August
In the morning, I get Bettina ready for school and drop her off before Olivia is even out of bed. I have plenty of work to do at Tanglewood, but that won’t ease my guilt, so I take the tape we found at the shelter into the station. Magnolia Springs can’t boast more than three cops, two of them reasonably new recruits, but then we’ve never had a lot of crime here. Lot of kids doing stupid shit, but nothing as bad as destroying the shelter.
Sheriff Webb and I went to school together. She never did much like me before I went away to war, much less afterward, and I know she’s going to like me even less after this visit. Every day I walk through town, I see the way they stare at my leg and think I don’t notice. I notice, believe me—when you lose a limb and have to walk with a prosthetic, people pay attention, and you feel like you got a fucking neon sign over your head that says “war cripple.” It’s ironic that the cost of living in the land of the brave and the free only comes at the expense of those who are willing to die for it.
Sheriff Webb leans back in her chair, sipping from a coffee mug as she pretends I’m not here. That’s a habit for the occupants of this town—pretend like the angry cripple isn’t standing right in front of you, and maybe he’ll get pissed off and go away. Not this time.
I lean over the counter and ring the bell. Their receptionist doesn’t appear to be in today. Sheriff looks at me, and then takes another sip of her coffee, so I ring the bell again. Still nothing. I raise my hand to ring it a third time, and she says, “August Cotton, you ding that bell once more and, war hero or not, I’m-a shove it up your ass. Now what can I do for you?”
I toss the tape on the counter. “Olivia Anders bought the shelter on Highway 98.”
“Mmhmm, I know it.”
“It was vandalized,” I say. She doesn’t get up from her seat, and I don’t budge. “You might wanna take a look at the tape. Figure you know the perpetrators real well.”
Her eyes narrow into hard slits, and she leans forward. “What are you sayin’, Mr. Cotton?”
“Look at the tape. I’m pretty sure neither one of their parents can afford to pay Olivia damages, so you might wanna come up with a suitable punishment.”
She chuckles, but there is not a trace of humor in it. “Might I?”
“Yep, I reckon you will.”
She gives me a smile that doesn’t touch her eyes, and I turn to leave. “How did you get the job of bringing this to my attention? I’m surprised Miss Priss didn’t storm in here crying and carryin’ on about the dogs and how we’re all bad townsfolk for not offering to help our veterans.”
“Don’t call her that,” I warn, and she tucks her hands into her belt with a smug smile and a huffing noise. “She’s good people, and she don’t deserve your hostility. Hell, she don’t even know I’m here. She wanted to just forget it happened, but it ain’t right.”
She studies me with a shrewd gaze. “Why would she do that?”
“Because that’s the kind of person she is,” I say. “Olivia doesn’t have to be here. She came here to help our town.”
“And has she helped you, August?”
I turn away and make for the door, but I pause with my hand on the knob.
“More than you know,” I answer back in a whisper, too quiet for her to really hear me. “You make this right, Shona, or I’ll be paying a visit to your brother about your nephew and his friend.”
I wipe the perspiration from my brow as I open the door and step out into the thick ’Bama heat. It’s not even ten a.m. and already I’m sweating like a man walking through the gates of hell. Funny thing is, I was just fine before Sheriff Webb started asking questions. I was fine before Olivia Anders showed up. Now? Everything is shot to fucking shit, and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do about it.
When I pull in the drive, Olivia’s bike is resting up against the porch of the shelter, and I smile to myself. I don’t know why. I don’t know how I make up for what I did to her yesterday. It ain’t safe to be around her. Hell, even if I wasn’t fucked up from war it wouldn’t be safe to be around her anyway. That woman is dangerous. I never met a girl who got under my skin more than her. I never met a girl I couldn’t walk away from.
I haven’t even known her long. I don’t know anything about her except she’s as stubborn as a mule, and her heart is bigger and more pure than anyone’s I’ve ever met. Something in her, something bruised and hurt and ruined by the world calls to me, and I can’t get her outta my head. It’s been an awful long time since I wanted to lie with a woman, and she makes me forget why I can’t have her. All I see is her. All I want is her. But I can’t even bring myself to be honest about not being complete. I ain’t whole anymore. And I ain’t a man women like Olivia want to take to their bed. I’m the thing they run from. And I’d hurt her in the end. Something tells me she’s been hurt enough.
