Sarah Mine (4 page)

“You know a lot of old stuff is going to come up, right? You’re back. He’s ill.”

“He’s dying, Sarah, and it couldn’t happen to a better man. Well, maybe your father.”

I wondered who had gotten hold of him. It wouldn’t have been anyone in town and I couldn’t see his mother suddenly tearfully calling her son home. No, the only ones who would’ve told him anything were his brothers. Jax, I thought as Hill walked down the street, easing his camera back into his bags of tricks. Jax would be the one to call. He’d see it as a courtesy call he should make as the eldest Deveraux brother. Jax was the type of man who, even though he no longer lived in Pierce Point, still seemed to know all that was going on.

I envisioned him having this intricate spy network that told him when his dead-beat dad was sick or I was in the hospital. It was more likely that he had a subscription to the town newspaper, but the spy ring could be possible. This was Jax Deveraux. Anything was possible with him.

For a man who had spent years boasting about his three great sons, Big Jack had done a bang up job of alienating and abandoning all three of them. And I thought my father was bad. At least he loved one of his kids.

We wandered around Pierce Point and I knew it wasn’t because Hill felt like reminiscing. Sometimes you just had to try to outrun your demons. He walked and took pictures. And I used to drink. Until I realized demons couldn’t be outrun, even after a combination of drugs and alcohol made you face mortality. There were greetings to both of us and a lot of double-takes when they saw who we were with. I wanted to jump on a bench and shout out: “Yes. Hill is back. Yes, we had sex already. Nothing more to see here. Move along.”

Interesting, since I was all about keeping things low key when it came to him. Did he notice the whispers? Did he know we were the center of attention? It didn’t seem to bother him, but one day I’d wake up and he’d be gone. I was the one who had to live with the fallout.

While Hill darted into the deli, I sat on a bench. What the hell was I doing?

This was me changing things? This was me learning from past mistakes? Because from where I was sitting, I was right back where I had been four years ago. Only this time I was sober enough to know what was happening. What was that saying about insanity? That it was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

What was I going to do when he left? This time there’d be nothing to numb everything. Because it would hurt. It
always
hurt to wake up and find him gone. Not a good-bye, not a note, not a see you later. Just an empty bed and his bag gone.

“Roast beef on sourdough with spicy mustard.”

“I can’t do this,” I said as he dropped the wrapped sandwiches into the side pocket of his pack. He stilled, smart enough to realize I wasn’t talking about a sandwich or lunch. Hill sat down, lowering his bag to the bench. He copied my position, resting his elbows on his knees. “I can’t be that girl again, Hill.”

“We’ve had this conversation, Sarah.”

“I can’t be her anymore. I can’t be the one they talk about. I can’t be the girl you use as a weapon against your dad, this town, or yourself. I have spent almost four years trying to pick up my pieces. I struggle every day to not go back to who I was. And you…you keep breaking me open. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not. Does it matter? I know what they say about me here. I know that I could be sober and clean for fifty years and I’ll still be ‘that Sarah James girl’ to everyone. I don’t want to be ‘that Sarah James girl’ to me.” I wiped my cheek and stared at my damp fingers. “I think…I think that’s how you see me too. If I’m the only one on Team Sarah, okay. But you’re not. You’re Team Hill. And that team,” I shrugged, “sees me as the enemy.” I stood. I needed to walk away. Walk away from him, and I guess, walk away from me.

“I do not.”

I nodded as I took a step backwards. “Yes, you do. You really do.”

“Damn it. This was easier when you were…”

I held up my hand, stopping him from finishing that sentence. “See? Team Hill.” Making a fist, I turned and walked away. It was hell. It was like being in rehab and detoxing again.

I’d be okay. I had made it through it then, I could make it through this.

Hill

There were billions of things wrong with Pierce Point. At the moment number one was that the only drinking establishment of any worth was Brandi’s. It was rather ironic, or pathetic, that the woman I was drinking over was the woman pouring my drinks.

