Rough Hand (Rock Bridge Ruffians, Book One)

by Olivia Chase

  I wrap my arms around her, cling to her, the woman who knew my dad the way I did. “I miss him,” I wail against her shoulder. “God, I miss him so much. And I don’t know why she did that, and I hate her for it, but I miss her too.”

  She holds me tight, lets me cry as I babble incoherent words, just getting it all off my chest. The agony that’s squeezed my heart like a rusty vise. I can hear her crying too, her warm tears dampening my hair as she and I release our pain together.

  I don’t know how long we sit like that. But eventually, we both pull back. I look at her face, swollen with tears, her eyes streaked red, her mascara running in thin black lines down her cheeks. I sniffle and wipe my nose. I’m sure I look the same.

  Aunt Marianne takes my hands in hers. When she speaks, her voice is level, no hint of the anger from earlier. “You okay?”

  I give a small nod. I feel like I should apologize for breaking down. But I won’t. She’s family. Even if she’s angry, even if she’s fighting over this money, I needed to connect with someone who intimately understands my pain.

  Aunt Marianne sighs and leans back. Looks over to the grandfather clock ticking in the corner of the living room. “Your father would probably be mad at me.”

  I stay quiet, letting her speak.

  “At the time, I felt like it was the right thing to do. That punishing your mother for what she did meant taking the money and doing something positive with it.” She looks over at me, sadness and empathy in her eyes. “But the most positive thing I can do is help his children survive. Show them the love he isn’t around anymore to give.”

  I can’t help it. More tears fall from my eyes. I bite my lower lip to keep another fresh sob from breaking free.

  “I’ll drop the claim. The money is yours. Just promise me you’ll use it to help your sisters.”

  “I promise.”

  “And maybe I can come down sometime and visit you guys there.” Her smile is bittersweet. “So many loved ones gone now. Sometimes I think my heart will break from all the pain. But you just get up every day and keep going. Your uncle helps give me strength.”

  I think of Levi, of how I wanted us to be that kind of strength for each other. Another piece chips away from my heart. I have to let him go. “I’m glad you have that love in your life,” I tell her. “And I want you to come visit. Rock Bridge has changed since I was last there. I wonder if you’d even recognize it.”

  That makes her smile. “Oh, I can just imagine.” She claps her hands on her lap and looks at me, her eyes resolute. “It’s late. You’re not planning on driving home tonight, are you?”

  I shrug. “I was.” I can’t afford to get a hotel room for an overnight stay here.

  “Nonsense. You’ll stay here. Have dinner with me and your uncle. He’ll want to see you too. He’s working late at the bank tonight, but he’ll be thrilled you came to visit. I’ll get the guest room prepared for you.” She pauses. “If you want to stay.”

  I stand up and hug her. “I’d love to.”

  “Okay, go freshen up,” she says, shooing me off. “You know where the bathroom is. Relax. I’ll holler when dinner is ready.”

  “Do you need help?”

  She scoffs. “I haven’t needed help since I was a newlywed. Now get on out of here.”

  I laugh and head down the hallway to the bathroom, where I splash water on my face, then pat it dry with a soft hand towel. My relief is almost tangible. With her dropping the claim, my sisters and I will have enough of a cushion to live off of for a while.

  I can buy us a small, cozy house, and they can each have their own rooms. Even get Morgan a car for when she graduates and goes off to college…and help pay for her tuition. Pay for medical insurance, get us the help we need.

  My aunt doesn’t know what a gift this is. But I’ll make sure she knows how much I’m grateful.

  All she needed was for me to listen, to understand her hurt. To validate her pain. I can understand that. Respect it. And in turn, she listened to me, too.

  I lost my mom and dad. I may never understand why it happened. But I gained a closer connection to my sisters. To my aunt. I gained more respect for myself, for my strength and tenacity.

  I look at myself in the mirror. Really look. Let myself feel the pain of missing Levi. I can’t ignore it. I have to embrace it, accept it. Only then can I move past it. The last few months have taught me that.

