Striking Page 4

  After going ten miles an hour up his dirt driveway, trying desperately, for once, not to show up in public smudged, I threw the Jeep in park. Gas lanterns glowed on his whitewashed house, but he still lived with his parents. He bitched about it all the time and then he’d backtrack, thinking he’d offended me.

  My boots clopped up the few stairs that led to his porch. I turned the knob and walked right in, the Blankenship’s were like my second parents. I hadn’t knocked since I was six. The screen door squeaked before slamming behind me.

  Shriver appeared, silently counting with his fingers—three—two—one.

  “Stockton Maxwell Wright, slam that door one more time and I’ll slam your head in it.”

  I’d been threatened thousands of times by his mother but had never actually been at the receiving end of a door bashing. Her yell was scary enough and every once in a while I did get popped in the back of the neck or jerked by my ear.

  “Sorry Mrs. Blankenship,” I yelled back towards the kitchen.

  “You ready?” I asked him. Physically, we were polar opposites. He had bleach blond wavy hair to my coal black spikes. And he had baby blues while I sported some weird mint green color with flakes of gold here and there. Of course all the girls lined up for a shot at him, while my stature and general asinine behavior warranted screams and running of women and small children. My mother always said it was gonna take someone with a good bit of moxie to put up with me. Obviously moxie was in short order around these parts. I hadn’t had a date in years.

  What was moxie anyway?

  And what would I do with a date, show her how to make a frying pan?

  Why weren’t the girls knocking my door down?

  Oh—I know why.

  “Let’s go, my man, the ladies are ‘a’ waitin’ for me.” His Southern accent more pronounced when he was on the prowl.

  “Shriver, I swear, if you come in here two sheets to the wind one more time, I’ll twist a knot in your ass so tight you won’t be able to walk for a week.” Mrs. Blankenship belted out from the entrance to the kitchen.

  I had to turn around to hide the snicker. If you were caught laughing you became a target for her infamous tirade.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I’ll do my best.” He replied and then clapped me on the back, signaling his readiness to leave the nest.

  “Can I move in with you?” He asked, half laughing.

  “Hell no. I can only put up with you in spurts. You know after about three hours, you crawl up my last nerve. No way.”

  “Asshole.” He fired back.

  “Dickhead.”

  We hopped into the Jeep and made our way to Mick’s. There wasn’t much to do in town. There was a movie theatre which only played movies that had come out on DVD and there was Mick’s. Half of it was a bar and the other half was a restaurant. If you wanted to do something real you’d have to drive over to one of the surrounding towns for bowling or a movie that wasn’t six months old.

  As we parked Shriver hit my arm, “Try to get some tonight, man. You’ve been a real bastard lately.”

  He walked in like he owned the place. I followed behind him and after the threshold we parted ways. He went for the pool tables where his groupies awaited him and I headed for the bar, the smell of cigars and over-perfumed women changing my mind about the Coke—it was a whiskey night after all.

  I sat at the sticky, maple bar forcing my eyes on the wood since I knew the ironwork—the wine glass holders, the decorative touches—they were all hand forged by my father. Some of them I’d even had a hand in. I was suffocated everywhere I looked.

  “Hey Sugar, what’ll it be?” Vanessa Atkins asked from the other side of the bar. I knew my order would spark some proposition in her. If someone as much as scratched their balls, she took it as an invitation. God forbid you smile at her, she’d be in your lap like a lion on wildebeest.

  “Just a shot of whiskey.” I shrugged, practically forcing ‘don’t make a big deal of it’ down her throat. But we had history, neither of us could deny it. And I had to admit, she looked pretty damned good tonight, short black skirt, legs for days. She wore her hair in a short cut now, in school it had been long enough for me to run my hands through. But it didn’t change the facts.

  And I’d considered getting back together with her, I had. But it felt like turning time backwards, like trying to relive a past I’d like to keep on silent.

  “Gettin’ wild tonight Stock? I could help with that.” There it is, right on time. She just couldn’t help herself.

  “Nah, just blowin’ off some steam.”

  She cocked one side of her mouth up, her version of a sexy grin. I’d seen it so many times before. I’d seen it given to so many guys before—right in front of me.

  “I can help with the blowin’ if that’s what you’re after,” she winked and resumed making my drink. That got me some encouraging grunt from the patrons in hearing distance—they could have her—they probably had her already.

  I scanned the room and could name off everybody in the place—and most of their parents’ names. I shot the shit with the old timers sitting next to me, mostly listening to stories about my father and the antics they’d all committed together. They told me how I was his spitting image—how even as a boy I’d looked just like him. Things I knew. Things I loathed. Things that haunted me.

  I looked up from the staunch conversation to see Henry Macon coming through the restaurant towards the bar. I’d heard he needed some help repairing some of the gates on his property, gates my father built. But he and I rarely spoke. He was my father’s best friend and at one time they’d been in business together just out of high school. But when Henry’s father died, he took over the sheep farming and my father turned to the only trade he knew. It was painful for both of us to be in spitting distance of each other, so we didn’t. He avoided me and I avoided him. Plus, I was up to my eyeballs in work, so stopping to repair his fences wasn’t really in the cards.

