Anything but Broken

by Joelle Knox

  I think about his eyes, and his fingertips, and the tingles. And I hit send.

  It seems like forever until my phone trills.

  Now who’s trouble?

  It’s easier like this. In the darkness of Evie’s car, where he can’t see my goofy smile and I have time to think about how to answer. And it’s not real, right? Just words, floating into space, bouncing off satellites.

  Not me. I’m a good girl.

  Careful. If lightning strikes Evie’s car, I’ll have to fix it.

  I bite my lip and glance at Evie. “I’m making a mistake, aren’t I?” I don’t tell her what the mistake is, because I need to know how obvious I am.

  She squints through the windshield as she slows and makes her turn. “Just...be careful, Hannah.”

  Pretty damn obvious, I guess. “He won’t do anything,” I say, not sure if I’m confident about that or hoping she contradicts me. “He’s safe.”

  “Depends on your definition of the word.”

  I think of all the ways my mother told me boys would try to use and abuse me. Not that I needed the lectures, but I understood why she wasn’t taking any chances. Teen pregnancy hadn’t fit the Casey brand any more than crazy daughters.

  So many ways to get hurt, but I still can’t imagine Sean hurting me. I can imagine him hurting other people, I guess—I know he’s got a dangerous edge—but Sean’s not going to drug my drinks. He won’t pressure me to have sex if I don’t want to.

  If I don’t want to, and maybe that’s what Evie means. Just because Sean won’t hurt me doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Some kinds of trouble I’d walk straight into.

  I glance down at my phone, at his last message. Is he teasing me or flirting? Both?

  I’m mostly good, I type back, holding my breath. For now.

  The answer is stark, tempting. A walk on the wild side, huh?

  Is that what it is? Maybe. It would be the perfect distraction. I was thinking of driving instead of walking. Know anyone with a fast car?

  I might. Tuesday night at seven.

  Pick me up?

  Sure.

  Evie’s pulling to a stop as I tuck my phone away. Her house is on a tiny lot on a quiet street, but it’s nice beneath the faded paint and crooked shutters. It reminds me of the buildings in the town square—a restoration in progress. It’s a project, the kind that tempts me in my weaker moments.

  I can imagine staying here. Finding a low-pressure job, something that pays enough to cover the rent and my expenses. Or maybe I wouldn’t even have to do that—just sell that cold monstrosity up on the hill and live off the proceeds.

  I haven’t admitted it to myself yet, not even in the silence of my own mind, but there’s no reason to go to law school anymore. There’s no one left to impress.

  Or disappoint.

  The porch stairs creak as I follow Evie to the front door. It feels rebellious to indulge this fantasy, to picture a weekend spent sanding and painting the porch railings and laughing. To consider nights spent texting suggestive things to boys who make me tingle and mornings where I crawl out of bed excited instead of dreading the day ahead.

  It feels rebellious, but here’s the danger—my parents taught me to rationalize anything. Give me long enough and I’ll convince myself this is the bold, exciting first step in a new life. But the truth will be there, nagging me.

  I’d still be running away.

  Evie drops her keys on the cute entryway table. It looks ancient, the paint scuffed and faded, but it’s impossible to tell whether it’s an antique she rescued from a junk shop or some carefully distressed piece of brand-new furniture that cost way too much.

  “Thanks for coming out with me,” I say as I shut the door behind me. It’s cool inside, because an air conditioner is one necessity you don’t mess around with.

  “It was fun.” Evie shrugs and gestures around with a smile. “I did the floors first. The carpet was gross. And I’m almost finished with the kitchen, but I haven’t done anything else, so your room is rocking some serious seventies style. But there is a bed.”

  My bag is still sitting by the couch. I didn’t make it past the living room earlier before I started itching to head to the bar, which is proof of something I’m too raw to consider right now. Sweeping it up, I grin. “Well, the floors look great. And the seventies were cool, right?”

