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  “It’s just a good thing we haven’t had to deal with his son all these years,” my father continued, sounding so certain—and echoing the one-sided conversation we’d had countless times, now. “The minute I saw that boy when they moved in next door, I knew he’d turn into trouble. And damn, wasn’t I right? With the fire? And all the shit he got up to after he left Randall? Not to mention your face, baby. I mean, I know you don’t want me to bring it up…”

  I lifted my finger to my cheek, feeling at the two-inch long scar that scraped along my cheekbone. I remembered the singing pain like it’d happened yesterday, not twelve years ago.

  “I’m sure wherever he went to after prison, he hasn’t heard anything about the death of his father,” my dad continued, his voice becoming hoarse. “I’m sure he wanted to scrape off the history of this town and start anew. Just as well. Maybe there’s hope for him, wherever he is.”

  “Dad, why are you here?” I asked, voice tense.

  I’d loved him unconditionally growing up, and it’d taken me years to creep out from under his shadow, to realize that my father, while he hadn’t been anything like Old Man Holzman, was neither a role model nor the type of grandfather I wanted for Max.

  The tricky part was this balancing act.

  Family ties. God.

  Mayor Thames—I’d taken to calling him that, mentally—puffed out his chest. “What, I can’t come visit my—”

  Max ripped back out onto the screen porch, holding two chilled cans of lemonade. He passed one to his grandfather, keeping his eyes lowered to the ground.

  “Slow down,” Dad snapped, grabbing it from him. “Don’t run in the—”

  “Dad,” I cut him off, glowering now. “Is there something specific you want?”

  My father saw so much of Eric in Max, worried that the same inner rage spewed up in him too. One that was necessarily linked to the incident—the night Max had been conceived.

  “Just came to check on you, darling,” he said, his voice softening again, to that sweet-cute tone he’d used on me as a girl. The one he’d buttered me up with, after he’d brought me down.

  I would not let him do the same to Max.

  No matter how much he wanted to.

  Max popped the tab on his lemonade and slurped it. I looped an arm around his shoulders—god, he was already so tall—and smiled at Mayor Thames. “We’re all good, Daddy. Never been better. Isn’t that right, Max?”

  Max nodded, strengthened by my support. He knew he could always count on me. I had his back.

  “Can I watch some TV, Ma?” Max asked.

  “Sure can,” I replied, grabbing at his elbow and shaking it playfully. I gave him a crooked smile, wanting only that he felt safe and happy.

  “TV will rot your brain!” Dad’s nostrils flared. He always had to have the last say.

  But Max had already darted back into the house. He understood that his grandfather held no true love for him. That, in the three years we’d spent living in my parents’ house out of pure necessity, his grandfather had held him no more than twice. That familial tension crackled between all of us, due to events I couldn’t translate to him. There was no way to explain it yet without hurting him, and that I wouldn’t do.

  “Well,” Dad said and sniffed. “Well. I’ll see you tomorrow night for dinner? We did agree on that day.”

  “Dinner. Sure,” I replied.

  My father hurried back to his car, making an excuse about some meeting or another.

  I waited till he was gone then leaned back and brought the last letter from Eric from the pocket of my worn overalls. The man’s prose was gorgeous, speaking of his new home—New Orleans—in this grand, chaotic, musical manner.

  When Maggie looks at me, I understand that all of it happened—the fire, leaving Randall—for a reason. But God, Olivia, I still ache for you in ways I’ll never understand.

  If he returned for his father’s funeral, how was I going to tell him that he’d had a child with me all this time?

  Immediately, after I’d discovered I was pregnant, my father had informed me that Eric was in prison for armed robbery somewhere in Kentucky. He told me he’d shot someone, that he was dangerous, volatile. No one to involve with my child. And I’d believed him, knowing only the healing wound on my face and the baby growing inside me.

  I had to do what was best for my son.

  And I’d had to live with the regret of never contacting Eric every single day since then.

  Until a letter had come to my parents’, addressed to me. Since then, I’d been filled with promise, with questions. Had Eric actually been in prison? Had he actually shot someone? It didn’t fucking seem like it. Of course, there was only so much you could discover, via letter. Either way, I had to tell him sometime.

