Crossroads Page 4

  By the time I began to suspect he was running drugs through the restaurant, I'd already fallen for him. He was older, established. He had a decent apartment. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was out of the slums and had several locks on the door to settle my anxiety. At first, he'd been a gentleman, a lover. He'd been kind and generous.

  Then he'd promised me he'd get out of drugs. He went back into insurance, which was his trade of choice before he started running. His behavior had become more and more controlling and erratic.

  I fell out of love with John a long time ago. I just couldn't leave. He kept me home, wouldn't let me work. If I mentioned looking for a job, he lost it. That was the first time he'd hit me.

  Where did I have to go, after all?

  I hadn't suspected he was running drugs again at all. Finding them in the trunk of his car while he was in the bathroom of the gas station in Three Lakes had been a total shock. That straw broke the camel's back.

  He'd promised me, over and over, that he was out of the game. All those hours he was supposed to have been at work, at the insurance company, he was on runs back and forth to Bend. A little more than a three-hour drive, he'd have just enough time to go there and back and me totally thinking he was in some office in the city the whole time.

  He'd even started buying me nice things again as if he'd gotten a promotion. All the truth came out sitting in his El Camino in the gas station parking lot. He'd never even stopped. He'd just started hiding it.

  I was free now. He couldn't get to me here. Hell, he didn't even know where I was. I could start over.

  Our apartment in Portland didn't have anything in it important enough to risk going back. I'd left my childhood home with only the clothes on my back and my meager life savings. I'd left my life on the streets with only the clothes on my back to go to rehab. After rehab, they'd put me in a halfway house, given me clothes for an interview, and I'd luckily gotten the first cook job I applied for.

  Sentimental objects were not something I'd ever had. I'd learned early on there was no point in getting attached to anything. I should've learned not to get attached to anyone. Maybe it would've saved me some trouble with John.

  Pulling myself out of my past, I finished washing and turned off the shower.

  Wrapping a towel around my head, I moaned in delight as I felt how fluffy they were. I hadn't used such a nice towel since I was a kid. One of them was smaller, obviously made for going around the head. The other was huge, like a beach towel and fluffy white. Pristinely clean.

  As I luxuriated in the towel, I drank the rest of my coffee. I'd nearly let it get cold, I'd taken so long in the shower. After rehab, coffee was the only drug I had left, and I was never quitting coffee. It had been too good to me.

  My phone dinged on the counter. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I checked it. It was an email from John, sent just a few minutes before.

  Where the fuck are you?

  There was nobody in the world that I needed to talk to, and I damn sure didn't want to talk to him, so I turned the phone off and left it in my bag. I wanted to make a total clean sweep, an all-new life. Whether or not that would happen in Three Lakes, or if I'd take a bus across the country and start over in a totally new location remained to be seen.

  Soon, very soon, I'd have to find a way to make some money. For the moment, though, I had a barbeque to go to.

  Swiping some gel into my hair, I gave it a shake and left it messy. It wouldn't neaten no matter what I did, so there was no point.

  My clothes were so wrinkled, I really hated to wear them. Shaking out the three outfits I'd packed, I looked at the clothes I'd worn the day before. My favorite jeans were thrown across the couch. They were ripped and broken in and so comfortable. Probably not the best for a charity barbeque, though. I slid on my newest pair of jeans, a designer pair that were only moderately comfortable. They'd been a gift from John. I almost hated to wear them. They were a guilt gift, one of the things he'd given me when he'd felt bad about hiding the drug-running from me.

  All my shirts were wrinkled. I spread them out on the bed, weighing my options. Finally, I slid my black boots on, tucking them under my boot-cut jeans, and walked back to Brady's kitchen without a shirt on, grabbing my empty mug on the way out the door.

  He'd seen me shirtless this morning, but we'd both been sleepy. I didn't think he'd noticed the scars on my back.

  Brady waited in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee. "Okay, don't judge me, but I need more coffee."

