by TM Frazier
I got up slowly, taking the sheet with me, waiting for a moment before attempting to take a step.
No pain.
No dizziness.
I grabbed one of his shirts from the pile and tugged it on. It was huge, covering my thighs completely.
The coffee table had an empty whiskey bottle laying on its side. The walls were the same slatted wood as in the bedroom which was the only bedroom from what I could see.
A small three cushion sofa sat in the middle of the room. There was no TV, but in the corner, was a stack of well-read paperbacks right next to a shotgun and a tall fishing pole leaning up against the wall.
There wasn’t a single picture or knick-knack to be found. Nothing personal at all. The old hard wood floors were stain and polish free. They creaked as I stepped over them through the tiny kitchen that could barely be classified as a kitchen with only a two-burner stove and a mini fridge on top of a base of cabinets with no doors and a few drawers. A single shelf lined the wall above and the only thing it held was dust.
Unlike my camper which was…
My camper!
I sprinted to the front door and ripped it open. The sun had just peeked above the tops of the trees, a big beam of its first rays illuminated the pile of twisted metal that used to be my home.
“No!” I darted across the lawn and slid to a stop before I crashed right into it.
All around the camper was everything I owned. My new clothes which I hastily gathered in my arms. My mother’s box which was now empty. I scanned the surrounding area. Most of the contents were floating in puddles.
My heart sank. I dropped to my knees and lifted the note my mother had given me. The ink dripped down the page along with the last words my mother ever had for me.
My necklace! I’d taken off the sunflower pendant she’d given me. I crawled around the grass and mud on my hands and knees until something in the corner of my eye caught my attention.
I got to my feet and picked it up. It was a picture. One I’d never seen before. I stumbled over to Rusty, my glorified lawn ornament, and got inside. I shut the door and held the picture in front of me.
The photo was of my mother when she was about my age. She was standing in front of Rusty and Blue with a big smile on her face wearing jeans and a mid-riff bearing yellow tank top. 1995 was written on the back of the picture, the year before I was born. Underneath it was a repetitive watermark for OUTSKIRTS PHOTO-MAT.
Mother HAD been in Outskirts after all. Before I was born.
How was all this possible?
The picture was also proof that Rusty and Blue weren’t just bought for me recently and stored away in secret. She’d owned them for over twenty years.
Looking at that picture was like looking into the life of a total stranger. It left me with almost no answers and a thousand more questions. The entire ordeal went from frustrating to infuriating in the tick of the clock.
Mother had kept so much from me and by the looks of things she’d also kept me from so much.
Maybe she thought that somehow living in her camper, driving her truck, would help me feel closer to the real her, but the only thing I ended up feeling, sitting in the driver’s seat of Rusty, one of her many decade’s old secrets, was furious.
How could I feel close to her? I never even knew her.
The person in the picture was someone I never knew. That woman looked happy. Adventurous even. The woman I knew was frail. Weak. A doormat who never stood up to my father or the church.
Not for herself.
Not even for me.
“Why didn’t you just leave him?” I asked out loud to my smiling mother in the picture as the anger started boiling in my gut until it bubbled over and I found myself shouting at her. “Why didn’t you just leave him?” I repeated, tearing the picture in a thousand little pieces and throwing them out the window. “You fucking coward!” I screamed, pounding on the steering wheel.
My throat tightened and a heaviness grew in my chest like my heart didn’t know whether to beat faster or stop beating altogether. “Did you leave me all this to show me the life you could’ve had, but didn’t? Why!?” I pounded the wheel again and then again, and again and again until my vision was blurry and all I could see was the redness of my own heated rage. “You’re a fucking coward! You fucking COWARD!” I pounded the wheel until the skin across my knuckles split and blood dripped between my fingers.
Strong hands bit into my biceps, yanking me from the cab. I was spun around by my shoulders and found myself face to face with Finn. “I like it when you swear,” he said, pressing closer.
“Finn, get off me! Get off me! Let me go!” I wailed, struggling to free myself from his grip. Kicking out my legs only to connect with the air as he evaded my every move.
A growl tore from his throat. Finn picked me up and walked me to the back of the truck, setting me on the open tailgate. He pushed himself between my legs and hovered over me to keep me from leaping off.
“Let me go,” I demanded, pushing at his hard chest. “I don’t have time for your broodiness right now.”
Finn held my wrists together with one hand. “No, of course you don’t. You’re too busy tearing up pictures and screaming at no one.”
“Let me go,” I repeated.
“No,” he said between clenched teeth.
“Just go! Leave me alone. Leave meeeeeee!” I wailed as I pounded against his stone chest.
“You don’t want to hit me,” he warned, his eyes hardened.
“Then let me go.”
“Why?” He stepped in closer, unaffected by my attempt to fight against him. My inner thighs were touching his outer thighs.
