by Lucy Score
“Tell me you’re okay,” he insisted, squeezing my hand.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was too busy trying not to hyperventilate or worse: cry. I hated that my whole body still reacted like wildfire at his touch.
“I’m fine,” I said flatly. I wrenched my hand free. Fine was not the f word I would have chosen. But my pride was at stake. “See you around.”
I ran until I couldn’t see straight. My wounded heart limped along with me as I slipped down Bathtub Gin Alley to avoid the summer crowds. I slunk and stumbled my way toward the woods. Gasping for breath, desperate for peace, for numbness, I skidded to a stop.
Of course I’d come here. It was a clearing half a mile out of town on the lakeside trail. I’d played here as a kid. Partied here as a teenager. Fell in love over and over again with Bowie.
Half-heartedly I kicked at a rotting log and then sat. Feeling my insides rot right along with this chunk of nature. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the air that was already thick with humidity. This was the spot where I discovered how important answers were.
Callie Kendall disappeared from Bootleg four years ago on a summer night. This was the last place anyone had ever seen her. I watched my father, my town, Callie’s family, ask the same questions over and over again. But there weren’t any answers. And I couldn’t accept that.
Now Bowie had given me the answer I dreaded. Now I knew. I was nothing but a nuisance to him. All my needing him to help me and Scarlett out of scrapes. All my depending on him to be there. All my dreams of shared pajamas. It was over.
I needed to be glad to have the answer. I wouldn’t waste any more time pining and plotting. I’d move on.
Just as soon as I mourned what I’d lost. What I’d never had.
7
Bowie
Present Day
The text message ruined my life. It wasn’t a surprise. Just confirmation that things in Bootleg were going to get rougher.
Scary Lawyer Jayme: DNA results are back. It’s Callie’s blood.
I swore and swung my legs over the side of the bed and let the family attorney ruin my day off. Snow fell pretty as a picture outside my bedroom window. It was a snow day. School was closed. I was going to catch up on a few hours of sleep then drink my body weight in coffee and fix some shit around the house I’d been ignoring until I noticed it all when my half-brother Jonah moved in.
Instead, I was waking up with a family crisis on my hands.
I’d been elected the Bodine point of contact for our attorney. Mainly because Gibson was an ass. Jameson “couldn’t people”—and was too busy loving up on Leah Mae to be of any real use. And Scarlett would only make a heap of trouble for everyone. I debated responding. But before I could formulate a response, the phone vibrated in my hand again.
Scary Lawyer Jayme: They’ve had the results for a few weeks. Just keeping a lid on them.
I glared holes in the wall across from my bed. Cassidy’s wall. Her bedroom was on the other side. We lived parallel lives in opposite sides of a duplex. We shared a wall, a backyard, a front porch. Given that Cassidy was my sister Scarlett’s age and best friend, we shared a good long history, too.
She had to have known. The dark thought had me dragging on a pair of sweats. I stopped in the hallway and stared at the door that connected my side to her side. We’d never used the door. We didn’t have a relationship like that. Not anymore.
Now, I was wondering what the hell kind of relationship we did have if she’d been sitting on the DNA results all this time without a word.
I took the stairs two at a time and yanked the front door open. In two steps I was standing at her front door, banging on it with the pent-up frustration that had been my constant companion for years. It was fucking cold, and I was barefoot, but my anger kept me warm.
Sometimes life just plain wasn’t fair. The thought stuck in my mind when the door swung open.
“If you’re fixin’ to break down the door, by all means, go right ahead,” she yawned.
Same pretty, freckled face, only a touch pale today. She had dark circles under her eyes. Her hair, that tawny blonde-brown mix, was a mess. She wore a hoodie and gym shorts that highlighted that mile of leg that I was so fond of.
Deputy Cassidy Tucker was the literal girl next door. And I never had a shot at her.
“You don’t own any shirts?” she demanded, shivering at the cloud of cold air that I was letting in.
I pushed past her into the foyer that was the twin of mine. Beadboard and plaster. She’d painted hers a soft gold. Mine was still the dingy ivory it had been when I moved in. A more romantic frame of mind would have me waxing that fate had us buying opposite sides of the same house around the same time. But realistically, I knew I’d put my offer in because I wanted to be close to her.
Pathetic. Yeah, I was well aware.
“Come on in, why don’t you?” she muttered, closing the door behind us. I was too riled for conversation. So I stormed down the hallway to her kitchen. Like mine, it was too small with a minuscule amount of counter space and squeaky cabinets that were born sometime during our grandparents’ generation.
She always had her coffee maker set to 7 a.m. I pushed the override button and it sputtered to life. I pulled a mug out of the cabinet and then shot her a look. She was perched on a stool at the tiny island she’d squeezed in on top of the black and white tile, still yawning. Reluctantly, I pulled a second mug off the shelf.
“Late night?” I asked. I couldn’t seem to quit caring when it came to her.
“Accident on Mountain Road. 2 a.m. No injuries. Just a hell of a mess.”
I poured coffee into the Bootleg PD mug, keeping her favorite Cockspurs mug for myself, and put it in front of her. She could get her own damn cream and sugar. “When were you going to tell me about the DNA results?”