  Before his father had passed, I’d been on the brink so many times, but telling him in a letter seemed cruel, and each time I’d suggested we take things further, via phone or social media, he’d never responded to the question. Maybe he didn’t want more than just a penpal.

  And how could I possibly complicate his life with another child when he had a four-year-old to look after?

  This shit was too complex.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I lifted it and stabbed the button to answer, marveling at how normal my voice sounded—despite my confused thoughts.

  “Hey, this is Olivia.”

  “Olivia. Jesus. Hi.” There was a long pause, a gap. My stomach lurched, as if I’d leaped off a cliff. “You sound exactly the same.”

  It was Eric. Calling from outer space.

  Chapter 3

  Eric

  Watching little Maggie peek her head over the window to spot the town outside brought back memories. I’d been eight or so when we’d moved to Randall: just an anxious kid, so ready to run when my pop got too much to handle. But Maggie’s blonde hair shone from the sunlight, and her cries of excitement calmed the anger in me.

  “You grew up here, Daddy?” she asked. “North Car-lina. North Car-lina!”

  “Carolina, hon.”

  “Caramelina!”

  She’d said the words, variations of them, over and over again on our route from New Orleans.

  Driving down had come after speaking to Olivia on the phone/ Our conversation had been stunted, strange—how else could it possibly be after so many years apart?—but it’d held promise of something else.

  Christ, thinking about her, how she’d looked the last time we’d been together, had me hard. I had to force myself not to dwell on it. Thinking about that body, that mind, that soul, was a good fucking way to crash a car.

  Thankfully, I’d kept all that shit under wraps on the phone. We’d spoken mostly about my father: if anyone was handling the funeral arrangements—they weren’t—or if anyone was taking care of the house—shit outta luck.

  “Well, I guess that means I’ll make my way over to you,” I’d said.

  On the other end, Olivia had gone dark for a moment. I could almost feel her sorting through her thoughts, which streamed through the air between us like water. “I suppose that would be good. Let’s talk when you get here. All right?”

  “All right,” I’d returned.

  Just being back in Randall pushed anxiety onto me. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. My thoughts turned oddly dark, stirring with anger at my father, at my mother for letting the abuse happen before her death, and at the fire. Jesus, I’d only been a kid. Eighteen years old and on the brink of near-constant craze. If I went home, my dad cracked a fist into me. And if I didn’t, I was normally with Olivia, a forbidden love her father wouldn’t allow.

  “Daddy, where we gonna stay?” Maggie asked from the back seat, shifting a bit beneath the seatbelt.

  I glanced at her in the rearview mirror, flashed her a smile. “I’ve rented us a place, baby. A nice little house for us.” I eased the car to a lower speed as we cruised through downtown.

  The splitting sound of the siren cut into my ears, and I clenched my te
eth to keep from cursing. Maggie smacked hers over her ears.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” I echoed. “I just went a little too fast, is all.” A cop on a motorcycle drove behind us, signaling.

  I pulled the car to the side and watched as the cop petered out behind me. He slid off the back of his bike, really taking his time as he strolled toward the window—typical cop swagger.

  I eased my fingers into my pocket, drew out my wallet, and leafed through it for my license. Eric Holzman. That name was damned in these parts, but fuck ‘em all.

  I rolled down my window, letting in the cool air, and nodded to him. “Mornin’ officer.”

  “Mornin’ occifer!” Maggie called from the back.

  I held back a chuckle.

  The cop chewed gum like he was mad at it as he gripped my license. His gaze rose toward me and back down to my picture. He had a bit of flub beneath his chin and his hair was cut tight to his skull. But a name flashed up on my tongue.

  Tyler. Tyler Bennington.

  “Eric Holzman. Jesus Christ, that can’t really be you. Can it?” Tyler asked. His voice had burned into more of a southern twang in the previous twelve-odd years. He sounded more like our fathers, our uncles, than the high school kid I remembered from PE class. He’d been a goody-two-shoes, but not as popular as Olivia. Once, someone had picked on him—calling him a name, something abhorrent—and I’d smacked the prick along the jawline.

