by Mia Carson
A few more patrons of the bar strolled in, greeting the bartenders loudly. None of them appeared to have a care in the world, and Edmund’s desire to be exactly like that strengthened his resolve. He laid down his pool cue with a thwack.
“What are you doing?” Tommy asked, smirking.
“I am taking your advice. Right now,” Edmund announced. His responsibilities at home would have to wait a few days, maybe a few weeks. He retrieved his cell from his pocket and called for a cab. “If anyone asks, I’m with you for the night.”
Tommy lifted his beer in a toast. “Go get ‘em, man!”
“And for your own sake, stay away from my mom,” Edmund warned. Sarah would be a wreck when she realized her son had left, and even more so if she learned Tommy was behind it.
The cab pulled up a few minutes later, and his hands twitching with excitement, Edmund leapt in the back and directed the driver to the church. Still in his tux, minus the jacket, he paid the cabbie, hopped out, and rested his hands on the top of his Mustang.
“What do you say, old girl?” he whispered. “Time for a road trip?”
The old ’66 convertible Mustang glistened in the setting sunlight as he popped open the long door and climbed inside. He slid the key into the ignition, and as the engine purred to life, the thrum of the vehicle let him forget about the wedding that didn’t happen and the embarrassment Jenny had caused him, standing all alone at the altar. Why she had to wait until that moment to decide this wasn’t what she wanted, Edmund would never know, but he was alright with that. He was perfectly alright with never speaking to that woman again.
The Mustang glided onto the interstate, and Edmund rolled down the windows, blared whatever rock was on the radio at the time, and let the wind blow away his cares. He hopped onto Interstate 64 and followed wherever it led before making a decision to head southeast. Night settled in over Kentucky, and after the fifteenth call from his mom, he turned off his cell and tossed it in the back seat. Tommy was right. For a few days, they could deal without him. Excited at his newfound freedom and the adventure awaiting him, Edmund leaned back in his seat and laughed, quietly at first until he let loose and held his arm out the window, hollering like a bat out of hell.
Tonight he would get out of town and make his plans. Tomorrow morning would be the start of a wild ride, and he was going to enjoy every damn minute of it.
When he was too tired to keep his eyes open any longer, he pulled off at the first motel on the side of the road. If Sarah caught him staying at a place like this, she’d have a heart attack. He checked into a dimly lit room that smelled faintly of body odor and pot. He ordered pizza from whatever was close and lounged on the bed. In the morning, he’d hit the road again, maybe head all the way down to Miami and see what was happening there. It was summer, after all, which meant college girls and bikinis. A few one-night stands were long overdue, as were drunken nights spent not giving a shit about being hungover the next day. Before he fell asleep, he texted Tommy his plan, and the reply was a huge smiley along with several other emoji’s that made Edmund choke on his pizza with laughter.
Chapter 2
Kris shifted the phone from her right ear to her left as her Grams nagged her. She moved deeper under the hood of the old Chevy and nodded along with whatever the old woman said, though she wasn’t really listening.
“Just do it for me, will you?” Grams said with a sigh.
“Grams, I don’t think lunch with Dennis is going to do anything except piss me off,” she said and grunted as she worked on a bolt. “Damn it! Come on, you bastard.”
“Young lady, are you working while you’re talking to me?”
Kris immediately dropped the wrench and sprang up out of the truck, glancing around as if Grams would fall out of the sky and into her shop. “What? No, never. I’m all ears.”
“And you’re full of shit,” Grams snapped. “Did you hear anything I’ve been telling you?”
“Course, I heard it all—lunch with Dennis, he’s my brother, and on and on,” Kris said as she wiped her oily hands on a rag hanging from her jumper pocket. “We don’t exactly get along anymore, and I’m not sure I want to give him a—God, what are we on now? Sixth chance? Seventh?”
