by Laura Drake
But sweet stuff could be addictive, especially to a stray more accustomed to scrounging for scraps. She couldn’t afford what he offered—not if it left her vulnerable.
She dug deep and found a handful of “don’t care.” “Wow. That was great.” She pulled up the bedsheet and sat up, glancing to the clock on the nightstand. “You have to get to work, huh?” She tossed him a polite stranger’s smile.
“What?” He winced like she’d hit him with a whip. “What is this, the after-sex brush-off?”
She flushed, tightened the smile and her resolve, both of which were in danger of slipping. Then where would she be? Truly naked. That was so not happening.
Adam raked a hand through his hair. “What just happened was...I don’t even have a word for it. You can’t tell me that you didn’t—”
Get it over with. “Adam, look. You’re a nice guy—”
“You’ve said that before. Several times, in fact.” He squinted at her, as if trying to bring reality into focus. “Why do you say it like it’s a bad thing?”
“I need you to know, before we go any farther. I keep things temporary—stuff that doesn’t matter in places that don’t matter. It’s the only way this’ll work.” She felt the muscles in her jaw bunch, and the pressure of her molars grinding. “I’ve had experiences with ‘nice guys.’” She turned away and dropped her legs off the other side of the bed. “No, thank you.”
“Look. I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but whatever just happened here, that wasn’t just me.” He grabbed her hand. “And I didn’t drag you into this bed. You wanted this as much as I did.”
She turned to him, resting one knee on the bed, and took her hand back. “Yeah, I did. It was great. Thank you.”
“Thank you?” He bolted upright. “Are you going to leave me a tip, too? Jesus, Priss. What happened to you? Someone must have hurt you. Bad.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.” She crossed her arms over her bare chest.
“You’re right. You don’t.” Looking intently into her eyes, he cupped the side of her face. “But I’d like to know.”
She would have welcomed his ire; she deserved it. She could have fought his judgments. But his softness stripped her of her only defense—righteous, burning anger. His caring doused the flames like a bucket of water on a campfire, leaving only smoke tendrils and steam.
There was only one piece of armor she had left: the truth.
She sighed. “You don’t know me. Our experiences are too different. We are too different.”
“I may not know much of your life before this, but I know that today, I met the real Priss Hart.”
His smug smile stirred the ashes of her anger. “You don’t know anything, Preston. But I’ll tell you what happened, just so you understand.”
He waited.
She grasped herself at the waist to hold her guts in.
“When I left Vegas, I ‘lucked out’ in Seattle—I got a job as a receptionist with a tech firm. I worked hard, and within a year, I moved up to the HR department. They sent me to classes, and my boss liked me—he was grooming me to move up. I had dreams of someday taking over his job as head of the department.” She shook her head. “I was so naive. I thought that if you threw yourself into something, that if you worked really hard, you could make it work. But I didn’t know shit.” She heard the bitterness pouring out with her words.
“Lots of employees went out to happy hour after work on Fridays. I usually worked late, but one Friday this cute guy stopped me when I was alone in the break room. I knew he was way over my head. He was the Golden Boy of the marketing department, an up-and-comer who had big aspirations and an Ivy League degree to back them up. A real ‘nice guy.’ Anyway, he talked me into going that night.”
Her fingers bit into the skin of her waist. “It was a trendy bar, packed with people who knew what to do. How to act. Then there was me.” She took a breath. “So this marketing guy was really nice, buying me drinks, and making me feel like I belonged at his table full of yuppies. When the drinks kept coming, I loosened up. Started to believe I did belong. Oh, yes, I was brilliant.” Her mouth twisted. “My head was buzzing and the room was pulsing to the beat of the music when I told him I had to go. He said he’d take me home. Such a nice guy.
“When we got to his car, he was all over me. At first I went with it, but he went too fast. It took me a few minutes, but I realized all he wanted to do was get off. I didn’t even factor into the equation.” She stared down at the bed he was sure she didn’t see—she was back in that car. “I might have been more politically correct, but I’d had too much to drink. I laughed at him. Big mistake. Turns out the worst thing you can do to a nice guy is laugh at him.
“He pushed me out of his car, talking mean and low to me, saying how I was just a piece he’d picked up for the fuck.” She pulled in a breath. “But that wasn’t the worst. He must’ve been afraid of what I’d say at the office, so he told everyone he had scored in the parking lot. It got back to my department head and I was let go.”
“They didn’t believe your side of the story?”
“My boss believed me, but it didn’t matter. See, in HR, you’re held to a higher standard. I signed an agreement when I transferred in that I wouldn’t ‘date’ other employees.” She let her hands fall into her lap. Quiet filled the place in her where the story used to be. Speaking it out loud eased something that had been coiled in her for so long that she hadn’t noticed it was there.
She also hadn’t known talking about it could be so freeing.
Adam broke the silence. “Ah, Priss. Always willing to take all the responsibility. It’s one of the deep and wonderful things about you. But it’s also your downfall.” He held up a hand at her squeak of protest. “Your mistake wasn’t in being naive or trusting. It was in thinking that ass was a nice guy.”
