He blew out a long breath. “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m glad you had someone.”
Guilt dried up my words, and all I did was nod.
The silence stretched on, and I needed more from him. Despite what I was about to do to him—I needed more.
I need him to believe what was so hard to believe.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, feeling small and vulnerable and also pissed and hurt that I had to ask for kindness.
“When I picked you up in that house… the doctor?”
“Dr. John.”
He didn’t say anything, and I felt the anger simmer in my system. “You’re wondering how I could choose that kind of help?” I asked. “You’re wondering how I could make that mistake after everything I went through. Drugs fucked me up once; did I honestly think they wouldn’t fuck me up again?”
“No,” he said, fast and hard like that was the furthest thing from what he was thinking. “I’m wondering how we get that asshole arrested. I’m wondering where he lives so I can beat the shit out of him. I’m wondering how we stop your mother from doing this shit to you a second time. Doing anything like that to any kid again, ever.”
His voice was low and rough and wrapping around me like a hug he wouldn’t give me for real. “And I’m sorry,” he said. “For doubting you.”
“Oh,” I sighed and felt, again, near tears. This whole thing was making a mess out of me. “It’s all right. I still doubt myself plenty.”
“You don’t have to say that,” he said. “It’s not all right. You are so strong, Beth. So strong to have lived through all that and still keep moving. Still have a voice and a smile and a life…”
“What else was I supposed to do?” I asked, because it really never seemed like I had a choice. “I had to keep moving or I would have died.”
I glanced over and saw the way he was looking at me. And I saw the way he hadn’t been moving, not for the last seven years, maybe for a bunch of years before that. He’d stayed stuck. And he was dying from it. Slowly, day by day.
“Tommy,” I breathed.
And he looked away, quickly, like he knew what I’d seen. He knew what he’d revealed.
He winced, pulling the paper napkin away from his cut. Some of the paper stuck there, and he looked ridiculous and so dear I had to curl my hands around the steering wheel so I wouldn’t touch him.
3
Tommy
We stopped for food and to let Pest stretch her legs in a small town up high in the Sierra Nevadas.
“I’d better go inside instead of you,” she said, putting the truck in park in the farthest parking spot away from the minimart and gas station.
“Why?” I asked, my hand already on the door handle.
“Well, you kind of draw attention, with the blood and the limp and split lip.”
“You draw your own kind of attention,” I said. Because she was wild and beautiful and I couldn’t stop staring at her. Knowing what her mother had done to her made her strength even more impressive. And that she’d stumbled into Dr. John’s care even more heartbreaking.
“Yeah, watch this.”
She put on her sunglasses and took down her bun, instead making two long braids that hid the colors as best she could. In the driver’s seat of the truck she took off her shirt, and I felt myself go white-hot.
“What are you doing?” I asked, looking away.
“Turning my shirt inside out. The glow in the dark wolf is kind of recognizable.” I could feel her looking at me and got even more embarrassed. Like it was weird to look away, but it felt rude to look at her. Privacy was a thing, right? Just because we’d had sex didn’t mean I had the right to look at her however I wanted.
I flinched when her cool fingers touched my ears.
“They were always your tell, Tommy.”
“My ears?”
“They glow red when you’re excited or nervous or worried.” I felt her come closer, and I closed my eyes with the agony/pleasure of it all. The miniscule nature of the truck cab. How it felt like every breath of air I pulled in had been a breath she’d exhaled.
The story she’d told me about her mom, the sex we’d had, the fact that our good-bye was not at all yet a good-bye; all of it was crammed into this truck with us, pushing us together.
And I didn’t know how to fight it.
She kissed my cheek, and the brush of her skin against mine went through me like a seismic wave through earth. “It’s cute,” she said and hopped out of the truck. “Let’s go, Pest.”
Pest hopped out after her, and I was left alone in the truck.
I watched through the windshield as Beth took Pest out into the field beside the car and Pest peed and then pooped and Beth looked around with a chagrined wince on her face to see if anyone was watching her not bag it up.
The smart thing, the best thing would be for me to leave. To, while her back was turned, get out of the truck and let her go her own way, and I go mine. Because Bates was after me. Not her.
Sammy, when he got sensation back in his legs, he’d be after me.
Not her.
This house we were going to, this safe place Beth was talking about.
That was hers. Not mine.
I’d bring all this trouble there.
I put my hand on the handle, pulled it but stopped just before the mechanism in the door caught.
I should leave.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Instead, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and called Carissa, who answered before the first ring was over.
“Honestly, Tommy,” she said.
“I can explain.”
“I don’t think anyone cares anymore about your explanations. Sammy certainly doesn’t.”
“Beth can’t go back to her mother.”
“That’s not your call.”
“Why is it Bates’s call?” I pinched the bridge of my nose where a thousand pounds of pressure was building up behind my eyes. “Why is he doing this?”
“That’s irrelevant, Tommy. It was always irrelevant. The only thing that matters is you paying back the debt.”
“Her mom hurt her, Carissa. Really hurt her. And I don’t know if Bates knows that or cares about it. But I do. I said I wouldn’t hurt anyone to pay back this debt. And I meant that.”
