Looking for Trouble

by Victoria Dahl

  “All right, my little dominatrix. On the bike.”

  She mounted up behind him and slid her arms around his waist. He smelled good. And felt even better.

  “Do you want me to teach you how to ride?” he asked over his shoulder.

  Yes! her brain shouted. Yes, she wanted to learn how to ride. But... She shook her head. “There won’t be time. You can’t teach me in just a few days.”

  He was still for a moment before he nodded. “You’re right.” He flashed a smile. “Next time?”

  “Next time,” she said, both of them in on the joke. There’d be no next time.

  As he urged the engine into a roar, she closed her eyes and felt the rumble of power around her. Under her ass, between her thighs, shivering up into her whole body through his back. He pulled onto the street and sped toward the highway.

  It was strangely soothing to her, the danger of this man she barely knew flying her through the world. It felt like she was real.

  That was what sex was like for her, too. The good kind anyway. The brutal, messy, dirty kind. It felt real. No pretenses or pretending. Just taking and giving pleasure. Just losing your thoughts and fears and feeling.

  That was where Alex took her every time. They wanted the same things. They needed those feelings. They were animals together. In bed, yes. Or against a wall, or on the couch. But here, too. Running, flying, feeling the wind tearing at your body, trying to slow you down. But they didn’t slow down. They reached the highway and Alex hit the throttle and they were gone.

  Sophie opened her eyes to a sky on fire. The sun burned behind high clouds above the Tetons. The mountains were dark, jagged spears stabbing into that orange sky, sending out flames of red and pink and silver.

  Tears pricked her eyes. She pretended they were from the wind and held tighter to Alex’s body.

  “Where do you want to go?” he shouted over his shoulder.

  She pressed her cheek tighter to his back. “Anywhere,” she answered, and meant it to her very soul. Anywhere. Just away.

  The sun dropped as they drove, sliding down until it touched the peaks of the mountains before it began to disappear behind them. The oranges and pinks blazed even brighter for a moment, then deepened to fiery red. Alex slowed just as the fire darkened to purple.

  He set his foot down and Sophie stretched behind him. “Where are we?” she asked over the rumble of the idling engine. Desert grasslands stretched out toward the foothills that surrounded them.

  “You’ve never been here?”

  She looked around in confusion until she finally saw the sign that pointed toward the east. Providence, it said. She set her mouth and nodded. “Only once.”

  “When they found them?”

  “Yes.” His back was a straight, hard line against her.

  “I was here today. For the first time since...”

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything. He’d have to spend the whole day here tomorrow, but she hadn’t planned on ever coming back. Still, it was something being out here at dusk, the quiet broken only by the occasional car that passed.

  “Would you mind?” he asked, and she knew what he meant, but didn’t know how to answer it. She didn’t want to go, but she was ashamed of that. She was too strong to cower away from something so harmless, and yet she wasn’t strong at all, was she?

  Sophie swallowed her reluctance and nodded. “Not at all.”

  He turned the bike down a lonely ranch road and off they went, driving toward the darkness this time. The first stars were just rising above the hills. The sky was all purple and blue here, just edging toward black. By the time he slowed the bike and pulled into a gravel lot, the sunset was nothing more than a lightness at their backs.

  It was twilight, her favorite time. Not dark enough to be night, but nothing close to day. But when she took off her helmet, the twilight didn’t feel peaceful. It felt eerie. Too quiet now that they were far away from the highway and close to that place.

  “How many people will be here tomorrow?” she asked just to chase off the silence.

  “I have no idea. Hell, I’d thought it would be no more than however many people are on that damn board, but now... Who knows.”

  “The lawsuit,” she murmured.

  “Yeah. Not great timing on your brother’s part. Though it’ll make my mom happy if we’re mobbed. She’s been under the impression that the whole town will turn out to honor him.”

  “Why?” she asked in surprise. He’d been dead for twenty-five years and even though his grandfather had been an important man around town, Wyatt Bishop had just been an average citizen.

  “Why?” he repeated with a humorless laugh. He tipped his head up to look toward the stars. “Because she’s just as delusional as she’s always been.”

  “I know she’s always been, um...staunchly defensive of him.”

  “Jesus, it’s more than that. Do you know that after he disappeared, she had my brother and I convinced that our father had been kidnapped and held hostage and that’s why he wasn’t home?”

  “Kidnapped?” she asked in shock. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean after he’d been gone a week and there was no sign of him, she decided something had happened to him. That he’d seen some sort of corruption or crime and he’d been taken to keep him quiet.”

  “But...why would she think that?”

  “Because she needed him not to have abandoned her. More than that, she needed him to be a hero. She always did. So she made him into a hero however she could.”

  “But he was with my mom. What did that have to do with anything?”

  He shrugged. “For a while, my mom just left her out of the story. She was convinced your mom’s disappearance had nothing to do with Dad. It was coincidence. And she had us convinced, too. But I finally wised up.”

  Sophie heard the bitter note in his voice and recognized it. “School?”

