One Last Chance: Small Town Second Chance Romance

by Amelia Gates

  After a moment, David nodded slowly. “Guess it has to be better than prison food,” he said.

  I adamantly agreed. Daisy swallowed hard and put her fork down to take a drink. David was onto his second beer while I’d barely made it through a third of my first one. I was in no rush. He seemed to be in enough of a rush for the two of us.

  “So…tell me, Kash, what is it you’ve been up to since you’ve been back in town?”

  “Mostly working,” I said. “Roadkill Crew until they laid me off. So right now, it’s just cleaning up the motel, fixing everything that’s broken in it, one mess at a time. That’s just room and board though, so I’ve been applying all over trying to get something else.”

  His eyes twinkled humorously. “I notice you skipped right over what you’ve been doing with my daughter,” he said.

  I glanced at Daisy. I didn’t know how much she’d told him, or if this was their whole confession dinner or something. It would have helped me out a lot if she would say literally anything—hell, if she would look at me, I could probably figure out how to handle this. I nudged her foot under the table, and quick as a whip, she snatched it back out of my reach. Okay, cool, no help there.

  “I was surprised when she invited me over for dinner,” I said, honestly enough.

  “Were you? Why? Is it so abnormal to eat with your girlfriend’s family these days? I guess it’s not Scope or Tweeter or whatever it is you kids are into now. But everybody’s gotta eat. Might as well eat with your girl whenever you get the chance.” He winked at Daisy, who flattened her lips at him in what might have been a smile had it not looked so stiff. She was growing more tense by the minute.

  I chewed a large mouthful as I carefully curated a few select truths.

  “I haven’t had a lot of time for socializing,” I said finally. “Been busy putting my life back together. I’d like to be someone Daisy would be proud to be seen with, if she decides she’d like to be seen with me.”

  Tension unwound from Daisy’s shoulders little by little. Keep playing it safe, then. Got it.

  David opened his third beer and swallowed half of it in a single mouthful. I sipped at mine. I had a feeling I would want to keep my head on straight.

  “Yeah, it’s got to be a bitch trying to straighten up your life after a murder conviction,” David said. His sympathetic tone was tainted with acid, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  I nodded slowly. “On that note, I would like to thank all of you for inviting me into your home this evening. I appreciate the trust.”

  David gestured sloppily as he finished off that beer and opened another one, crowding the table with discarded bottles. Sandy smiled at me while Daisy slid a wary look at her dad.

  Not him, me! Look at me, Daisy. Help me understand what’s happening here. Why are you being so weird?

  But my thoughts, loud as they were in my own head, didn’t make it to hers. She looked back down at her plate.

  “Don’t take this wrong, son, but it ain’t about trust,” David said. “You’re hanging around my kid. Last time you did that, my kid ended up dead. You know what they say. Keep your friends close, and your loose cannons closer.”

  His grin came about three seconds too late to be convincing. He was dead serious. I grinned back at him, playing dumb.

  “Hey, at least you didn’t say enemies,” I said lightly.

  “There’s still time.”

  I took a bite and chewed slowly.

  “Well,” I said. “Honestly, I hope it doesn’t ever come to that. I wouldn’t want to be your enemy, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be Daisy’s. You guys are the closest thing to family that I still have.”

  With beer number five in hand, David snorted. He was wobbling a little on his chair now. That combined with the tinge of red on the tip of his nose made me certain the alcohol was starting to get to him. “Just don’t go trying to make us blood family, boy. I’m too damn young to be a grandpa.”

  I chuckled along with him and took a drink of beer. He watched me like a hawk, his head slightly tilted. Daisy had stopped eating entirely and sat with her hands clasped firmly in her lap, even tenser now than she was five minutes ago. What the fuck was going on here?

  “Unless I’m too late with that warning,” David said, his voice dropping half an octave.

  “Hm?” I asked, my mouth full of food.

  “You been sleeping with my daughter, boy?”

