Burn It Up

by Cara McKenna

“You want to know why I needed to see you so goddamn badly?” he asked. “Why I’m so fucking angry? It’s because I’m scared to death.”

  “I know. But the baby’s fine. And I’m a good mother, believe it or not.”

  “You gotta understand, Abilene, you don’t want me to see you both, and my mind goes right back to that shithole I found you in.”

  She felt her face turn hot. She didn’t remember much about the place, that beige trailer she’d called home for days or maybe weeks, at the rock bottom of her heroin addiction. She remembered how it smelled. Like struck matches and incense, like unwashed sheets. Like stale sex. She had no memory of James finding her, only of waking up in his house, in his clothes, bleary and confused and wanting nothing except her next dose.

  “Who are you? Where am I?” she’d asked.

  “My name is James. I found you in some hellhole of a double-wide in Lime. You’re at my place.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I bought you for six hundred bucks off some junkie in a stupid hat.” Her old dealer, and a buyer of James’s illegal firearms.

  “Six hundred dollars? I’m not a whore.”

  “I never said you were. You’re here because you remind me of my little sister and because I’m a fucking idiot. I have absolutely zero interest in fucking you,” he’d said. “Not even if you took a shower—which you really fucking need to—and not if you gained ten pounds, and put on some lingerie, and did your hair real nice. The only reason you’re here is because I couldn’t not get you out of that place, but I don’t have the first clue what I’m gonna do with you. Except maybe sober you up, and feed you, and make sure you get that goddamn shower. After that, your choices are up to you. I’m just doing the bare minimum I need to to get some fucking sleep tonight. You got that?”

  For a criminal, James had proven a man of his word—he hadn’t made a move on her. Hadn’t put a hand on her except to usher her out of his little house, into his truck, through the entrance to a methadone clinic. A shake on the shoulder to wake her each morning . . . and a rougher, two-handed shake later, when she’d really pushed him.

  She’d stayed with him for more than two months. Long enough to pass through the hell of withdrawal and get clean, to gain back the twenty pounds heroin had stripped from her bones. Long enough for her hesitation to grow to trust, for trust to become gratitude, and, in time, for gratitude to morph into a crush. He’d been thirty-seven, and she twenty-one, but age gaps had never given her much pause.

  He’d resisted her flirtations admirably, for maybe two weeks. But in the end, no man was that saintly. James had tried to be, tried real hard, God help him, but it had been no use. Abilene had been helpless in many ways, but not without her leverage.

  The sex had been good. Not amazing, but intense, and tender as well. With other guys she’d been in it for whatever benefits were to be gained—shelter or favors or money—but with James it had simply been the contact she’d wanted.

  For him it had been sexual, too, almost purely. Sex and some affection, probably a touch of attachment. She’d made him feel strong and needed, she thought. He’d made her feel safe and desired. It had met their needs for as long as it had lasted, but it had always been doomed, and they’d both known it from the start.

  Whatever they’d been had lasted just a few weeks. Long enough for them to mess up and for her to get pregnant, though she hadn’t known that when she’d left him. She hadn’t gotten her period in ages, hadn’t felt normal in forever; the symptoms had been wasted on her until she’d been four months gone, and by then James had been out of her life for longer than they’d ever been together.

  She studied his expression, all that skepticism, maybe even pity. It burned her. There was a time when she’d been only too happy for people to see her as helpless and in need of safeguarding. It had been her currency. But with Mercy now in the picture, the concern grated, as did the assumption that she always relied on other people to get what she needed—the assumption that she couldn’t make it on her own.

  “I’m not the same person I was when we met,” she told him.

  “I hope that’s true. But you gotta understand, my imagination jumps straight to you using, not caring about anything except where your next fix is coming from. That girl I found in that trailer, she couldn’t take care of a baby. She couldn’t take care of herself. You’re a goddamn professional victim, sweetheart. So sue me if I was worried you might need rescuing. Again.”