  “Yeah. There were a lot of stories. I guess you know that.”

  “I do.” She’d always assumed they’d been crueler to her because it was so easy to call a woman a slut, a whore, a jezebel, a man-stealer. Not to mention all the things they’d called her dad, too. But she realized then that Alex and Shane had been older, so they’d probably heard more. There were only so many names that a first-grader knew, and by the time she’d gotten older, the story had had less shine on it.

  “I’d say kids are cruel, but you know that,” she said softly.

  “Kids are cruel, but it was way crueler for my mom to give us that kind of hope.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if she should touch him, wasn’t sure they had that kind of relationship. But he was telling her something secret, wasn’t he? He was sharing a pain that maybe only she could understand. Sophie wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek on his chest. “It was scary, wasn’t it?”

  His arms folded her in tighter. “Hmm?”

  “It was scary,” she whispered again. It had terrified her. She’d been scared for years. Not because Sophie had thought someone had kidnapped her mom or killed her or taken her away, but because she thought they hadn’t.

  His arms were so warm around her. He surrounded her. He filled up all the terrifying doubts inside her for that one brief moment. She held on and listened to his heartbeat and she didn’t think about how cold it was up there on the trail. How dark and terrible.

  When she pulled back again it was fully dark and a million stars shone above them. The moon hit the pale gray wood of the closest buildings, and the walls caught just enough light that they looked like ghosts lurking in the distance.

  “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Alex said.

  He shouldn’t have. She’d wanted to go away, not come back to this place.

  “Let’s just ride,” she sa
id. “Just a little farther. Okay?”

  “Yeah. That sounds good.” She’d started to move to the bike, but Alex said her name. She turned back to face him.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t plan to come here. I just looked up and there it was, and... Shit. I don’t know. There’s this ridiculous dedication tomorrow, and I fucking hate it and I realized that at least you’d understand. That I could tell you.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I do understand. Tomorrow’s going to be hard.”

  The outline of his shoulders slumped a little. He was facing away from the moonlight. She couldn’t see his face, just the glint off his scalp and the delicate scallop of one ear.

  “I know you can’t talk to anyone else about it,” she said. “I can’t either. You have your brother, at least.”

  His head tilted. “You have your brother, too,” he said wryly.

  “Ha! Okay. I see your point.” She turned and faced the town, thinking this was the time to talk if she ever wanted to. Alex would be gone soon. Tomorrow or the next day. He’d be gone and she’d go back to her life. Librarian and daughter and sister by day. Her real self once or twice a year with men who’d never know anything else about her.

  Alex was the only one who really knew there were two Sophies. Lauren knew a little bit, but only a little.

  So she looked at the ghostly wisps of the town and the black edge of the hills rising above it.

  She took a deep breath. “This is where they died,” she whispered. She’d never said it. Not out loud. She’d always said missing or disappeared or gone or vanished. But that wasn’t it anymore. Her mother was dead.

  Alex took her hand and they watched the darkness together. “Strange that they were always so close to us,” he said.

  She nodded, wondering how many times she’d passed these hills. “Do you want to stay the night again?” she asked.

  His hand squeezed hers. “I’d like that.”

  “Me, too.”

  But neither of them moved for a long time. She’d finally gotten comfortable with this place somehow. Alex’s big hand wrapped around hers made it seem almost peaceful. Almost.

  “I don’t know what to do with my mother’s ashes,” she admitted to the town.

  She felt Alex turn toward her. “What?”

  Sophie laughed nervously, self-conscious even in the dark. “I don’t know what to do with them.”

  “Well, you don’t have to do anything with them. Keep them on the mantle or in a closet, even.”

  “I mean I haven’t even picked them up yet. I can’t. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, Sophie,” he breathed, and then he surrounded her again, pulling her close to him, making it all go away. “I don’t know why either, but I get it. I do. You’re okay.”

  She breathed through her mouth to try to keep the tears at bay. It mostly worked. She didn’t sob. She didn’t break down, but a few tears escaped. She had no idea why. It was so stupid. She’d go pick them up on Monday. What to do with them after wasn’t even her decision to make. Her father could keep them or bury them or spread them over his land. It wasn’t her responsibility.

  Somehow she still didn’t feel better.

  A coyote howled somewhere in the north. Another answered. Sophie wished she and Alex were already back at her place, warm under the covers and falling asleep. But when Alex asked if she was ready to ride, her heart leaped again. Yes.

  She didn’t want to sleep yet. She wanted to fly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “HAS ANYONE SEEN my kitten?” his mom asked.

  Alex slanted an impatient look across the table. Yes, he’d seen her kitten exactly one hour before. It had been curled up against Sophie’s naked back before Alex had chased it off with a friendly nudge. He’d needed that back to himself.

  “There’s one right there,” he said, pointing to a tabby slinking across the floor.

  “No, the kitten is gray—” his mom started, but he cut her off.

  “Maybe she’s lost here in the dining room.”

  “It’s not that,” she snapped. “She goes outside.”

