I nod, passing it to her. She takes a giant bite, barely chewing it before she swallows. “I saw your ma down by the gas station. I waved to her, but she didn’t see me.”
Tonya is always seeing my mom around town. Everyone is always seeing everyone. There are less than four thousand people in Cape Craven, fewer if you don’t consider the farmers who live on the fringes and barely ever come into the town proper. And we all live knee-deep in each other’s business.
“You see the hullabaloo at The Office?”
I shake my head.
Tonya bounces in her seat. “There had to be like a dozen cop cars out front. Cops everywhere.”
Brow furrowing, I pull out my phone. Scrolling through my social media feed, I see a few other mentions of the ruckus at The Office, so I switch to the local “news” site, run by a very nosy old woman called Buzz. She loves gossip more than the slender cigarettes she chain-smokes. Having learned about the internet from her granddaughter, she found a wider audience for her “observations” online. If anyone knows what’s going on at The Office, it’s Buzz.
“Cops swarming Craven Industries’ main office,” is the headline on her blog. I skim her overblown prose, realizing that she has no idea what is happening at The Office. Which means it isn’t likely to be a violent crime.
For a moment, a numbness passes over me. The last time the police were teeming all over Craven Industries, they’d been arresting Ax. What if they’re there for a similar reason now?
What if Ax is back?
It’s bound to happen someday. Ax was sentenced to fifteen years, but inmates rarely serve out their entire sentences in North Carolina’s overcrowded prisons. Would he return to the alleged scene of the crime? And if so, how would Brent react?
Catching sight of the time, I shove the last bite of my sandwich in my mouth and thrust my phone into my pocket. “Gotta go,” I say, waving at Tonya, then start jogging across the grass toward the foundation office.
The minute hand is moving from straight up to one past when I burst through the door. Ms. Birch’s eyes narrow but she says nothing. I head to my desk and resume grinding through the spreadsheet that has consumed my morning.
Unfortunately, the rows and columns of numbers are not enough to keep my mind on my task. Too soon it’s wandering straight to the topic I’ve been avoiding for what seems like most of my life.
Alexander Craven. Billionaire. Hero. Bad boy.
The only man I’ve ever loved.
We met in junior high. I sat behind him in English and doted on his every word. He barely noticed me. Even in those days, he’d been bigger than other guys. Taller. Stronger. With that cocky half-smile that to this day still has me clenching my thighs at the memory.
It wasn’t until high school that he spoke to me, in the halls one day between classes. He’d asked for my help on his French midterm. I’d responded with a resounding “Oui!”
He’d asked me what that meant.
Ax had scraped by in that class by the skin of his teeth, but he could have written the textbook on French kissing. His mouth is made for kisses. Soft but firm, teasing, demanding.
I look up, blinking, to find Ms. Birch standing over my desk. “I asked if you had the quarterly report finished, Sabrina.”
How long was she standing there before I noticed her?
“Almost,” I reply, typing away frantically. Ms. Birch shakes her head and walks away, and I bite my lip, frustrated. I’d been an A student once, with a sizable scholarship to a prestigious university.
Then Ax happened and all that went away.
I can’t let myself think about that now, or I’ll fall off the precipice that is always waiting just up ahead. Besides, Ax is locked away. Maximum security. And even if he wasn’t—well.
The door bursts open, and a gust of wind blows through, carrying Tonya with it. “I asked Tommy why them cops were at The Office,” she says, without an introduction. Tonya is pure stream of consciousness.
“Tommy said Brent called them. Asked them down to talk about something.” Tommy is Tonya’s cousin, and not far ahead of her on the IQ curve. He serves on the local force, although he does little more than issue speeding tickets and play with his radar gun.
“Why?” I whisper-yell, my eyes darting over to Ms. Birch’s desk. The old biddy is sitting ram-rod straight, so I know she’s listening to our every word. Did I mention Ms. Birch is Buzz’s best friend?
