Sixty Nine (Payne Brothers Romance Book 4)

by Sosie Frost

  “Yeah, that’s a bitch.”

  Gretchen popped back to Marius’s side, gently squeezing his hand. “But hopefully, there’s someone around to heal him up.”

  Tidus glanced at me. “Shouldn’t be a problem, right, Glory?”

  “Wouldn’t know.” I lied through my teeth and he knew it. “Wouldn’t care.”

  And I didn’t want to know.

  Varius didn’t come to me looking for help. He was running from everything—himself, the past, his responsibilities. And instead of healing him, I’d given him permission to take me. To indulge in his obsession. To succumb to sin and destroy himself between my legs.

  And I’d let him because I’d wanted the same thing.

  What broke first—half of the commandments or my own foolish heart?

  The preschoolers pressed toward the doors. Marius shouted as a rugrat darted between his knees, nearly taking out his prosthetic leg. The child frolicked to a disjointed version of Frosty the Snowman. This spurred the other children to begin singing, each picking a different part of the song to scream as loudly as they could muster.

  Lulu danced in my arms, giddy that the music began.

  “Fwosty…the…toes Ben…” Her face scrunched, the wheels in her head turned, and Lulu decided the song she’d been practicing all week—at all hours of the day and night—was no longer entertaining. She switched movies and belted out her new favorite. “Let go! Let go! Snow!”

  God help me, I’d freed myself from one winter wonderland to get trapped in another. I could handle the same ten Christmas Carols from the 1950s on loop in any store or church, but if I had to listen to Frozen one more time…

  Unfortunately, Lulu had convinced more than one child to switch tunes. The flash mob turned from sweet declaration of Christmas pageantry into a thinly veiled parody of Disney’s current messiah, just begging for a cease and desist to get shoved up our stockings.

  But at least the kids were singing.

  Marius led the charge, Gretchen close behind. The kids pranced after Santa and burst through the township building, gleefully interrupting the normal monthly business with jingling bells, warm smiles, and copywritten material.

  With a little help from Gretchen, the children reluctantly switched back to the correct song.

  “Frosty…the snowman…”

  All too late. The meeting descended into utter and total chaos.

  Marius gave his jolliest most political laugh. “Ho, Ho—What the hell?”

  Santa’s greeting was lost in a flurry of profanity, insults, and shouted accusations with language better suited for a jam-packed mall parking lot on Christmas Eve than a meeting room loaded with kids.

  The townspeople shouted over each other, stacking shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowded meeting room. Heated words snarled across the seats, and the insults flew like the balled-up copies of the agenda, used as quick projectiles to interrupt frantic arguments.

  Chairs overturned.

  The microphones spit feedback.

  And the children paraded headfirst in a warzone which pitted neighbor against neighbor, irate councilmembers against the mayor, and two drunken fire chiefs from rival departments in an all-out death-match between the podium and overhead projector.

  Sherriff Samson attempted to keep order between the two graying, pot-bellied fire chiefs by hollering for the drunken idiots to sit down, put their pants back on, and settle things like men.

  For this, he earned a snowball to the face.

  With the town’s only law enforcement officer sputtering out a snow cone, the fire chiefs leapt for each other and crashed into the first row of chairs.

  And, in the middle of the mayhem, Quint Payne leapt onto the podium, seized the mic, and called to the townsfolk.

  “Place your bets!” He pointed to the tussling firefighters. “In this corner—Carl’s got a bum knee! And in this corner—Earl with the pig valve!”

  A dozen meeting-goers thrust their hands into the air, clutching tens and twenties. The fight turned ugly, the crowd-unruly, and the preschoolers lost in the middle of a verse.

  “With a corncob pipe and a button nose…”

  “You son of a bitch!” The older fire chief wore a jacket marked Butterpond Volunteer Fire Department #1, but he ripped it from his shoulders and tossed it to the ground. He thrust his finger into the weatherworn face of the opposing fire chief, sporting a jacket marking him as chief of Butterpond #2. “You heard the call come in! We’re assigned to that street!”