  He laughed, his eyes on my chest. I mean, I knew I was attractive. No matter how much I ate, my metabolism kept me lean. I'd never been one for working out, though I should probably do some cardio. I lived in fear of becoming skinny-fat. Considering all the junk I ate, it would probably happen.

  Looking down at my chest, I realized what had caught his eye. It was either the tattoos on my biceps or the nipple ring in my right nipple.

  Oh, yeah. I liked the nipple ring, too. It was sensual as hell in bed.

  "Sorry, I do own shirts, but none of them are really appropriate for a barbeque, and also, they're wrinkled as hell." Smiling sheepishly, I moved toward the counter, keeping my back facing away from him. "Think I could borrow something?"

  He didn't laugh this time, but he kept his eyes firmly on my chest. He liked what he saw.

  I returned the sentiment. He was built like a linebacker. Already imagining what he would feel like looming over me in bed, making me feel small and safe, I stood a little straighter and flexed my pectoral muscles just a teeny-tiny bit, giving him a reason to keep his attention on the nipple ring.

  "Yeah. My shirts are probably too big, but I think I have something that will do just fine. On you. Your, uh, slender, uh, frame."

  The man visibly swallowed. Like a cartoon character when he saw his love interest. Damn it, he was so cute. Almost innocent.

  He finally stood, tearing his eyes away from my chest when I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. I would've been perfectly content to stay there all day, eye-fucking each other, but he'd acted like the barbeque was important to him, and I didn't want him to miss it.

  He was gone for several minutes. Long enough for me to make another cup of coffee and get my back against the counter again so he couldn't see my scars. They were not something I wanted to advertise. My only other scars were between my toes, and he'd have to look hard to find those. At least my former friends had the sense to tell me to shoot up between my toes so the scars wouldn't show.

  He came back with a woman's dress shirt. "I know it's weird, but it was my grandmother’s. I kept her room the way it was. Please don't be creeped out."

  "I'm not creeped out at all. It's sweet that you didn't change her room." I took the shirt, a simple black button-down with short sleeves. It was a classic piece, that any woman of any age could wear. He'd chosen well.

  Sure, I wasn't female, obviously, but my body was suited to women's cuts. I bought them often. Slipping my arms into the sleeves, I buttoned the shirt, then lifted my gaze back to Brady. His eyes were back to the exact same spot on my chest.

  "I think you need an undershirt," he said in a low voice.

  Looking down, I realized my nipple ring poked straight through the thin silk shirt.

  "Well, look at that." I turned and picked up my coffee. "I think it's fine." After giving Brady a challenging look, I sat at the table to drink my drug of choice. The idea of Brady knowing my nipple ring was rubbing against the silk of the shirt made me feel powerful and sexy.

  The looming barbeque, which had been making me feel fairly anxious, turned into a possible afternoon of sexy teasing. My anxiety reared its head, reminding me that John could still try to find me. Then, I told my anxiety to shut the fuck up. At the barbeque I’d be surrounded by people, including a cop. It didn’t get safer. John didn’t like being in front of a lot of people. If faced with the crowd, he’d leave and try to get me alone later.

  I couldn't wait to get there.

  7r />
  Brady

  Glancing over at Corey riding in the passenger seat of my truck, I couldn't help but be relieved he was sticking around, at least for the day. He obviously needed help, and why not give it to him? Everyone needed a friend sometimes.

  I didn't mind being that friend.

  We got to Ian's garage before everyone else. The weather had finally turned, and the afternoons were good and warm, even though the nights still got too cold. Ian had cleaned out his bays, setting up tables borrowed from different community members. We'd hung fliers all over town and hoped the tourists would turn up to eat barbeque and have a beer in the parking lot of a quaint country garage and body shop.

  Nate had outdone himself with the decorations. Nobody would be able to walk or drive down Main Street without seeing the barbeque. Hay bales lined the parking lot, and he had canopies set up to keep the cooks and food out of the direct sunlight. Those hard balloons that car dealers used lined the sidewalk leading up to the place, and flag-streamers stretched from canopy to tree to building.

