Return (Coming Home #1) (4 page)

The door to the garage opens and I hear footsteps in the back. Must be Daniel, Mikey’s brother, coming in.
He’s my age and Amy told me he’s a mechanic in town.
Mikey mumbles something to his mom about how one card is bent at the corner, the Queen of Hearts.

And then a voice that makes heat fill my belly instantly
asks
, “Room
for me?”

Mark?

What is
Mark
doing here? Elaine gives me a sidelong look and a sinking feeling fills me. Matchmaking. The entire time Mark and I were dating she practically planned our wedding. Appointed herself my mother stand-in. Used to say she didn’t have a daughter but I was close enough. She couldn’t wait to go flower shopping and pick the perfect centerpieces for our wedding.

I never
told Mark any of this, because it felt like I’d jinx it.

When I came back I figured she would try to get me back together with Mark. I thought she’d give me more than, oh, two hours of being home before setting us up.

As I turn and catch Mark’s eye, I see bewilderment. Then he tilts his chin and his jaw tightens, his eyes on Elaine. She’s suddenly up and busy at the kitchen counter, rearranging
the perfectly-neat spices or something.

“Mark!” Brian says loudly. “Good to see you! How’s number four working for you?”

Number four?

I groan
suddenly
. I can’t help it.
It hits me.
I know what “number four” means.
The fourth cottage out back.
 

Mark looks at me when I make the sound, and his tongue starts to roll in his cheek. He’s suppressing his anger, and I can’t blame him.

Neither one
of us chose this.

Man, does he look good. Not that he didn’t look fine in the rain, wet and rescuing me like I was a damsel in distress. But now h
e’s wearing
jeans that look like he’s poured into them. A grey
H
enley shirt, short-sleeved, his biceps pushing the edges of the sleeves out as he crosse
s
his arms over his chest.

A chest my own ear has rested against for one hundred days. I had memorized
his heartbeat.

Mark’s hair is blown dry and sandy blonde again. The ends of his hair turn up, no longer curling from the rain. He look
s
like he
i
s on edge and relaxed at the same time. Not many peop
l
e can do that.

Mark can.

Mikey looks at Mark like he’s a god. Cops do that to younger kids, I guess. But then again, Mikey isn’t a kid any more. The air in the room shifts. Tension returns.

It’s
my fault.

“The cabin’s great,” Mark answers Brian, but his eyes are on me. I won’t look at him. Won’t give in. My hand reaches for another chip from the bowl like it’s attached to a different Carrie. One whose dad isn’t dead, who didn’t leave in disgust three years ago.

Who didn’t leave ashamed.

Who wasn’t betrayed by the very man staring at her right now.

“
Your tire okay?” Mark finally says
to me, taking a step forward and pulling out the dining chair right behind where Brian is sitting. That puts him and Mikey together as a team, and me and Elaine as the other. Good. I can read Elaine’s nonverbal hints like the back of my hand. You play Euchre all your life with someone, you figure out all their secrets really fast.
 

“My tire is fine,” I say tightly. “Thank you.”

E
laine’s turn
to narrow her eyes and watch us with suspicion. She can feel the tension between us. I hope my arousal isn’t obvious. Mark is triggering feelings I haven’t felt in years. I put those feelings into a box in my heart. I scribbled “The Past” on it and stuck it in storage.

I don’t want to feel attracted to him. I don’t want my body to respond to being in the same room with him. I don’t want to think
about how he tastes when he kisses me.

Seems like that box is coming off the shelf a little too fast.

“Good. Just be careful,” Mark says with a frowning half-grin.

M
ikey turns over the card that determines the suit that is trump. Trump means that suit—hearts, clubs, spades, diamonds—is the power suit, and those cards beat other suits. The Jack has a
l
l the power in this game, this seemingly
unimportant nobody in the royal family. He comes up from behind and
bam!
He’s suddenly more powerful than the queen, king or ace.

Go Jack.