What drove a sober addict to work as a bartender? Something wrong with that career choice. Lifting my glass, I took a sip of whiskey. When life kicked you in the balls, you asked the alcohol gods for salvation. I hated hard alcohol. I hated the smell; I hated the taste. But I sure enjoyed the efficient way it could get a guy hammered when he was on a mission. Sarah tilted her head to hear over the band that was murdering Bon Jovi. They were terrible. They made my teeth hurt they were so bad.

“Well, isn’t this unexpected. William Hilton Deveraux.”

Fuck.

I lifted my glass and took a bracing swallow as Brandi James spilled into the seat beside me. Damn, I thought, blinking. Someone had gotten herself a new pair of tits. They were straining the front of her black polo shirt with her name in hot pink swirly, girly letters on the left breast. Subtle. Real subtle. Brandi was as much a brunette as her sister but had gone for the blonde look. It was okay, I supposed, if one cared.

All of the buttons on her top were open, to show off the new boobs, and there was a god damn pink heart tattoo on the impressive swell. It matched the damn apostrophe in Brandi’s. That was just sick.

“Hello, Brandi.”

She leaned forward. Presenting the cleavage? “How are you, Hill? It’s been a while.”

“I’m fine.” There was something very calculating about Brandi. It had taken a while for me to catch on that she was looking for the richest dick in town. Of course I had been a teenager in high school when I first decided I deserved smokin’ hot Brandi James and her incredible vanishing panties. And because I was William Hilton Deveraux, she had decided I was the right game for her ambitions.

She sent me on one long mind fuck. She collected boys in high school, a man harem to do whatever she wanted. I was ashamed to say I had been one of her sheep. And what Brandi had wanted was to utterly destroy her sister, for whatever reason. I had been the weapon of choice.

Yeah, I had bullied Sarah, humiliated her, all to win the girl. Only the girl I wound up with that night hadn’t been the one in front of me but the one behind the bar. Talk about a twist of fate.

I hated thinking of that night. The scent of bonfires and cheap beer had a way of making the small of my back sweat because I’d see her so clearly. Those sad brown eyes got to me, even then, but seeing them filled with fear as the feral dogs that were my friends had circled her was something else entirely.

I wasn’t a hero, not now and certainly not then, but even I hadn’t been heartless enough to let them drag her off into the night. So I had laid claim to the drunken girl in over her head and had taken her virginity not long after, starting the twisted return and retreat to Sarah’s bed.

That had pissed off Brandi. I was supposed to be one of her hard-ons on a shelf; I was supposed to do what she wanted. To have lost the rich kid to her sister? There was a viciousness to Brandi that was hidden in her pretty face. She had been mean to Sarah before we had hooked up; after, it was a cruelty that would’ve impressed Big Jack.

I glanced at Sarah and figured nothing had changed with the sisters. What the hell was she doing here?

“You look,” the tip of Brandi’s tongue curled out to touch the little bow of her mouth, “good.”

What shit. I looked like hell. “Likewise.” What shit. She looked like hell. Well-ridden, put-away-wet hell. That almost made me grin as I finished my drink.

“I’ve seen your pictures. You’re really good.”

I was. That was the crux of it all. “Thanks. Which one is your favorite?”

Her deep red lips parted at the question. Damn but she was a walking, breathing cliché from her fake boobs, to her fake hair, to her fake human appearance. Beneath all the cheap gloss, Brandi was a praying mantis.

Leaning back in the chair, I watched her writhe on the hook she had dangled. If she knew one photograph of mine, I would strip naked and bend her over the table and give her what she wanted. Right there, right then. An eyebrow arched up as I waited. I caught the waitress’s eye and held up two fingers then tapped them against the glass I waggled. If I was going to chat with Brandi, I wanted to start doubling up.

“That one on the cover.”

Which cover? “Uh-huh,” I said, tilting my chair back. Sarah was filling a line of shot glasses with what looked like tequila. She loaded a tray, set a salt shaker and a bowl of lemon wedges in the middle, and it was whisked away to the band. Not helping things, Sarah.