I climb out of the cab and head inside. Olivia has her back to me, earbuds in, and her hair tied up with a red bandana. She’s shakin’ her ass, and fuck me if it isn’t nearly impossible not to walk on over there and rip those little short shorts from her body. Instead, I lean in the doorjamb and watch her shimmy as she works and sings off-key. She shouldn’t be out here by herself, listening through her headphones. Fuck me dead. Anyone could walk on in here and take her against her will, and there’d be no one to come to her aid. Goddamn it. What is it with this woman? Why the hell doesn’t she have any regard for her own safety? Throw her in the lion’s den and she’d likely have her hand taken off trying to pet the damn thing. Or make it open up to her.
Olivia turns around with an arm full of plasterboard to dump into our pile in the middle of the room, her gaze meets mine and she jumps about a mile in the air, clutching her hand against her chest.
“Oh my God, you scared the shit outta me.”
“You know how many women are attacked every day because they listen to music through earbuds?” I say impatiently, thinking she should know this shit already. “You can’t hear an assailant coming.”
She smiles. “And here I thought I was safe in Magnolia Springs.”
I give her a look. “You never know who’s lurking around corners.”
“That’s true,” she says. “Most of the time we never know who’s standing right in front of us either.”
I nod, because she’s right. A little of the anger leaves me, and then my gaze drifts to the marks on her throat. I clench my jaw so hard my teeth creak. “How are you doin’ today?”
Her hand automatically closes around her neck, as if I wouldn’t notice the dark bruises marring her snow-white flesh. It was the first thing I saw last night when she walked into the house, and the only thing I saw later when I had her pressed against my bedroom wall and wanted to kiss her with everything I had. It’s why I didn’t kiss her, ’cause any man capable of hurting a woman the way I hurt her has no right to be putting his mouth on hers.
“I’m fine,” she says with a tight smile.
I nod, though I don’t believe it, and neither does she, I don’t think.
Olivia unfastens the bandana from her hair and folds it, tying it around her neck like a scarf. “What are you doing here?”
“We got a grand opening soon, don’t we?”
“August, I know you have things to tend to back at Tanglewood. You don’t have to help me here.”
“You know, this would go a lot quicker if you quit talkin’,” I say, and I fight the smile that threatens to appear when she feigns disbelief.
I get to work, helping her remove the debris from the wall coming down, and we shift it out into the huge dumpster by the side of the building. I follow her to the back of the shelter where the kennels are mostly untouched. The concrete floor could use a lick of paint, the doors some new hinges, and some of them need new wire and a couple of new locks. Olivia makes an inventory, and I offer to take her to the hardware store. We don’t have no Home Depot here, but we manage to find everything we need and spend a good hour strolling the aisles of old Winthrop’s Hardware for shit we don’t. The woman can shop.
We’re not back at the shelter more than ten minutes, chowing down on sandwiches from Stevie Rae Mae’s, when a police cruiser pulls into the drive, and we both look at one another in surprise. We abandon our food as the sheriff steps out of her vehicle.
“August Cotton, well, this is cozy,” she says with a chuckle. I jam my hands in the pocket of my jeans so I won’t ball them into fists.
“Can we help you, Sheriff?” Olivia says, her brow furrowed in confusion as if she’s worried she might have done something wrong.
“I took a look at that tape, and what did I find but my nephew and his friend Beau Banks?”
“Tape?” Olivia asks, looking between the two of us for clarification.
“Mr. Cotton here stopped by my office this morning, showed me a little video tape of the perps who vandalized your shelter.”
I sigh. Olivia looks at me with a horror-stricken expression. Here it comes. “You took the tape to her?”
“For future reference, Miss Anders, if someone vandalizes your property or threatens you in any way, you should report it.” Her gaze lowers to Olivia’s neck, and then flits to me before settling back on Olivia.
Olivia toys with the bandana. “Thanks. I will.”
“Alright, y’all, get your butts on out here,” Sheriff Webb says, opening the back door of the cruiser. “Congratulations, Miss Anders. You’re now the proud owner of two strapping young men who’ll be spending the rest of their summer working for you for free.”
“Oh . . . no,” Olivia says, shaking her head. “That’s . . . really, I can handle it.”
Sheriff Webb chuckles. “Oh, but I insist. Boys, don’t make me tase your ass.”