“Because she did!” I screamed, my eyes sprang open to find his cold blue gaze. “She could have run anywhere and taken me with her. Instead she left him but she left me too. She was a coward who couldn’t make the right decision and I love her. I love her…but I hate her. I hate her so much…so…” I was interrupted when Finn’s lips pressed against mine, momentarily rendering me stupid. I pointed my toes toward the sky to avoid my initial instinct which was to wrap my legs around him. It was so consuming that I momentarily forgot to fight him off, but I didn’t need to, he pulled his lips from mine.
“Stop doing that,” I said. I pushed him off but he stayed between my legs, his hands on my bare back just under the hem of his big t-shirt I was wearing. His gaze hardened. I could see the conflict written in his lined forehead and the deep V between his eyes. I had no doubt the conflict had everything to do with me.
And kissing me.
“It’s your fault that I do it,” Finn said, his voice deep and smooth against my chin and then my neck.
“So that’s your plan? Kiss me every time you want to shut me up?” I asked, still feeling every bit of my anger but also feeling something else. Something that sent tingles between my legs and an ache in my core. “Thank you for saving me. Really. Thank you. I appreciate it,” my voice cracked. “But you can just leave me alone now. And please, STOP kissing me,” I said in almost a whisper.
“I’m going to kiss you whenever I want to kiss you,” Finn stated as if I didn’t have a say in the matter.
The early morning sunlight highlighted the beads of sweat trickling from his shoulders down Finn’s broad chest and across the valleys of his defined abs. He was standing so close that we were breathing in each other’s air. “Whenever you want to kiss me?” I laughed. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this. You’re always mad at me. Why did you save me? Why do you keep kissing me when you’re always mad at me?”
“It’s when I’m pissed off at you that I want to kiss you the most,” Finn said, his voice flowing over my skin like a silky blanket. He slid me closer so I could feel the outline of his rigid erection as if he were proving a point. He lowered his lips to mine and consumed my mouth in a greedy kiss that had me shaking with need and spinning with confusion.
“Do you always kiss everyone you hate?” I asked, y
anking my lips from his.
“Does this feel like hate to you?” he growled looking between us as if he could see the connection there.
His nostrils flared. He pulled me flush against him so I could feel every bit of him. Almost like he was showing me how it could feel if only it weren’t for our clothes between us.
“I know what it feels like to be hated,” I assured him as he brushed his lips over my jaw and licked his way around to my neck, stopping to suck the sensitive spot behind my ear.
I didn’t have on anything underneath his oversized shirt that hung off my one shoulder and I knew if I moved he’d be able to see the evidence of how he affected me soaked through the light cotton fabric.
“What exactly does that mean?” he pulled back again, staring daggers into my eyes. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing. Forget about it,” I answered, regretting my sudden overshare and wishing I could take it back.
“Sawyer. Tell me. Who hurt you?” he growled. From the murderous look in his eyes, I knew there was no way he was going to let this go.
“My father was very involved in the church and the church believed that women were secondary to men. Dad took that very literally. Mom and I were both second class citizens in our own home. He treated us both like children who needed to be disciplined on a daily basis. The more he drank…the worse the discipline became.”
“He hurt you,” Finn confirmed, softly rubbing the pad of his thumb under my eye. “How could he hurt YOU?” he whispered.
The softness of his voice melted around me, wrapping me in its soothing warmth. “Not just me. My mom. Well, mostly my mom.” I looked over at my mangled camper. “It was always worse during a storm. The sound of the thunder outside masked what was really going on inside.”
“That’s why…” Finn said, his voice trailing off as he registered the reason for my freak out last night.
“Yeah, that’s why.” I pointed to the wreckage. “They can be quite destructive.” I looked to Finn. “But not quite as destructive as my father.”
Finn threaded his fingers through my hair and held the back of my head as if he was afraid I was going to pull away. “Who were you yelling about before? Who left you?” he asked, searching my eyes for answers. I evaded his eyes but he held me by the back of my head. “Who left you?” he asked again, tugging slightly.
“My mother,” I answered on an exhale, feeling the anger bubbling to the surface all over again.
As if he could sense my shifting emotions, Finn kissed me again and I was lost in the sensation of his skilled lips. His hand snaked its way under the hem of my shirt and slid up my torso, his fingertips grazing the underside of my breasts.
My breath hitched. My nipples tightened. Like a reflex, I tightened my thighs around Finn’s legs, pulling him closer. “What are you doing?” I gasped.
“Talking,” Finn groaned against my neck. “Your mother left you. When?”
“A few weeks ago. She…she died.” I was practically growling.
I’d never been so angry before. Angry about my mother. Angry that I was feeling things toward Finn that both confused and amazed me.
Finn went to kiss me again and I bit at him before he could come too close, my teeth clanking in the air. He chuckled and pressed his lips to mine anyway, sucking my bottom lip. I bit down and instantly tasted his blood, coppery and sweet on my tongue.
Finn pulled back and the rage I expected wasn’t there. Instead he snaked out his tongue, licking the drop of blood from his lip, keeping his eyes trained on me the entire time. “How did she die?” he asked, leaning forward and brushing his lips against the crook of my neck. He rocked against my bare opening with his hardness.
When he left me in bed he’d gotten partially dressed, only the thin fabric of his boxer briefs between us.