  It seemed he didn’t remember that particular incident, if the fact that he’d taken out his pen and put it to paper was the tell.

  An itch started in my fingers, and I clenched my fists. God, it had been years since I’d punched a dick—since I’d thought I’d better “teach someone a lesson.” These days, teaching lessons meant A, B, Cs and 1, 2, 3s. Not brawls.

  But this town stirred up anger in me. I already felt it, like the old friend I was better off without.

  “It certainly is me,” I said to him, watching as he created the ticket. “You know, I swear this intersection used to be, what, twenty miles an hour?”

  “We changed it over to fifteen last year,” Tyler explained. “Mayor Thames said it was beneficial, what with kids running back and forth around here so often. Two years ago, there was the toe incident.”

  “Mayor Thames?” I asked, rising up in my seat. My heart began its strange, volatile beating. “Really? Olivia’s dad is… wait, the toe incident?” Fuck it, they labelled anything in this town an incident.

  The toe incident.

  The fire incident.

  The return-of-the-unloved-son incident.

  “Sure enough, he’s mayor all right,” Tyler continued, shoving the ticket through the window. “And my boss, if you can believe that. The ticket’s no more than forty, though, if you can pay that. I assume you’re here because of your dad? I was third one on the scene for that. A sad thing to see. Sorry, man. What a way to go.”

  I thanked him, taking the ticket, keeping my shit to myself. The desire to punch a hole through a wall in check. In the back, Maggie sat straight in her car seat, her blonde hair swirling and her eyes wide as she took in the town, all the little brick buildings, the trees.

  Tyler eyed her curiously, his dark brown eyes nothing more than two black holes. “That there girl yours?” he asked.

  “Sure is,” I said. My voice grew dark as I eyed him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. We’ve had a hard day’s road from New Orleans and wouldn’t mind making our way to where we’re staying.”

  Tyler nodded firmly, slipping his pad of fresh tickets into his back pocket. “Ha. Reckon it’s you who’s got the rental house down the road, then?”

  “Where else?” I asked him.

  “Well, I don’t imagine you’ll be seeing Olivia while you’re here. Will you?” he asked.

  My eyebrows popped high on my forehead. Olivia? No one, not our parents, not our friends, knew how close Olivia and I had been back in high school. No one suspected our little nightly encounters—when I’d raced over to her bed and snuggled beside her, lost in the heat of her body. When I’d picked her up on my motorbike, wheeling her out to our secret spot by the barnyard. I’d watched as the starlight had glinted on her pupils. Something about her curiosity had made her the brightest, most alluring woman alive.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, tone abrasive.

  Tyler bucked back in response, scoffing slightly. “You take care, now,” he said, more of a warning than a sign of empathy. He strode back to his shitty police-officer motorbike, his hands shoved in his pockets.

  I revved my engine then drove us the last few blocks to the little house I’d rented for the week.

  My boss, Mike, had paid me early to help me rent the place. Told me that family came first and sent me on my way with paid leave. Mike was a fucking gem.

  Five minutes later we were inside and marveling. Damn, rentals in Randall were sure a lot cheaper than in New Orleans.

  There was a large bedroom just for Maggie—complete with a little dollhouse and Barbie dolls well-dressed in wide gowns leaning against it. She shrieked with excitement, diving into a world of play as I dressed for the afternoon with Olivia.

  How did anyone dress for a first “date” with a former “lover”?

  I was thirty-one years old now. My shoulders were broad and thick with muscle, and my hair was coarse on my chest. Remembering what a boy I’d been at eighteen usually made me chuckle.

  “All right, Bean,” I said to Maggie, lifting her from her dollhouse and bringing her against me. I left a droplet of a kiss on her cheek. “We have to meet an old friend of daddy’s, okay?”

  “Okay,” she sighed, sounding reluctant. She brought her fists against her eyes, rubbing tightly. “I’m sleepy.”

  “You can sleep after dinner. I bet you’re hungrier than you are tired.”

  “I bet you right, dad.”