And spades is trump, which makes the Jack of Spades the true king. Jack of Clubs isn’t too shabby, either.

The game, which had been so important to me, is
now trivial
.
Other games are more critical.
The
potato
chip I like,
a local brand you can’t get in
Oklahoma,
sticks in my throat. All I can see is Mark. He’
s
changed into warm, casual clothes,
and his bare arms
make my heart race. The tiny bit of stubble on his jaw feels intimate.
So do his eyes.
 

They’re not looking at his cards.

I’m melting into the chair under his stare. So many questions fill my heart. If only I could ask them. If only Mark would tell me the truth.

That
i
s the problem.
If I ask, and he lie
s
, what little sliver of hope I cl
i
ng to w
ill
die.

Like my father.

Mark’s eyes roam over me and I wonder what he thinks. I’ve filled out in the three years I’ve been away. Always known for my big chest, I
now
have curves
everywhere
. Nice ones
that
men like. “Hot mama!” they’d cry out when I walked down
the street
on my way to work.
C
onstruction workers loved to ask for my
number. Or beg me to do things to them that made me blush.

The way Mark trace
s
my new body spark
s
a fi
r
e in my belly.

And b
elow it.

As I play a ten of clubs without thinking, I remember. The nights I spent in my rented room in
Oklahoma City
, sharing a place with seven other girls, were filled with Mark. They could probably smell him in
OKC
. I carried that much of him with me. Three years of
working midnights as a check processor
and visiting my father in the prison they moved him to was what it took to drive
away
the imprint of Mark’s hands on me, his lips on mine.

My soul didn’t want his branding any more, but that was harder to wall off. You can’t make something burned deep in you
disappear
.

Scars might fade, but they never go away.

“
Took that hand, and with a ten!” Elaine says,
standing to give me a high five. I imitate her and as I reach up, my shirt lifts and shows my belly.
 

Mark and Mikey stare.

Mark shoots Mikey a look of death. Elaine hides a smile.

I fight to hide mine.

T
he game continues. Our words are few. Everyone is pleasant, but it’s weird. Creepy. I want to beg Mark to give me an explanation. Something that makes what he did make sense.

When your boyfriend
turns your dad in to the
feds
on trumped up drug charges, you’d like to know why.

Trumped up.
Oh, I’m a real comedi
e
nne tonight, huh?

Dad tried to tell him. Br
ia
n, too. He wasn’t the one with the meth. Wasn’t making it or dealing it. The shady chemistry professor at the university was the one who masterminded everything.

But Mark had bills of lading proving dad had order
e
d all the chemicals
and the special equipment to make the meth. The DEA busted the largest meth lab in the history of the state.

Grant funded, too, it turned out. The federal government had paid for tens of millions of dollars worth of meth, all created in a lab where thousands of chemistry students passed through every day.

Higher Education at its finest.

D
ad was d
ealing, they said.
A professor in the chemistry
department gave the police and feds a ton of evidence proving it.
Allegedly
proving it.
 

Claimed
Dad
was the kingpin of a huge drug network.
That he sold
meth
on campus
through his job on campus
.

Lies.

All lies.

Dad couldn’t prove anything, but worse? His lawyer couldn’t
disprove
anything. As the head of facilities, he ordered what the professors asked.
How do you prove you
didn’t
do something?
 

A clip that made the evening news for other a week runs through my head. Dad is red-faced and furious, his eyes wild. “It’s not like I was ordering stuff to make a bomb!”

He made CNN. MSNBC. FOXNews. Even Tosh made fun of him.

My dad became an
I
nternet meme.

And I became The Daughter Who Must Have Known.

“
Carrie? You got anything good?” Mikey kicks me under the table and I look around. Elaine
is asking, waving her cards.
 

I look down. “Pass.”

“Is that ‘pass’ or ‘paaaaaassssss,’” Elaine jokes. If I say the word slowly, it’s a hint
that m
y hand has something halfway decent but not enough to overpower all the other
car
ds.

I just shrug.