  “…and two eyes made out of coal!”

  “That’s a load of horse shit, Earl, and you know it!” The fire chief hmphed, his thick mustache disguising his scowl. “Clement Street is in our jurisdiction!”

  “Don’t piss around with me, Carl! The corner of Clement and Holly is ours!”

  “Why don’t you just claim Mayview too?”

  “Seeing as my company can actually extinguish a goddamned fire, maybe I should!”

  “…Came to life that day!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Earl stepped a little too close, bumping chests. “You saying my men can’t put out a fire?”

  “I’m saying that if you’re too incompetent to know where your jurisdiction ends and mine begins, maybe you should screw-in your hose somewhere else!”

  “Don’t you tell me what to screw!” Earl’s face turned fire-engine red. “Last I heard, you’ve been spraying your hose over on Hillcrest Extension! Sarah McCruthers’ place?”

  The audience gasped. Carl sputtered. Sherriff Samson dove between them.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Jehoshaphat!” Samson held both men apart with a gruff profanity. “How many times do I gotta break this fight up? You two tussled in the middle of Clement Street for so long the Johnson house burned to the ground. Now you jackasses are gonna get into it again?”

  “He didn’t move his truck!” Carl yelled.

  Earl swung his fist. “It was our territory!”

  Samson shouted for help, but the closest reinforcement was Santa. Marius leapt forward, but Earl’s wayward punch skipped off Carl’s shoulder and slammed directly into Santa’s beard.

  Down he went—less a bowl full of jelly…more a mountain of muscle, aggression, and tactical Navy SEAL training.

  Santa’s roar overwhelmed the meeting room. The sack of presents crumpled to the floor, and Marius dove into the melee—punching, biting, clawing, and completely invalidating the bet orchestrated by Quint.

  I hauled three of the preschoolers back as Tidus chugged the last of his whiskey, ripped off his shirt, and dove into the brawl to defend his brother.

  Maybe they were right.

  I wasn’t ready for a Butterpond municipal meeting.

  “Stop!” One of the kids yelled, breaking into tears. “Santa’s being naughty!”

  “Varius!” I hoisted Lulu further into my arms. It did nothing. The shouting, swearing, and crashing of chairs into a mobile whiteboard terrified her. She wailed. The preschoolers screamed. “Get Santa out of there!”

  “I got ‘em!” Quint pocketed a fistful of twenties before jumping over a beached Sherriff Samson. “Marius! Use the coal!”

  Oh God.

  “Come on, kids.” I forced a smile. It did nothing. The sharp, terrified cries of the children deafened the entire meeting hall. “Keep singing!”

  “Frosty…the snowman…”

  Too little, too late. The fight transcended minor scuffle and erupted into a neighborhood brawl. Men dove into the ruckus. Women scolded their husbands. The elderly clutched their walkers.

  And the huddle of men collapsed upon itself with much gnashing of teeth.

  With a mighty roar, Santa’s leg—clad in a thick, rubber boot—launched into the air.

  Children screamed as the prosthetic slammed into the meeting room’s Christmas tree, kicking the pretty, white-lace angel in the face before upsetting the entire set-up. The lights ripped from the walls as every ornament jingled and crashed into the floor.

 
; Lulu squealed. “Treeeeeeee!”

  That…was enough holiday spirit for one day.

  I turned for the kids, groaning as a dozen preschoolers scattered throughout the meeting room. Each pleaded, begged, and mourned for the broken Santa Claus—now legless and presumably unable to manage a sleigh and their expected presents.

  In rightful terror, their screeches echoed throughout the room, but no one was louder than my diva Lulu. Her eyes welled with tears, hands clutched and yanked at my hair. Her little fists got a good grip, and I nearly crashed into the wall as she tugged so hard she’d take my teeth out with it.

  “Momma doesn’t have money for a weave now…” I tried to soothe her, but she was beyond help. With a sigh, I called to Varius as he surveyed the chaos in stunned shock. “V! Can you take Lulu?”

