Anywhere But Here (2 page)

Kellen

April 29

Present . . .

Damn.

The legs and ass on the girl walking away. I wouldn’t mind seeing her out of those skinny jeans she’d been dipped in. Even hotter was all that ink peeking out of her loose tank. Her fair skin was a painted canvas, the vibrant colors reaching down her arms and up the back of her neck, exposed beneath the messy bun she had all that white blonde hair pulled into.

I was dying to get a look at her from the front, wishing I’d finished my lunch just five minutes sooner, because it looked like she was leaving my shop. Hopefully she’d be coming back. My eyes followed her easy stride down the block, each confident step causing her hips to sway in a hypnotizing motion. As an admirer of art and beauty, I was convinced there weren’t many things finer than the female form, and I had no doubt, just from the way this woman carried herself, that she was every inch a masterpiece. I didn’t usually get that much from behind, but the sass in her steps and the personality in her style was sexy as fuck. Or maybe I was just a sucker for an inked babe, and this one had a lot of ink I was itching to take a closer look at. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d exercised questionable judgment when a girl walked into my parlor with a bit of inked skin and nice assets.

I reached Bulletproof just as she reached the corner and was nearly plowed over by an idiot on a bicycle coming around the corner. Despite her quick reflexes and attempt to jump out of the way, he clipped her and she lost her balance. Without thinking, I darted toward the end of the block as she was knocked flat on her ass. The douchebag on wheels tossed a “sorry” over his shoulder and kept going. He attempted to breeze past me without slowing, but I introduced him to the pavement with a quick shove, knocking him and his bike sideways.

He emitted a startled yelp just before he wiped out, but I was already to the girl. She sat, her back angled toward me, head down, collecting herself. But the noise of the crash drew her attention. Her chin lifted the same time her head turned to take in the cursing biker, and my whole fucking world came down around me. I got why they called it a blast from the past, because I felt like I’d been sucker punched right in the gut.

At seventeen I’d been convinced she was the prettiest thing I’d ever lay eyes on. How wrong I was. At twenty-five, she was the kind of beautiful that made it difficult to breathe, and I had maybe half a second before she turned those pale green eyes on me. I could still picture them perfectly in my head every time I closed mine.
Shit.
I had to pull myself together.

Steeling my nerves, I cleared my throat, “Well, well, well. Look what we have here.” Her entire body went rigid the second my voice hit her, and then oh so painfully slowly, she dragged her gaze up to meet mine. My breath became trapped in my lungs. Seven long years since I’d looked into those eyes and, as if not a single day had gone by, I felt myself stumbling headlong into their depths, ignoring the angry flames that danced in them, searing me as I fell deeper. How many times through the years had I imagined looking into them again? I’ll tell you. Every single damn day since she left. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t attended her grandmother’s funeral with the hope of bumping into her. Shit, I’d psyched myself up for three days, all for nothing when she didn’t show. Now I needed to stop staring or risk her knowing that I was about to fall to my knees in front of her.

“After you missed the funeral, I was beginning to think you’d truly written this town off.” The muscles in her jaw tightened and in a flash, the flames in her eyes turned icy. Without uttering a word in response, she started to pick herself up. I stuck out my hand, but received only a scornful look. Guess she was still pissed. She rose to her feet, her cold gaze landing on me again before she spun around, intent on leaving me standing there like an utter fool.

“Wait, Shae.” My hand shot out, landing on her shoulder. She jerked away so fast you’d have thought my touch burned her. She turned on me in a flash of fury, catching me off guard, and the next thing I knew my nose was crunching beneath an astonishingly powerful right cross.

“Ah fuck,” I staggered back a step, my hands immediately lifting to my face as my eyes began to water and my nose started pouring blood. “Shit,” I hissed through clenched teeth, not taking my eyes off of her.

Hers were narrowed on me, not a drop of remorse in them. “Don’t touch me,” she growled and I was actually startled by the amount of venom dripping from her tongue. I stood there stunned, blood pouring down my face as she turned on her heels and I stared after her. She didn’t glance back once as she made her way to an old, faded blue Volkswagen Bug on the other side of the street, and then she was gone.

Seven years was a long time to carry a grudge, but it seemed that girl had been holding onto her anger all that time, letting it burn itself into a white hot hatred. There was no questioning that what I saw on her face and heard in her words was pure hatred. I’d hate to think of the damage she might have done if she weren’t still such a dainty little thing.