“See, Mom? Carrie won’t cheat like
some
people,” he says, sticking out his tongue. “
She’s honest.”
 

Now I see the fourteen year old in him. It makes
me happy again.

Until I look over at Mark.

His jaw is tight, and those eyes are speckled with anger. He reaches for a chip and stops himself, taking a deep sigh. Mark plays a card.
A
s he pulls his hand bac
k
it brushes against my glass, almost tipping it. Like the gentleman he always
i
s, he grabs it and diverts the fall, letting my water pour into his lap and not mine.

I grab some napkins from
a stack on the table and start mopping up the water, dabbing at his...

Oh, God! I’m gently patting his crotch!

Elaine bites her lips and turns away. Brian is oblivious, watching television. Mikey’s mouth keeps opening and closing like he’s a fish.

And Mark looks down at my hand, which has come to a complete stop on his jeans button, the napkins shredded and falling into little white clumpy
bits on his...

Wet spot.

I freeze, my muscles finally stopped by my mortified brain.
Don’t look up!
I tell myself, backing away like I’ve just run into a hungry lion.

I kind of have.

 Mark looks at me as I catch his eye.
T
he air changes. Everyone else in the room fades. It’s just me and Mark, and my hand is on his growing bulge.

I snatch my arm back and start to say, “I’m sorry,” but all
that comes out is a gasp. The way he watches me makes a slow smolder build in my skin. My nipples feel hard against the soft cloth of my shirt. My nub warms and flares to a fire I haven’t felt in three years.

And my heart? It starts to sing.

“E
n
joying yourself?” he says with a crooked smile, the look sultry and inviting, as if he wants me to touch him again.

I’m sure he does.

“I’m so sorry!”
I choke out. Elaine and Mikey have magically disappeared. Brian see
s
nothing, engrossed in his show.

Mark reaches for some fresh napkins and dabs himself clean.

“It’s just water,” he says, starting to laugh.

It’s a sexy sound, a deep rumbling in his chest. The kind of sound a man makes after he kisses you with fire and longing.

Except we haven’t kissed.

Oh, how I want to. He didn’t do anything
wrong, technically. Right? He was just the arresting officer who had to get my dad and turn him in.

But he never told me.
He c
ould have shared that tiny little detail that would end up ruining my life.

His anguished voice from three years ago fills my head. “I couldn’t tell you,” he’d said. “It made Joe a flight risk if I told you. I was doing my job.” His voice had broken after that, and the
first sign of bright tears had been in his eyes as he’d held my numb hand. Mark had apologized so many times that the words “I’m sorry” stopped making sense. They sounded like word glop after a while.
Eyem Sar Eee. Eyem Sar Eee.
 

The memory fades and so does the heat in my body. I can’t turn off how he makes me respond, but I can control how I react. Maybe my skin, my belly, my nipples, and my
sex have a mind of their own.

But I can choose what to do.

“You can blot my crotch any time, Carrie,” Mark jokes, and the spell is broken. He’s released me.

I couldn’t release myself after all.

“
Enough about crotches. We’re not playing strip poker.
Ready to finish the game?” Elaine calls out from the other room. She then contradicts herself. “Sweet Mary, Jesus and Joseph, it’s eleven o’clock!
Mikey, you have school tomorrow. Game over!”

Mark narrows his eyes and looks at me like he’s sizing up a perp. The change in his attitude puts me on edge. It’s a one-eighty turn, and I don’t like it.

“See you around, Carrie,” he says and walks into the kitchen to give Elaine a hug, then saunters out the back door like he hasn’t just upended my life and turned my insides to butterflies.

We both
watch him disappear into the darkness.

“He still loves you, Carrie,” Elaine says quietly. She doesn’t look at me as she washes the coffee pot for the thousandth time. Mikey’s long gone now, and Brian’s snoring lightly in his chair.

The show he’s watching isn’t even over.

Somehow, in under an hour, everything I’ve run away from came roaring back, right in front of my face.