  He didn’t move.

  “Varius!” I shouted over the chaos. “Take Lulu. I’ll get the kids!”

  He heard me. He must have heard me.

  But he stayed frozen—expression lost in a dark and twisted memory.

  My stomach pitted, and my heart tangled with dread. Varius’s eyes had shadowed, dark and hollow. Pained. The screaming children surrounded him, but he didn’t reach for them, refused to comfort them, couldn’t escape from them.

  “V!” What use was calling to him? Varius was beyond my voice now.

  Beyond my help.

  Whatever memories he possessed of that day resurfaced in the chaos of the meeting. And it consumed him. Rendered him silent, still, and utterly devoid of emotion and reaction.

  And I could do nothing to help him.

  Not now that a dozen preschoolers feared Santa was disappearing before their eyes, limb by limb.

  Maybe not ever.

  I called to Gretchen, offering her Lulu while I scrambled to the tree and removed Marius’s leg. With a sharp whistle and skillful dodge of the Widow Barlow’s cane as it twacked down on the fire chiefs’ heads, I shuffled the sniffling, traumatized children from the meeting room. One quick head-count later, and I had all of them more-or-less in one piece and collected.

  “Is Santa okay?” A little girl asked, fingers in her mouth, tears in her eyes.

  Gretchen fumed. “Not when I get through with him.”

  The doors opened behind me. I turned, but Varius said nothing. He clenched his jaw and hid his trembling hand and escaped into the night beyond the cries.

  “Uh-oh…” Gretchen handed Lulu back to me.

  My daughter snuggled into my neck, and I gently rubbed her back as her weeping turned into giggles.

  “Leg!” She pointed back toward the fray. “Panta leg!”

  Santa was the least of my concerns now…and so was a Christmas pageant doomed to failure as the flash mob was lucky to escape with only minor childhood trauma and not a misdemeanor.

  I had no idea how badly the events of that storm had damaged Varius. Hell, I doubted his family even knew.

  Varius needed help—but he’d never ask for it, wouldn’t acknowledge it, or even believed that he deserved it.

  But he needed someone.

  Something.

  Without his faith, without his church and his community, Varius was completely and utterly lost.

  And I knew, deep in my heart, I was the only woman who could find him.

  9

  Varius

  “What do you mean, you’re leaving?”

  My sister barricaded the top of the basement stairs. She lunged forward as I approached, and, for a solid second, I wondered if she aimed to push me back down.

  Instead, she seized my duffel bag and threw it behind her into the kitchen.

  “You aren’t serious?” Cassi knew better than to pout—especially after we’d Geneva Convention’d her puffy lower lip during the Prada purse Christmas fiasco of 2006 when she’d ended up with five bags and an equal number of broke brothers. “Like, you’re leaving leaving?”

  Something I should have done long ago. “I’ll call you with the details once I get there.”

  “Where?”

  I hadn’t decided yet. “Don’t worry about me, Sassy.”

  “You make it really hard not to.” She followed me into the kitchen as I stuffed my wallet into my jacket and hunted for my phone. “Where do you think you’re going? What are you looking to find?”

  Nothing. What was left to search for? I’d already experienced the greatest pleasures, faith, and beauty life could offer. All that was left now was darkness, pain, and misery.

  And I had no way to combat any of it.

  “What about the church?” Cassi asked. “You’re just going to walk away from them?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Does that make it better?”

  “Makes it a little easier second time around.”

  She crossed her arms. “Is this because of what happened at the meeting? It’s okay now, V. They dropped all the charges against Marius. And the kids were all promised presents, regardless of Santa’s disability, blackeye, or temper.”

  I hoisted the bag onto my shoulder. “You know it’s not about the meeting.”

  “You have to work through this at some point,” she said.

  “I am. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  She groaned, grabbing my hand before I could escape the kitchen. “That’s not what I mean. Something is wrong, V. You have to let us help you.”

  And what made her think I deserved the help? What made me so special that I earned a family’s love and compassion?

  What was the difference between me and the little girl who lost her life that day?