  Sleeping? No, not really. Oh, wait, there was that one time and then that other time and—I should have just shaken my head. The two seconds of hesitation while I chewed was way, way too long. David’s congenial demeanor dropped like a rock. Tendons bulged in his neck, his eyes bugged, and the redness spread from his nose across his nose. I tried to swallow quickly, thinking that words were probably better than a frantic gesture at this point, and choked on a bite.

  David shoved the table back as he lunged to his feet, sending beer bottles clattering and crashing to the floor. Daisy and Sandy jumped out of their own chairs and got away from the table. Just in time, too, because then David grabbed the edge of the table and threw it aside. Dishes smashed against the counter and wall, food splattered all over the floor, and a puddle of beer and tea swirled out from the upended table.

  I was on my feet then, instinctively standing between David and the women. I’d finally dislodged the lump of meat in my throat and had my hands up.

  “Hold on,” I said, then coughed hard. Bits of meatloaf flew around my throat, ruining all of my attempts to speak.

  “Hold on? Hold on?! You think a little shit like you is gonna tell me what to do in my own goddamn house?! Boy, you better run and hope I don’t call the cops on you for raping my daughter.” He took two long strides toward me, his hands balled into fists.

  “I—what?! No, I never did that!” I shot an appalled look at Daisy, who seemed to be frozen in place.

  Where was my hotheaded warrior queen? My panicked look seemed to loosen her tongue.

  “Daddy, he didn’t, I swear it,” she said, lurching forward slightly as though she had to force her legs to move.

  “You touched my daughter!” His meaty fist was swinging at my head now. I dodged and backed toward the door, leading him away from Daisy and Sandy.

  “I never did anything to her that she didn’t want,” I said, my mind spinning through the complicated truth-selection process a little too fast. That was most definitely not the right thing to say.

  “Are you calling my baby a whore?!” This punch collided squarely with my solar plexus, knocking the wind out of me. White-hot pain radiated through my arms as my muscles seized, and I coughed again, still trying to dodge. I could have taken him down, easily, but I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Daisy’s dad. Not in front of her. If I had, I was pretty sure she would never forgive me.

  “Daddy, stop! He’s not calling me a whore. I’m sorry, please stop! He never hurt me, I swear!”

  “Of course you’d say that, you little slut,” David snarled.

  “Don’t talk to her like that!” I hissed.

  I got in his face again before he could turn on Daisy, and put myself right in the way of his lumbering fist. Was he really about to fucking hit her? A monster roared inside of me, begging me to flatten him. Begging me to give him at least a hint of what he was about to give her. A saner, more controlled part of me knew that wasn’t the way to go. Call it pussy-whipped or whatever, but I couldn’t do something I knew Daisy wouldn’t forgive me for. Despite everything that was happening here, Daisy fucking loved her dad. Honestly, though, I wasn’t sure why. If this was his usual behavior, love should be one of the first things to fly out the window.

  David knocked me against the flimsy wall, and I felt it give way. He pulled me back up by my collar, smashing my nose against his forehead. Blinded by bright white pain I struggled and thrashed until the floor fell out from under my feet. There wasn’t much more this that I would take. I wasn’t a fucking punching bag and even though I had
a hold on my temper, I wasn’t sure it would last much longer. When David gripped my shirt in his fist, I didn’t struggle. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that I allowed him to shove me through the front door and out of his house. A second later my head ricocheted off the dirt outside, sending a pulse of black through the white behind my eyes.

  “Stay the fuck away from my daughter!” David’s voice was warped by the ringing in my ears. I struggled to my feet in time to see the door slam shut. Daisy watched me through the window, her face pale and drawn, her expression blank. I wanted to charge back in there and take the old man down. She could see it in every line of my body, and she waved me away. Go, she mouthed. Please go. Dammit, Daisy.

  Fine. I turned my back on her whole family and climbed up into my truck. I would go, for her sake—but this was far, far from over.