  “Kittens aren’t safe outside,” he snapped back.

  Shane rolled his eyes. “Let’s worry about the cat another day.”

  Alex glared at both of them. He was too tired and irritated to be sitting at this so-called dining room table that was piled a foot high with papers and pictures and mail.

  “All right, is everyone ready?” Shane asked.

  Alex glanced down at his black jeans. Not exactly funeral wear, but this wasn’t exactly a funeral. Black jeans were the most formal thing he owned at the moment, but he figured he looked okay with the white shirt and gray tie that Shane had loaned him. He’d shaved his scalp and face, at least, so he wouldn’t scare any of the other guests.

  “I’m ready,” their mom said. She was dressed in a black dress and sweater and even wore a little hat with a black veil. Yeah, she was ready, and pretty excited about the whole thing. “Alex, I just wish you’d reconsider. It’s not right.”

  “I’m not making a speech, Mom, and that’s the end of it.”

  “After everything he did for you, it’s the least you can do for him.”

  “He’s dead, Mom. He doesn’t really care at this point.”

  She gasped as if he’d slapped her. “He laid there for twenty-four years and you—”

  “That’s right. He was there for twenty-four years. He wasn’t in Mexico. He wasn’t on the beach. He wasn’t kidnapped or injured or wandering the country with amnesia. All those days and weeks and years you made us look for him were wasted. Every single one. I don’t remember much about him except that wasted time and those made-up stories, thanks to you. I don’t remember the real man anymore. So no, I won’t be making a speech about him.”

  He expected Shane to jump in and shut him up, but Shane didn’t say a word.

  Their mom pressed her knuckles to her mouth. “That’s outrageous!” she cried.

  Shane finally spoke. “Leave him alone, Mom. It’s time to go.”

  “Leave him alone? He’s the one saying crazy things! Not me! I’m not crazy!”

  “Nobody said you were crazy.”

  Alex opened his mouth but Shane shot him a quelling look. Alex shrugged. Fine. Not today.

  “Come on, Mom. Let’s get going.”

  She wiped tears from her face and sniffed. “Fine. I just need to find my papers.”

  Alex stood, knowing he’d lose his temper if he watched her search through this mess for the speech she’d printed out. “I’ll wait outside.”

  He stepped out onto the stoop and suddenly wished he still smoked. He hadn’t had a cigarette in ten years, but Jesus, he needed one now. That place made him feel almost panicked, surrounded by all the lies she’d lived with for decades. Any reasonable person would’ve tossed that stuff as soon as the body was found. Why would she want to remind herself that she’d wasted so much time?

  At least the front yard was free of that clutter. The grass was neatly cut, and the fall leaves raked away. He wondered if Shane took care of it for her. She certainly didn’t do it herself.

  And suddenly there was a memory. Of his father. A real memory, not something filtered through his mother’s twisted mind.

  They’d had a decent house back then on a couple of acres with a big barn. During the summer his dad had mowed the lawn on a riding mower. Shane and Alex had each begged to be taken for a ride. He’d always made them play rock-paper-scissors to see who went first.

  But that last year, just a few weeks before he’d disappeared, his dad had started teaching Alex how to use the mower. Alex could still remember the pride and nervousness that had filled his chest as he’d sat between his dad’s knees and steered the mower. “You have to remember it’s n
ot a toy,” his dad had said every single time. “You could hurt yourself or someone else. You have to take care.”

  He’d taken care.

  Unlike Shane, Alex hadn’t had a lot in common with their dad. Alex hadn’t liked training horses or camping or ranching. But riding on that stupid lawn mower, they’d bonded.

  He could still remember the hot sun and the sharp scent of grass that cut through the duller cloud of diesel, and his dad’s big hands over his, showing him how to shift and steer and lift the blades during turns on the driveway.

  And over the nearly deafening roar of the motor, his dad’s voice in his ear. “Good job, Alex. I think you’re better at this than I am. Next year it’s all yours.”

  The next year it had been. But only until the bank had taken the house.

  But for those few weeks, it had been the two of them, doing that chore together, sharing that time.

  That was a real memory.

  God, he wished he had a cigarette.

  A bright flash of color drew his eye, and Alex caught sight of Sophie walking from her front door toward the street. Her head turned and she hesitated, but even from this distance, Alex could see her tentative smile when he raised a hand. She waved back, then turned away, heading the opposite way down the street, probably to avoid his mother’s house. But Alex still watched as she got farther away, his gaze glued to the vivid pink of her skirt as she walked.

  The way she moved was already familiar to him. Something in her walk and the sway of her hips and the way she tipped her head. He’d recognize her just by her shadow, and even that shadow would make his heart trip just like it did now.

  He didn’t want to leave her behind.

  Alex looked away from her just before she disappeared around the corner.

  It didn’t matter what he wanted. He was leaving. There was no question of that. But the feeling shook him. Even when he’d loved Andrea, he’d always felt a secret relief when it had been time to get back to work. A feeling that he was moving on, even when he knew he’d be returning.