Holding my face, trying to stem the flow, I carried myself back to the shop. Laurel gasped when she looked up from her spot behind the counter and saw me push my way through the door, covered in blood. “What the hell happened to you?”

Both Marcy and Derek looked up from the pieces they were working on. The hum of needles was silenced when they told their clients to take a ten minute break.

“Shit,” Derek muttered, walking over.

“What happened?” Marcy was right behind him, echoing Laurel’s question, as our blue haired piercing queen rounded the counter with a clean towel, holding it out to me.

I took it, trying to mop up some of the blood on my face while keeping it from bleeding out more. “Bumped into an ex.”

Laurel’s eyebrows arched and Derek let out a laugh. “Which one?”

“The one who hates me enough to break my fucking nose,” I spit blood into the towel.

“It’s broken?” Derek cringed.

I nodded. It wasn’t the first time, so I knew a broken nose when I was suffering from one.

“Still doesn’t answer my question. You piss off a lot of chicks.”

That was true. “None as bad as I pissed off this one, and apparently she’s been letting that rage fester for seven years.”

“Shae?” he asked incredulously. “Tiny, blonde cheerleader broke your nose? Wait, holy shit, was that her that was just in here?”

I nodded again. “Yeah, looked like she was coming out of the shop, and she might be tiny still, but blondie packs one hell of a punch now.” Definitely wasn’t the same girl I knew back then. She still had the face an angel, but all the sweetness that made her her was gone. She was an angel of vengeance now, ready to rein her wrath down upon yours truly. Seven years ago I would have said I deserved it and more, but that was a long damn time ago.

“Wait, the chick that was just in here?” Laurel asked. “She’s your ex?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

Laurel let out a short laugh. “Well this is going to be fun. She’s also your six o’clock, unless you want me to call her and cancel.”

“No. Don’t cancel.”

Derek gave his head an amused shake. “You looking for a rematch?”

“No, but hopefully she got all the violence out of her system and she won’t feel the need to hit me again.”

He cocked his brow. “You’ve heard the saying, hell hath no fury. Well brother, you scorned her good. You really think she’s going to call one broken nose even?”

“That was seven years ago.”

Derek didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His expression said it all. Time apparently didn’t matter when you’d done what I did. He was around back then. He knew what went down. What really went down, which is why there was also sympathy in his eyes. I ducked my head and let out a heavy breath.

“What’d you do to this girl?” Marcy asked and Laurel looked on with eager curiosity. I’d only met the two of them a few years ago when they showed up in town right around the time I was opening up. They hadn’t gone to high school with me, Derek and Shae. They didn’t know my history with her and I wasn’t looking to open up about it.

“Nothing,” I muttered. Just broke her heart is all. In the worst possible way. Both girls looked at me like they could see right through my bullshit. “I’m gonna go to the ER, get my nose checked out. I should be back in an hour or two. Reschedule my one-thirty. I’ll call if I need you to reschedule my four o’clock.”

Laurel nodded and I walked out, tossing the towel in the receptacle next to my bike.

The waiting room in the ER wasn’t overly crowded, but I still had to sit thirty minutes before a doctor could see me. It was a bitch when he realigned my nose, but I was lucky I didn’t have to have surgery. The last time I wasn’t so fortunate. This marked my third nasal fracture. I wasn’t going to have much of a nose left the next time, the doc warned.

He taped it and sent me on my way after I turned down the prescription for pain pills. A quick stop off in the men’s room showed me a not so pretty picture. Bruises were already forming under my eyes. The next few days were going to be shit until the swelling went down.

On the ride back over to Bulletproof, I worked up a good bit of righteous anger and I was itching to confront Shae again. I stopped off at my place and cleaned up some, throwing on clean clothes since mine were blood spattered, and then headed back with plenty of time to make my four o’clock and prepare myself to see Shae again later tonight.

Seven fucking years.

We were teenagers back then. Just kids. I didn’t care what Derek said or thought, regardless of how badly I’d fucked up, she didn’t get to come back  here swinging after seven damn years.

Not because of high school shit that she wasn’t over.

Walking back into the shop, my eyes caught on the back wall. The one I’d painted. If I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t over shit either. Proof of that was staring me in the face. And maybe that’s why I was letting myself get so worked up. She was the one that got away. Correction, she was the one I let go, and she’d taken a fucking chunk out of me when she left. But I’d moved on. Lived with it. Sure, I thought about her all the fucking time, even now, but I was living my life, not stuck in a past I couldn’t change, holding onto anger and resentment over it. I’d learned a long time ago that the anger didn’t do any good, and I’d had a lot of it back then. That’s what happened when you lost the only good thing in your life. The one thing keeping you from drowning in all the bad. That’s what she was for a short time. My life raft in a shit storm of bad. It was a long time after she was gone that I was able to crawl out of it and build this for myself, and be something more than my father and brother ever made of themselves.

