But there’s a five percent chance that I can play this right. That despite the odds I’ll end up okay. That Ky will be safe. I’ve lived my life in that five percent.
He moves the flashlight to the paper, casting a demonic glow on his features. “You were driving erratically back there, Ms. Beck.”
“I’m so sorry. I guess I’m a little sleepy. I’ll stop at the next gas station and get some caffeine.” And if he writes me a ticket I’ll definitely be in the system, where Stefano’s people can find me. “I promise to be more careful.”
“Mason closes at ten every night.”
The wheels in my tired brain turn slow and squeaky. “Who?”
A small upturn of his lips. “The owner of the gas station in this direction. He used to stay open until midnight, until Sherri had the baby. The next place isn’t for fifty miles.”
I was born in the Tanglewood county hospital, the eighth child in an unhappy home. All of us weeds coming up through the cracks—unwanted but unstoppable. I have never known anything other than the neon lights and exposed bricks of the city. Certainly every gas station is open twenty four hours, with metal bars on the windows and deals with the neighborhood gang to keep them from being held up too many times.
In all my eighteen years I’ve never seen such a long stretch of nothingness.
And in the middle of a black inky land there’s him—a real life small town sheriff with a slow drawl and a twinkle in his brown eyes.
“Is there a motel nearby?” I won’t get very far without gas.
Besides, nothing sounds better than a moderately clean bed.
“A motel? Lisa Renee would be offended to hear the word used to describe the Bed & Breakfast. She won’t hear you say it, though. She’s gone on a cruise to Alaska. Takes a trip every year during the slow season.”
I can’t imagine a place this wide open ever having a fast season.
“Do you think you could just let me go?”
That earns me a full-fledged smile, his teeth sharp white against the dark night. In my delirium he looks like some kind of prince, his sheriff’s badge his shining armor and his black-and-white his honorable steed.
“No, ma’am. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you keep weaving and bobbing on this back road.” He tilts the flashlight to the side, casting a faint glow over the backseat without shining directly in Ky’s face. “And it looks like you have a small passenger. Couldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to him.”
My stomach turns into a hard stone. “Then what can I do?”
His lips press together. He seems almost regretful as he looks back at his car and then to me. “What you can do is step out of the vehicle.”
THREE
The third fairy said, “She shall have a wonderful grace in all she does or says.”
Jessica
Fear has a flavor, like I’ve bitten into lip and drawn blood. Step out of the vehicle. That’s what happens when you’re in trouble. Big trouble. When things are about to get worse.
“Why?”
“I need to check you for alcohol consumption.”
“I’m not drunk. I never drink.” Which suddenly seemed like a travesty. Years of sobriety. Of careful planning and hiding, all turned to dust in one terrible evening.
“All the same, ma’am.”
I press my hand to my forehead, as if the answer might be written on my skin. Somewhere close. Somewhere I can’t see. I’m not worried about what he’ll do if I fail an alcohol test. Even running on two hours of sleep I can walk in a straight line.
I’m more worried about what he’ll do with me after that.
There are more corrupt cops on the city streets than clean ones. Even if he doesn’t have ties to the Luskis he could touch me. He could use me. All while Ky sleeps peacefully in the backseat. I don’t trust cops any more than he seems to trust sleepy drivers.
“You have to promise something.”
His eyebrow quirks up. “It seems to me you aren’t in a position to bargain.”
“Swear that you won’t touch me.” I would floor the car before I got out, if he didn’t agree to this. If he didn’t make me believe in him this much.
Brown eyes seem to shine even in the darkness. That gaze skims over my body in the recesses of the car, seeming to take everything in. “I assume you’re not carrying, Ms. Beck.”
A shiver runs over my skin, whether from the cool night air or his piercing eyes. “I would never carry a gun, if that’s what you mean.”
“You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little cautious, considering the mark on your finger.”
Every muscle in my body pulls taut.
I’m usually careful about keeping my hands hidden, but I must have slipped. Or he has a sharp eye. Either way he’s seen the bleeding heart and the needle that runs through it, in black ink on the inside of my right forefinger.
Everyone affiliated with the Luskis has this mark somewhere on their bodies. Stefano has an elaborate tattoo covering his right hand, an anatomical heart with arteries dangling and spewing blood across his forearm, as if its been ripped from his body. The needle drawn straight up his middle finger. It’s as beautiful as it is terrifying.
My tattoo is much smaller, much more crude. Because I’m not a lieutenant in the organization. I’m one of the girls they own.
At least I was until Stefano sent me away.
I curl my fingers around the steering wheel, staring into the abyss. “How do you know what it means?”
A low laugh. “Provence is about halfway between Tanglewood and Stillwater. We get a decent amount of drug trade coming through here. Weapons sometimes.” He glances back at the sleeping child, as if moderating his words. “And worse.”
Worse, meaning human trafficking. Humans like me. Like Ky would be.
No, Stefano would turn his son into a soldier. A cruel man, in his own image.
And that seems even worse.