Grams didn’t respond, and Kris pulled her cell from her ear to check the call hadn’t dropped. “Grams, you there?” she asked and worry clenched her chest. Grams was in her sixties and still kicking, but that didn’t mean she was immune to a sudden heart attack. “Grams, if you don’t answer me, I’m calling the Jameson twins.”
“Don’t you dare bother those boys,” Grams said loudly, and Kris jumped as she whipped around.
Glaring at her Grams, she ended the call and shoved her cell back in her pocket. “I knew you were watching me.”
The short woman with long, white hair braided over her shoulder shrugged as she shoved her cell in her large tote of a purse. “I know you, Kristen, and I knew you wouldn’t say yes to me over the phone.”
“So you came to harass me in person? Great, that’s great. The answer is still no,” she said, dug around for her wrench, and ducked back under the hood. “I don’t know why this matters so much to you, anyway. He’s doing fine in town. He has a job, he’s living with me in our tiny little house, and he hasn’t touched a drug in months.”
“And how many words have you said to him in the six months since he’s been back?”
Kris’s head hung low as she worked at the stubborn bolt, her biceps flexing as she tugged and heaved before the damn thing finally sprang loose so fast she nearly toppled into the truck’s engine. Wiping sweat from her forehead with her arm, she slung the bolt onto her worktable close by and swung the wrench onto her shoulder. Dennis was her older brother, and since they were teenagers, he had been in trouble with the law. This last time had been the worst, and he’d spent four years in jail. He was out now, living with Kris in the tiny two-bedroom-one-bath house she managed to scrape up enough money to buy so she could get out from under Grams’s thumb. As far as she could in this tiny ass town. Though it was true Dennis had behaved himself, Kris hated the idea of getting close to her brother again only to have him let her down hard.
“I don’t know, Grams,” she whined. “Do I really have to?”
Grams set her heavy tote on a nearby chair and clasped her hands in front of her. “Kris, I know your family hasn’t been the easiest to deal with. I never thought I’d have a daughter that cared more for drugs than her children,” she said bitterly. “But he is your brother and the only one besides you who might turn out alright. If he doesn’t know he has at least one person on his side, he might not stay on the straight and narrow.”
Kris gripped the wrench tighter as she stared Grams down, the woman who had raised her and her brother when their parents couldn’t be bothered to be actual parents. She was tough and never a pushover, but damn, when she gave Kris those puppy-dog eyes, game over. She puffed out her cheeks and tossed the wrench onto the table.
“Fine,” she conceded and held her hands up to ward off her Grams. “Fine, I’ll have lunch with him.”
“Good, he’s already at the diner.” Kris’s mouth dropped open, and she growled curses under her breath. “What was that, dear?” Grams said lightly as she picked up her tote and slung it over her shoulder.
“Nothing, not a damn word. Let me close up the shop, and I’ll be there.”
“Thank you, Kris, really,” she said and with a satisfied glint in her eyes, left Kris’s shop.
Kris rolled her eyes, cleaned her hands, and locked up her tools and keys to the cars in her garage. On a Sunday, she was the only one there, but she had two other guys who worked with her. Charlie, a good friend and ex-boyfriend, and Frank, when he wasn’t too drunk to work, but that was the best she could get when living in a Podunk town like this. Grabbing her work cell and keys to the tow truck, she rolled down the garage doors, padlocked them, and walked across the hot pavement to the diner. Its silver sign glistened in the afternoon sun, and Kr
is held her hand over her eyes as she ran across the two-lane road, ignoring the horn blast.
“Watch it, Kris,” a man yelled out his window.
“Sorry, Mr. Fitz,” she called back. “That part came in for your tractor, by the way.”
“When can you fix it?” Mr. Fitz asked, coming to a dead stop in the street, but he blocked no one.
Kris mentally ticked off the other cars in her shop and shrugged. “Maybe by Thursday?”
“I’ll tell the wife to make up some bourbon balls for ya,” he said and waved his ratty hat at her before he drove off.