She was the first one to ever make me believe that was even possible. The first one to see something in me besides what the rest of the world saw when they looked down their noses. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me now.

Shae

April 29

Present . . .

Oh shit, what did I do?

I hit him.

I actually hit him. In the face.

Wow, it felt good. I mean, my hand hurt like hell and I had to ice it as soon as I got to Didi’s house, but it was worth it. I’d been holding that in for so long, and then seeing him there on the street. He caught me completely off guard. And that damn smug smile. I’d sure as hell wiped that off his face. I grinned even as I felt all the tiny bits inside me that I’d been holding together for so long–too long– start to crumble. My hands began to shake and my breathing became labored.

No.

It’d been so long since I had a breakdown. I would not have one now.

My first instinct was to pop the cork off one of the bottles in Didi’s wine rack, but that would lead to me drinking the whole thing, which would interfere with my appointment later tonight. Instead, I found a glass in the cupboard, filled it with cool water and sipped from that.

Seven years.

Seven damn years and I couldn’t even lay eyes on him without losing my shit.

Why did he have to look so good?

Why did he have to look pleased to see me?

I wanted him to be balding with a beer gut. I wanted him to be miserable in a crappy life. I wanted him to spend every day of that crappy life being sorry, but mostly I just wanted seeing his face to not hurt as much as it did.

There was a time when I believed he was the only thing I needed. I was convinced that Kellen Nash was my happily ever after, but I’d been wrong. So very wrong, and I’d paid dearly for that mistake. Trusting him once had cost me more than I’d been willing to give up. It had nearly cost me my life. I used to wish it had. I used to think it was better than living with the feeling of being hollowed out and empty inside except for a raw, agonizing pain that took a long time to go away, and even then it never went away completely. It just faded into the background as I had no choice but to go on with my life.

Now, six hours of being back in this town and I was falling into a backslide, remembering things better left forgotten. Not that it was possible to ever truly forget, but I could shove it all down. I needed out of this town before everything was dragged back up. My meeting with the real estate agent couldn’t come fast enough. Suzie Q, my VW Bug, and I needed to be back on the road to New York ASAP.

My phone dinged in my purse, and without checking, I knew it had to be one of two people. Hoping it was Lizzie, my best friend, and not my editor, I chanced a look. I found text messages from both that I’d missed throughout the morning. I satisfied Liz’s with a quick reply that I’d made it to Conway alive and hopefully would make it back out the same way in a couple days. I didn’t mention my run-in. I’d save that for a phone call later. She shot back a
good luck
attached to several kissy lip emojis. I swear she couldn’t send a message without emojis.

That left replying to Pat, who no doubt was wondering if I was making any progress on my latest manuscript.

I had to go out of town for a few days, but I’ll work while I’m here. I added almost ten thousand words yesterday.

That should appease her. I sent and waited for a response, which came almost immediately.

Out of town? Send me what you have so far.

I sighed and typed out another reply.

Family stuff. I’ll send it when it’s finished.

She’d been bugging me to get her hands on the new manuscript since I sold her on the story, but that wasn’t how I worked and she knew it. I didn’t let anyone peek at it until I’d typed out the proverbial ‘
the end
.’ She knew this, but it wouldn’t keep her from harassing me.

Fine. You better be working wherever you are. I’ll need it soon.

Her not so subtle reminder that I did have a deadline looming pushed me to retrieve my laptop from my bag and set up in what used to be Papa’s den. The publishing company was supportive and they gave me a lot of freedom, but they would only wait so long, and I’d promised them I would have this one done by the end of May. That was after I missed the first agreed upon deadline at the end of March. Until yesterday, it had been slow going. For some reason I was struggling to get this story out.

It was only after I got the news of Didi’s death, that I found the words I’d been trying to put onto paper for months. It seemed that I worked best under emotional distress.

My first book was what kept me alive after everything that happened when I left Conway. Instead of letting the pain destroy me like I almost had, I finally found a way to release a tiny bit of it about five years ago. I put words onto paper and they became a story. My story. A story that Lizzie encouraged me to share with the world. She was the only one who knew it wasn’t a work of fiction. She was the only one who knew that the pain, devastation and heartbreak on those pages were my own. We met in group therapy during what we referred to as the dark days. It was there we were encouraged to write down what we felt. It helped. It didn’t heal, but it helped.