Two teenage boys climb out of the car with their shoulders slumped and their faces downturned. The sheriff clips them both on the backs of the heads, and I stand there unsure of how to proceed. “Miss Anders, meet perp one and two, otherwise known as Josiah Webb, my nephew”—she manages to make nephew sound like a bad word—“and his accomplice, Beau Banks.” She turns to the boys and says, “Apologize, now.”
They keep their jaws locked up tight, and she whispers in a voice that’s not so much a whisper as it is a polite threat, “So help me God, I don’t care that either one of you are seventeen going on eighteen, or that you’re family, Josiah. I will give you both an ass whoopin’.”
“Sss-sorry,” Beau is the first to speak. He’s got scruffy blond Bieber hair and a pimply face—he looks like one of those shaggy dogs. Josiah Webb, though? He’s taller than his friend, bulkier too, and as black as midnight. He’s got a chip on his shoulder as large as mine, and he comes from real bad stock too. His aunt might be the town sheriff, but his older brother is doing time for statutory rape and supplying drugs to a minor, and his daddy is one hell of a mean bastard.
“Sorry,” Josiah says, but it’s obvious from his tone that he don’t mean it.
Sheriff scowls. “Act like you got some raisin’, boy. Now you two made this mess, you’re gonna help clean it up.”
“Will you excuse us for just a minute.” Olivia frowns and turns to me. “Can I talk to you inside?”
“Sure. You two run along and have a little chat,” Shona says. “I ain’t got nothin’ to do but stand around and wait for a bunch of white people all day.”
“We’ll just be a second.” Olivia reaches out to grab my arm. For the first time in a long time, I don’t pull away, I let myself be led. Once we’re back inside the building, she turns on me. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
I smirk and fold my arms over my chest. “That depends on who you ask, now, doesn’t it?”
“I specifically didn’t want to go to the sheriff, I told you that. This town hates me enough; I don’t need a reason for those kids’ parents to come here upset with me.” She folds her arms across her chest. This pushes her boobs up, and gives me a better view of her cleavage. When she catches me staring, her cheeks turn the prettiest shade of pink, and she drops her arms by her sides.
“So, you think it’s okay they go unpunished?”
“Of course not. I just don’t need anyone else putting a stop to this shelter.”
“Nobody’s putting a stop to it. In fact, now we’ll work quicker.”
“I don’t understand you,” she says, and it isn’t an insult—I can tell she’s genuinely baffled by me. Good. I don’t need her inside my head with her shrink bullshit about how I need some animal to pick up my cues and stop me from hurting another human being. Though the second that thought manifests inside my head, I see the desperate pleas in her eyes from when I had her shoved up against the wall with my hand squeezing her throat.
“You don’t have to, darlin’.” I walk toward the door and catch her sigh as she follows behind me a beat later.
She turns to Sheriff Webb. “Alright then, bring in the perps.”
“Well, you heard the woman. Get to work, boys,” Shona says, ruffling Josiah’s hair and glaring at Beau as they pass her and file inside. “I’ll be back around five to pick you up.”
Neither one of them look at her as they trudge up the stairs, though Beau mutters under his breath, “You can’t keep us here. It’s called kidnapping.”
“Dude, shut up,” Josiah says.
“Honey, I’m the sheriff. I can do whatever I want, and this is what I want. Now, you get your skinny little ass inside, and if you sass me again, you’ll be headed straight for juvie. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they both say, and wander inside with their tails between their legs.
“They give you any trouble, you just let me know.” The sheriff opens her door. “I take it you’re goin’ to be here, Mr. Cotton?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here.”
“Mmhmm, that’s what I thought.” She climbs into the cruiser and starts the engine.
The second her car pulls out of the drive, Olivia turns to glare at me. “I can’t believe you did that.”
I shrug. My stance on letting those two little shits get away with it hasn’t changed any in the last five minutes, so I just stare until she’s uncomfortable enough to walk inside, and then I watch her ass as she goes. It’s something akin to torture, not being able to touch her, not being able to bend her over a counter, or a chair, or the fuckin’ hood of my truck and take her like I would have before war ruined me.
Balling my hands into fists until my bones creak, I force myself to focus on the pain and forget about getting closer to this woman, because it ain’t ever gonna happen. I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the ground and follow her inside.