  “Yeah, okay.” She heads down the hall and reaches inside the first door on the left, flicking the light switch. “You got a date with Sean Whitlow yet?”

  “Not a date.” I sound like the very definition of protesting too much, but it’s true. I do not have a date. Dates are formal and fraught with expectations and intent. This is something else, something giddy and forbidden. “We’re hanging out.”

  “He’s a nice guy,” she says diplomatically.

  I walk past her into the bedroom. The hardwood floors are pristine, but the walls still sport dark, ugly pine paneling. I drop my bag onto the bed and glance back at her. “It’s okay. You can tell me I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “Evie…”

  She sighs and leans against the doorframe. “You’re in a weird spot, Hannah. Your dad’s dead. Your mom will be soon. You’re not. So can you go out with Sean? Hell, yeah. But you have to ask yourself the hard questions.”

  I can come up with a hundred of those, but none more important than the biggest one. Why him?

  Because he understands. He knows things about my family no one else does. That the Casey family was only ever perfect on the surface, and underneath we were all broken from the start. Because he makes my heart race, even when I’m stone-cold sober, and I’ve never been able to want before, not without enough alcohol to make me forget.

  All fair reasons. All true reasons. But not because he’s safe. That’s a lie I won’t allow myself.

  Loving Sean Whitlow has already killed one Casey girl.

  6

  »» sean ««

  The engine rumbles and the wind through the open window dies down as I pull to a stop on the curb outside Evie’s house. Dusk has fallen, and I can already see lightning bugs flashing in the growing darkness.

  Hannah’s waiting on the porch swing, her flip-flops dangling from her toes as she sways in the breeze. She’s dressed casually, in cutoffs and a tank top, and my heart thumps as I shut off the car.

  She doesn’t look like a girl from up on the hill. She looks like she’s ready to take a fast ride down a dirt road and cool her feet in the creek.

  I climb out of the car. “You ready?”

  “Yep.” She pauses on the bottom porch step, her gaze sweeping over my car. “That’s beautiful.”

  “It was my dad’s. Some kids get trust funds, I got a 1969 Boss 429. Not a bad deal.” I run my hand over the gleaming hood. “Ready to get her dirty?”

  “Totally.” She walks up next to me, close enough to smell her shampoo or her lotion or something. Strawberries and vanilla, like an ice cream cone, or something else you’re supposed to lick.

  I really shouldn’t be here. And that’s not going to stop me.

  I clear my throat. “You like her?”

  She touches the hood gingerly, as if she’s afraid she’ll break something. She’s wearing a simple silver ring that makes her fingers look fragile. Delicate. “It’s a 1969? Was it like this when you got it, or did you restore it?”

  “Nah, the car was a wreck.” Peeling paint, no windshield, ripped upholstery. About the only problem we managed to avoid was a rusted-out undercarriage. “Dad started fixing her up, and Gibb and I finished.”

  “It’s amazing.” When she smiles up at me, her whole face lights up. “That’s a skill, you know? Seeing the potential in something is hard enough. But you made it everything it could be.”

  That’s my job. I swallow the words and return her smile instead. “Get in.”

  She slides into the passenger seat, and by the time I climb behind the wheel, she’s examining the dashboard, running her
fingers over the wood grain. “This makes my car look like a spaceship.”

  “She may be old, but she still flies.” I lean over and tap the window handle. “But no air conditioning, so you might want to keep this rolled down.”

  She gestures to her hair, which is braided and pinned up. “I was hoping for wind. I planned ahead.”

  How long has it been since she drove through a Georgia summer night with all the windows down? Has she ever? “Let’s hope your cute little hairstyle holds.”

  I crank the engine as she buckles her seat belt, and the sound of eight cylinders drowns out everything else before settling into an idle. I pull into the street and head for the south edge of town.

  “Tell me about the car.” She’s still touching it. Caressing it. I can see her out of the corner of my eye, stroking every damn thing she can reach.

  Christ help me. “What do you want to know?”