“What do you think Dr. Renshaw will do to her daughter?” Carissa asked, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or if she was really wondering.
“Her mom thinks she’s sick. Like mentally unwell. She used Beth as a guinea pig for all kinds of drugs when she was a kid, trying to make her ‘normal.’ Who knows what she’ll do if she gets her daughter back? Drug her into a coma, probably,” I said, remembering Carissa coming back from that hospital she’d been put in when we were kids. We helped her hide the meds so she could get off all the drugs that made her feel like a zombie, but she was never really herself again after that. “Hospitalize her, for sure.”
If anyone should understand how scary that was, it was Carissa.
“Why?” Carissa asked, her voice sharp and hard.
“I don’t know, Carissa,” I sighed. “Why do shitty people do shitty things?”
A car pulled up next to us. An SUV with Mexico flags waving from the antenna. The back doors opened and kids spilled out. Two of them with a soccer ball raced into the field where Beth was standing with Pest. She stopped the kids, warned them about the poop and sent them to play a few feet away.
“I’ll be in touch,” Carissa said and hung up.
The mom from the SUV came out with their dog, a dainty little white thing, and she went into the field, too. I wanted to honk the horn, get Beth out of there before she was recognized, but instead Beth asked the mom for a poop bag and stood there and chatted with the lady. Pointing to me, pointing at Pest, who was sniffing the white dog’s butt.
Finally, Beth came back into the truck, bringing with her the smell of outside and a giant smile. It made me crazy how she acted
like everything was okay.
“We’ve got to be careful,” I said. “Your picture is everywhere now.”
She waved me off and started the truck back up. “I’m a lady in a field with a dog,” she said. “They didn’t suspect a thing.”
“You take too many risks, Beth.”
“Oh, Tommy. They aren’t risks. I’m just living my life.”
And that, it seemed, was the difference between us. And I realized it was a fucking shame the number of times I’d tried to get her to be more like me, when what I needed was to be so much more like her.
I just didn’t know how.
“I talked to Carissa,” I said.
“And?” She glanced over at me, her eyes wide.
“Hard to say, but I think she’s going to try and convince Bates that you shouldn’t be anywhere near your mom.”
“Well, that’s good news,” she said with a wide smile. “Now we just need to convince my mom of that.”
Beth
The truck bounced over an unpaved road, lined with trees, taking us down off the ridge. The ocean had disappeared from view a while ago, and Tommy was looking more and more uncertain.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Trust me,” I said, which, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized were the most hurtful things I could say. Because he was going to trust me and I was going to stab him in the heart.
He’d peeled off the McDonald’s napkin that had been stuck to his head, and he was bleeding again. His white shirt had scarlet dots on the shoulder.
I turned left at the old blue mailbox, and we dipped down again. I went right, deep into the weeds, to avoid the giant pothole in the middle of the driveway.
My moat, Peter had always said, and in the rainy season, he wasn’t wrong.
I pulled the truck up to the back of what looked like a nondescript one-story house. Cedar shingles had long gone gray with age and sunlight. A pot of something green and overgrown sat beside a screen door under an awning. Butterflies and bugs drifted in and out of the sunlight.
The garage in front of us had a nice apartment built above it, where I stayed when I came to visit. Peter called it my apartment, which was a little ridiculous considering that, after I’d left three years ago, I’d only been up here a handful of times.
But Peter didn’t have anyone else in his life, so the apartment above the garage remained mine.
My heart pounded in my eyes. The palms of my hands.
Two dogs came roaring around the corner, a Doberman mix I didn’t recognize and Bessie, the German shepherd who’d been old when I’d been here last year and now looked ancient.
Pest got up in my lap, paws pressed to the window, her entire body wiggling with excitement.
“They’ll eat you in one bite,” I told her and set her down beside me. “Stay here,” I told Tommy, whose face was all bruised and bloody. Lord, he looked rough.
I’d imagined this moment over the years. Bringing Tommy here to introduce him to Peter. I imagined that it would be happy, no secrets. Everyone prepared and ready. Nervous, sure, but eager.
This was the opposite of everything I’d imagined.
Nothing but secrets and blood.
“Nope,” he said, and we both popped out of the truck, slamming the doors before Pest could get out and get eaten.
The screen door opened, and a tall, raw-boned man with a shock of thick white hair growing wild on his head stepped out into the yard. He had reading glasses on the end of his nose and a red button-down shirt, buttoned up all wrong.
He was holding a shotgun.
“What’s your business here, son?” he said to Tommy, who put his hands up and looked over at me. A whole lot of “what the hell is this mess” in his face.
“Peter.” I ran around the truck, averting shotgun disasters. Bessie, recognizing me, trotted over and nudged my hand for a pat. “It’s me.”
Peter tore his narrowed gaze away from Tommy and focused on me. A smile rippled across his face. He wasn’t a hugger, so we didn’t do that. But he looked at me fondly from a few feet away, and I smiled at him.
“Beth,” he said. “Been listening to the news, thought you might show up.”
