doesn’t mean their life is stress-free. Someone else having a family doesn’t mean their life is perfect. Looking at the world like that…it isn’t okay.”

  The silence in the cab was deafening again, as Levi thought through what she’d just said. He had that thousand-mile stare going on, and Tenny could only be grateful that they were on backcountry roads with very little traffic. She was fairly sure that he was paying just enough attention to his surroundings to keep from driving off the road, but not one more iota than that.

  Finally, he blew his breath out tremulously as he nodded. “I get it,” he said softly. “I didn’t before – you’re right. I was throwing myself a one-person pity party, complete with streamers and party poppers. It’s…it’ll take me a long time to really have it all sink in. Don’t give up on me, Tenny. I promise I’ll do my best to learn.”

  He
leaned over the console and snagged her hand from her lap. She squeezed his work-roughened fingers tightly, and then brought them up to her lips to give them a kiss.

  She’d told Levi that he had to stop expecting her to be perfect and now she realized, she needed to do the same in return. She couldn’t judge him harshly for his mistakes, not when he was admitting to them and trying to change.

  And anyway, he was still the only man who made her heart try to thump its way out of her chest. He was the only person she could truly tell everything to, and feel safe doing so. She trusted him like she’d never trusted anyone before.

  She couldn’t let that go now.

  Chapter 38

  Levi

  Levi rapped lightly on the weather-beaten door and then pushed it open, the high-pitched screech of the un-oiled hinges ringing in his ears. “Dad, it’s Levi,” he called out, the words weird on his tongue. He wasn’t his dad, but Steve didn’t know he wasn’t his dad, or maybe he did know and he’d just never told Levi, but either way, Levi had to call him Dad until he could tell him the truth.

  Levi’s head hurt.

  The TV was blaring, the cats were swarming around his feet, the blinds were drawn, the same few lamps were on…the house smelled the same and looked the same as it ever did. Sure, maybe a few piles had been moved from one spot to the next over the years, but this was still the house he’d lived in the first 18 years of his life.

  And with any luck at all, he’d never have to come here again.