I saw the shadow in her green eyes come and go. I knew this woman as well as I knew anyone on this earth. At least, I had.
I swung away from her, not wanting to face her betrayal. “Goddammit, Cass.” I wanted to hurl my mug into the sink and shatter it. She was one of us. No matter what had or hadn’t gone down between us all those years ago.
She sighed. “Look, Bow. What do you want me to say? I’m a cop.”
“You’re a deputy.” If I was good and pissed, she should be, too.
“Same damn thing,” she said, coolly. It was a sign I’d landed a direct hit. Where my little sister Scarlett raged with hellfire, Cassidy froze me out until every inch of my body was frostbitten. “It doesn’t change anything anyway.”
“It’s a bloody finger pointing at my father as a murder suspect.”
“The investigators are looking at all leads—”
I took the step that brought me to her, and it pissed me off even more when she recoiled. “Don’t feed me that bullshit, Cass. You owe me more than the standard line.”
“You may not take my job seriously, but I sure as hell do,” she shot back, working up the energy to get mad.
“Apparently I take our friendship more seriously than you do.”
“That’s not fair, Bowie. I’m doing my job. Connelly says keep a lid on it, so what do you want me to do? Run blabbing all over town?”
I crossed my arms, not inclined to get out of her personal space. “No. I want you to come to me. Or Scarlett. I assume my sweet little sister doesn’t know about you holdin’ out on us since she isn’t here burning down your life.”
Now Cassidy winced. The fear of my sister was strong in all of us.
“Why, Cass? Why’d you keep this to yourself?”
She slid off her stool and paced the eight feet of tile. “What do you want me to say? That it’s been eatin’ me alive? That I hate being in this position between you…Bodines and the investigation? I’m not even supposed to know about the results. I’m some peon to Connelly. Someone he dumps grunt work on and orders coffee from.”
That would irk her, I knew. She’d worked damn hard to st
and on her own two feet and not just be seen as an extension of her father, Sheriff Tucker.
I grunted, not feeling particularly sympathetic. “You owe us all an apology.” Me. You owe me an apology. “You chose to work in Bootleg. You chose to be a part of our family. Now deal with it.”
She skidded to a stop in front of me. “I’m not apologizing for doing my job!”
“Then apologize for being a shitty friend.” It was a low blow. One I wasn’t particularly proud of. There wasn’t a more loyal person in my life than Cassidy. She reacted as if I’d hit her. By that I mean she balled up her fist and started to wind up. I took defensive measures and pinned her up against her fridge.
“Now, Cass—”
“Don’t you ‘Now, Cass,’ me! You come into my house, insult my job, and accuse me of being a shitty friend?” She squirmed against me, and I was pretty sure she was trying to work a leg free to knee me in the balls. I crowded her, stilling her with my hips. I’d known Cassidy her whole life, and this was the most physical contact we’d ever had. It made my day a little worse.
“I’m pissed off,” I admitted, gritting my teeth. Holding her in place wasn’t easy. She was trained to take down 200-pound drunk assholes. If she really wanted to, she could have already handed me my balls. “Okay? You hurt me, Cass.”
She froze against me. “I hurt you? Oh, that’s rich.”
I felt her heart thumping in her chest against mine, felt the soft, subtle curves of her breasts pressing into my bare chest.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I needed to get some space between us right quick before my traitor dick—that didn’t give a good damn what Cassidy had or hadn’t done—got any harder against the flat of her belly.
Too late. I saw the second recognition flickered into her eyes. Her breath caught, her body stilled. I could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her neck.
“You gonna take a swing at me if I let you go?” I demanded, my voice was rough on the edges of the words.
She hesitated, then shook her head. I stepped back immediately, taking my chances.
What the hell was I doing? I was the good guy. I didn’t barge into women’s houses and pin them between appliances and hard-ons. I was polite. I said “ma’am.” I walked dates to their front doors without an agenda—though to be fair, more often than not I was invited inside.
It was Cassidy, I decided, shamelessly blaming her. She drove me fucking crazy. And I wasn’t about to walk through why that was. Not for the nine billionth time.
“I’m going home,” I announced, shooting a glance at her. Her eyes were pinned on the front of my sweatpants. “Come find me when you figure out how to fix this mess.”
I slammed her front door and then my own. Two doors between the mess of feelings I had tangled up around Cassidy. It still wasn’t enough.
8
Cassidy
The thudding on my front door was getting old, real old. It was just after 8 a.m. And I was working on my second visitor of the day.
“Cassidy Ann! You open this door right this second!”
I knew exactly who it was even before she started bellowing. Bowie was out for blood, and there was only one person he’d send my way to extract it.
I wrenched open the door, trying to fight my way out of the hoodie I’d pulled on backward.
Scarlett, my best friend, co-conspirator, and wingman, stormed inside with all the heat of a thousand Julys.
“I am so mad at you right now!”
I looked over Scarlett’s shoulder to the SUV idling in front of my house. Devlin, Scarlett’s live-in boyfriend, sent me a wave and mouthed “good luck” to me before pulling away from the curb.