She shook her head. “You don’t get it. It’s not about him. All I have control of in this life is myself. That Friday night out at the bar I left myself open to get slammed. That was my fault, so I paid. But I learned.”
She looked at him for the first time since she started her story. “That’s why I date guys who know the score. I won’t leave a hole in anyone’s life when I’m gone. And I won’t have any holes in mine. More honest that way.”
“But you can’t think that opening up to someone always ends badly. You’re too old to believe—”
“Look, I learned at my mother’s knee what happens when you put your happiness in someone else’s hands. I’ll take care of me, thank you very much.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you’ll never trust someone enough to let them really matter? To let them in close?”
“Oh, really, Adam? And you’re just an open book, right?” She raised an eyebrow. Time to redirect the conversation. “Where’d you get the scars?”
* * *
HE SHOULD HAVE known she wouldn’t bleed without extracting some of his blood in return. He didn’t want to say it—didn’t want to go back there. But he’d promised to live the life he wanted. Priss was afraid of permanence. He was afraid of—most everything else. Pain was pain, no matter what caused it. And he’d just told her that burdens were lightened when shared. Leave it to Priss to make him prove that he believed in what he preached.
“Roger and I were friends, from the moment we met on the first day of kindergarten. We played on the same Little League team. We were in Cub Scouts together. He lived a couple of blocks from me, and I spent as much time at his house as I spent at my own. I was going to be a major-league pitcher when I grew up, and he was going to be my catcher.”
Adam remembered the sandy hair over a freckled nose, and green eyes. He cleared his throat. “And we were both going to be pilots. See, Roger’s dad was a pilot for one of the big airlines.” He took a breath and let it out. He owed her the whole
story. “I was jealous. My dad was only a boring pharmacist.”
He lay back against the pillows, determined just to relate the memories, not fall into them.
“We were about Nacho’s age when Roger’s dad started taking us out to the small airport in Santa Maria, to ‘help him’ work on his plane. He had part interest in a Cessna 172, and he did the wrenching himself.” A thrum started up in his torso, the restless anxiety that had lessened over the years, but still made his voice come out all shaky. “My mom refused to let me fly at first until she saw how bad it hurt me to be left on the ground.”
Priss touched the Morse code of dashes and divots on his chest. “Tell me what happened.”
Her touch was enough to anchor him in the present, allowing him to go on.
“There was nothing different about that day than any other we’d spent flying. The sky was clear, the weather perfect.” His eyes drifted closed, but when the old film clip began, he snapped them open. “Ten minutes into the flight, something went wrong. The sound of the engine changed. It coughed and sputtered. Roger and I just sat frozen in the backseat while his dad radioed trouble. He’d turned to go back to the airport right away. But we weren’t close enough.”
Priss splayed her fingers on his chest, her palm over his heart.
“So he was going to set it down in a farmer’s field. He told us to put our heads down and hang on. Roger grabbed my hand. It was so quiet when the engine died. I could hear the wind rushing by the canopy when Roger’s dad wasn’t calling out a Mayday on the radio.
“They said that he didn’t see the high lines because the sun was in his eyes. They said the nose gear clipped it and drove us into the ground. They said—” He took a breath. “It doesn’t matter what they said. What happened is I lived. Roger and his dad didn’t.”
He ran a hand over his face. It came away wet.
Priss’s eyes reflected his pain. But she didn’t move, just sat waiting for the rest.
“When they finally released me from the hospital, I had to spend a month at home, in bed. And I had a lot of time to think. That’s when I decided I was done taking chances. It’s why I became a pharmacist, like my dad.
“And it worked, too, right up until I decided I wanted more of a life than just existing in my safe little bubble. That’s when I asked you out.”
Her eyes widened.
“We’re not so different, you and I. We both have scars.” He lifted her hand from his chest and put her palm against his, measuring. Her fingers only came to the last joint of his. He knew that he’d spooked her. Knew he was pushing. If he looked at her now, she’d run. Instead he focused on their mismatched hands. “Look, Priss. Maybe we can learn from each other. I can teach you that nice guys are different than you think.”
“Okay, but what do I know that I could teach you?” Her voice was small, almost a whisper.
“You can show me what it’s like, flying above the radar.”
“You already know that the flying part is easy, Preston. It’s the landing that’s hard.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
NACHO SAT ON THE seat next to her, while Priss drove in a new-guy, sex-sated fog. Adam had called in a relief pharmacist to cover for him, and they’d played the day away in bed. After the morning’s heavy revelations, they’d kept it light. And hot. When Adam came out of those straight laces...wow. But he hadn’t shed his careful, exacting skills with his clothes. His mouth had mapped every inch of her skin. And she’d reveled in discovering his. The wind whipped away the heat in her face and she shifted in her seat, thinking about the intimacies they’d shared. There’d just been enough time to shoo him out the door, hop in the shower and fly to the school to pick up Nacho.
“Hello. Are you listening to me at all?” Nacho waved a hand.
“Oh, sorry. How did you do on the spelling test?”
He huffed a long-suffering sigh. “That wasn’t even what I was talking about.”
“Hey, I’m on antihistamines. Cut me some slack. Tell me again.”