Almost four years later and I had a contract with a major publishing house and five successful novels under my belt. They wanted more, and with this latest one, I was running the risk of them losing interest, because too long between books and readers would do the same. I had to finish this one. Like yesterday.

I sat down and started to type. Words came to me faster than I could hit the keys to get them out. It seemed the block was over. In my head the story started to take on a new life and new direction, and I felt some of the excitement I’d been lacking.

Writing was my way of processing life, the pain, struggle, overcoming, even love. I found inspiration everywhere. In a song. In a story on the news or radio. Talking to a stranger. Or not talking to a stranger. Sometimes just a face and the emotion I saw on that face could inspire a story, but my best writing was always sparked from my own emotions and experiences. Loss was something I knew, something I felt deeply, something I could take and channel. The deeper I felt, the more I could connect with my characters and breathe life into them. Didi’s loss gave me plenty of emotion to feed off. The good memories. The safety and comfort. The love, laughter and support. All of the beauty she’d instilled in my life created a warmth that spread through my chest. And then there was the sadness of knowing that was all gone. I used all of it, every last drop, even as the tears fell, until my hands actually started to ache and I felt emotionally exhausted.

The clock in the corner of my screen told me I’d been at work for three hours and added almost another six thousand words. If I kept this up, I would be finished sooner than expected, which would make Pat happy. For tonight I was done though. It was five, and I only had an hour until my appointment at Bulletproof Ink.

If writing was my way of releasing everything inside of me, getting inked was my way of holding onto the things I didn’t want to let go of, the things I wanted to keep with me forever. Not everything was bad. I had experienced some truly beautiful and wonderful moments in my life. Sometimes they were overshadowed by the darkness, but with my ink, I brought them into the light. I reminded myself of the good, and that I was a survivor. I hated that Didi was gone, but I would keep her with me and the lessons she taught me, forever.

I dumped my bags in the guest room and freshened up in the shower before making the drive back across town. The same blue haired girl sat behind the counter, still chomping on pink bubblegum, headphones in and eyes fixed on the computer screen in front of her. When I approached the counter, she looked up and popped the earbuds out and then glanced almost nervously toward the back. The same two artists were at work on different clients, and a curtain had been pulled around a third work station.

“Um, he should be just about ready for you, but I think there’s something you should know.” She didn’t get the chance to finish her thought, because the curtain was pulled back and once again I my body stiffened at the voice that had always wreaked havoc on my nerves.

“No need to warn her away Laurel. Shae’s never been the cowardly type to run away from a little conflict. Oh wait . . .” he deadpanned.

I closed my eyes, drew in a fortifying breath and then turned. “This is your shop?” Of course that would be my luck.

“Don’t look so shocked, sweetheart. I know everyone always said I’d never accomplish anything–”

“Don’t you dare throw that in my face.” I took an angry step toward him and dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “You know I never– I always believed–”
Gah!
I couldn’t do this. I shook my head and spun around, retreating.

“So there it is. Running away. Again.”

I stopped, turned and tried not to let him see how much being near him again was affecting me. “I’m sure as hell not about to let you tattoo me, and I have zero interest in rehashing the past, so there’s no reason for me to stick around.”

With two long strides, he destroyed the distance between us and it took everything I had to stand my ground. I was close enough to see the swirls of grey and the different shades of blue that made up his eye color. It was like looking at a stormy sky with bright flecks of the purest blue shining through the clouds, offering hope that the storm would pass. I’d always thought of him like that. An uncontrollable storm, an unstoppable force of nature, but I’d also believed there was a gentler side to him. I’d seen it. Then the illusion came down and I realized it was a lie. He was destruction personified, determined to take out everything in his path. Unfortunately I had landed there.

“Someday you’re going to have to let go of that past and quit blaming me. I stopped blaming you a long time ago for how things ended up.” His softly muttered words were a slap in my face.

“
You
stopped blaming
me?
” I spit incredulously.

“I know I fucked up back then, but I wasn’t the only who made mistakes.”

I laughed bitterly. “My only mistake was believing a single word that came out of your mouth.”

He flinched, almost imperceptibly, and then covered it up with a shake of his head. “What the fuck happened to you Shae?”

I thought that answer was pretty obvious. “You happened to me. Or have you forgotten?”

“Believe me, I remember every detail. Vividly.”