Tonya shrugs. “Hell if I know. Tommy don’t know either.”
I take a deep breath to keep from rolling my eyes. Tonya is sweet, bless her dear heart, but when God was handing out brains, she thought he said “trains” and missed hers.
“Miss Carter, do you have a reason for loitering around this office?”
Tonya straightens out of her slouch at Ms. Birch’s stern voice. “Doin’ what now? I ain’t embroiderin’. Momma never taught me how to sew.”
“I didn’t say ‘embroidering,’ I said—oh, forget it.” Birch shakes her head. “If you don’t have any pressing need to be here, something relating to the Craven Foundation, then you can find your way out the door.”
Tonya saunters toward the doorway, her lips pursed. “You don’t gotta be rude,” she drawls, then opens the door to the outside. Before stepping out, she turns back. “Oh, by the way, Brina, I’m seeing Andy again tonight. You think I should wear that low-cut red dress of mine? The one that shows off my—”
“See you later, Tonya,” I almost shout, cutting her off before she could say “hoo-has” or whatever other colorful euphemism she’s about to employ. “Give my love to your momma.”
The door closes, and my gaze shoots to Ms. Birch. The woman’s face is red, her eyes little slits. I expect to see smoke curling up from her nostrils. Birch has had a thing for Andy for as long as anyone can remember, but he’s never given her the time of day.
Although almost two decades older than Tonya, Andy’s still a good-looking man, with an athletic build and confident demeanor. He’s worked his way up to foreman, a position of authority in Cape Craven, enough to convince a cute younger woman like Tonya to let him come courting.
Ms. Birch slams her desk drawer and stands up, moving toward the inner office and shutting the door behind her. The office is reserved for members of the Craven family to use when they’re in residence. Mostly they’re not, so Ms. Birch uses it to make phone calls she doesn’t want me to overhear.
I lean back, rubbing the backs of my hands over my eyes. Although my work at the foundation is fulfilling at times, at other times, it’s hard to force myself to give a damn. Spreadsheets, emails, pointless phone calls. Without the leadership of a Craven-In-Charge, we are forced to spin our wheels. And the heir apparent Brent doesn’t seem to care much about charity issues.
His father, Christopher Craven, used to be a different story. Chris is tall, handsome, with a light in his eyes that intimidates lesser men. That light seems to have dimmed over the past couple years, and in that time, he hasn’t set foot in the foundation.
Besides, Christopher Craven seems to be distracted by more personal matters lately. I could see why the old man didn’t give a flying fart about his foundation.
The Cravens seem to have little interest at present in guiding their charity efforts, that means I have little more to do than push paper from one end of my desk to the other and wonder what life would have been like if I hadn’t stuck around Cape Craven. I’d been bound for the best school in the state, a full ride, dorm room reserved and bags all but packed.
Enter Ax and his golden eyes. They shone as brightly as his father’s had, but with a more sinister light, a light that screamed lust. And while it had been fun to succumb to that lust, the consequences are more far-reaching than I could have guessed. Still, if I had to do it all over again, I’d—.
The phone on my desk rings and I sigh, ready for another pointless phone call in a lifetime of pointless phone calls. “Craven Foundation,” I say by rote.
“Sabrina, girl, it’s your mother.”
As if I wouldn’t know that voice anywhere, even in its current state of seeming agitation. “Yes, Mom?”
My mother calls anywhere from twice to a dozen times a day. I’ve tried countless times to discourage her chattiness, but after losing her part-time job at the deli once she’d broken her hip, she had little to do all day but watch her TV shows and talk on the phone.
“The school called. They want you down there right away.”
My heart beats hard against my chest bone. “Do you know why?”
“Lil Devil is fighting again.”
Fuck. I close my eyes, wishing that just once my day wouldn’t fall to shit faster than green grass through a goose.
“You going, or you want me to call Jim and see if he can give me a lift down there?”
“I’m going,” I say, suppressing a groan. “Just stay put.” As if she could do much more.