  It was a small-town shindig, for sure. I hoped the tourists found it charming and welcoming. Surely they would.

  My job was the grill. We had three, one Ian's, the other two borrowed from local families.

  "So what's this all for?" Corey asked as we parked close to the front. I'd loaded the truck with several coolers full of food while Corey had finished his coffee. "And where'd all the food in the back of your truck come from?" He had a bewildered look on his face as he grabbed one of them.

  "I told you I was loading the truck," I said with a laugh. I’d grabbed all the food from Three Lakes Grocery the day before, early in the day.

  "Shit, I would've helped you if I'd realized." His face reddened as he looked around. "Where is everyone?" he asked as he shaded his eyes.

  The weather couldn't have been better, bright sunshine streaming down on the parking lot. "They'll be along. We're here first to start the grills. I would've been here earlier, but we had quite a late night." The image of his hand on his cock burst into my mind, and I turned quickly away before my eyes glued themselves to his crotch.

  "That we did," he whispered as he opened one of the coolers. I'd divided them up into all the hot dogs I'd bought in one, and the prepackaged hamburger patties in the other. I'd bought them before the party the night before and put them in coolers on ice.

  The ice was melting, but it was good timing since I could start cooking them now. "Everyone will be here shortly. The gas station owner is donating all the drinks. And the grocery store owner donated a lot of this food and gave the rest to me at cost."

  "Wow," he said, opening the third cooler, which was full of kebabs. "This is impressive."

  "A friend of ours, a friend of the town, was in a hit and run almost five months ago." I told him what happened to Tyler. His picture was plastered all over the place, his smiling face a painful reminder that he wouldn't be with us.

  "Tyler would've gone all out for something like this. He loved it. He would've been here bossing everyone around, telling us we were doing it wrong, and then doing it again himself."

  Corey snorted. "Your words make him sound terrible, but your tone of voice says he did all this among friends that loved him for his bossiness."

  "Basically, yeah. We love him for it. He'll be back, we have to believe that. In the meantime, we are raising money to help his parents with the copays on Tyler's insurance."

  We got busy, Corey moving around me with practiced ease. "You grill often?" I asked him as I stood back and watched him go. The smell of burgers filled the air and made my stomach growl.

  "Not really. Your hot dogs are about to burn," he said. I jumped forward and began loading hotdogs into serving trays to put out for sale.

  As soon as the smells of the barbeque hit the air, people started coming out of the woodwork. It was a little early for alcohol, still before noon, but Carson was due to show up later in the afternoon with his brews.

  I'd been shocked to see the guy I'd run into at the gas station come out from Ian's apartment above the shop. "What's up, Max?" I asked, a little suspicious that he was up there.

  "Hey, this is some party," he replied, looking around at all the people that had already arrived. The first round of burgers wasn't even off of the grill yet, and people were lined up with their buns ready. This round of people mostly looked local, but I saw a few cars turning around on Main Street and coming back. They’d seen the line and maybe opened their windows and smelled that wonderful barbeque smell.

  Nate and Ian pulled in just then, unloading buns and sides from the back seat of Ian's Mustang. They had it packed to the brim with all the trimmings. "The party is here," Nate called with a big grin as he walked over to the food table beside the grill with his arms loaded.

  "The party wanted to stay in bed," I quipped as I pulled hot dogs off the heat. "Guys, this is Corey. He's staying with me for..." I glanced at him to see if he would give any indication of how long he was sticking around. He didn't. "A few days."

  Corey held out his hand, apprehension on his face, but Nate and Ian, and even Max helped put him at ease, shaking his hand and giving him warm and welcoming smiles.

  "Welcome," Ian said. "I'd offer you my apartment, but Max here beat you to it." He clapped Max on the back.

  "I wondered what was going on, but didn't want to be too nosy," I said with a laugh as I put more hot dogs on. The ones I'd just set on the food table were gone.

  "Thank you," Corey said. "But Brady's little cottage is more than enough for me. I'll probably only be here a short time, anyway."

