Blaze: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World)

by Delaney Foster

  George—sorry, Deputy Briggman—snickers under his breath as I watch Adrienne grab the kid and walk out the door. I mentally flip him the bird. I’ve given him enough free food and beer after a long shift to last a lifetime. I better not hear shit from him.

  She disappears into the night, and I turn and glare at the two assholes behind the desk. “Not a fucking word.”

  George holds his hands in the air in surrender. “Wasn’t even thinking of it.”

  Glenn, the other deputy, smirks and leans back in his chair. “I’ll say it.” His steely eyes meet mine. “You’re fucked, son.”

  I inhale a deep breath and don’t even argue with him. What would be the point? He’s right.

  I

  Am

  Fucked.

  Liam stares out the passenger side window into the glittering lights of the city as we make our way to the outskirts. The only light in the cabin of the car comes from the moon and the soft green glow of the numbers on the dash. Every once in a while, the beam from a streetlamp on the highway lights up his face.

  I lower the volume on the radio. “So, you wanna tell me what happened tonight?”

  He shakes his head without looking at me.

  “Okay. You want to at least tell me how you got to a bar on the opposite side of town without a car or money for an Uber?”

  He swallows then leans his forehead against the window. Silence.

  I exhale, frustrated. “At some point you’re going to have to talk to me, Liam. This isn’t going away.”

  “Just leave it alone, Miss M.”

  I take a deep breath and remember he’s just a kid. Reminding him that I could lose my job or that Blaze could lose his business wouldn’t do either of us any good.

  “Fine. We don’t have to talk about it right now.” I glance over at him. “But we will talk about it.”

  After a long stretch of silence, he looks at me, his innocent features clouded with fear and remorse. A dark brown curl falls over his forehead, but he ignores it. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  “Can’t,” he says before staring back out the window.

  I’m smart enough to know can’t means regardless of what he wants me to believe, he didn’t start that fire by himself. However. Whoever. Whatever coaxed him into it is going to have to answer to me.

  I ease my foot from the gas pedal as I exit the interstate. “Well, thankfully Mr. Abbott was generous enough to give you a second chance.”

  He laughs under his breath. “He didn’t do that for me.”

  “Of course he did.”

  Liam looks at me and smiles. “Come on, Miss M. I’m a guy. I know guy stuff. He only gave me a chance because he thinks you’re hot.”

  “He gave you a chance because he saw something, something that made him believe you deserve it.” I turn off the main road into our subdivision. “It had nothing to do with me.”

  “Whatever you say,” Liam says then continues looking out the window.

  We pass all the two story homes in our neighborhood with their perfect landscaping and basketball goals by the driveway. Leafy ferns hang from front porch beams and floral wreaths decorate their front doors. Streetlamps let off a soft orange glow, guiding our way down the street and to the cul-de-sac. It’s quiet. It’s cozy. It’s normal. Because everyone deserves a bit of normal, even when it seems like the world is hellbent on serving us chaos.

  There’s a police cruiser parked near the curb in front of the house. Liam spots it the same time I do. Brody must have called them when he found out Liam was missing.

  He gapes at me with panic in his eyes. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  I pull into the driveway and park next to Brody’s car, trying to mask my anxiety with confidence. “Nothing. You’re going to be fine.” I’ll make sure of it.

  “But I messed up.” His voice cracks on his words, and my heart cracks right along with it.

  I know that fear, the one wrapping around him right now. For four years, I experienced it every time a social worker sat me down to “talk” or when the school counselor called me to the office. There are signs, subtle tells, that foster kids begin to look for, things that warn them their world is about to be turned upside down… again. Liam made a mistake, one that I am going to do everything I can to make sure he never makes again, but he isn’t going to get thrown back into the system because of it. Not if I can help it. I’m going to fight for him, fight until I bleed if I have to. Because I know what it’s like to feel like you’re fighting alone.

  “People mess up. We’re human. It’s what we do.” I kill the engine and turn to face him. “Look at me.” He does. “We all make mistakes. How we handle those mistakes is what makes or breaks us. Understand?”