  “Well, I don’t,” she spat back. “And I’m not a victim. I never was.”

  His smile was pitying. Maddening. “You were sleeping with a stranger for heroin when I met you. What the fuck does that make you? A goddamn feminist?”

  “Fuck you.”

  That gave him pause. His expression went from smug to uncertain in a blink.

  She was shocked herself. She doubted she’d cussed since labor. And before that, only during flashes of hormonal insanity. And before that, heroin withdrawal.

  “I was never a victim,” she repeated. She thought back on what Casey had said about luck, about choices. “Every shitty situation I’ve wound up in, I got there myself. Because I made lousy decisions and trusted people I shouldn’t have. For a dozen stupid reasons. To defy my parents, to escape from my hometown, for a place to stay. For attention. I may have woken up in some real nasty places, but I walked myself there on my own two feet. I chose all of that stuff, though I’m not proud to admit it.” At first, for a taste of freedom, of what she’d mistaken for adulthood. Later, out of necessity.

  “You only think I’m a victim because I’m the woman. But you take a long, hard look at our breakup, and tell me who felt used when it all turned to shit.”

  He blinked at her, eyes wide.

  “I haven’t been a good person,” she went on, cooling her head. “Not for a long time. Not until I found out I was pregnant. But I’ve done better since then. I quit smoking; I worked hard. I asked for help when I truly needed it. And I’m a good mother. Mercy is healthy and she’s loved, and has a whole house full of people who want her safe.”

  “A whole house full of people who think I’m the dangerous one,” he countered. “And maybe I am. Maybe I’m a criminal, and maybe I’ve hurt people, but never my family. Never any woman, and never any kid. I’m not perfect, but I provide. But you . . . You always fall apart or you run, the second something goes wrong.”

  He sighed, rubbed his thighs, and seemed to calm himself. When he looked up, he met her eyes squarely. “Can’t you understand how I’d worry—given the way we even met? And when you refused to see me, you have any idea what flashed through my mind? How am I not supposed to jump to the worst conclusions?”

  “You never had any faith in me.”

  His stare was steady. “You never gave me any reason to.”

  She felt tears welling.

  “Don’t,” he said. “That shit won’t work on me anymore.”

  Now she was just livid. “I can cry without it being some kind of game, you know. You hurt my feelings. What the heck do you expect me to do?” She wiped at her cheeks, so pissed she could slap him. He was the only man she’d ever struck in her life—pointless little shoves and punches and scratches in the midst of withdrawal, when he’d basically held her captive. She’d been an animal then, though.

  “Look,” he said, hunkering down, clasping his hands between his knees. “That baby is my daughter. I have obligations to her—to make sure she’s safe and being taken care of. So let’s get down to fucking business, okay? You’ll need money.”

  She sat up straighter, taken aback. “Money?”

  “I know you, Abilene. Well enough to guess you probably never signed yourself up for health insurance. So how deep are you in the hole, exactly? Births ain’t cheap. How much do you need? I’ve got eight hundred on me, and more coming, once I chase down some customers.”

  “Well, you can keep it. I got insurance. Eventually.”

  “How much?”

  “Nothin
g. Vince gave me a few hundred dollars to cover my first doctor’s appointment—give him your dirty money. I got on insurance. And I worked and paid my bills and my rent. And I got some of the medical expenses and some of the baby’s things for cheap, because of my income.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have fucking had to. You should have come to me. Let me take care of it.”

  “You were in prison,” she cut back.

  “I’ve got ways.”

  “I don’t want your shady money, James. I don’t want to pay for Mercy’s diapers with the proceeds from you selling stolen guns. Ever since I knew she was coming, I’ve done everything the right way. I’ve worked and I’ve lived cheap, and when I’ve needed help, people have helped me because they care.”

  “Grossier,” he said, then clarified, “Casey.”

  “Everyone in this house. And my other boss at the bar. The lady who used to rent a room to me—she let me out of my lease early and even let me have my deposit back. I’ve had help, but because people wanted to help, not because I scammed them into it. I’m not who I used to be.”