  And now that I saw him coming towards me, the pain curdled in my stomach.

  It was enough to make me order another shot.

  And ordering another shot gave Vanessa an extra gleam in her eye.

  The first shot rose in my throat.

  “Do you have a moment Stockton?”

  I rose to meet him and we shook hands reminiscent of enemies.

  “Yes, of course. What can I do for you?” His voice was in as much tangled pain as mine was.

  “I have some gates on the property that’ve been torn up by the bulls. Can you make time to come repair them?”

  “How quickly do you need it?”

  “Pretty dang soon.”

  “I can get over there Sunday afternoon right after church.”

  “That would be fine. But there’s a small issue of money.”

  “Don’t worry about money. You and I both know Dad wouldn’t have charged you.”

  He nodded and looked to the floor.

  “Let me trade you something then. Mallory’s got some fine fruit and vegetables canned in the cellar. It’s too much for us, we can spare quite a few.”

  How could I say no to that? It was Mallory who taught my mother to can and we all knew her finished product was the best.

  My mouth opened to answer but was interrupted by a girl, strike that, a woman, dressed in some lace pink dress and the front of it came to a crossing between her breasts, decked out in pearls, smelling like heaven itself as she sidled up next to Henry. Her wild golden tresses waterfalled around her shoulders, begging me to bathe in them—but calloused, grimy, fingers like mine had no business stroking those waves. And her eyes—I’d witnessed the bluest of skies but they were puddles compared to the clarity in her crystal blue irises. At the first lull of her voice, I looked towards the windows making sure the peaks of the mountains weren’t disrupted—because it had disgruntled my very core. It was smooth and soft like the maker Himself had polished it with silk before she was born. But she didn’t spare me a second glance. And her manners we
re atrocious, she’d interrupted without an ‘excuse me’ or a ‘hey, you, kiss my ass, I’m talking here’. She even called my father’s friend by his first name when she addressed him. She’d sauntered into the bar as if the deed had been signed over to her. She was prim, proper, and pompous all rolled into one. And that was just the P’s. She didn’t want to know what B words I’d come up with in the few seconds I’d experienced her.

  “Henry, Aunt Mallory says you’re supposed to hurry up with—him.”

  Chapter 5

  Stockton

  Holy hell.

  Oh wait….

  Holy…. holy.

  How in the hell-and this time I f-ing mean it-did I get sucked into attending church?

  My parents, those rat bastard sons of bitches-which was now officially how I was referring to them-must have been having a really good time about this.

  Here I was, begging them, pleading with them to send me to rehab, because deep, deep down I knew it had to be better than abandoning me in this godforsaken hick town. And they were just laughing it up.

  I knew they were!

  They had to have known church would be part of the recovery plan. That was probably why my parents sent me to my aunt’s to begin with-just for church. Yeah, right, my dad the closet Presbyterian plastic surgeon….

  Ok, if I were really honest with myself, so the abandoned-in-the-middle-of-redneck-central wasn’t so bad so far. I mean, I say that while I’m cringing. But truthfully, there hadn’t been much going on except for a real concern of dying from boredom.

  Although my aunt and uncle worked from sun up to sun down yesterday-even though it was Saturday-I was allowed the day off to catch up from jet lag. Yes, apparently I was here to work. Their words, not mine.

  Work.

  And that’s where things started to get bad.

  That’s how my parents were going to get the devil out of me. They banished me to the land of middle class and sheep farmers.

  Oh, god.

  And if that weren’t terrible enough, I was now sitting front and center in an f-ing pew. A freaking pew! I had never even said that word before.

  I didn’t even think churches in California still used pews.

  Not that I would really know, since I hadn’t been to church since Easter.

  When I was eight.

  This wasn’t a punishment for destroying my mom’s store. This was purgatory.

  Or worse.

  What was worse than purgatory?

  What exactly was purgatory?

  “Mallory who’s this?”

  “Good morning, Mary Ellen, this is my niece,” my aunt stood up next to me and tugged on my arm. “This is Camdyn. She’s from California.”

  My aunt said California like it was a curse word. And it probably was to these people. I reached a polite hand out to the elderly woman who was now staring at me with a deeply concerned expression. So maybe California was definitely a cuss word to these people.

  She wasn’t letting go of her wrinkly-death-grip, even after I tried to tug my hand back, so I eventually gave up to the soothing hand patting. She had brilliant white hair hidden underneath a wide-brimmed yellow hat and a button up, pale yellow dress to match. She was missing one of her eye-teeth and her dated white pumps were severely scuffed.

  She freaked me out.

  I came from the land of plastic surgery and fifty year old women who still thought they could pull off a bikini, Botox and bleached blonde hair. This old lady was working the wrinkles and missing teeth and as far as I knew she could have been born circa dinosaurs and the birth of Jesus Christ.

  Honestly, how was I supposed to know how old she was?

  The only number that came to mind was ancient.

  Not that it mattered. The only thing that mattered was extracting my hand from her corpse-like hold.