  Silence. Followed by a deep breath and a nod.

  I ruffle my fingers through the curls on top of his head. “Good. When we go inside, you go upstairs. Take a shower and go to bed. I have a feeling you’re going to have a very busy day tomorrow.”

  Another nod before he opens his door and climbs out of the car. My phone buzzes just as I get out of the car and follow Liam to the front porch. I glance down and see Brody’s face on the screen. You’re about an hour too late, buddy. I ignore his call then punch in the keypad code to unlock the door. Brody is pacing in front of the fireplace while a uniformed police officer I recognize all too well leans against the bar between the living room and kitchen.

  You have got to be shitting me.

  Brody waves his phone in the air when we walk in as if I didn’t know he just called me. He shoots daggers at me before his gaze shifts to Liam. “Hey, bud. Nice of you to join us. You want to tell me and Officer Grimes where you’ve been?”

  Officer Grimes. I almost snort out loud.

  I pat Liam on the back. “Upstairs. Shower and bed.” Brody eyes me first. Then Liam. I answer them both by pointing toward the staircase. I swear to all that is holy if Brody challenges me on this, I will yank his balls and make him cry right here in front of his best friend.

  Liam heads toward the stairs, and Brody doesn’t say a word until he’s out of sight and we hear the bathroom door close.

  Brody flicks his eyes to mine. “Did you just copblock me?”

  I walk through the living room and around the bar into the kitchen. “That’s not a thing. And he’s not a cop.”

  Officer Grimes clears his throat and narrows his eyes. “What the fuck, Addy? Am too.” His lips turn up, featuring his adorable dimples. “Even got the cuffs to prove it.” He pats his hip and winks.

  Jake Grimes is devastatingly gorgeous, a triple threat: tatted, toned, and tempting. And completely full of himself.

  I open the fridge and grab a bottle of water. “Promises, promises. Too bad you don’t have the stick to go with them.” I twist the lid and take a sip. His gaze locks on mine, his expression full of purpose as he opens his mouth to say something, probably about his stick, but I cut him off. “And what I meant was that I know what you two are doing and it’s not cool.”

  I’m all for teaching lessons when lessons need to be taught, but Brody has no idea what Liam and I have been through tonight or the panic he felt when he saw Jake’s unit parked in front of the house. Maybe if Brody had called me when he figured out Liam wasn’t in his bed, he would’ve known better. But I should’ve known he wouldn’t. Panicking isn’t Brody’s style. The dude has nerves of steel. He never even flinched when the boys and I played a prank on him and shoe polished all the windows of his brand-new Camaro one day. He simply laughed and made us apologize to Veronica. Yeah, he named his car after a comic book character. He’s that guy.

  “I just wanted to shake him up a little,” Brody says.

  “Consider him shaken.” I take another sip then set the water on the counter. “Tell me, B. How in the hell did a fifteen-year-old boy sneak out of this house on your watch when there’s a camera at the front door and motion sensor lights at the back?”

  He walks into the kitc
hen and leans against the counter beside me. “Fuck if I know.” He grabs my water bottle and takes a sip. Asshole. He knows I’m not a spit swapper. Now I have to grab a new bottle. “How did you know where to find him?”

  “The phone call from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department made it pretty easy.”

  Brody chokes on the sip he just took. Serves him right for stealing my drink. Jake laughs. Brody pounds a fist on his chest, and I throw Karma a wink. Then I spend the next five minutes explaining what happened and how Liam will be spending the next several weeks, or months even, helping Blaze Abbott clean up his bar.

  “Brewery,” Brody interrupts me.

  “What?”

  “The Taproom. It’s a brewery. Not a bar. And Blaze fucking Abbott. Holy shit.”

  My knees grow weak at the mention of his name. I blink away the memory of his eyes, of his voice, of the way the whole world disappeared when he looked at me. “You know him?”