  We walked to the diner—a little place Olivia and I had frequented when we’d been trying to avoid her motley crew of cheerleaders and football players, namely Freddy, the quarterback and Cynthia, her quote-unquote “best friend”—hand-in-hand.

  Maggie bounced at my side. Thoughts of Olivia revolved through my mind.

  What would I find at the end of this road?

  Olivia, as a thirty-one-year-old woman. Beautiful, sure. A bit wrinkly? Aged? Had she been married? Had she considered it with someone, at all? There was so much we didn’t know about one another. So many gaps we had to fill.

  We moved toward the meeting spot, and Maggie pitched forward, landing on her knee against the curb of the road. I watched her fall, trying—and failing—to nab her before the brunt of the sidewalk attack. The sidewalk scraped at her skin, leaving a smear of blood. Immediately, she let out a shriek. “No!”

  I grabbed her and hugged her tight. “Okay, baby. You’re okay.”

  Her eyes were shut tight. Her face was an incredible shade of purple. “Daddy no!” she cried again. “Daddy!”

  I ripped off a piece of my shirt and pressed it gently against her knee. She murmured, her little hands reaching for my chest. Floundering, she brought her cheek against me, tears falling down her cheeks. She needed a serious bandage, something thicker than the flannel of my shirt. She needed antiseptic.

  I raced into the diner, pressed my shoulder against the door, and entered—the interior all sizzling pancake batter, burgers frying. There, at the corner table, was my girl. My woman. Olivia Thames, one of her legs over the other, her arms crossed over her breasts, her eyes alight. She looked older, yes, but beautifully confident—like the world had delivered her a hard road and she’d met it, head-on.

  But the moment she spotted blubbering Maggie in my arms, her eyebrows lowered. She leapt to her feet and rushed to my side. Her hand was upon my shoulder, and her eyes burned with a strange mix of desire and fear.

  “Let’s get her back to my place,” Olivia said—the first words spoken in person in twelve years. “This cut is pretty deep.”

  Chapter 4

  Olivi
a

  It was metaphorical, finding Eric this way: his daughter’s blood filtering out over his shirt, his eyebrows filthy with sweat. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been bleeding out myself—blood coursing in small rivers down my cheeks, into my mouth.

  I heard my own voice, mother-like, as I eased little Maggie—a bright-eyed blondie who looked like a doll with attitude—into the back seat of my car. I shoved aside Max’s comic books to make space, hopeful that Eric wouldn’t see them.

  Eric’s eyes were animal-like as he perched beside the car. God, he was handsome: thick with muscles, his cheeks speckled with a dark five-o-clock shadow. When our eyes met, it felt so much like it had years before—when we’d been able to gaze across the high school, or across the fence between our parents’ homes, and speak volumes.

  “Are you far from here?” Eric asked.

  “Closer than a doctor’s office and open instead of closed,” I said. “I’ve got antiseptic and Mickey Mouse Band-Aids.” I cringed inwardly and got into the car quick, before he could ask why the hell I’d have Disney themed Band-Aids as a grown adult.

  This wasn’t the time to tell him, but god, he’d find out in about two minutes regardless.

  “I’ll drive,” Eric said, and put out his hand for the keys.

  I handed them over, because now wasn’t the time to argue, and slipped into the passenger seat.

  As he pulled himself into the driver’s position, I half-expected to feel his hand upon my knee, grazing up the length of my smooth thigh.

  It was crazy to think it. We’d hardly touched one another, in reality. We’d fucked just the one time.

  “It’s all right, baby,” Eric said to his daughter, easing my car from the diner parking lot. He glanced toward me, his hands dominant upon the steering wheel. “Olivia, I don’t know where you live.”

  “Make a left on Jefferson,” I said, hungry with the tension between us.

  I turned back toward Maggie, whose tears were like cartoon tears—big and slurping down her face, almost an icy blue color. “Maggie, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m a good friend of your father’s, from way back when. I’m Olivia.” I brought a wide grin across my face, lifting my hand toward her. She gripped the end of my finger in response, before emitting a small, volatile sob.