One Reckless Summer (13 page)

So he went on more quietly, trying to think where to begin. “A couple of years ago, in prison, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He did chemo and went into remission. But then it came back, and it brought leukemia with it, and at that point they told him there wasn’t any reason to treat it because there wasn’t any hope.”

Next to him, he sensed her swallowing nervously. “But…how did he get
here
?”

Somehow, the next part was even harder to say, because he knew what she’d think of him and his family. The same thing people
always
thought. “He…broke out, with some other guys he knew, and he came here to die. He called me and asked me to come here and help him. Die. So that’s what I did. I gave up my job, pretty much gave up my life, to come back to this godforsaken place and help my brother die someplace other than a prison cell.”

He stopped, looked at her, tried to read her face in the dark, but couldn’t. So he decided he’d better keep talking, better get to the business of trying to convince the police chief’s daughter that he wasn’t actually doing anything wrong here. Unless you counted harboring a fugitive. And giving him the painkillers that
Wayne
had brought with him and that were surely stolen.
Shit
,
how had this happened?

“I’m sure you think my whole family was trash, and you might even be right—but
Wayne
is my brother. The last family I have left and the only one of them I ever really gave a damn about. I don’t want to be here, believe me. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But my brother asked me. I couldn’t say no.”

Finally, next to him, she spoke, more quiet than usual. “I don’t think you’re trash, Mick.”

Despite himself, despite how fucking
angry
he was with her right
now,
somehow the words sank down inside him and rested there, in a good place.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said.

He let out a sigh. “Hell, why not. You know all the important stuff now anyway.”

“What was
Wayne
in prison for?”

Mick swallowed back his disgust over what Jenny would think. “Armed robbery.”

He sensed her drawing in her breath. “What…did he rob?”

“The time he got caught, a quickie mart. And he would’ve been out by now, but he, uh, wasn’t a model prisoner. He has a way of getting himself in trouble. Always has.” He stared back out over the dark water below them, to the perfect cottages on the other side. He couldn’t see them, but even now, in the dark, he could feel them—and feel how far away they were, how far away they’d
always
been.

“Were…
you
there? When he, um, got caught?”

She sounded nervous again, and the question burned in his chest. She might not think he was trash, but she also apparently knew the truth about him, a fact which stung. “No,” he said softly, “or else I’d have probably gone to prison, too. But I’m getting pretty damn tired of keeping secrets, so you might as well know—I…I haven’t exactly been an angel.

“The thing is, though,” he went on, “the thing I want you to know about me is…
Wayne
going to prison changed my life, changed
me.
I…don’t do those kinds of things anymore, Jenny. I haven’t for a long time.”

She stayed quiet too long, the silence wrenching his gut, before whispering, “Did you ever rob a liquor store in Crestview?”

His shoulders slumped forward in automatic response, and he pushed his hands back through his hair, unable to answer, hating his life. He knew the fact that he didn’t tell her
no
right away pretty much said yes—but still, somehow, he couldn’t spit it out. Finally, he asked her, “Does that make you afraid of me?”

“A little. All of this does.”

His next words came out in a rush. “I’m different now, Jenny. I live in
Cincinnati
, and I work as a bricklayer and stonemason. I had a job there, a decent job contracting for a big homebuilder, and I had an apartment.”

She turned to look at him in the dark. “Had?”

“I had to give that stuff up to come take care of
Wayne
. I had a little money saved—but not enough that I could pay my rent for a few months with no job. So I put my stuff in storage, drained my bank account, and came here, for now. I wish I was back there. I wish I wasn’t waiting for my brother to die.”

He felt more than saw her eyes on him, but was glad for the dark—glad it meant she couldn’t see him very well, either. “How much…time does he have?”

Mick shrugged. “Another month or two, maybe three, according to the doctors he saw. Right now, he’s mostly tired, but he can take care of himself, get up and out of bed and all that. Tonight,” he stopped, sighed, remembering and feeling awful about it, “I forgot to give him his pain medication. So he woke up in pain. That’s why we were up in the middle of the night. But usually, I’m able to keep him comfortable, and he mostly lies in bed and watches TV, or sleeps.”

“Where did you get…pain medication?”

He drew in a breath. Despite how shaken she’d seemed initially, Little Miss Pussycat kept coming up with hard questions, sounding less and less afraid to ask them. “He brought ’em with him. I didn’t ask where they came from. But he found out what he’d need, and he got it before he came here.”

At least she sounded calmer now, more curious than freaked out. “So…what do you do with
your
time? When he’s sleeping or watching TV.”

He peered out over the lake. “I go out for the things we need—I drive over to Crestview to get groceries and do laundry to make sure no one recognizes me. I go fishing with an old rod and reel I found in the shed. I come across the lake and see you.”
And I dig.
But she didn’t need to know about that part. The uglier parts. That a man had to have a grave. And that a grave took a damn long time to dig.

“You’ve only come to see me twice. But you said it like it was a regular thing.”

I think about you a lot. Our sex. Your face. While I give
Wayne
oxycodone
and slap
duragesic
patches onto his skin to take away
his
pain
,
I use
you
to take away
mine. “Guess it seemed like more,” he murmured.

Beside him, she lay back in the grass and looked up at the sky, so he did, too. Damn, there were a lot of stars here—way more than in the city. He supposed he didn’t see them much, living under the trees the way they did. He hadn’t noticed them on the nights he’d crossed the lake to her, either, but he was noticing them now. “Tell me what’s so special up there, pussycat,” he requested quietly.