“Here I am,” I said with a shrug. Though something like relief rained over me. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but we just needed a safe place to get ourselves organized.”
“You know you’re welcome here,” he said and glanced back over at Tommy. “Who is your friend?”
I’d thought about this. About lying. But before I could say anything, Tommy answered.
“Tommy MacNeill,” he said. “Sorry to barge in on you like this.”
If I hadn’t been looking, if I hadn’t been watching with my heart in my throat, I might not have seen it. The way Peter leaned back a little, his mouth open like he’d been hit in the gut. The shotgun in his hand slipped to his side, and he took a deep breath before looking at me.
I shook my head once, fast; he doesn’t know, I said with that gesture, with the frantic widening of my eyes. He doesn’t know who you are.
Peter closed his mouth, pulled himself together, but it wasn’t easy. The effort was visible.
He coughed and wiped at his mouth, his fingers trembling.
“Looks like you’ve been in a scrape,” he finally said in a gruff voice to Tommy.
Tommy touched his eye, the dried blood there.
“It looks worse than it is.” Tommy aimed for a joke, and Peter glanced away, sniffing like it was just too hard to watch Tommy pretend not to be hurt. I knew the feeling. “It just won’t stop bleeding.”
It felt like the world was sitting on my shoulders, pushing me slowly into the earth, like if I looked down my feet would be buried in the hard-packed soil of Peter’s parking area. I’d be like one of his trees out front, the sky held in my branches.
“Those kinds of cuts are tricky,” Peter said, his throat bobbing above his shirt.
It was obvious I’d gone too far, bringing Tommy up here unannounced. Peter had every right to tell us we weren’t welcome. We brought a shit ton of baggage with us, and Peter had a real aversion to baggage.
“We can leave,” I said, drawing their attention. “If it’s not a good time or whatever.”
“It’s okay,” Peter said. “Go on up and get yourself looked after.” Peter pointed at the garage but was staring at the ground a few feet in front of Tommy’s toes. “All your stuff is up there from last time. I have Angie clean it up every month, just in case.” My heart squeezed at the thought of this old man waiting for me. Sending his cleaning lady up to the garage to change the sheets just so the place would be ready if I decided to visit. I used to come up here a few times a year, but since my YouTube video took off, I’ve barely called Peter, much less come to visit.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Get yourself settled,” Peter said. “I’m in the house when you’re ready to talk.”
He shot me a pointed look, and I nodded. He was going to want some explanations, and I owed him that.
“Don’t forget your…” Peter peered through the windshield of the truck. “Jesus, what is that thing?”
“We’re not sure,” Tommy said and opened the truck. Pest all but flew into his arms, and Peter’s dogs went nuts at the sight of her.
One sharp whistle between Peter’s teeth, though, and the dogs settled.
“Go on then,” he said, shooing the dogs with one hand and us with the other.
The apartment above the garage was just the way I remembered it. A big queen-size bed. The cat clock on the wall. The shelves of books. The TV Peter surprised me with years ago. He didn’t much like TV. But he did it because I told him about my insomnia, how the TV helped sometimes when I was up in the middle of the night. Old movies with the sound off had become a familiar bedtime story.
The denim crazy quilt his wife had made from worn-out pairs of jeans was still on the bed. The windows were clean, and tons of sunlight fell across the
pine walls and floors, making the whole room glow like a honeycomb.
“Nice place,” Tommy said.
“It was for their daughter,” I said and immediately winced. Fuck, this was a tangled web. I put the bags down. There wasn’t much. My makeup and changes of underwear. His duffel bag. “I stay here every time I come up.”
“Peter has a wife?” Tommy asked.
“Had one. She died a bunch of years ago.” I stepped from the bedroom into the bathroom and opened the cabinet under the sink and predictably found the first-aid kit. “Come in here,” I said. “Let’s clean you up.”
He came to stand in the bathroom doorway, and the already small bathroom became tiny.
I could smell him, soap and his laundry detergent and the metallic bite of blood. I opened my mouth to inhale so I could taste the salt of his sweat across my tongue.
I would never not want Tommy. Never. And that was before last night. Last night had made everything a thousand times more clear. More real. I didn’t have to imagine how it would feel to have sex with him. I only had to remember.
And the memories were alive in me.
Even now, I felt him in my body, his lips and his breath, his sweat and his weight.
It had been real. Not a dream.
And I wanted him again so badly I ached with it.
He stepped inside the bathroom, and I shifted to sit on the edge of the tub. He lowered the lid of the toilet and sat there. Our knees touched and we both shifted away, but it was useless. The room was too small. There was nothing to do but touch.
And I felt the hard bone of his knee against the inside of my thigh and I had to bite my lip against the groan. The groan that sat in my throat waiting for me to be unguarded so it could come out.
Everything was going wrong for us. I was, in fact, in the middle of betraying him, and he was on the run for his life after trying to save my life, and it didn’t matter.
The world could be on fire and I would want him.
The white tiles and shower curtain and the bright sunlight made it feel like we were inside of an egg. A bubble.
Where I Belong (The Debt Book 2) Page 3