  He laughs. “Everyone knows him. Guy’s a fucking legend.” Of course he is. Brody stares at me as if he’s not sure I understand or speak English. “The East Coast Abbotts? Levi Abbott? Any of that ring a bell?”

  No. None of it rings a bell. I’m not from the East Coast and also not exactly what anyone would call a social butterfly. I don’t have many friends outside of the people I’ve met through my job. I don’t hang out at pool halls and taprooms like Brody and Jake. Give me fuzzy socks, a glass of wine, and The Golden Girls, and I’m a happy camper.

  “Well, since you obviously know more about the Abbotts and The Taproom and this Blaze guy than I do, you can bring Liam to start work in the morning.”

  He was going to do that anyway. This just gives me a better excuse. Brody agrees with all the enthusiasm of a kid waiting in line to meet his childhood hero.

  Jake rakes his eyes over my body. “Well, it looks like you have shit handled here, so I’m going to head out.” A flicker of amusement flashes in his baby blues when he smiles at me. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Addy.” Then he sees himself out.

  I grab a new water bottle and head for the door and shake my head. “You really need to find new friends, Brody.”

  Brody stops me just before I walk out. “Yeah. About that…”

  Oh no. This can’t be good.

  I raise my eyebrows in question, so he continues. “The only way I could convince Jake to come over and play the bad cop was to tell him he could take you on a date.”

  He pimped me out… To a cop.

  I chunk the water bottle across the room, hitting him in the middle of the chest. He manages to catch it before it falls to the floor. His laughter follows me as I close the door. One of these days, I’m seriously going to kill him.

  The scent of French vanilla fills the kitchen in my one-bedroom apartment. I stop for a moment and breathe it in because a French vanilla coffee pod with caramel flavored creamer is one of life’s barest essentials. Kind of like clean water and health care—a priority. And I can’t justify spending five dollars a day for a cup of coffee, so this… this is my little slice of morning heaven.

  My life is full of moments, tiny little snippets of happiness that I treasure while they last. It’s all about the little things, really. A Keurig pod and a bottle of creamer. Finding real strawberries in a scoop of strawberry ice cream. Having a dog stop to sniff your shoe and wag its tail when you pass it on the sidewalk. The flash of desire in a stranger’s eyes. Ordinary moments that always seem to pass too quickly. I try to remember to stop and drink them in before they’re snatched away. Life taught me that long before I was ready.

  The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was to email my boss with an explanation. The first thing I do when I wake up this morning—after I make coffee—is call Brody to make sure he got Liam to The Taproom on time.

  He answers on the second ring. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “How’d it go this morning with your mancrush?”

  My words echo back at me the way they always do when he has me on the Bluetooth in his car. He’s driving. That’s a good sign. I put him on speaker while I start my morning routine.

  “Oh, you know, we exchanged glances, he smiled, I blushed, then we had coffee and I rode off into the sunset.”

  Why do his words make my stomach flip?

  I pull the spiral ponytail holder from my wrist and wrap it around a pile of hair on top of my head. “Sunrise.”

  “What?”

  “It’s seven thirty in the morning. There’s no sunset.”

  “Jesus Addy, it was a joke. You really need to get laid. Which reminds me, you need to pick Liam up at two.”

  “What? Why can’t you do it?” And what does that have to do with me getting laid?

  “I’ve been summoned to a meeting with the board this afternoon regarding this whole shitshow. Not sure I’ll be done in time.”

  Brody screwed up. We will probably all be feeling the consequences of his irresponsibility for a while. I could have killed him—okay, maybe kill is a strong word—but I would hate for him to lose his job over this. He likes to play like he’s tough, but these kids are just as important to him as they are to me. He lives to see them smile. So do I.

  I’ve been waiting for my phone to ring since the minute I hit send on the email. I still haven’t received any kind of response. The silence feels absolute. When I was growing up, the people in my life always used silence as a weapon. There is so much raw power in unspoken words.

  It’s paralyzing.

  It’s chaotic.

  I hate the silence.