I click off my monitor and grab my bag, staring at the door to the office holding Ms. Birch. Shaking my head, I decide on the coward’s way out. I stoop, grab a pen and write a short explanation on a sticky note, then pop it onto her monitor. Knowing she’ll lay into me either way, I prefer to prolong the inevitable.
I’m out the door and to my car in moments, but it’s a good five minutes before I make it out of the tiny foundation parking lot. My car is older than I am and is what my mom calls “temperamental.” I think it’s mental. But it’s all I can afford.
The old bitch finally turns over, and I give her some gas, gunning it out of the parking lot and down the hill toward the elementary school. It’s only a couple miles to the school so it doesn’t give me much time to dwell on what I might find when I arrive.
Just one day, Lord. Can’t you give me one day where something doesn’t go terribly, horribly wrong?
It isn’t like I really expect an answer, but the silence seems particularly deafening today. I park next to the school’s lone bus and climb out, preparing for what’s about to go down.
3
Ax
The town hasn’t changed much in the five years since I’ve been here, just like it hadn’t changed much in the five years I was gone on my mission for Uncle Sam. Cape Craven is timeless, in a way. Unlike other Rust Belt towns that have gone to hell after their companies moved to Mexico or China or Vietnam, Cape Craven continues its uninterrupted idyllic rural American existence.
It owes that idyllic existence to the Craven family if you believe the history my father has steeped his boys in. His great-grandfather bought a parcel of land here after the Civil War when prices were cheap and labor plentiful if you were willing to pay for it.
Old Man Craven, who was formerly known as Lord Craven, had left a life of disgrace in Jolly Old England to start a new life in America. Some said he’d made his family’s fortune back by privateering during the war. Others said it was a scandal involving a certain female member of the royal family that drove him out of Britain. Whatever it was, he’d quickly found a home on the coast of North Carolina.
What had started as a small garment factory had expanded to an empire that stretched to several high-end luxury products making Craven a household name. If your household made over six figures, that is. My father had continued the work of his father before him, expanding the brand and keeping profits rolling in. When most American companies started to move off-shore to make even more money, my father bucked the trend and kept his manufacturing base here in the U.S., the main plant in charming little Cape Craven.
While Dad’s stubbornness might have hurt his share price, it had endeared him even more to the town that depended on his goodwill for their livelihoods. Which meant it hadn’t been a bad thing to grow up here with the Craven name.
Our family estate is high up on a bluff, with an uninterrupted view of the sea that crashes against the rocks far below. But I’m not headed to my ancestral home. Most of the town was settled below the bluffs, along a main street that stretches for a quarter mile and is dotted with the same shops that seem to have always been here.
Ben the barber. The general store where the old guys sit on milk cans out front and shoot the shit. The greasy spoon where Miss Mabel makes the state’s best chicken and waffles. The town car passes them all. A few blocks later, my head turns, and my eyes follow the small building that houses the Craven Foundation.
Is she in there now?
Does she still think about me?
As interested as I’d be to learn the answer to those questions, I remind myself that it doesn’t matter. I’m back in Cape Craven for one purpose, and one purpose only.
Revenge.
There is no reason to embroil Sabrina in my plans. She’s been fucked over by life enough without getting mixed up in whatever trouble I’m in. I wonder for a moment why she’s back in Cape Craven. When I’d gone off to join the military after graduation, she’d been headed to Chapel Hill. I was afraid then that it would be the last I’d see of her sweet face, as much as the thought gutted me.
But, five years later, when I returned home, she’d been there. I decided to take things slow, feeling a bit unstable after my time in the armed forces. It was strange to be home again, to be back in the quiet of my small town after I’d learned how big and how brutal the world could be.
I ran into her at the general store. Imagine my surprise, trying to hunt up a couple of cans of sustenance before returning to my rural hideaway, when there she’d been, reading the label on a box of cereal. Sabrina’s like that: always reading labels and checking contents. The definition of responsible.