  Chapter 26

  Being suddenly confronted with the depth of David’s violence changed my whole perspective in a heartbeat. I’d been laboring under the misconception that between the two of us, I had the most to lose if I mismanaged this situation—my freedom was kind of a big deal—but I hadn’t fully understood the reality of the risk Daisy had been taking every damn day that she and I were together.

  She was a goddamn prisoner in that house of hers. I’d never seen her so subdued. She had prison bars behind her eyes and her dad was the jailer. I had the means to bust her out and by God I was going to do it, Breaker be damned.

  There was only one route into the woods by car—a winding, lumpy dirt road which poured out of the woods through an ancient gate and ended unceremoniously at a rusty cattle grate embedded into the ground. I’d avoided the spot for the last several months, unable to bring myself to visit the scene of the crime. It was here that Hunter had been murdered, his body left hanging over the fence like an animal pelt.

  I had seen the pictures of Hunter’s body enough times in the interrogation room that the image was burned into my brain. So hot and so deep that even if I wanted to, I would never be able to forget it.

  I slowed as I approached the cattle grate. The place looked annoyingly normal. There were no markers, no hurriedly erected crosses, nothing at all, but a dark smear across the top of a beam where the sun had baked his blood into a rich wood stain. Frowning, I pulled the truck to a stop.

  Yes, I had to get Daisy out of there. That wasn’t even a question. But if I could do it with my freedom intact, we would both be safe. She wouldn’t have to choose between living in America or being with me.

  I was no damn detective, I knew that—but if there was a chance that they’d missed something, even a small chance, I couldn’t afford to pass it up.

  I saw all the evidence markers in my head. There had been a footprint here, where the killer had planted his feet to strike. The marks had been deep and heavy, but obscured by rainfall. Inconclusive evidence, they had said. Didn’t matter anyway, they were long gone now. Any tire tracks that might have been here had been washed away before the cops even showed up.

  “What am I looking for?” I muttered to myself out loud.

  I didn’t have an answer to that question. Still, I kept my eyes open as I retraced the killer’s steps. They’d come out of the woods together, Hunter slightly ahead of the other person. There was a struggle—here. I moved my body, trying to hit all the broken branches and flattening the grass the way it had been flattened in the pictures.

  I frowned. The range of motion was clumsy and limited. I bent my knees, taking a few inches off my height and condensed my steps. It was still clumsy, but I fit inside the parameters now.

  I slipped on the slick grass and my foot caught on a thick, exposed tree root. I fell to my knees and found myself staring directly at the dark stain on the fence.

  “You clumsy bastard,” I said to the mystery assailant. “You short, clumsy bastard.”

  The ghost who had lived in my head for so long, obscured by my own face, was beginning to take shape. I let it stitch itself together on its own, resisting the urge to try faces on the outline.

  Crawling on my hands and knees, I rooted beneath the grass, covering the whole six feet between the root and the fence, looking for anything else. I didn’t come up with much, just a few degraded cigarette filters and a couple of bottle caps. Kids came out here to get drunk all the time. And maybe the years had erased the bad memories associated with this particular location. Either that, or they thought they were cool drinking in an ancient crime scene. I felt a chill run through my spine and failure capture me in a chokehold.

  I searched the place some more, stupid as that might have been. Years later, there wasn’t a chance of evidence being left. Deep down, I knew that, but I was also okay with grasping at straws. And so, after a while, I said ‘fuck it’. This town wasn’t where we belonged. Too many bad memories, too much hurt, too much pain. Fuck proving my innocence too. The only damn thing that mattered was that I didn’t kill Hunter. I knew it. Daisy knew it. Everyone else could shove a rod up their asses.

  My frustration mounted. I needed my freedom. Daisy needed her freedom. We needed our freedom. And I would stop at nothing to make sure that we got just what we truly deserved.

  The sun had gone down and the light was fading fast. The road would have changed its shape over the years. I got moving, jumping back on the mission that had brought me out here to begin with. Daisy needed my help.