Scarlett unwound a mile of blue and gold striped scarf from her neck and shrugged out of her parka. “You have five seconds exactly to earn my forgiveness,” she said, crossing her arms the same way Bowie had barely an hour before.
I had a feeling Scarlett at least wouldn’t be pushing me up against my fridge sporting hard wood.
“Coffee?” I offered. I was so damn tired.
“You’re forgiven,” Scarlett chirped, skipping her way back to my kitchen. She was as at home here as June or Bowie. Damn him.
Scarlett helped herself to the mug she’d made me with our high school graduation picture on it. “All right, sit ‘n’ spill.”
In the rest of the South, it was “sit a spell.” But in Bootleg Springs, where gossip flowed faster than the creeks to the lake, it was spill.
“Look,” I said, “the DNA results came back a few weeks ago. Connelly’s keeping everything under wraps so he could have more time with the investigation before the whole town turns into a circus over nothing.”
“Over nothing?” Scarlett snorted mid sugar dump. “It’s her blood.”
“That’s a good thing, Scar.” I sat down wearily on the same stool I hadn’t bothered pushing back in. “It was always going to be her blood. What’s more important is what they didn’t find.”
“What didn’t they find?”
“No DNA belonging to your dad.”
She leaned against the counter and contemplated. “You still should have told us.”
“I was under direct orders not to say a word. No matter what your stupid brother says about me, I take my job very seriously.”
“He’s real mad, Cass.” Scarlett turned her back on me and began to rummage through the refrigerator that her brother had pinned me to with his very hard—I’d think about that later. No, I wouldn’t. I’d refused to give Bowie more than a passing thought since I was a teenager. No siree. My brain didn’t have enough room for the man. Or his morning wood.
“What are you digging for?” I asked, changing the subject. Bowie being mad at me was something new to our 27-year-old relationship. It didn’t much bother me when anyone else had an axe to grind with me. But it wasn’t sitting well that he was good and pissed.
She pulled out eggs and milk. “If you make me pancakes, I’ll probably forgive you.”
“You forgave me over the coffee,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but this way I’ll doubly forgive you and I’ll be inclined to share all the dirty details of what Devlin did to me last night.”
My dating life was a disaster. My sex life had coasted on fumes for so long I’d forgotten what an orgasm felt like. Scarlett was my only connection to the world of pleasure…and dating men who weren’t half-wits.
I yawned mightily, giving up on the idea of sleep. “Go snatch the bacon out of your brother’s fridge and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Over crispy, pilfered bacon and fluffy pancakes, we caught up on lives that seemed to be moving faster and faster these days.
“How’s living with Devlin?” I asked, swirling a piece of pancake through the river of syrup on my plate.
“Amazing and awful and everything in between,” Scarlett reported cheerfully.
“Awful?”
“The man has more shoes than a Macy’s! I mean, we have rolling racks for his suits in the living room.”
I laughed. The suave, educated, charming Devlin McCallister had been on track for some sort of political post in Washington, D.C. when Scarlett set her sights on him. They were both miles happier with him opening up his own law practice here. Rumor had it, he might be eyeing up Ol’ Judge Carwell’s seat when he hit the residency requirement.
“When are y’all gonna build?” Scarlett and Devlin had bought a pretty piece of lakefront property and spent the last few months arguing over house plans and tile samples.
She rolled her eyes in the direction of my window. “Ground breaking was supposed to happen tomorrow. Thanks, Mother Nature.”
I watched the fat flakes fall from the white sky. “Couple of days and it’ll be gone. You’ll be in your house in no time,” I predicted.
“Let’s hope so before I end up strangling my handsome roommate with one of his nine belts. Nine. Who the hell needs that many ways to hold your pants up?”
I topped off
our coffees and pushed my plate away. Too little sleep, too much caffeine, and a pissed off next-door neighbor were wreaking havoc with my insides.
“Bowie said he let you have it this morning,” Scarlett said, beginning her fishing expedition.
“He wasn’t happy with me,” I said cagily. There’d been a time in our lives when Scarlett and I had no secrets about my feelings for her brother. But those days were over. She’d stormed my bedroom two days after Bowie had told me I was basically just another sister to him and demanded to know what the hell my problem was.
I’d never told her what he said to me. But I made her pinkie swear she’d never, ever bring up me marrying Bowie ever again. I reckoned she’d gotten the hint. And true to her word, Scarlett had done what I’d asked. She was a good friend.
“He told me I was a shitty friend,” I admitted. The insult bothered me more than a nest of nettles.
“He holds you to a pretty high standard,” Scarlett said carefully. “Higher than most anyone else. He’s taking it personally that you didn’t come to him with this.”
“Why in the hell would he think I would come to him? He’s not my keeper. If anything, I should have shown up on your doorstep the minute I found out.”
“Yes. You should have.”
Dang it. Walked right into that one.
“Scarlett, my job—”
“Your loyalties are torn right down the middle. I get it. I really do. You’re a law enforcement officer. And you’re my best friend. I don’t know what I would’ve done in your place, Cass. I really don’t. But I think some of the reasoning behind you keeping us out of it is because you’re hell-bent on doing everything yourself.”
“I am not hell-bent on doing everything myself!”