  Nate moved around the grill, setting up the lettuce, tomato, and onions beside Corey's grill where he had commandeered the burgers. Ian moved closer to me. "Everything okay?" he asked softly.

  "He just needs friends," I said with a shrug. "We've all been there."

  Ian's eyes followed Nate as he spoke with Corey, both of them laughing at something Max said from across the grill. "That we have, and recently, too."

  "What's Max's story?" I watched him move and noticed again he had a very faint limp.

  "I don't know much. Just that he was living with his parents and wanted his own place. And I had the room since I've moved into the temporary house with Nate."

  It was nice seeing one of Three Lakes’ own come home. "Well, good then. Maybe he needs a friend too."

  Both Nate and Corey laughed at Max again, and I found myself feeling a tinge of jealousy. Before I let myself wander down that particular path, I returned my focus to my grill. Corey wasn't mine to feel any jealousy over.

  Time passed quickly, and I'd never been more proud of my town than I was that afternoon. Nate and Ian stayed busy refilling veggies, plates, napkins, and all the trimmings and even pulled Max into helping. Corey and I were tied to the grills, the early summer heat combined with the heat from the grill enough to cause us to break a sweat.

  Charlie Banner, the owner, turned up with towels soaking in ice water not long after noon. “Thought you boys might be feeling the sun!” he exclaimed as he toted the cooler over.

  After a cooldown, Max had to go do something for his parents, but not long after Carson pulled in with a load of beer and ice to keep the afternoon crowd happy. As a police officer, I wasn't strictly supposed to allow the outdoor drinking, but I was off duty—and the rest of the force had plans to stay away from Ian's for the afternoon. Carson was only charging the event for the cost of the beer. The rest would go straight to Tyler's parents.

  "Want one?" I offered Corey. "We're cooking, one beer won't break the bank." I'd put several dollars in the jar for them later.

  "No, thank you," he said. "I'm not much for drinking." He flipped a burger and grinned over his shoulder at me. “Help yourself, though, don’t stop on my account.”

  I wasn’t much for drinking myself. Maybe that was how he kept his slim physique because it sure wasn't from watching what he ate. We'd all been sampling the food, but he could really put it away. Not
that I minded, if he was helping and sweating, he could eat as much as he wanted to.

  Carson got a small canopy out of his truck and set it up beside us, providing shade for the big buckets full of ice and beer. The ones Nate had set up the night before barely covered the food.

  Several hours passed before we could even think about moving away from the food and alcohol. Finally, though, in the late afternoon, the crowd thinned out and we turned off two of the grills, down to just one. I handed the reins of it over to Corey and started the cleanup process with Carson.

  "Hey, one of my regulars told me the river feels amazing. It's finally warmed up enough. You could go to that swimming hole up Broken Peak Trail none of the tourists know about. It would be a great way to cool off."

  We'd moved within Corey's earshot as he said the words. I glanced Corey's way and saw his face looked wistful. "Do you want to go?" I asked him, really hoping he said yes. After such a hot day of hard work, a quick dip in the river sounded amazing.

  "I mean, I wouldn't say no if you wanted to go," he said with a tentative smile.

  That was encouraging. He obviously wanted me to say I wanted to go. I really did.

  "Let's go, then. That sounds perfect after such a hot day."

  He looked down. "I'll need to borrow some trunks, though."

  Daisy, Tyler's aunt, was passing by just as he said it. "Corey, dear, I'm sure Tyler has some that'll fit you. You're about the same size."

  I glanced at his body. I hadn't realized it, but Tyler was a similar build. "Can you call his mom and dad? I wouldn't want to surprise them."

  "They're up at the hospital, but I'm heading over there as soon as we're done here to get Tyler another change of clothes. They've changed him a few times, hoping being in his own pajamas will be more comfortable to him than a hospital gown."

  "Thanks, Daisy!" She pitched in to help with cleanup.

  "Daisy, who is working the diner?" I asked her a while later as I carried a bag of trash to the dumpster behind the shop. She followed with a cardboard box full of burnable trash to put in Ian's burn pile.