I managed to sneak up behind her and cover her eyes with my hands. After stiffening automatically, I felt her relax when I spoke. The fact that the sound of my voice made her melt did strange things to my insides.
“Bet you can’t guess who.”
Her voice is like melted honey. “Bet I can.”
I push away the racy thoughts, prompted by her scent, faintly floral, with notes of sunshine. “I’ll give you a hint. It’s someone you’ve been dreaming about the last five years.”
“Funny, you don’t sound like Justin Timberlake.”
“You wound me,” I groan, then let my hands slip down to cup her shoulders. God, her skin is softer than satin.
She turns, and those ocean eyes pierce me. “Nothing wounds you,” she says, punching my shoulder. “You’re the Steel Soldier.”
My smile fades a little. That’s what the papers had been calling me. The Steel Soldier. I’d lead a squad of elite forces to retake a Middle-Eastern steel mill from insurgents and had ended up rescuing a group of women and children who’d been taken prisoner and held at the mill, unbeknownst to us. Before we’d realized it, the insurgents had started killing their hostages.
Supposedly I’d risked my life “in the service of civilians” and distinguished myself by my heroic actions. It didn’t feel heroic, seeing the bodies of murdered women and children, their only sin being in the wrong place when we’d shown up unannounced. So they’d pinned a metal to my chest, and I’d asked for my discharge papers.
“And you’re Sabrina, the Grown-up Witch.”
Her eyes widen. I’d called her the teenage version of the name to get her goat during high school. I’d teased her then, saying she’d cast a spell on herself to make her smart at math and English and all the other subjects she excelled at so easily.
And then she’d cast a spell on me, and I’d never recovered.
“What are you doing back in Cape Craven? I thought you’d never return.”
I shrug. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Her eyes narrow, and I wonder if I’ve hit on a sensitive subject. Deciding not to go down any roads she doesn’t want to travel, I ask her to grab a bite at the diner. She can’t just then but agrees to meet me the next night.
Catching up over dinner is more fun than I would have expected. We don’t delve too deeply, but we do make each other laugh, something I always enjoyed about our time together. After, she hints at heading home, but I won’t
let her. It’s off to the town’s only saloon where I force her to hustle me at pool, just like the old days. She’s a little rusty, but still good enough to take twenty bucks off me.
A few games and a few more drinks in, I get brave and ask if she wants to make it interesting. What she doesn’t know is, the base had shipped in a pool table special, for a major who had a thing for billiards. There’s not much to do in the desert, so I upped my game, in the back of my mind thinking about what I’d do if I got the chance to turn the tables on Sabrina.
She asks what I have in mind, and I ask her if she’s still driving that old piece of shit from high school. Her blush tells me everything I need to know. I inform her that if she wins the next game, I’ll give her Delilah.
Eyes wide, she shakes her head, saying that’s impossible. I remind her that I’m always serious when it comes to Delilah.
“And if you win? What do you get?”
This is the moment I’d been waiting for. “You.”
Sabrina rolls her eyes. “Right.”
“I get you. For tonight. My cabin. Your delectable body.”
She looks me up and down, considering it. I know she remembers how good it was back in high school. And it can be even better now.
“Deal.”
Long story short, I win, she loses, and we spend one of the most memorable nights of my life locked in my little cabin in the woods, spending hours losing ourselves in one another.
Her body is as tight and flexible as it was five years ago, but she’s gotten even more inventive. The things she can go with her mouth put all other women to shame. And when I wake up next to her in the morning and pull her into my arms, I remember how no other woman has ever felt as right as she has.
Sabrina is all I’ve ever wanted.
Goddamnit. Any thought of Sabrina has my cock throbbing painfully. Five years of only memories and my own fist. And now I’m back, potentially breathing the same air again as my high school crush. It’s enough to make me drool.
I shake off the memory as the town falls away behind me. I’d had high hopes of rekindling what we had in high school, but that was before my asshole brother got me thrown in the slammer.
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