  Maybe we’ll both be fired. We could always apply for a job at Starbucks. He could spend his mornings flirting with college girls he never really intends on dating, and I’d still get my fancy coffee without spending five dollars.

  I grab my one-dollar-and-four-cents-a-cup coffee then take the creamer from the fridge. “I’ll pick him up. And for what it’s worth, I hope they take it easy on you… On both of us.”

  “You’re good, babycakes. None of this is your fault. I’ll make sure they all know that.”

  Brody is immature, irresponsible, and annoying as shit, but when he cares, he cares big. Kind of like the brother I never had.

  “Laters, baby,” he says, and I hear the smile in his voice.

  “Tell me you did not just quote Fifty Shades of Grey.”

  He obviously got the line from the movie because I’ve never seen him hold a book, much less read one. I stir my coffee, and he laughs then ends the call.

  The rest of the morning, I scramble through my usual routine of making my bed, turning the dial to the refresh cycle on the dryer because ironing clothes is for overachievers, then getting dressed.

  Next thing I know, I’m leaning over my bathroom counter staring in the mirror with my mouth wide open as I apply mascara and thinking what in the actual fuck am I doing? I changed my top three times before deciding on an American Eagle tank top that looked halfway decent with my jeans, and now I’m cursing God for giving me invisible lashes. I even put on lipstick.

  This.

  Is.

  Ridiculous.

  I’m putting way too much effort into my appearance for someone who probably won’t even get out of my car.

  I shouldn’t get out of my car.

  I won’t get out of my car.

  Four hours later, I’m parked in front of The Taproom, staring at a shirtless god and… getting out of my effing car.

  Not far from a large wooden sign that reads The Taproom, a tall guy with gorgeous olive skin and jet-black hair is pacing back and forth and having an intense conversation with someone on the other end of his cell phone. Every few seconds, his hands fly through the air as if to emphasize his point, even though the caller can’t see him. Liam is shoveling piles of debris and ash into a steel barrel while Blaze carries a second barrel to a commercial-sized dumpster.

  When he lifts the barrel over his head to empty the contents, muscles I didn’t even know existed tighten and flex wh
en he moves. There’s no way that barrel weighs less than a hundred pounds, but he handles it as if it’s nothing. His jeans hang low on his hips, exposing the elastic band of his boxer briefs and I wonder for a split second what it would feel like to run my finger inside the top of that band. I’m going right to hell for the things going through my mind. His golden skin glistens with sweat, and my blood rushes in my ears the minute I find his eyes on me.

  He sets the barrel on the ground and wipes his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. Then he walks over to where I stand, swallowing hard when he sees me. “Damn.”

  I look away, embarrassed at the way his reaction makes my cheeks heat but inwardly high-fiving myself for not showing up looking like I just rolled out of bed.

  Blaze brings his hand to cup the back of his neck the same way he did last night. “I mean… It’s two o’clock already?”

  I shrug because for some reason the beads of sweat rolling across his pecs and down his stomach have made me momentarily forget how to speak.

  “I can come back later if you’re not finished,” I say once my vocal cords decide to finally work.

  He drops his hand and shakes his head. “Nah. I’ll bring him home when we’re done. Unless there’s some kind of rule against that?”

  Today is Haley’s shift at HoH. Haley is twenty-two with long blonde hair, flawless skin, and a body to die for. Oh, and she’s one of those Instagram-famous makeup tutorial/perfect hair girls that make me question everything I thought I ever knew about being a female. Together, she and Blaze would make beautiful babies. The thought of that being a serious possibility once he drops Liam off and meets her makes my stomach drop.

  “Nope, no rules. That would be great.” My voice cracks, exposing my lie. “I’ll grab a piece of paper and write down the address.”

  He tugs the glove off one hand and pulls his cell phone from his back pocket with a smirk. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve seen since I stared at the sweat on his chest. “Or I could just text you when we’re on our way.”

  I swallow. Hard. Then I rattle off the digits, and he stores them in his phone while I focus on appearing unaffected by the fact that he lowkey just asked for my number.