Cora
Cora and her Z4 Roadster were going eighty down the highway, blasting classic rock, when her phone lit up. Her first thought was that it would be Finn, whom she had tried to call at least four times before she had given up and contacted Wes, who had needed very little incentive to tell Cora where the local enforcer lived. It would, after all, have been polite of the jerk to call back when she had tried to get in touch with him. She might be pissed at him, but he had a right to know about Oliver’s little blackmailing trick.
But no, of course it couldn’t be Mr. I’m-Falling-For-You. Nope, Cora wasn’t that lucky. She resisted the urge to snarl as her mother’s name and number flashed across the digital screen. Her second thought was that Oliver, the budding blackmailer, had reneged on his promise to keep the photos he took and her mother was calling her to berate Cora about terrible life choices. It would fit in with the week she had been having.
There was also a chance that she was calling to apologize for all the crap she had ever said and done, and promise she was going to be a world-class mother. Yeah, right. And her car was about to become a winged unicorn and carry her off in the sky to live with Prince Perfect.
With a sigh, Cora pressed the Answer button on her steering wheel. Her music became little more than background noise, and her mother’s voice echoed out of the speakers.
“Hello?” she said before Cora had a chance to say anything. “Cora, are you there?”
The question sounded more like a demand, but that was Sam Anderson for you. Cora took a deep breath before answering. “Yes, Mom. I’m here.”
“Where are you?”
For a moment, Cora was fifteen again and wanting to lie to her mother about where she was and what she was doing. Cora was an adult; she didn’t have to tell anyone anything about where she had been or why. Wasn’t that the one and only perk of being grown-up? “I’m just outside of town, on interstate 50. Is there a problem?”
Rather than answer the question like a normal person would, Sam just barreled ahead with more questions. “What are you doing back there? Are you going home? Is Oliver coming home, then? Will you be back soon?”
Cora’s knuckles went white on her steering wheel. “Mom, I’m just driving. I needed to clear my head.”
It wasn’t really working. Usually the feeling of going eighty on a long stretch of road with the windows down helped, even more than exercising. There was something about the feel of leather against her back and the rumble of shifting gears that kept the fifty million things that she had to think about on any given day from seeming overwhelming. Food, fitness, and fuel: what more did a woman need?
“So you’ll be back?”
Cora rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom, I’ll be back. Why?”
“Your father wants to do a barbecue tonight.”
Cora would have been less shocked if her car actually had sprouted a horn and wings. A barbecue? They hadn’t done something so family-oriented since Cora was a kid. They were easily her favorite family memory. Her father liked to cook on the grill; her mother liked attention. Cora and Oliver had just liked the adventure of eating outside. It was a little jarring and ultimately confusing.
“We haven’t done that since I was in middle school.”
“Do you want to break his heart? He got this whole idea last night, and I haven’t been able to put him off it.”
Ah, that sounded more like the truth. It was easy to picture Cora’s dad coming up with the idea and her mother pointing out every reason why it was a bad idea. What surprised her more was that it hadn’t actually worked. Dad usually cowed to Mom pretty quickly. Maybe that show of backbone had been more than just a show. “Tried, did you?”
Her mother huffed loud enough to make the speakers vibrate. “Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady. I just want the house cleaned up for company, and it’s not so easy to do.”
“Company?” Cora asked. “Who else is coming?”
“Well, no one yet, Cora. Jeez. But your daddy had a whole list. He wants everything to be just right.”
Cora felt a pinch of guilt somewhere in her throat. A whole list? Well, that was something special. “All right, I’ll be there. I can pick up Oliver after school and we can come over. Do you want me to bring anything?”
“Some wine, or a dessert.”
Cora made a mental note to pick up both. “I can do that.”
“Good.”
There was a long awkward silence. Cora could hear the click of a lighter through the phone followed by the long inhalation as her mother took a drag of her cigarette. She switched gears and slowed down, feeling the hum of her car beneath her.
“Is there something else, Mom?”
“Amy Mullins says that a man was coming out of your place at an ungodly hour this morning.”
Cora just barely resisted the urge to curse. “Mrs. Mullins is nearly a hundred years old and hasn’t bothered to get new glasses since the ’80s.”
It was a deflection, not a lie. Not that Cora felt anything in particular about lying to her mother, but trying to keep fabrications about her personal life in order was more brainpower than she wanted to dedicate to any conversations with Sam Anderson.
“So, no bad-boy bikers were coming out of your place half-naked at four in the morning?”
