Flash (Penmore #2)

by Malorie Verdant

  I decided to wake Tahnee later. She could continue watching her favorite episode in the morning and be able to enjoy Jamie Fraser much more with daylight helping to illuminate his abdominal muscles.

  I just needed to see to one thing first.

  She was always the first thing I saw to when I stepped through our slightly tattered front door. Before I slipped off my heels, dropped my handbag, or even thought about sitting on our old porch swing and staring forlornly at the decaying front porch slats.

  I went to my baby before everything.

  Moving down our thin hallway silently, I approached the brightest white door—the only door we bothered giving a fresh coat of paint when we first bought the place—and carefully turned the handle.

  When I poked my head into the light pink room, I could already see Jessie fast asleep between the cracks in the cot. Her dark brown hair curled around her ears, her fists tightly clenched, fighting off invisible demons just like her mama.

  I should’ve closed the door.

  I definitely shouldn’t have walked in and wasted another evening staring at her, but I couldn’t help myself. I stepped inside the room to get a close-up look at her beautiful long black lashes. To stare at her rosy pink cheeks pressed against soft gray sheets covered in white elephants. Breathe in her sweet scent: a combination of lavender baby powder and innocence. I knew one day soon she’d need a big-girl bed.

  I brushed my finger across her soft cheek. As I took in her chestnut locks and the shape of her eyebrows, I couldn’t help but see her dad. If her eyes were open, they too would reveal where she came from, the bright green sparkling like his used to.

  There wasn’t a trace of me across her delicate features. Nosy people on the street who stopped us on the corner, wanting to play with a smiling baby, have always made the same stupid comment: “Shame she didn’t get your red curls.” They didn’t know what they were talking about.

  She was perfect.

  I leaned over the cot so I could feel Jessie’s chest rise and fall. It wasn’t too big a risk; nothing ever woke her up. For the first month after bringing her home, I was scared shitless by how deep she slept. I was constantly afraid that she wasn't breathing, listing in my mind all the things I could’ve done wrong. Eventually I got over the fact that she wasn’t like every baby on TV. There would be no crying and screaming and keeping her parents up all night; instead I had an angel in bed at night and a devil in the day.

  I lightly ran my fingers through her soft curls one last time before using all my willpower to leave her sleeping and return to Tahnee.

  I switched off the TV, then encouraged Tahnee to go to bed and let me clean up the mess. I told her I would go into detail about my nonexistent date the following morning over breakfast. I then cleaned up her evening snacks and headed to my own bedroom.

  When I lived with my parents, my room used to be various shades of pink. There were hot pink silk flowers and sparkling trinkets I’d collected from local garage sales on display. But when Tahnee sold her one-bedroom colonial home so the homeless girl who had a one-time fling with her son, and her future granddaughter could live with her in a small three-bedroom home, I decided to reinvent myself.

  I lived life efficiently here. Practically. I surrounded myself in chocolate browns, grays, and blacks, furniture and fabric that wouldn't show Jessie's fascination with emptying my makeup bag or squishing liquids into carpet threads with her fingers. My bedroom also had minimal decoration—fewer objects to be swallowed or knocked over. I thought I would prove my parents wrong in interior decorating alone; I could and would be grown up enough to handle my own baby.

  When I finally pulled off my heels and slid out of my tight black dress, I went straight to my bed. It wasn’t the first time that I scolded myself internally for not taking off my makeup, but I was too tired to spend another second on my feet.

  I made a silent prayer as I climbed under the covers. Then I tried to envision myself happily sipping a Mai Tai in Maui. I pictured the floral dress I would wear and the little purple flower that would rest on the glass, tried to imagine the sounds of waves crashing against the ocean.

  But as I fell asleep, the picture I planned faded. The dream turned into a nightmare. I was trapped in the past—in purgatory.

  Where I see him.

  Feel him.

  Lose him.

  All over again.