  “You compared it to a trust fund. Is it rare?”

  “Something like that.” She’ll probably think I’m an idiot if I tell her the truth—me, renting a tiny garage apartment, when my dad left me a car worth more than her parents’ giant, fancy house. “Ford only made them for two years.”

  “You don’t race this car, do you?”

  “No, hell no.” The thought of some asshole smashing the bumper or sideswiping the glossy black paint makes my hands tighten on the polished wheel. “No. This baby stays locked up at the garage.”

  She laughs at that before settling back into the seat. “I’m honored you took her out for me, then.”

  “Only for special occasions.” For a moment, I have no idea whether to keep things light or make them real. But neither of us can pretend that life doesn’t exist. “How have things been?”

  “They’ve been…” She trails off and sighs. “Hell, I don’t know. I spent most of the day at the hospital with my mother.”

  “No change?”

  “No.” Just like that she sounds small and tired again. “I don’t know what to do. I feel like I barely know her. What gives me the right to decide how she dies?”

  It doesn’t sound like much of a decision to me. The doctors seem to think there’s no hope of her mother ever waking up, and that means she’s already gone.

  But this isn’t about me. “What would she want?”

  “To go gracefully,” she says without hesitation. “Or at least with dignity?”

  The verbal question mark says it all. “What about you?”

  “What do I want?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want to know what she’d want,” she whispers, so quietly the wind almost steals the words. “For herself, I mean. Everything she ever said to me was about worrying what other people would think.”

  Appearances. I listened to Cait rant about her parents all the time, and I had enough run-ins with them myself to know how much looking good meant to them. Maybe that was all their mother ever talked about because it was all she wanted.

  I turn onto the two-lane highway and shift gears as I gain speed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring you down.”

  “No, it helps.” She rests her hand over mine for a few seconds, long enough for heat to spark up my arm. “I can’t say this stuff to anyone else. They’d think I was heartless. I don’t know, maybe I am, because no one ever taught me how not to be.”

  She’s not heartless. You don’t have to know her very well to realize it, either. I’ve watched her look around, surveying the world as if she isn’t really a part of it at all. As if it mystifies her, how normal people manage to live their lives without destroying everything around them.

  She’s not heartless. I think she feels too much, and that’s the part no one ever taught her to handle.

  “Hills or valley?” I ask quietly.

  She reaches one hand out the window, spreading her fingers wide like she’s trying to catch the wind. “I don’t care, as long as we go fast.”

  I head for the hills. “Ever been to Liberty Point?” I ask as I rev the engine, even though I know she hasn’t—she was way too young when she left town. “On the weekends, it’s full of kids making trouble, but it should be quiet tonight. And you can’t beat the view.”

  A tiny smile curves her lips. “I almost went up there once. After homecoming, my freshman year. With Steve Wessinger.”

  “With Wessinger?” The guy’s my age, for Christ’s sake. Way too old to be hitting on freshmen girls back in high school.

  A little voice in my head, the one that sounds like Gibb, calls me a fucking hypocrite. He’s probably right.

  “I met him in drama,” she protests. “That was the only thing I liked in high school. Working on the sets.”

  “He sells insurance. In smarmy little suits.”

  “Well, thank God I didn’t make out with him, then.”

  She’s making fun of me, but that’s okay. She’s loosening up, relaxing, and this time there’s no alcohol involved, so I’ll take it. “Mock me all you want, but trust me. You dodged a bullet.”

  “Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad. Isn’t that what high school is for? Awkwardly kissing boys who grow up to sell insurance?”

  “For you, maybe.” I spent all four years wrapped up in Cait.

  The thought shudders through my mind, grinding everything else to a halt. It isn’t the first time I’ve thought of her this evening, not even the first since picking Hannah up. But I thought of her then as Hannah’s sister, not my ex-girlfriend.