  Holding her firmly in the center of my mind, I navigated the poorly kept trail into the dark forest. Fuck legal. Fuck Breaker. And fuck this town. After what happened tonight, Mexico was a real fucking option. I just had to find that money.

  The problem with hiding money in a forest like this was you sort of had to rely on landmarks to tell you where you were and where to go. The problem with that was that it had been a very warm, very wet several years, and everything had grown and changed. Everything except that big boulder with the crack right down the middle of it.

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  A turn to the left, a turn to the right, up the hill, down the hill, stop at the big tree. Crap. The trees were all the same size now. There had been a mother oak here once, huge and intimidating, which dwarfed all the trees around it. The hollow with the fallen tree was directly behind it, but it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe this was a sign that I should have just turned the fuck around, but I was angry. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t watch Daisy stay here. In this town, sneaking around and having the lives strangled out of us one way or the other. I wasn’t really sure how this would go. Like I said, I was bigger than her father, more powerful than him too. But did I really expect to walk into her house and drag her out of there and all the way to Mexico, did I? I guess I kinda did. There were some specifics I would need to figure out afterwards. It was one thing to leave when I wasn’t allowed to leave the state. It was a whole other thing to do that with the cops on my ass. And there was no doubt in my mind that as soon as I set foot on his property, David was going to call the cops.

  I shook my head, trying to taper my anger while I walked over to where I felt like the tree should have been and stood there like an idiot looking at a cluster of young, small trees.

  Frowning, I walked back and forth along the trail. I didn’t expect the tree to suddenly appear or anything, but I was hoping to find its stump or a hole in the ground or a fallen log or something to show me exactly where Hunter and I had hid the money.

  Eventually I gave up on spotting it and decided to just venture out into the woods in the general direction I felt like the box would be in. This was turning out to be a lot damn harder than I expected it to be.

  The problem was that Hunter and I almost never came from this direction. We’d always walked out here to tend to our stash—it was more direct, and it was easier to tell if someone was following us. No one ever was, but that paranoid seed stayed active in my head. Turns out I wasn’t far off with my suspicions. Obviously someone had followed Hunter, or he’d still be here to tell me I was being an idiot.

  I almos
t didn’t see the tree. I was so focused on figuring out why Hunter had gone the way he did that night that my feet were dodging things on their own. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had to step up on the tree to get over it, I wouldn’t have seen it at all, especially not in the deepening dark.

  “There you are, you beautiful bitch,” I said.

  I walked along the top of it until I found the root and reoriented myself from there. It was a good thing I did—I’d been about twelve feet off from the target and walking diagonally. I never would have found the damn thing.

  It only took me five minutes to find the hollow after that. The sun’s light had faded entirely, and the moon was slow to rise, leaving me with only the stars and my phone’s weak flashlight to illuminate the spot.

  We’d set the thing exactly eight inches down. Accounting for six years of mulch, I dug twelve inches—give or take—and found… nothing. Frowning, I dug deeper still. Nothing.

  I was in up to my elbows in the exact center of the hollow, right where we always put our stash. Nobody would have found it if they didn’t know exactly where to look, which is why we had sworn an oath not to tell anybody about it. Not even Daisy.

  But it wasn’t there. Maybe I was a little bit off, it had happened before. Widening the circle with my hands, I focused my whole attention on the textures, willing the earth to give up the fucking container. I focused on it so hard that I could see it perfectly clearly—that baby-pink lid with the chip on one corner, the dent in the bottom where heat and wear had warped it. The metal safe inside, carving scratches into the plastic like random little runes.

  “Damn it, where are you?” I growled.

  Frustrated, I picked up my phone and shone the light around, looking for—well, anything, really. There was nothing, just dirt and plants.

  Leaves taunted me with their dull reflections, glinting like plastic and metal under my phone’s cold light. One glinted a little brighter than the rest. I almost bypassed it, thinking it was just more of the same, until I saw the shape. I crawled closer and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.