  “You're hogging all the covers,” Nate chuckled as he walked into the room, placing the glass of water on the bedside table.

  “Well after what you just did to my body, it needs as much comfort as it can get,” I told him smugly, hugging the blankets tighter to my body.

  “Are you complaining?” He leaned over to kiss my shoulder before quickly pulling all the sheets off my body with one sharp tug.

  Fuck, it was cold.

  “No,” I muttered before reaching behind me and grasping a corner of the sheets, tugging the corner in an attempt to cover myself. Unfortunately, that action turned into war. It was ludicrous. I was exhausted and yet I was naked on my knees in the middle of his queen-size bed, playing tug of war with sheets. The sound of my laughter filled his small bedroom. Seconds before I could declare victory, Nate pulled the covers completely out of my reach and above his head. As a result, I was looking up at the stunning man, freezing cold in the middle of the bed, captured in his vivid green eyes. And that smirk. Damn, he was good-looking.

  “I win. Now move over, Pamela, before you freeze, and if you’re nice, maybe I’ll share some of my covers,” he ordered before climbing onto the bed. With one arm, he managed to pull me backward until we were both snuggling in the middle of the mattress.

  “Stop calling me Pamela,” I chuckled, pulling the sheets up above my chest, which Nate had conveniently left uncovered after spreading the duvet over our bodies.

  “Nope, no can do. Parky will get angry at me, and this way I can admit to nothing.”

  “You can admit to nothing?”

  “Millie? Who? What? I'm pretty sure she went to bed straight after the Halloween party. Nope, that wasn’t me. I was with someone else.”

  “So, you don't plan on ever using my name?”

  “Maybe, when I have her permission and call you tomorrow.”

  I couldn't help but snort. “You? You're going to call me?”

  “Hey, I can call.”

  “Babe, you have a guest robe hanging on the back of your bedroom door. As in you have so many guests over who are naked and can’t find their clothes that you need to provide them with a spare robe. I also don't even live here. I just flew in, remember?”

  “Don’t be hating on the robe. I’m just really hospitable. Not that it matters now, of course. Maybe I’ll get your name stitched into the spare one. You’re also totally going to move now that you've had a taste of me. Lock me down before some floozy tries to trap me.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yep. We’ll wait a couple of months after you’ve moved here before we start living together, of course. Otherwise we might get called crazy. But straight after that we'll move in together, have two kids—twins, of course. I vote we call them both Jessie and save on that normal ‘my parents forget my name’ business. Although we might get a dog first. You’ll want to practice your parenting skills, and I wouldn’t mind the kids growing up with a trained dog.”

  Before I can come up with a comeback, my heart stuck in my throat, he starts singing.

  What the fuck?

  “Are you really singing the lyrics to the Laverne and Shirley theme song right now? How do you even know that?” I asked, focusing on the absurdity of the situation rather than my racing heart.

  “Yep. Mom had a thing for old TV shows when I was growing up, and I’m just that awesome. Get used to it, Mil—Pam. We're a couple now. How do you feel about Labradoodles?”

  “And when I don't hear from you in the morning?” I laughed.

  “Babe, I'm a guy. You’ve got to give me at least a month to freak out. The
n I’ll come crawling back. It’s a rite of passage.”

  I chuckled against his throat as he wrapped his arms around me, cocooning our bodies together underneath the covers.

  “Fine, fine, I'll see you in a month. Now go to sleep,” I murmured, smiling.

  Even in my sleep, the memory of his heart beating beneath mine, his soft chuckle filling the air, and the romantic notion of a fairy-tale future we might have together squeezed at my heart, crushing it until tears seeped from my closed eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I woke up without puffy eyes. The following day would be no different.

  I kept working toward a new life, but if life didn’t destroy me during the day, it always defeated me in the dark. Night after night.

  COOPER

  “VISITORS MUST STAY BEHIND THE yellow line,” the guard announced sternly to all the people waiting outside the prison gates.

  Surprisingly, it needed to be said.