  He’s left a hole in my heart that nothing can fill.

  Levi

  I sit at the edge of the lake, my bare feet dangling in the cool water, and stare straight ahead at the darkening woods in the distance. Nightfall is going to descend any minute now. The days are growing much shorter.

  When’s the last time I came here alone? I can’t remember. Every memory I had of this place has been overwritten by Alexa. By the imprint of her against me in the water. Of me taking her on the grass just behind where I’m sitting now, her eyes wide and trusting, her body open to all the pleasures I could give her.

  Seven days have passed.

  Seven days since I went off the rails, lambasted her, told her how much she was fucking with my life. How she needed to stop trying to change me, to control me.

  Seven days of living in hell.

  I’m the biggest fucking moron in the universe.

  A stiff breeze blows, but I ignore it. My feet are getting cold. I need the wakeup. Because I feel like I’m a shell of myself now, a hollowed-out corpse. God, I’m so dramatic. I huff a disgusted laugh at myself.

  Besides, it’s not really true. I’m not a shell. I’m not numb. I’m overrun with emotions, which have flooded me nonstop over the past week. Since our breakup, I can’t stop thinking about everything in my life that led me here.

  I pull my feet out of the water and slip back into my shoes, then stroll around the lake. I need peace, but I don’t know if I can find it here.

  I have to stop running.

  The thought has been whispering in the back of my mind for days, and I’ve been steadfastly ignoring it. But now it’s a scream on repeat. It won’t shut up. It’s a voice telling me I can’t get Alexa back unless I’m willing to make changes.

  Because she was right. And I was too stubborn to admit it.

  I walk through the woods, going more by rote memory than visibility, and get in my car. Turn onto the road and drive. My body is moving on auto pilot now. Guiding me toward a place I never thought I’d go again.

  I enter my old neighborhood, the one I was born in, where I lived the first ten years of my life. I haven’t been back here since I had to move in with my uncle. It’s dark out, and some of the streetlights are busted. I swear, it seems like the same lights out are the ones that didn’t work when I lived here.

  And my hands are turning the wheel, guiding me toward the house I grew up in. The place where I first learned how to walk. Where my mom raised me as a single parent. Where I explored the backyard, dug big holes looking for buried treasure, climbed the large maple tree to get a bird’s eye view of the neighborhood below me.

  I pull into the driveway. Shut my car off. Force myself to step outside.

  I haven’t been able to come back here. Looking at it now, as an adult, I’m flooded with memories. I’m also strangely disconnected.

  The outside looks dingier than I remember. It’s smaller, too. Probably because I’m bigger.

  I walk up the wooden slats to the front door. I wonder if the hidden key Mom put out for me is still there. I go to the last slat on the porch and peel back a small piece of wood she’d carved out as a niche to hide a key.

  It’s still there.

  I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath.

  Grab the key.

  Open the front door.

  The house was in such a state of disarray when she died and in such a bad part of town that it stayed abandoned and nothing new was ever built here. There are many other abandoned and burnt out houses all over this neighborhood.

  But this one was mine
.

  The inside of the house is musty. It’s emptied out—the bank sold all the furniture and belongings, presumably to go toward the mortgage she still owed. I stare at the living room. I remember riding my tricycle through the house, making big circles until Mom yelled at me to take my bike outside.

  I fell down those steps once, and she had a meltdown, dialing an ambulance to come get me. Thankfully, nothing was broken. And in this doorway, I used to mark my height with every passing birthday.

  The marks are still there, my blocky print barely visible in the darkened room.

  The kitchen is behind me. My heart is lodged in my throat. I don’t want to go in there. I know it won’t look the same as it did the last time I was here. But I can’t seem to make my feet move.

  Face it, I tell myself. Fucking walk in there and face it. Stop running.

  I make myself turn around. Take the steps. Stand in the doorway of the kitchen. The floor has been cleaned. It looks like nothing happened. If someone didn’t know better, they’d never guess that my mom had lain dead on the floor right in front of the sink, the gun resting near her limp hand.