I couldn’t help but compare the two sisters, and not just their appearance. Once upon a time, Brandi had been the hottie. She still was if she didn’t try so hard to be the girl she had been in high school. She wasn’t. She was twenty-six years old, a long way from a bright-eyed teenager. Brandi was the pampered daughter while Sarah had, for whatever reason, become the punching bag. Brandi had been the babe and Sarah the shadow. Somehow in the four years I had been away and Sarah had gotten clean, she had turned into a pretty woman. Not hot like Brandi had been because that wasn’t Sarah. But she had come into her own while Brandi had not so much hit the skids, but…stalled out.

My drink was poured. The only reason I knew that was my drink was that Sarah had looked right at me before she poured.
That’s right, baby, I’m drinking because of you.

“You should come by later,” Brandi said, “and we can talk about old times.”

“Which times were those, Brandi?” The game was tiresome now. It was the same one from adolescence. “The times you teased my dick or led me around by it? Thanks, honey, you made my night,” I said to the waitress who set my glass down. “You tell that pretty bartender to keep them coming.”

“I forgot, Hill, how much of an asshole you are.” Brandi stood up then looked down her nose at me.

“A lot,” I said, taking a sip of his glass. I stretched my arms out as I measured how much. “A lot.”

She gave a huff and walked away, swaying her ass to show what I was missing out on. I didn’t know what a flounce was but I was pretty sure that’s what she was doing. I was not missing out on much with that James sister. Well…maybe an STD.

Now that she was gone, I could get on to more important things. Like wondering where the fuck I was going to sleep now that my original plan was screwed to hell and gone.

Sarah

“That, my love, is a sad, miserable sight.”

I glanced away from where Hill was drinking. Damon, the other bartender, sidled up beside me. He copied my pose by resting his elbows on the bar.

“What is?” What had Brandi said? Anything about why I had gotten sober? Doubtful. If it wasn’t about Brandi, my sister didn’t think about it. That my sister had made a play for him wasn’t surprising. She
always
did. As if him rejecting her had turned on Brandi’s big game hunter vagina button.

Damon looked at me then Hill. His brown eyes were serious, as if he was studying something extremely interesting. “The two of you.” He drummed his hands on the table then straightened. “I have not seen this many sneaky-eyed looks in a long time. And I work in a bar. Stop ogling, Sarah, and start dropping panties. That boy is hammered enough to not say no.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “You’re an asshole.”

He winked.

I wasn’t going to drop my panties. That was the problem. An order came in, allowing me to focus on making drinks instead of Hill. When there was a slight break because the band wanted more drinks (as if that would make them better), Hill’s table was empty and he was nowhere in sight. I scanned the bar and noticed he wasn’t the only blonde not around. Brandi had disappeared too.

When two o’clock rolled around and Damon made the last call announcement, I had never been so relieved to know a night was coming to an end. It typically took us an hour to shut everything down after the last body staggered out after losing their keys to the jar. My father had started having his customers drop their keys in a jar when he had first opened Brandi’s, and we’d never lost a car to someone stealing a set of keys. Probably because no one wanted to make Brandon James mad. At noon, they’d all be dropped in the mailbox out front to be picked up. I think the idea had come from my mother. I couldn’t see my father giving a damn what anyone did. Not that I was going to ask him or my sister.

Brandi returned to count out the tills while I cleaned up my bar. We were always the first two to arrive and the last two to leave. Brandon James’ law. Not even Brandi could ignore it because he took the running of his bar very seriously; even if he didn’t want his youngest anywhere near it.

It wasn’t because I was an alcoholic, though my father scared me too much to ever dip into the bottles even when I had been drinking. It was because he hated me and wanted me to have nothing to do with his legacy.

Working in a bar probably wasn’t the wisest idea for a recovering alcoholic, but I did it for a few reasons. I knew how to do this job and I did it pretty well. And it pissed my father and sister off that a piece of paper legally bound me to this building. Once in a while Brandon would offer a large amount of money to buy me out of my mother’s inheritance, resorting to threats of violence when I said no. But the main reason I worked here was because I had made a choice four years ago to not be afraid of my father and sister. He had stopped swinging at me shortly after the overdose and I often wondered if it wasn’t because of Jax Deveraux, my unlikely guardian angel.

“So, Hill Deveraux is back,” my sister said.

“Yes.” I set the boxes filled with empty bottles in a pile beside the bar.

“Oh, that’s right. You and he have that thing.”