  Some people were going crazy. They were clamoring to see their loved ones, holding up fucking balloons and pets in the air. At least three of them were snapping photos with their cell phones like it was Christmas day.

  I didn’t get it.

  I was holding a brown cardboard box, had fifty dollars in my pocket and a cage behind me. The last thing I wanted was to immortalize that shit and stare at it for years to come.

  As soon as the gates opened, I planned on getting a taxi to take me far away from this place as fast as possible. No big reunion or fucking celebratory cake. Definitely no selfie sticks. As I stepped outside the prison wire, I couldn’t help but think, Who the fuck even thinks to bring a selfie stick?

  When I spotted Lizzie weaving through the crowd—her pixie blonde hair, shaved partially on one side, and big emerald eyes making her stand out amongst the masses—my body went rigid.

  “Told you not to come,” I grunted when she planted herself in front of me.

  “And when have I ever listened to you?” she replied, raising one eyebrow. Even in her black combat boots, Lizzie barely reached my shoulders. I was certain she thought her punk rock outfit—which included a bedazzled tutu—made her look hardcore, but all it did was make her look like a purple flower. She didn’t belong there.

  “Was hoping this would be the first,” I gritted out before frowning at her boots standing on that damn yellow line.

  The more I thought about the consequences of her being there, the angrier I got. My jaw clenched. I wanted to hurt something. I had so much pain coursing through my body with no way to fix it. Her presence couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was the last person she should be around.

  “What about Beth?” I asked, hating how this one visit might affect them.

  “Coop, relax. She's at school. No one knows I'm here. Just get into my car and let me give you a ride. Your stupid letter said you don’t have to go to the halfway house, but failed to mention where you’re staying. So I’m here to find out.”

  “If you're here to try and change my mind, don't start,” I told her, not moving an inch.

  “Dude, just get in my car. I'll drop you wherever the hell you want to stay, and then you can do whatever the fuck you want to do,” she groaned, completely oblivious to my anger, my concern, and the scene she was causing.

  “Okay,” I agreed, my lips twitching at the way her entire face became red. When Lizzie got angry, her ghost-white complexion turned tomato red. As kids, I was always trying to stir her up enough to see the color change. Now it reminded me of all the things I had missed when I was locked up.

  As we walked toward her car, she started talking to me as she stared straight ahead. “Now that you've stopped acting like a toddler, you want to tell me how you are?”

  “I'm good.”

  “You look different,” she said quietly, taking a quick side glance at the tattoo sleeve that now ran up the length of my left arm, the way my muscles bulged against my T-shirt, and the beard that had grown some since my last day in court before she diverted her gaze.

  I knew I looked five years older than my age. I wasn’t sorry about it.

  It did no one any good looking like a nineteen-year-old kid in prison.

  “I had a lot of free time on the inside,” I replied nonchalantly. “Decided to work out.”

  I knew it wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear or the question she was really asking. I could see it in her eyes. If prison transformed me so dramatically on the outside, she was scared how much it’d changed me on the inside. The concern in her body language and her tone still managed to yank at my buried emotions. I wished I could tell her I was the same guy she’d said goodbye to. Or at least a reformed man.

  For her, I’d lie. But we both knew it wasn’t the case.

  I wasn’t ever coming back from the person I became the moment that judge—a dickhead who smelled of stale coffee and liked combing his blond hair over—played executioner to my childhood. A man who decided to use my case to set a precedent for youth crimes against cops, making a short stint in juvie a pipe dream and an adult conviction my reality.

  “As long as you’re okay,” she replied before meeting my eyes firmly. “Now, the hair salon doesn't expect me back until two. You sure you don't want to grab lunch?”

  “I could do lunch.”

  “Anywhere in particular? To be honest, nothing’s really changed in the last two years.”

  “Don't care where we eat, Lizzie. Wouldn’t mind a burger though.”