  She had on pink lipstick.

  The memory jumps to my mind. I remember standing numbly there, staring at her pink lipstick, wondering how it could look so perfect when she was dead. How did I forget that?

  So many things I suppressed.

  I scrub a hand over my eyes. My chest fucking hurts. This house haunts me. This room is my nightmare come to life. The place where my mom abandoned me.

  “Why?” I ask out loud.

  No one is here to answer. She’s long gone, her body rotting in the ground. But I have to ask the questions, anyway. I have to voice all those things I never did.

  “I was a kid,” I continue, staring at the sink, because I can’t make myself look at the floor. “I needed you. And you killed yourself and I never knew why. And all these years, I’ve been trying to forget you.” Emotion floods me, overwhelms me.

  She used to sit with me on the couch and watch cartoons.

  We’d eat cereal for dinner sometimes.

  When I was scared at night, she’d let me curl up beside her in bed.

  Everything I blocked about my mom, every sweet and painful memory, runs and runs through me until I don’t know if I can stand it anymore.

  I make myself stand there and remember it all. Every fucking bit of it. Not for her. For me. Because being the walking dead hasn’t done fuck-all to help me live. And I’m ready to live. I’m ready to feel again. I need to stop hiding from those who are alive.

  Those who love me.

  Cade said Alexa loved me. And now that I’m facing myself, now that I’m dropping my walls, I know that I’ve fallen for her too.

  I fell for her and I fucked it up. I don’t know if I can ever get her back. I’m going to try though, dammit. I have to try.

  I go to the spot where my mom died. I kneel down and touch the tiles. “I miss you,” I let myself say. It’s true. “I miss you and I’m so angry at you. You’ll never understand what you did to me, how you fucked me up.”

  I close my eyes and release the pain.

  I get up and brush my knees off. Exit the house, putting the key back in the secret spot.

  This won’t fix everything—not in a day. But it’s a start. A step forward. This is me acknowledging that I need to change. I need to stop pushing away the people who love me, because they deserve better. And frankly, I do too.

  When I get in my car and drive back to my apartment, my chest isn’t quite as tight. I can breathe a little better.

  Maybe I’ll call Cade tonight. Talk to him some. Not about everything—because some of that experience was too personal to share. But he’s been a brother to me when I didn’t have one. Family when I felt abandoned and discarded by my own. And I’ve treated him like he’s nothing more than a casual acquaintance.

  Yet despite all that, he’s stuck by my side. Been loyal to me.

  A fucking real friend.

  When I get home, I hop into my place and dig my phone out of my pocket. Dial his number. It rings, and he picks it up. “Yeah, what’s up, man?”

  “Hey,” I say. “I’m ready to talk.”

  The shop is quiet this Saturday morning. Probably because the weather is unnaturally warm, so people are out enjoying their last bike ride of the season. I use the opportunity to straighten stock, clean nooks and crannies that have built up dust.

  “What do you want to listen to?” Tommy asks from the back.

  I look over my shoulder; he’s standing by the radio with a smile on his face, a coffee cup in his other hand. I shrug. “Whatever you want.”

  Tommy turns on some hip-hop crap that he listens to and I change my mind—make him put on the new Foo Fighters instead.

  Things feel a little lighter since I came back, and it seems the others in the shop have picked up on it.

  There’s more talking, more laughter than there was recently.

  The door dings, and I turn to see who’s coming in, a polite smile on my face. It’s a young girl who seems to be in her upper teens. Something about her looks familiar, but I can’t figure out what.

  Her eyes are wide with fear as she comes toward me, and when she’s close, I can see she’s been crying, and her whole body is shaking. “Um. I’m sorry to bother you. Are you Levi?”

  “Yeah,” I say cautiously. “What’s wrong? Do I know you?”