Kris waved and walked into the diner. The wash of cold air sent a shiver down her back, and she wiped the sweat from her face with her hand, searching for Dennis. His hunched frame took up one whole side of the small booth table towards the back, and she sucked in a deep breath, her hands clenching at her sides before she forced them to relax. He was her brother, her blood. She couldn't ignore him forever.
“Hey,” he said when he spotted her coming towards the table. He stood and opened his arms as if to hug her, but stopped halfway. “I… uh, I was hoping you’d make it.”
“I needed a break,” she said and sat down quickly, hoping he’d do the same. “Order yet?”
“Nah, just a pop,” he answered, motioning to the drink. “I was trying to wait for you.”
She nodded as she picked up the sticky menu and glanced over it, not that she needed to look. She’d grown up in this damn place and the menu hadn’t changed in nearly twenty-six years, but she couldn’t bring herself to stare at her brother.
“Kris,” he said and tugged down the menu so she had to look at him. “Grams put you up to this, didn’t she?”
Giving in, she set the menu down. “No, of course not,” she lied, but Dennis’s lips twitched in a grin, and she leaned back against the booth. “Maybe… Look, it’s not like I don’t want to have lunch with you. I do, I just… I’m not sure…”
Dennis reached over and held her hand gently in his big one. She stared at the black tattoos covering his knuckles, hand, and connected to the sleeve of his right arm. The twisted brambles and dying roses gave his arm a bulging effect, not that it needed any help. Her brother had always been a big guy, six and a half feet tall and easily three hundred pounds of muscle. The full beard didn’t help, or the scars on his neck and face from his days on the streets. Kris didn’t see what other people saw, though. She saw her big brother, and as she stared into his hazel eyes that matched her own, she squeezed his hand back with that weird sibling understanding they had.
“I know I haven’t made things easy,” he told her, his head hanging, “but I really am finished with all of that this time. I swear it. I know you might not trust me, that it might take a long-ass time, but I’ll prove to you that you can trust me again.”
“I do trust you.” She hesitated. “But I don’t want to lose my brother again.”
“You won’t, I swear it.”
She smiled and made a mental note to thank Grams later for riding her ass so hard. Honestly, she was lucky she hadn’t followed Dennis and taken up drugs or worse. He let go of her hand, and she picked up the menu again, ready to enjoy a lunch with her big brother when her work phone dinged in her pocket. She didn’t move to answer it at first, but Dennis set his menu down and eyed her.
“You can’t afford not to take the call,” he said. “It’s fine.”
She frowned as she pulled out her cell to answer the call. The man’s voice broke up on the other end. “What? I’m sorry, where did you say you are?”
“Route 25 or something? No, turned… that… farther south…”
Kris stuck her other finger in her ear to try and hear better. “What’s close by? Can you see anything?”
“…sign for…”
“Say that again?” she grumbled. Damn tourists. What the hell is he doing all the way out here?
“Green Valley?” he muttered. “Yeah, Green Valley.”
Kris turned around and glared out the diner window. “Did you mean to come to the middle of nowhere? Sir?” She waited, but he didn’t reply. “Right, well if you can hear me, there’s a tow truck on the way, twenty minutes.”
“Who was that?” Dennis asked after she hung up.
“Some idiot lost on the back roads again. Rain check on lunch?”
“Want me to get you something for later?”
Kris was going to say no, but her stomach growled and he chuckled at the sound. “Guess I haven’t eaten all day. Just get me a burger and fries.”
“Extra bacon?”
“Who are you talking to?” she teased. On impulse, she rushed around to the other side of the table and hugged her brother close. No words passed between them, but there didn’t have to be. She hurried out of the diner and hopped into the tow truck she was paying off slowly, just like the garage she was only able to get because of Grams.
Once on the road, she attached her cell to the dash and tried to call the guy back, but he didn’t answer. She tapped her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. If the guy could see the Green Valley sign that resided outside town, he couldn’t be that far away. She had no idea what made him come this far off the interstate, but she figured she’d find out if she ever tracked the guy down. The AC clunked and whined in the truck, and Kris smacked her hand on the dash.