  Until someone could answer that question—family, friends, God—I had no reason to stay.

  “What about the pageant?” Cassi followed me through the house. “What about all the work everybody is putting in? What about the church? What about us? You think you can just leave and we wouldn’t miss you? You’re running in the wrong direction. You need to come back to us, not push further away.”

  “And do what?” My voice rasped, the exhaustion bleeding into my words. “What can I do for the family? The church? I’m not the man I was a year ago. And I’m not going to stay here and infect the people I love and the community I grew up in with this…”

  Misery.

  Darkness.

  Void.

  I pushed her aside, heading to the door. “I promise. I will call.”

  Cassi had a temper. It was cute as a kid but dangerous in a woman who was after a favor.

  “You can’t leave!” Her voice edged in panic. “Varius, I want you to marry me and Rem!”

  The bag dropped to the floor.

  Great. My brothers and I thought we had a couple more years before we had to resolve our issues with Rem. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d ruined her life five years ago and returned just in time to take advantage of her?

  “Marry you?” I rubbed my temples, trying to remember my lovely sister as the little girl scampering over the farm in paisley dresses. It didn’t work. Before me stood a beautiful, stubborn woman who meddled in our lives and made them better. “Cassi…don’t tell me he got your pregnant.”

  Should’ve known not to insult Remington Marshall, Cassie’s first, greatest, and only love. My sister bristled and nearly dug a trench to begin the war.

  “I’ll have you know that I love Rem, and he loves me. And whatever happened years ago with the family and the burned barn is settled. You hear me?”

  “Cassi…”

  “No, I’m not pregnant.” She huffed. Still, she looked away, only a little ashamed. “Well, we had a scare. Thought I might be—”

  Not what an older brother wanted to hear. “What—”

  “Just listen to me,” she said. “Please, V. It’s not like I can go to Jules for this—or Tidus, God forbid. I thought I might be pregnant, and we were so worried about what the family would say. But I love Rem, and the more time passed, the more disappointed we were that I wasn’t having a baby.”

  “You are a baby, Cas
si.”

  “Not anymore.” She held her arms out. “Rem and I want to spend our life together. We want to get married. Start a family. And we want you to perform the ceremony.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re my big brother. You’re the reason I believe in the church. You’re the one who told me marriage was something holy and sanctified and beautiful. Why shouldn’t you be the one who blesses us?”

  My heart sunk. “How could I perform that rite if I’ve lost my faith?”

  “Because you haven’t lost your faith!”

  “Enough.”

  “Varius—”

  “I said enough.” I’d never raised my voice to my little sister before, and fortunately, I didn’t need to now. “Find someone else, Cas. I gave that life up.”

  “No.” She kicked the duffle bag toward me with a scowl. “You’re too afraid to confront it. If you want to leave, leave. Just do something with your life other than waste it away, wishing you’d died in that storm too.”

  Cassi’s cell rang before I said something I regretted. I grabbed the bag, but she waved at me, a frown darkening her expression.

  “No, I’m not at the church, Mrs. Barlow…” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know it’s Sunday…yes, I know there’s a guest minister today…” She paused. “No…I haven’t seen Lulu. Isn’t she with Glory?”

  A chill ripped through my spine.

  The bag was forgotten. The keys dug into my palm, nearly piercing skin as I clenched my fists.

  I turned, but Cassi had already ended the call.

  “What’s wrong?” The words caught in my throat. “What happened to Lulu?”

  Cassi bit her nail, worried. “She went missing a little bit ago. They’re looking for her now—”

  The blood pounded in my ears, and a quick, furious rage tore through my body. I ignored Cassi’s questions and sprinted from the kitchen, slamming the front door against the wall and leaping the last two steps from the porch.

  How many times had I made the drive from the farm to the church?

  How many times had I counted the fence posts, the stop signs, the broken curbs, and the dim lights?

  This was the first time I’d counted my own heartbeats. And every ragged, pounding thump against my ribs was another wasted second that suffocated me in those memories.