  She bites her lip, a gesture that strikes me as familiar. Fuck. I think I know who this is. One of Alexa’s sisters. “No, but…my sister used to work here. She’s out of town right now, and…” Her cheeks burn red. “I need some help. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  The doorbell dings again, and a guy with stringy brown hair comes in. I recognize him instantly—he’s a weak-ass petty drug dealer in town. Dylan something or another. Guy has an inflated sense of ego. When his eyes lock on the girl, they narrow. “Morgan. Get outside. We need to talk.” He doesn’t even look at me.

  I turn to her, ignoring the guy. “Are you safe?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head, and that’s all I need to know.

  I walk to the guy. Behind me, I hear Tommy and Cade leaving the back room to stand near the desk. “Get the fuck out of my shop,” I tell him.

  Dylan narrows his eyes at me. Punk-ass kid. “Man, this doesn’t involve you.” He looks at Morgan. “Don’t be a drama queen. Stop dragging other people into our business. Go outside, Morgan, before I make you regret it.”

  She’s visibly shaking now, her arms wrapped around her.

  Oh, fuck no. No one comes into my shop and threatens a woman. I move toward him. “I believe I told you to get out.” He starts to open his mouth, but I come over and stand right in his face. He might be as tall as me, but he’s lanky and weak. I’ll fucking pound his head into the ground.

  “Nothing happened,” Dylan says to me in a hostile, arrogant tone. “I didn’t touch her.”

  “You threatened me,” she says from behind me. Her voice is watery thin. “You told me you were gonna make sure I was sorry I broke up with you. That you would show my younger sister a good time if I thought I was too good for you.”

  “Is that right?” My voice is icy.

  “None of your fucking business,” he replies to me, but before he can say another word, I grab him firmly by the jaw and push his back against the shop wall. He tries to wrestle away, and I press my whole body flush to him, my other forearm coming against his throat.

  “It’s my fucking business if I say it is,” I growl. “And let me tell you something, asshole. If you get within fifty feet of this girl, or her sister, ever again, you’ll be seeing the inside of a hospital, and you won’t get out anytime soon. I’ll fucking wreck you. This girl is under my protection. Her whole family is. Do you understand what that means? Do you know who I am? I’m Levi Hunt. I have friends everywhere. Go ahead and ask around.”

  Dylan sucks in a breath.

  I stare hard into his eyes
so he can see that I mean what I say. I might be a little more peaceful these days, but back in my wild youth, I got quite a reputation for my temper.

  And right about now, I’m considering whether this idiot is worth adding to the list of punk ass motherfuckers I’ve given an ass-whipping in my lifetime.

  His face has drained of all its blood. He gives a weak nod and swallows hard against my forearm.

  I press harder on his throat with my arm, just to make sure he gets the point. His mouth opens as he struggles for air. His face is turning red now, and he’s gasping.

  Then I release him. He sags against the wall, sucking in breaths as fast as he can.

  “You’re a piece of shit,” I spit at Dylan. “Don’t ever come anywhere near here again. And I will find out if you even try to talk to Morgan or hurt her in any way. I know who you are. I know where you live. I will fuck you up in ways you can’t even imagine.”

  He must decide I mean it, because he turns tail and pretty much runs out of the store. The door dings behind him as he exits.

  Before I can move, a pair of arms wrap around me, and Morgan is sobbing against my shirt. “Thank you,” she says over and over again.

  My heart breaks over the fear and pain she’s experienced due to that half-wit. “Shh,” I sooth, holding her. “You’re safe. If he ever tries to bother you again, you come to me. I’ll take care of it. I promise.” I can’t undo the things I said to Alexa, but I can still make sure she and her sisters are safe here, that they understand they have my protection.

  She sniffles and pulls away, wiping her eyes. “Thanks. I’m sorry. I just had nowhere else to go. I don’t know anyone, and my sister mentioned that you guys are pretty badass, so you were the first person I thought of.”

  Alexa mentioned me to her sisters?

  Thinking about her pushes another splinter into my chest. I struggle to keep my voice even. “I’m glad you came here. Let me walk you home.”