  He nodded slowly, hesitantly. “I can see that. I can see enough to believe that—some of it, anyway. You look healthy,” he allowed. “And this is a real nice place. But it’s still my kid, Abilene. You two need somewhere permanent to live. Somewhere stable. It’s my job to provide that. Where the money comes from shouldn’t matter.”

  “Of course it does. James,” she huffed, exasperated, “I’m not doing shit the wrong way anymore. Not ever again. I’d rather live in one crummy little room that I pay for with my tips than let you buy me a whole house with your filthy money.”

  “My filthy money got your ass clean.”

  “And I owe you for that. I might even owe you my life. But things are different now, and I don’t ever want to have to tell my daughter that her dad’s going back to prison for ten years—or worse. You’ve been busted twice. They catch you again, or if some weapon you sold winds up killing a cop or something, and they trace it back to you . . . All the money in the world doesn’t mean crap if you get locked up for good. And I’m not being evil here. And I’m not telling you that you can’t be a part of Mercy’s life. But if you are, you better believe you’re going straight.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You got any idea how much I can make in a year, doing what I do? And you got any clue how much I’d make if I went and found some job fit for an ex-con with a ninth-grade education?”

  “I don’t care how much you give us, only that it’s clean.”

  He shook his head, heaved a deep breath. “You were so much easier to like when you were a mess—you know that?” Then his expression softened, telling her it was a joke.

  She didn’t smile back. “Easier in a lot of ways, I’m sure. But I’m serious. I’d take fifty bucks a month that you made as a fry cook over five thousand that came from guns. And you can find something—you’re strong. And you must have learned some kind of skill in prison.”

  “The math doesn’t work—”

  “We’ll make it work. We have to. I can’t go back to how I used to be. Not anymore. My daughter’s not growing up with a criminal for a father or a train wreck for a mama. You go to Vince, see if he can get you a job at the quarry or something. Get a trucking license. Anything, so long as it’s honest.”

  He rubbed his thighs again, looking pale. “I’ll think it over, okay?” From a man who didn’t back down, ever, it felt as solid as a promise.

  “Good.”

  “Now we need to talk about Grossier, though. You and him.”

  “Casey? What about him?”

  “You two. What are you?”

  “He’s my boss. And my friend.”

  “Tell me straight—you fucking him?”

  She bit her tongue to quell a reflexive lie. She nodded. “Yeah. What about it?”

  “I just want to know who he is to you. Who’s coming in and out of my daughter’s life.”

  Who she thinks her daddy is, Abilene read between the lines. “He’s a good man.” Or he was now, she trusted. What he might have been before . . .

  “I know he wants you safe,” James said. “But I also know he’s been inside, and I don’t know what for.”

  “Neither do I. And I don’t want to.” All she knew was that it had been during his time in Vegas, so probably something to do with gambling.

  “He’s coming around our daughter, so I goddamn do.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “Yeah, I am. Because everybody knows exactly what it is I’ve been up to. And that I’ve done my time. But what do you really know about this guy? Really?”

  “I know he treats me good. And that he cares about the baby.”

  James flinched at that. Had to sting, knowing a stranger had been filling those shoes in his absence. Sleeping with his ex, caring for his child. Whatever came next, and for however long the present situation was reality, those two men would have tension. Some real ugly, heavy tension.

  “You’ll just have to get good with him,” Abilene said. “Because he seems determined to be there for me.” As her lover, just for now, but as her boss and friend long after they quit sharing a bed, she hoped. Though would Casey still be so devoted, if James told him the truth about her?

  “It’s not about my feelings,” James said evenly. “It’s about what’s best for the kid.”

  He’d cooled himself off, and she did the same. She’d owed him answers and handed them over. But in all fairness she owed him a little more.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For keeping you in the dark. And for how I was when we split.”

  “Not much to be done about it now.”