“I’m not carrying,” I say, my voice low with shame. Because even though I’ve never held a gun in my life, that’s my heritage. An ancestry in violence and greed. “And I don’t have any drugs. I only want to drive.”
I open the car door, giving Ky one last look, praying he’ll stay asleep for this.
The sheriff’s hand doesn’t go near his holstered weapon, but I imagine he could pull it out pretty fast, like one of those old-time western movies. I can feel his wariness, his watchfulness, as if I might be a drug runner with my baby in the backseat.
My sandal steps onto the pavement.
Which I’m surprised to realize isn’t pavement at all. It roughened into dirt road, the sides delineated only by earth—no curb. The past summer had been particularly hot, and the overhead sun must have scorched the grass, leaving only crinkled chuff.
As the sheriff lowered the flashlight to the ground, I finally get a good look at him.
Wind-blown hair and slightly quirked lips. A broad chest and long legs. He looks like he could go to battle at four in the morning. Those brown eyes hold a thousand secrets.
Secrets like the tattoo on my finger and the pain it can bring.
Awareness hits me like a ton of childish bricks. My puffy eyes and runny nose would be very clear in the headlights from his patrol car. I had taken off my hoodie once we left the city limits, leaving only my thin tank top. Hours of driving without stop made me unsteady.
It looks bad, listing to the side like this. I can see how he might doubt my sobriety, but I’ll prove him wrong. I’ve been stone cold sober since I turned fifteen, since I was born. Since Daddy gave me away like a gift, completing the promise made when I was born.
A modern-day curse.
FOUR
Then the spiteful old fairy’s turn came. “When the princess turns of age, she shall prick her finger with a spindle, and she shall die!”
Jessica
The sheriff bends down and drags a stick through the dirt.
I feel my eyes widen. “You can’t be serious. Where’s the b
reathalyzer? I want to do that one. Don’t worry about violating my right to privacy or anything.”
His lips tilted, amused. “I appreciate the offer, but I wasn’t trying to protect your privacy. We don’t have one of those. This isn’t Tanglewood, Ms. Beck.”
My gaze slides to the lettering on the side of the cop car. Sheriff is written in large block letters. Hmm. Provence Police Department, the logo proclaimed. Definitely not in Tanglewood city limits, where the cops had way more than breathalyzers in every car. They had actual machine guns and tanks, ostensibly to handle riots even if everyone knew they’re army surplus. Deals made in backrooms at the expense of the taxpayer—and the unsuspecting citizen the military gear would inevitably be used on. A war against its own people. That’s all I knew about cops. The enemy. Not this man, leaning a hip against my rusty car, raising an eyebrow as he waited for me to walk the line he’d drawn by hand.
No, this definitely isn’t Tanglewood.
“If you’ll start from one end and walk to the other,” he prompted.
I move to the end of the line. “Do I need to touch my nose?”
“Only if you want to,” he drawled.
If it’s optional I’m definitely not doing it. I’m pretty sure I look silly enough as it is, standing on the side of a back country road, afraid for my life but strangely exhilarated. As if I’ve been operating in the shadows for so many years. And in this moment, with night a heavy veil around us, I’ve woken up.
I hold my hands out in the air on either side. It just seems like the thing to do. I’m a tight-rope walker in one, two, three steps. When I leave the line behind, I turn my palms up and offer him a dry, “Tada.”
I didn’t mean it as an invitation, but it feels that way.
His gaze moves down my body, taking its sweet time and turning an inspection into a statement of interest. Heat flares in his eyes. I’m sure it’s there, but the next second it’s gone, replaced by that impersonal cop stare.
For the briefest moment, he definitely checked me out.
Did he like what he saw? A shiver ran down my body. I shouldn’t care about that. It’s just that it had been so long since I felt that kind of interest. Never, really.
The kind where she had a choice.
“You got a jacket in the car?” he asks.
The night breeze runs over my skin, making goosebumps. Not because it’s cold. Because it’s a tactile awareness of his gaze. I can’t ever admit that to him. To anyone. Hell, I shouldn’t even admit it to myself. And I’ll let him bundle me in a down feather jacket if I don’t have to explain the real source of her chills. Sexual awareness. A foreign feeling but undeniable.
Well, good thing I’m leaving here. And I’ll be far, far away.
Never to return. I’ll never have to see the sheriff again, and why does that suddenly seem worse than everything that came before? Like the worst tragedy in a sad story?
“Okay, I believe you,” he says. “You’re not drunk.”
“Thank you.”
“But you are unfit to drive. I can’t ignore how you were driving earlier. More importantly, I can tell you’re exhausted just from looking at you. It’s a danger to the people around here. And it’s a danger to you.”
Blood rushes to my face, because what does he know about the danger to me? What does he know about fists and locks and being given as a gift before I could walk?
I wish I could be angry at him, but he’s right.
It’s something else that makes my cheeks hot. Shame.
Ky deserves better than this, even if I don’t know how to give it to him. Exhausted. That’s what the sheriff called me. Not only from driving for hours, from running tonight. I’m bone-deep tired. Soul-deep tired.