“Come on, baby,” she grunted. “Not today. It’s pushing a hundred.”
The truck didn’t care, and after the air let out one last icy breath, it shut off completely. Cursing and hoping this guy could go without AC for an hour, she rolled down the windows and drove a little faster. There were only four cops in Green Valley, and they never patrolled the roads far out of town. The truck barreled down a hill and around a turn when she spotted smoke drifting up from the side of the road, ten miles out of town. She turned on her yellow flashing lights and beeped the horn to get the man’s attention. A head popped around the propped-up hood, and he waved a hand over his head.
“Well now, you’re not from around here,” she whispered as she threw the truck in park. The man in question was dressed too nicely to be stuck on the side of the road. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and as she climbed out of the tow truck, her attention shifted from the man with his mussed-up hair to the car. “Holy shit. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Are you the woman I spoke to on the phone?” he asked, walking towards the rear of his car.
“Yeah, I am. Kristen Rivers,” she said and held out her hand. He glanced at it before shaking it firmly. “Looks like you got yourself some car troubles.”
“Looks that way,” he said slowly, eyeing her up and down.
She was used to it and ignored his look, too fascinated by his car. “Well then, let’s take a look and see what you broke on the old girl.”
Chapter 3
Edmund hoped he’d relayed the message to the woman he spoke to on the phone before his signal cut out completely. The heat of the day settled on his shoulders as he rolled up his sleeves and frowned down at his tux pants. He’d planned on stopping at a town somewhere outside of Kentucky to get new clothes, but his car had other ideas. He managed to look up a shop close by the interstate, but as soon as he exited, he was turned around on back roads and his old baby gave out completely.
When the tow truck pulled up, he was ready to thank the guy for finding him, but the tall, curvy form of a woman in a black mechanic jumpsuit was not what he expected. Her brown hair, with hints of red picked up by the sunlight, was pulled back in a ponytail, and she yanked an oil-covered rag from her pocket as she walked past him to the front of the car.
“You did a number on her, didn’t you?” she mused, waving away the smoke with the rag.
Tongue-tied, he nodded as he watched her lithe body lean over the engine. Sweat glistened on her neck, and she cursed as she reached her hand in.
“Careful,” he said and reached out to pull her back, but she shot him a look.
“I think I know what I’m doing,”
she said with a wink. “This is not my first car.”
“And how many have you worked on before?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
She straightened, matching his posture with a grin. “Pushing two hundred,” she said proudly. “I also own my own garage and my own tow truck. How many cars have you fixed up before?”
Edmund coughed to cover his surprise. “None, I’m afraid.”
“Exactly, so if you don’t mind, let me do my work?”
“You really are the mechanic?” he asked before he could stop himself.
She leaned back over the engine, and Edmund’s eyes drifted down to her ass staring him in the face. The jumpsuit she wore did nothing to hide every delicious curve of her body, and Edmund was reminded very quickly of the fact that he was a red-blooded male and currently single.
“What is it with men thinking a woman can’t work on cars?” she grumbled.
“I wasn’t implying that. You just don’t strike me as the mechanic type,” he covered quickly.
She sighed, puffing her cheeks out as she rested her forearms on the edge of the car. “You’re driving a 1966 convertible Mustang, Windsor V8, four-barrel engine with mostly original parts,” she listed with a twitch to her lips. “A car I’ve never seen in person but I can say I’m very happy you broke down close to my town.”
“Damn,” he laughed, holding up his hands in defeat. “Alright, you know cars.”
“Yes, I do,” she said, amused, and Edmund smiled with her. “You’re leaking oil, to begin with, and it looks like your battery’s fried. Let me test it real quick. If it’s the battery, I have a spare that should work on the truck.”
“And if it’s not the battery?” he asked.
She shoved the rag back in her pocket. “Then you get to enjoy my company a bit longer.”