“First, I got a B on my spelling test.”
“Hey, that’s awesome!” She held up a hand for a high five. “Way to go, Nacho.”
“Second, when can I go work with Bear?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the door.
Not a good sign.
“You’re still grounded.” At the center of town, she turned onto Hollister. “We’ll talk about it after that.”
“This is bullshit.”
“Hey, watch your mouth.”
“I have been. And I’ve been watching everything else, too. I’m going to the stupid YMCA art classes. I hate it, but I’m going.”
“I know you do. But you just need to stick with it and you’ll see—”
“I’m home every time you call after school, aren’t I?”
“Yes. And I appreciate it.”
“I’m reading every night. I’m doing my homework. I’m doing everything you want. I’m turning into a freakin’ nerd, and you don’t even notice.” His words came out ragged, as if being chewed before he spit them out.
Please don’t ruin the day. It’s been too perfect. She pushed down her selfish irritation and took a cleansing breath. “I have noticed. I’m very proud of you.” At the end of the block, she turned into the alley behind the stores.
He shifted to frown out of the windshield, chin on his chest. “But it doesn’t count for shit.”
“Hey—”
“I’m never getting off restriction, am I? Just tell me.”
“Of course you are. But it isn’t like you came home late one day. You damaged property.” She parked in her slot and shut down the engine—or tried to. Mona convulsed and sputtered. “Property I had to pay for.”
“And you’re gonna hold it against me for the rest of my shitty life.” He flung off the seat belt and it clanged against the door. “This is prison, and I got a life sentence.” He opened the door, stepped out, then slammed it with all the force that ten-year-old muscles possessed.
Mona rocked on her springs. As if startled, her engine quit, midcough.
“I’m not doing this anymore.” He walked back the way they’d just come.
“Nacho, where are you going?”
He didn’t turn, just waved a hand in dismissal. When he reached the street, he turned right and disappeared around the block wall that separated the alley from the neighborhood behind it.
She grabbed the key and got out to stand, hand on the car, deciding. Follow him, or let him go?
He hadn’t thrown a raging tantrum this time. Maybe he was maturing. She’d give him a few minutes to walk off some steam.
But what if he doesn’t come back?
Of course he’d come back. He liked their apartment. Their life. Didn’t he?
They’d laughed together just last night, eating tacos and working on the jigsaw puzzle, the dropped shredded cheese obscuring the pieces. Yeah, he liked this life.
But it would be dark in an hour. Her fingers tap-danced on the door’s ledge.
He’s safe. Widow’s Grove is Mayberry, for cripe’s sakes. Just give him some time to calm down.
Growing up, she hadn’t needed a strong hand. But Nacho did. Tough love may seem hard to him. Hell, it was hard on her. But it was working.
Being a good parent means sticking with the hard stuff. Staying the course. He’ll thank me someday.
Ignoring the pull in her chest that made her feet want to follow him, she turned and walked for the back door.
He’ll be back by the time I put dinner on the table....
But he wasn’t.
Priss stood at the stove, stirring the mac ’n’ cheese, listening to the seconds tick away in her head. The ticking had gotten louder and louder, the past few minutes. Her heartbeat fell in sync, tripping up and up...
>
She snapped off the burner on the stove. Where the heck could he be?
Time to go find out.
She trotted to the bedroom to grab a light jacket for herself and one for Nacho. Minutes later, keys in hand, she stepped out of the back door. The red-tinted light falling on the alley told her that dusk was just minutes away—she hurried her steps. She hopped in Mona and cranked the engine. It chugged and chugged, but wouldn’t catch. She tried again. And again, until the heady vapor of gas swam in her cleared sinuses.
“Goddamn it, Mona. I do not have time for this.” She sat, head leaning on the steering wheel, assessing her options. She could walk, but Nacho had a half-hour head start. Even if she jogged, there was no telling which way he’d gone once he hit the street.
“Please don’t make me ask for help.” She raised her head, and cranked the engine one more time. Mona chugged, faster and faster. Hope rose, and Priss leaned on the key, as if twisting harder would help. “Come on, you old bitch.”
When the chugging slowed, she smacked her palms on the steering wheel. “Fine. That’s just fine.” Retrieving her purse from the seat, she opened the door and stepped out. She slammed the door then kicked it, to let the car know how she really felt.
Wanting a guy was one thing. But needing one? Neediness was one-sided, and therefore unacceptable. Her mother’s life was a map of where that road led.
She glanced to the street, the stretching tug in her chest a reminder that Nacho got farther away with every passing minute.
Her muscles tightened, forming the armor she’d need in order to ask a favor.
Get over yourself. It’s only a ride. She trudged to the back door of the drugstore.
Ten minutes later Priss sat next to Adam in his sedan, grateful for the heat pouring from the vents. And for him.
He drove to the end of the alley and looked both ways. “Right or left?”
“Right.” She snapped her seat belt. “I thought for sure he’d come back.” Widow’s Grove was a safe town but there were perverts everywhere. She blocked the news stories in her head of kidnapped kids, imprisoned for years. Or the skeletal remains with wild animal teeth marks in them, found in remote areas. A shudder ripped down her spine.