Cora sighed and shook her head. She wasn’t going to have this conversation. As a woman and an adult, she didn’t have to answer to anyone about any part of her sex life. She was certainly long past the age of having to explain her actions to her own mother. “Mom, stop. What time do you want Oliver and me there?”
“Dad’s putting the burgers on at five. If you wanna be here a little earlier than that, I’d appreciate some help.”
Help invariably meant Cora was going to do whatever her mother had been too frantic or lazy (Sam Anderson had the singular ability to be both) to accomplish. Cora could already see herself setting up tables and sweeping up the emptied carport so people could mingle.
She downshifted again and took a slow turn down a road that barely stood out against the flat Nevada landscape. She was only twenty minutes outside of town but everything looked barren and unsettled. The ground was dusty in some places and cracked in others. A small ranch-style house the color of terra cotta and stucco was the lone exception to the otherwise flat landscape.
“All right. We’ll see you then. I’ve got to go.”
“Bring your boyfriend with you,” her mother responded, hanging up the phone before Cora could say she didn’t have a boyfriend.
“Oh, grow up,” she told the disconnected line, knowing she sounded completely petulant. That was just fan-friggin’-tastic. Her palm burned as she slapped it against the side of the steering wheel twice in quick succession. Her ire was bubbling beneath her skin, and she couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
This whole week had been nothing but one frustrating event after another. Her mother calling in the middle of the business week, her brother being in jail, living away from her comfortable apartment in a tiny cheap box with a troubled little brother, the advances of a man who, if he would just be anything but a criminal, might actually be a decent partner. And now, thanks to a retired biddy with no hobbies save for spying on others, her mother knew about it.
“Goddammit!” she snarled and slapped the wheel again.
The front door to the one-story house slapped open, and Finn stood there. He either hadn’t changed since leaving her house, or he owned nothing but jeans. A doorway silhouetted his golden body so dark his obsidian hair got lost in all the shadows. He waited there for a moment, a scowl fixed on his handsome face, before he shoved his thumbs in his belt loops and leaned against the doorframe.
“Goddammit,” she said again, this time in a whisper.
With quaking knees and a stomach that vibrated with anger, she pulled to a stop, then slung herself out of her car.
“We have to talk.”
He raised his brow. “Seems like we did plenty of that this morning.”
She held up a hand and swallowed a hundred angry retorts that welled up in her throat. In the calmest voice she could manage, Cora said, “I am not ready to talk about last night, or…or this morning.”
Her voice broke, and she hated it. She hated that everything seemed to be happening too quickly for her to handle. Cora liked to manage; it was what made her a great boss. At work, she was a goddess of capability. She was perfectly capable of handling twenty crises at once and put out twelve fires while schmoozing a persnickety client. It was what made her a fantastic businesswoman. But solving work problems was vastly different from solving personal ones.
Personal problem number one came tromping down the front steps with a liquid grace reserved for panthers and quicksilver. His eyes were as dark as sapphires in water and filled with concern. Oh God, not that. Anything but that. She could have taken him being cold and distant, or ever bitter. She would have relished in him being angry. It would have made everything easier. But that gentle look, so openly worried about her, was her undoing.
The first tear rolled down her cheek, then a second. She blinked and he was there, standing in front of her. The sun was perched behind him in such a way that she couldn’t see anything but the rugged masculine outline of him, but she could feel him. He was a wave of heat that hummed against her skin.
“Cora…” he started.
“I…I can’t.”
When his arms wrapped around her, she crumpled. He completely undid her. The wide span of his fingers splayed on either side of her spine as he pulled her gently toward him, and the feel of his bare chest against her wet cheek was a deep and abiding comfort to her.
He didn’t say anything or ask, and she was grateful. He just held here there beneath the Nevada sun as she cried out all of her frustrations. His body began to sway back and forth, and she swayed with him. One large hand lifted and brushed the hair off her face, tucking it gently behind her ear. With the other, he stroked up and down the length of her back as if she were a cat. It felt good.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said.
“For what?”
“Crying all over you.” She scoffed at herself, stepping away from the amenity of his embrace. He slid his hands down her arms, letting her step away, but didn’t quite let her pull back. The rough tips of his fingers held her wrists. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see lines of her tears down his chest. “God, I don’t normally do that.”
He smirked and gently squeezed her wrists. “What kind of man would I be if I made a woman feel ashamed of her God-given right to cry?”
“Men can cry, too,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
“Oh, no doubt, but they ought to do it into beer, not on my chest.”