  A tiny thing, maybe, but enough to bring the truth of the situation roaring back to the forefront of my brain. This isn’t just another date, and not only because Hannah is hurting, balanced on the edge of uncertainty and a pain she maybe hasn’t had time to feel yet. She’s also Cait’s baby sister, for fuck’s sake.

  What the hell am I doing?

  Something terrible, because Hannah makes it worse, turning to stare out the open window. “No, not for me. I wasn’t really interested in kissing for a while after that summer.”

  The truth spills out. “Neither was I.”

  I downshift and make the last turn. A smart man would go ahead and turn around, or keep driving and talking until she’s forgotten about her flirty text messages. Until she decides to kill the pain on something—or someone—a little easier than me.

  But I don’t.

  »» hannah ««

  The point is empty, just like he said it would be. We’re alone, parked in the exact spot where dozens—hundreds—of Hurricane Creek teenagers have thrown away their inhibitions and their innocence.

  It isn’t hard to see why. It’s gorgeous, the valley stretching out for miles and the sun balanced on the hills to the west. The sky is a million colors, from the deep blue above us to vivid reds and golds painting the trees in the distance. Sean cuts the engine, and it’s just us and the wind through the trees and the insects and animals that never shut up during the summer.

  It’s romantic. The most painfully romantic situation I’ve ever been in, and instead of sliding my hand over his or leaning close, I open my mouth and basically insult him. “I don’t need you to save me. So if this is some pity or obligation thing…”

  He snorts. “It should be, shouldn’t it? One of the two.”

  It almost has to be. Guys like Sean don’t take girls like me to Liberty Point. “I don’t want a knight. I want a distraction.”

  “I’ve figured that out already, Hannah.” He stretches over me, closes his hand around the door handle, and pushes it open. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I could touch him now. Sink my fingers into his hair, lean in a little. I can imagine doing it, I want to, but nerves freeze me in place until he withdraws, and I’m such a liar.

  I want a distraction, but I can’t handle this. Him.

  My heart pounds as I climb out of the car and ease the door shut. I’m nervous about scratching his pristine paint job or somehow damaging his lovingly restored vehicle. I’ve already forgotten what he called it, but I can ask when he drops me off a
nd hit the internet. The weirdest thing is that it’s not about impressing him or even about not sounding stupid.

  I’m fascinated. By the process, and by the idea of Sean taking something broken and unloved and turning it into something precious. Maybe that’s what he tried to do with Cait. Cars are probably more predictable.

  He doesn’t waste any time before facing me, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m a bad distraction, for all kinds of reasons, and you know it.”

  “Okay.” I shrug, because I can’t let him see how lost I am. If he figures out he’s the only one I trust, he really will know I’m trouble. Girls looking for easy distractions aren’t usually this brittle. “I’ll come up here with Steve Wessinger next time.”

  “His wife might not like that.” Sean touches my arm, hesitating for only a moment before gripping my elbow and turning me around. “I was gonna say, you’re a big girl. And maybe I’m not much of a nice guy, after all, ’cause I won’t tell you no.”

  “I don’t want a nice guy.” It’s not so hard after all. I don’t even have to lean. Just kind of...sway, and my body brushes his, and we spark everywhere we touch, even through our clothes. I’m so aware of him that I can feel the way he pushes against the air that ghosts over my bare skin.

  He shakes his head and exhales, and the warmth of his breath feathers over me, too. “You should.”

  I reach up, letting my hand hover for a second before I give in and brush my fingertip across the crooked bridge of his nose. He races cars and gets in fights and takes girls on romantic dates when he knows better.

  And when I’m touching him, my life isn’t spinning out of control. When I’m touching him, the world might be spinning, but I’m here, in the moment, in my own skin, and that’s what I need more than anything. “Help me be a little bad.”

  He smiles slowly, one corner of his mouth tilting up. “If you promise me one thing.”

  I’m not innocent enough to say anything. Promises can be dangerous. “What?”

  “That it doesn’t go too far.”

  A promise as easy to make as it will be to break, because I don’t even know what it means. “Not too far. Just a little bad.”