  “Camdyn, this is Mrs. Baxter,” Mallory said sweetly and then shot me the evil eye that I interpreted as, “Don’t you dare forget your manners or you will be sleeping with the sheep.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I smiled like my full set of teeth were coated with sugar. Mallory cleared her throat aggressively just in time for me to remember, “Ma’am.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, dear,” cooed Mrs. Baxter.

  And then she was off to greet more parishioners and suck the youth from their fingers in her cold grip of death.

  Too dramatic?

  “Oh, there’s Preacher,” my aunt mumbled to me. I wasn’t sure if it was one of those, quick, duck so I don’t have to introduce you, or quick, act like you’re not some entitled biotch that got stuck with her religious hillbilly aunt instead of rehab, whispers. But either way I found myself standing up straighter and erasing the mixture of utter fear and cynical contempt from my face.

  I didn’t really think my aunt deserved all of this sheer kindness radiating off of me, but I did know the sooner her, her church and her sheep pulled the wicked out of me, the sooner I could get back to Lala land and civilized society.

  And cell service.

  “Well, hello, Mallory,” Preacher stopped by and my aunt sighed in resignation. Oh, yes, this was happening. “Hi there, Henry.” My uncle glanced over and offered a nod but then returned his attention to the floor. Lucky bastard. The preacher continued, “I wanted to thank you for those cans of peaches you sent over. Mabel made the most delicious cobbler from them. So thank you for your kindness and generosity.”

  “It was my pleasure, Preacher,” Mallory crooned. “You know I love to can just about anything I can get my hands on. Henry could never eat it all.”

  The preacher gave her a warm smile and then turned his attention on me. “And you brought a guest?”

  Preacher was about the same age as my aunt, with salt and peppered dark hair and laugh lines that softened the harsh angles of his semi-attractive face. I wasn’t saying he was a silver fox or anything, but he apparently was aging better than anyone else in the community-probably because he wasn’t hitting the moonshine for breakfast or outside all day, every day working with sheep.

  Just an observation.

  “This is my niece, Camdyn,” my aunt smiled benevolently down at me. “She’s going to be staying with us for a while, helping out on the farm and what not.”

  Preacher stuck out his hand and his light blue eyes met mine with genuine kindness, making me hesitate in my snarkiness. “Camdyn?”

  “Cami,” I corrected quickly. “Sir.”

  “Well, it’s wonderful to have you here, Cami.” His smile brightened and he asked, “So are you looking at colleges around here or….?”

  I cleared my throat, stalling for time in order to make something up, “I, uh, I’m actually taking a break from classes right now. I’m down here to kind of, uh, figure out what I want to do with my life.” Not a complete lie, but I still felt guilty feeding a pastor my bullshit.

  “But you’re college age?” He pressed, not really concerned at all with my current plight in life, but definitely way too concerned with my age. Was this guy a secret creeper? That could be entertaining. Well, as long as he didn’t really focus those deviant ways on me.

  “Uh, yes, I’m twenty-one,” I answered awkwardly. My aunt shot me a glare from her peripheral and so I quickly added, “Sir.”

  “Perfect,” I thought I heard him mumble before he reached out and snagged the shirt sleeve of someone walking by. “Stockton, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  And then the stars aligned, the moon eclipsed and the planets did whatever the hell planets were supposed to do and the most gorgeous body I’d ever seen in my lifetime stopped in front of me. I started at his worn Chuck Taylors that were somehow both adorable at the same time they were sexy, worked my way up his fitted, black dress pants that hugged his hips exactly how a man’s hips should be displayed, I paused, stared and drooled at his obviously muscular, hard chest through his gray oxford and then lost my mind completely. I could have sworn one of his arms was bigger than the other, like decidedly so, but h
is body was too perfect for something as weird as elephantitis of one arm, so I moved my attention to what I knew was going to be a perfect face.

  And I was right. Oh, so right.

  Full lips, dark, shaved jet black hair that seemed to feature every aspect of his handsome face. Sharp, angular bone structure gave him an easy career as a model if he ever moved to LA. In fact, the only thing interrupting his sheer perfection was his piercing mint green eyes that were glaring daggers into me.

  Painful, pure hateful daggers that basically said, “Step back, bitch.”

  He seemed vaguely familiar to me for some reason, but I couldn’t figure out why since I didn’t know anybody in this town except Mallory and Henry.

  The preacher was talking again and I forced myself to dig deep for confidence and listen.

  “Stockton, this is Mallory’s niece Cami, she’s here from California for a visit,” the preacher said knowledgably as if he were actually proud to introduce us.

  “She’s staying with me for a while, Stockton,” Mallory interjected quickly. “And I think ya’ll are about the same age. Cami, Stockton’s our town blacksmith. He does real fine work.”

  Blacksmith?

  While I processed a job that belonged in the seventeen hundreds, he was practicing kindness with my aunt.

  “That’s nice, ma’am,” Stockton, the man with the evil glare, said kindly in return. When he turned his attention to my aunt he was all southern gentleman and chivalry, but as soon as he slid his attention back to me, he was the evil version of himself. “Pleasure to meet you, Cami.”

  “Somehow I just don’t believe you,” I smiled sweetly but pinned him with a “tell the truth you bastard” glare. We were in church after all.