My eyes rolled back in my head with a pleasure that jolted into me so hard I felt like I’d been struck by lightning. I was downright dizzy.
“How,” Finn repeated against my skin.
“She…she killed herself,” I managed to finally answer, hissing the unwanted truth through my teeth.
Finn froze.
I took advantage of his momentary pause and pushed against his chest one last time. He faltered, taking a half step back, giving me enough space to jump from the tailgate and run.
Finn didn’t give chase.
Probably because he knew something I’d realized far too late.
I had nowhere to go.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Finn
She killed herself.
I should have gone after Sawyer but her words were like a stake to my heart, freezing me in place. When I finally snapped out of it, she was gone.
Shit.
Sawyer had just suffered a concussion for fuck’s sake and now she was wandering around in yet another afternoon storm when the one the night before almost killed her.
Florida weather was unpredictable at best. The schizophrenic rain certainly wasn’t helping me find Sawyer any faster.
After searching the house and porch, I jogged over to her truck and yanked open the door.
Nothing.
Besides the yard, the swamp, or possibly hiding in the brush somewhere, there weren’t many other places she could be.
She could have hit her head and fallen into the water. Encounters with snakes, wild hogs, panthers, bobcats, or alligators. Fuck, the animal didn’t even have to be scary. The wrong mosquito bite could mean the end.
I made it around the house and immediately my eyes locked on my boat, teetering back and forth in the water as the rain created a wake where there usually wasn’t one.
Making my way over as fast as I could, I yanked the covering from the top and there she was.
I exhaled.
Soaking wet. Shaking. Holding her knees to her chest on the floor of the boat. Her teeth chattering louder than the rain splashing all around us.
She didn’t react when I lifted her into my arms. I cradled her shivering body against my chest and carried her up to the porch.
She still said nothing when I turned on the shower, stripped us both of our wet clothes and held her under the hot spray until I felt the trembling leave her body and her chattering stop.
I wrapped her in a clean towel, picked her up again and carried her to my room where we both got in bed and I tucked her warm naked body against mine.
There wasn’t much I could offer Sawyer, but what I could give her was distraction. I talked nonsense to her about everything and anything until she fell asleep.
The rain stopped completely.
The wind chimes on the porch sounded. The ones Jackie had made for our new house when we’d moved in together. It was the only possession of hers I’d taken with me to the swamp.
At first, they played just a sporadic note or two until it became a full-on symphony.
The music floated through the now eerily still night. Not a cricket could be heard. Not a frog croaked. Not a mosquito buzzed.
For hours it was just me, lying there wide awake with Sawyer in my arms while the chimes relentlessly reminded me of a past that no matter how hard I tried, I’d never be able to forget.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sawyer
“Is it true that your RV got mangled by a twister?” Kayla asked, popping her gum and sticking a pen into the messy bun on top of her head.
It had been over a week since I’d seen Finn. I’d woken up alone the next morning and soon after, Josh had stopped by to check on me.
I’d been sleeping on the couch in her apartment ever since.
I’d gone back over to the swamp shack to thank Finn for saving me. Twice. But both times there was no sign of him.
The only reason I knew he’d been around at all was the blue tarp that had been placed over my wrecked camper.
“I don’t know if it was a tornado for sure, but something got it in the storm,” I said as I felt my heart sinking.
“Were you in it when it happe
ned?” Maya asked, appearing with a tray of drinks in hand raised above her head.
“Yes, but luckily Finn pulled me out.”
If on cue, the band chose that very moment to stop playing. Kayla and Maya gasped in unison.
“He did what?” Missy asked in a whisper, over pouring a shot of whiskey. Amber liquid spilled over the rim of the shot glass and pooled on the bar. “Shit,” she swore.
“Ladies?” Critter raised his eyebrows at the girls who reluctantly picked up their trays and headed back to wait on their tables.
“Thanks,” I said, grateful to be out from under their scrutiny although I was sure I hadn’t heard the end of it.
“Finn, you say?” Critter asked, flipping a rag over his shoulder. “Haven’t seen that boy around in a while.”
I tried to sound casual. “How do you know Finn?”
“Told you. I know everything and everyone. Finn’s a good kid, but he ain’t been around in a long time.”
“Why did he stop coming around?” I asked, washing my hands in the sink.
“That’s not for me to say.” Critter smacked the register and it sprang open. “I’m not one to go around telling other people’s stories.”
“So what you’re saying is that you don’t know?” I teased.
“That’s not it. I told you. I know everything and everyone.”
Suddenly I wished I hadn’t torn the picture of my mother into bits and pieces. Critter had told me when we first met that he didn’t know her, but it was a long time ago. Maybe the picture would’ve jogged his memory.
“Finn giving you any kind of trouble?” Critter asked. Wrinkles formed on top of his wrinkles as a worried expression crossed over his face.
“Not really,” I answered. Not the kind that Critter could fix anyway.
“You let me know if I need to kick that boy’s ass for you. I may be getting on in years, but I’ve got some fight left in me for punks like that.” Critter adjusted his belt.