  “Except to apologize. So I’m sorry. You know, I stole from you, when we broke up.”

  “Three hundred dollars,” he confirmed.

  It was technically three hundred and thirty that she’d taken out of his wallet, and he knew that, no doubt. She’d heard him on the phone with his customers, and he quoted people their debts right down to the penny, with interest. That he wasn’t hung up on the thirty bucks reassured her. It hinted that she was still a person to him, not a transaction.

  “I’m sorry I took it,” she said.

  “Don’t be, for fuck’s sake. That’s nothing. Just a final fuck-you, and I was happy to let you have the last word, if the payoff was me stitching my life back together in peace after you ripped it up.”

  “I’m sorry, all the same.”

  “You needed it more than me. Long as it went to groceries or rent and not dope, what the fuck do I care?”

  “I bought a car with it,” she said lamely. The same heap she drove now. Two hundred fifty she’d paid, and used the rest for gas and a few meals. Not much of an investment, but it had been her first taste of freedom in months and months. It had carried her as far as Fortuity before the gas ran out. Dead broke and hungry, she’d asked the waitress at the diner if she could maybe get some food and wash dishes in exchange. She’d been offered a job instead, and here she’d stayed.

  “So what’s next?” she asked him.

  “What’s next is that I meet my daughter. And after that we figure out where you two’ll stay, and how to pay for it.”

  “I can worry about that. I’ll be going back to work soon.”

  “You’d never have needed to stop if you’d been straight with me.”

  And here she stood, at the edge of what she feared most. Here she stood, ready to hand this man a knife and beg him not to use it on her. “James . . .”

  “What?”

  “I have a favor to ask you. A big one. One that matters way more than money to me.”

  “So ask it,” he said, never one for a preamble.

  “Please don’t tell anyone about how things were, when we met.”

  He stared at her. “So you do get how fucked-up it was, then? You get exactly why I was so fucking eager to find you, make sure everything was okay over here?”

  “I do, okay? Just promise me. Please.”<
br />
  “You don’t want him to know how you were. He thinks you’re some fucking innocent little girl who got mixed up with a big bad man, doesn’t he?”

  “Don’t gloat. Just promise me you won’t. If he finds out, it should be from me.” And the only circumstance under which she could imagine telling Casey the truth was if they somehow fell in love, got serious with each other. But with his criminal past keeping Abilene at arm’s length, and Casey’s own mysterious misgivings, she trusted that was a conversation she could keep on avoiding, likely indefinitely.

  “You’re fucking right; you should tell him,” James said. “You want to be good for our daughter, you practice what you’re preaching. Be honest with a man for once in your life.”

  “You want our daughter to know why you missed her birth?” she countered.

  “No, I don’t. But I also know she’s gonna find out someday. Because she’s gonna ask, and I’m gonna tell her. Just like he’s gonna find out about you. So yeah, you better tell him, unless you want somebody else painting that pretty little picture for you.”

  “I’ll tell him. When the time’s right.” She didn’t suspect any good could come of explaining to James that she and Casey were only lovers, only casual, not when he was feeling so vigilant about the stability of Mercy’s situation. She let him infer it was more than it was, if only to skirt a lecture.

  “We both fucked this all up real bad,” James said at length, tone softer. “Parenthood, I mean. And I’m really goddamn pissed at you right now. For not telling me, then for trying to shut me out. For running to a load of strangers and making me out to be some kind of psycho. I did a lot for you, you know. I forgave a lot, overlooked a lot. You used me and I was happy to let you, and this is how you repay me?”

  “You scared me, when we broke up. I thought you might even hurt me.”

  He shook his head, looking ancient. “I wish I could say you knew me better than that . . . But maybe that’s too much to hope for.”

  “And you didn’t handle this situation all that great, yourself. Coming around in the middle of the night, spying or whatever that was about.”

  He sat up straight. “What, now? This the same crazy bull Grossier was yelling at me about?”