“The sun is one of literally trillions of stars,” she began, “in the Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way is one of more than a billion galaxies. We are…so small, Mick, as to be almost non-existent.”

He kept looking up, trying to wrap his mind around the scope of what she’d just relayed to him. “You say that like it’s a good thing. To be non-existent.”

“That’s not how I mean it. I mean that, if we’re that small, how big can our troubles really be?”

“Mine feel pretty damn big right now, honey.”

“Look up for a while and think about everything else out there and maybe it won’t feel that way so much.”

He did. He tried. And he felt it. Just a little. Not a lot. His brother was still going to need another pill in the morning, and his seventy-two-hour patch with the
fentanyl
in it would need to be changed, too. And at some point soon, in a month, or two, the meds would quit working and things would get much worse. But thinking about all those stars, all those worlds out there, did take him away from it all, just for a few minutes, just like thinking about Jenny always did.

Only then, like a freight train, Mick’s big problem came roaring back into his mind, nearly mowing him down, zapping his strength. Jenny knew about
Wayne
now.
Jenny knew about
Wayne
.

And maybe when he’d asked her to keep his presence a secret it had been easy for her because she hadn’t known why. But now she did—now she knew he was breaking the law, hiding an escaped convict, for God’s sake.

Could she keep
that
a secret? From her
father
? Would she?

Everything depended on it.
Wayne
’s death. And Mick’s life—his freedom.

Fear and fury gathered inside him and, without warning, without planning, he rolled toward her until he was on top of her, clamping his hands around her arms as he brought his face down close to hers. “
You can’t turn me in
,
Jenny! Tell me you won’t
,
damn it. Promise me.
” The words came out harsh, hard,
angry
—he felt them in his chest, pounding there. “
Damn it
,
tell me!
”

That was when he saw one glistening tear slip from her eye. That was when he saw the look on her face. Oh God, he’d just scared the shit out of her.

And he should have
wanted
that—God knew that had been his goal in the beginning, that night in the woods. And from a practical standpoint, it was a damn smart goal.

But a bigger part of him hated himself for this, for what this situation made of him, for letting it take him back too close to his old life, back when all he’d wanted was to please his big brother, no matter what it took. He hated making Jenny Tolliver cry.

And so he released her arms from his grip and moved his hands gently to her face, pushing her hair back off her forehead, stroking her cheek. “I’m sorry, pussycat,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Please don’t cry. I’m just…really fucking afraid here, you know?”

Beneath him, he felt her nod, and he used his thumb to wipe away that lingering tear on her cheek.

She moved to sit up, so he helped her, kept his arm around her afterward, wanted to make her feel better—somehow.

“I won’t tell, Mick,” she said, her voice soft as the dark night. “I promise.”

“Really, pussycat?”

She nodded.

But it wasn’t enough. “Because I know you’re tight with your dad, and I know it might be tempting…”

She let out a heavy breath, yet shook her head. “I won’t tell.”

“Why?” he whispered.

“Because I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Thank you,” he said,
then
leaned his forehead over to touch hers.

A few minutes later, Mick walked her down to the canoe. And he believed her, he really did—but it was still hard to let her go paddling back across that lake. He believed her, but he hardly knew her, and now he had to trust that she was as good and kind as she seemed most of the time. Damn, she was a nosy little thing—yet kind at heart, he reminded himself. He was depending on that kindness.

“Goodbye, pussycat,” he said, low and soft.

“Bye,” she murmured, but as she turned toward the canoe, Mick’s instincts made him grab on to her hand.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Come here,” he breathed, and pulled her to him, close, tight. He hadn’t planned it, but he wasn’t quite ready to go back to that stuffy cabin where death was coming. “I just…need to hold you a minute. That makes it better.”

Her arms had closed around his waist now, yet she pulled back slightly to peer up at him. “Makes what better?”

“Everything, honey. Everything.”

He never meant to kiss her, either, but before he knew it, his mouth was on hers, and her lips were so soft—
everything
on her was soft. He went hard in the space of a heartbeat as she kissed him back, kissed him back even now, even knowing his darkest secrets—and
that
made him kiss her even more hungrily.

Oh God, he needed her—
bad.
He hated admitting that to himself, but he knew it—he needed her now, to take all the rotten stuff away.

Shit, he’d let that happen too fast,
way
too fast—he wasn’t a guy who got attached to women often—but this was different. This was about slaking the pain, about finding a way to feel good when everything around him was bad. And Jenny made him feel
damn
good.

Her hands were in his hair, his on her sweet, round ass. He got lost in the kissing and touching, and soon couldn’t keep from moving, driving himself against her through their clothes. Her breath grew ragged, which he loved. It excited him to make a girl like her lose control.

But when he reached for the button on her blue jeans, he realized—oh God, oh shit—he was trembling. What the hell? His hands shook, and inside…inside he suddenly needed to be with her so bad he could barely get her out of her clothes. God, what was happening?

He didn’t know, but he quit thinking and pressed on, urgently now, unzipping her pants, tugging to get them down. She reached for his, too, and they worked feverishly. And despite how much he’d loved her breasts that last time they’d been together, he didn’t bother removing her tank top—by the time both their pants were lowered, he couldn’t wait another second.

He moved behind her, instinctively needing her in a whole new, rough way. He used his hands to press hers to the rough bark of the nearest tree. Then he closed one palm over her hip and wrapped his other arm full around her waist, and plunged inside her.