“I understand.” I swallow hard, more deflated by this one moment than I was for years of pain and powerlessness. This moment seems to cut deeper than all of them, standing in front of this man who is so far above me. “I’ll sleep it off in my car until daylight, and then we’ll go.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that either.” The drawl shrank under the serious, almost regretful tone.
That old anxiety resurfaces—mistrust of anyone with a badge, of anyone with a dick. “Why not? I wouldn’t be endangering anyone that way.”
“Well, there’s no way I could trust you to stay put unless I also stayed out here all night, which I’d rather not do. Then there’s the fact that leaving you out here and defenseless wouldn’t be safe for you.”
“Do you have any ideas, then? Because I’m fresh out.”
“Is there someone who can come pick you two up?”
FIVE
At this all the guests trembled, and many of them began to weep. The king and queen wept loudest of all. For a curse like this could not be broken.
Jessica
My sleep-starved mind turns the question over like it’s completely new. Like I’ve never before wondered if anyone could help me. First my mother had failed me. Then my father. God, every person who looked the other way on the sidewalk when a teenage girl cowered beside a man old enough to be her father had failed me.
That was the way the old Jessica saw the world.
Then the little window on the pregnancy test showed positive, and everything changed. This was my fresh start. Ky had a real chance at life. And I learned to look on the bright side.
Like the fact that I can take care of myself and him. Usually.
Loneliness rises like acid. “No.”
Crickets serenade us in the pause that followed. The sheriff doesn’t look like he’s coming up with an idea. He looks like he’s trying to talk himself out of one.
Finally he says, “You can sleep at the police station.”
My mouth falls open. “You’re putting me under arrest?”
“Absolutely not,” he said smoothly.
“Would I be sleeping a cell?”
After a pause, “Yes.”
“So let me get this straight. You want to take me, in your police car, to the police station, where I’ll spend the night in jail. How is this different from being arrested?”
He cocks his head. “Less paperwork?” At my small noise of protest, he looks apologetic. But unrelenting. “The cot is very comfortable, I’ve been told.”
“Oh great, well if the cot is comfortable…”
“We do it all the time when someone has a little too much to drink at the bar in town. They can’t drive home so they sleep it off.”
I can’t believe how wrong I had been, not only fifteen minutes ago. Immediately wrong. I thought things couldn’t get worse? I’m going to jail. My optimism was well and truly deflated, punctured by a handsome sheriff and a country road that last for eternity.
“And what about Ky? He’s going to be under arrest? He’s six months old!”
“He won’t be under arrest.” The sheriff’s brown eyes soften. “His name is Ky? Does it stand for something?”
His interest makes my heart swell with pride, a maternal instinct that overwhelms self-preservation. “It’s not short for anything. Only Ky. I wanted to honor my mother, Makenna.”
To honor the woman she could have been if she hadn’t been beaten down to the mere shadow of a woman by the time I was born. This is how they kept us docile, generation after generation of girls broken before they were even women.
The sheriff takes a step toward my car, looking at Ky through the back window. “He’s a handsome boy. I’m sure she’s proud.”
Sometimes it’s a relief that she died before I could be sent away as a gift, fourteen years old and crying like a child. What would she think of me being a mother? What would she think of me running to keep Ky safe? Would she be proud? “I like to think so.”
Recognition flashes over his face, grief for a woman he didn’t know. “I’m sorry.”
I manage a pained smile, tears pricking my eyes. At least it’s dark enough that he can’t see my lower lip trembling, my breath shuddering in and out of my chest.
�
�I’m not arresting anyone,” he says gently. “It’s just a safe place for you to rest.”
Something clicks into place inside me, as if I’ve been waiting for this offer my whole life. A sad little jail in a country town shouldn’t be anyone’s idea of paradise, but I’ve been afraid for so long. A safe place to rest sounds like heaven.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Why don’t you grab what you need from your bags? I can move the carseat over.”
I pull the baby bag from the backseat, then move aside so he can unhook the carseat. He does so with a quiet efficiency that has me raising my eyebrows.
“I have three nieces,” he says when he sees my face.
And he does handle the carseat like a pro, lifting the heavy weight with ease, using his free hand to keep the base steady while he circles my car to his. I watch him lean into the backseat of his patrol car, latching the seat into place and measuring out the bands so that it fits securely.
The beige fabric of his uniform slacks pulls taut over his ass and thighs, revealing strength and leanness in one package. Shock rises inside me, swift as a flood. I’m checking him out. That’s what I’m doing right now—checking out the man who’s not-arresting me.
I can’t remember the last time I checked someone out.
I can’t remember ever checking someone out.
My sexuality was stolen from me a long time ago. Before I became a mother. Before I had even become a woman. Men were always things to be feared. Monsters that sometimes had nice smiles, which only made them scarier.
And in the middle of nowhere I had found something other than fear.
I found desire.
SIX
The wise young fairy came from behind the curtain and said: “Your daughter shall not die. I cannot undo what my elder sister has done; the princess shall indeed prick her finger with the spindle, but she shall not die. She shall fall into sleep that will last a hundred years. At the end of that time, a prince will find her and awaken her.”
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