  “How about the diner on Clarence Street?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Okay then.” She paused for a beat. “Coop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I'm glad you're out.”

  “Me too.”

  We finished lunch with barely a few words said between us. I could see the anguish across her face as I gave her the directions to my new place. I was slightly concerned that she’d drive me straight to her house, then tell me to go fuck myself when I asked her to turn around—Lizzie wasn’t one to mince words—but thankfully she parked out front of the apartment complex.

  When she looked around the run-down building, she grimaced and asked with disdain, "This is where you're going to stay?"

  I just nodded and got out of the car.

  Her expression became worse as we climbed the stairs and approached my new front door. The moment the door swung open, just before we walked through the archway, a mouse scurried out. I ignored Lizzie’s arched brow and began examining the one-bedroom apartment.

  It didn’t have any walls. Everything was open-plan, because the construction crew clearly didn’t want to waste money on this shithole. I briefly took in the sketchy queen-size mattress, small dining room with plastic crates for stools, a dated kitchen, and pink-tiled bathroom from the doorway. The visible water damage and evidence of animal infestation highlighted the very minimal maintenance that had occurred in the last fifteen years. The smell of spoiled meat that drifted through my kitchen window from the back of the butcher’s shop was also making the place smell like a sewer.

  Lizzie’s wide eyes, pursed lips, and total silence let me know she was mortified staring at the pseudo-furniture around the rooms.

  I was just grateful. I knew it could be worse.

  Housing for an ex-con just released from prison didn’t include many options. There was a reason every halfway house in the state was overcrowded—no one wanted to rent to a convicted felon, let alone give him a place two blocks from the college. I knew this wasn’t a gift to take for granted. It wasn’t the best neighborhood—frat houses weren’t likely to pop up anytime soon near the butcher’s back alley—but the longer I could avoid having discussions like “I just got out of prison” or “What did you do, bro?” the better.

  I still felt like I needed to explain. “A friend on the inside knows the owner. They’ve offered the apartment to me rent-free until I can get on my feet. Electricity and water has been paid for the first two months.” I raked a hand through my hair and looked into her eyes. “Lizzie, I’m d
efinitely not complaining. There isn’t really anywhere else for me to go.”

  “Al didn’t want you back?” she asked, eyes wide. “He didn’t try to get in contact?”

  “He tried, but Al’s been taking care of my messes for long enough,” I replied dismissively. “I didn’t want to bother him this time. I can do this on my own.”

  “Bother him? Really? He wouldn’t think of it that way and you know it.”

  “He’s a mechanic, Lizzie, who felt sorry for me after he found me in the back of a rusted Mustang in his car yard with a broken arm and bloody nose at the age of six. If my bitch of a social worker didn’t have stiff fucking rules, he might’ve had a fighting chance of adopting me, but he didn’t. He shouldn’t be stuck constantly dealing with my shit just because he wanted to save a little kid.”

  “Your shit? You won’t approach him to handle your problems, but when I turned fifteen and started getting too much attention from those fucked-up social workers, you had no issues going to him then. Seconds after Jake and Beth went into decent foster homes, you made us run to him. And you were right. He gave us clothes, after-school jobs, and let us stay in the small apartment above the garage.”

  “Protecting kids from the system is different than protecting a felon, Lizzie. I just did time. That’s different.”

  “He served time in the same prison you just left, Coop! You forgetting that? You think he’d judge you? The fact that his ties with that motorcycle club on the outskirts of Nevada might put him back in a cell any day makes your comments ridiculous.”

  I said nothing. She wasn’t wrong, but I still wouldn’t be asking for any favors. The only forms of generosity I accepted now were ugly, smelling of old meat and dead rats. Things I wouldn’t miss when pulled from my bare hands or required acts of retribution.

  If things seemed too good, I avoided them. Even the smallest gestures of kindness I treated like embers floating off a dying fire. Best avoided. Sure they were pretty, but if they hit anything, they could cause more pain. Start a fire I wouldn’t survive.