His lips quirked up as he said it, and she felt herself smiling in response. He managed, despite all the tattoos and the rock-hard muscle, to look affable. It was strange. Finn literally beat people up for a living, and Cora made people feel better in their work environments, but it was him who was more approachable.
“Perish the thought.”
“Unless it’s Chris Pratt. I’d forgive him wanting to cry on my chest.”
A small laugh worked its way across her lips. She crossed her arms and glanced around. There was a garden, she realized. Nothing was growing out of it right now, but it was clear that there had been recently. Plots of rich, dark earth still formed neat little rows in a fenced-in four-by-four shape. Cora wondered what he had grown. To the other side of the long house she could see a garage, but it was closed up. There was a small patch of grass, healthy and green, tucked against a small rocked area that surrounded a pond. “Nice place,” she said.
“It’s not much, but it’s home.” He stepped to one side and slid an arm around her back. “Come on in. Let’s see about getting you some lunch.”
“Why are you always feeding me?” she asked, letting herself be guided into his house. “I’m not scrawny.”
“No,” he said, the sound of appreciation turning the single syllable into a purr. “That you are not.”
The screen door swung shut behind them, and Cora got her first good look at Finn’s personal sanctum. It was cleaner than she imagined it would be, if a little cluttered. There was a long couch covered with a deep blue blanket, a television that must have been twenty years old, at least, and a coffee table. All of these things were neat and orderly. It was the bookshelves that were taking up all the space.
There must have been ten of them, lined up from one side of the wall to the other. They were of various heights and widths, but every last inch of them was taken up with novels of every variety. If there was some kind of organizational system, Cora couldn’t decipher it. Worn paperbacks still sporting thrift-store stickers seemed to share space with modern leather-bound classics. Armor-clad adventurers peered out from the bright covers of some, where dark-noir detectives held smoking guns on others. It was, she thought, the strangest collection she had ever seen.
“Holy crap,” she said as she ventured farther into the living room.
“I like books,” he said, stepping around her.
“Yeah, I see that.” She perused the shelves, her curiosity warring with her desire to organize things. “It is a very impressive collection.”
He nodded as he walked past the last shelf and into a good-sized kitchen. It was neater here, with only one small squat bookshelf that seemed to be relegated to cookbooks. Their cracked and worn spines showed use.
“I lived on the reservation near Duck Valley with my mother and my sisters. We didn’t have a lot of money. No one really did. Most of the time people were just sort of struggling to get by, you know?”
She didn’t, not really. Growing up in Nevada, she knew there were reservations and that their populations dwindled, but little else. It hadn’t really been covered in her local history class, and she had been so desperate to get away from here that she’d never bothered looking into it more. She kept quiet and let him continue.
“Beer?” he asked, rather than saying more on the subject.
“Why not?”
He opened the fridge and stuck his head inside before he began pulling out sandwich fixings, setting them on the clean counter space, and then two beers. He opened one bottle and handed it to her while he took the other for himself. She watched him take a long swig, the muscles of his throat working to swallow the amber liquid.
“My dad, if you want to call him that, didn’t stick around. He loved my mother, but she didn’t want to leave the reservation, and he didn’t feel like he belonged there. Maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. They fought a lot, they loved a lot, but ultimately the fighting won. He left before I was even in school. My mother was devastated. My sisters weren’t really surprised.”
“How many sisters do you have?” Cora asked.
“Seven.”
“Oh, wow.” She couldn’t quite keep the shock out of her voice.
He spared her a grin. “Good women, every last one. Got me used to dealing with tears, in general.” His broad hand tapped the spot on his chest where it was still a little damp.
She bet it would. She took her own drink and lingered near the small, two-person table tucked into the nearest corner. A copy of this morning’s paper was splayed over the surface. Her eyes lingered on the front page, which depicted a broken window and a headline talking about a local store being robbed overnight.
“I always wanted a huge family,” she said, her fingers trailing over the newsprint. “I thought having twenty sisters would make me feel better.”
“Better?” he asked, opening a package of lunchmeat.
“I didn’t have many friends when I was a kid. Sure, there was Wes, but he was a boy and it was really hard to talk to him about my ever-changing Backstreet Boy crushes.”
“I would have pegged you as an *NSYNC girl, myself.”
“God no,” she said, placing a flat palm over her heart. “I mean, the Boys were iconic through and through. *NSYNC just backed up Justin Timberlake.”
“Ouch, you really didn’t have a lot of female friends growing up, did you?”
“I didn’t have a lot of friends, period. There was Wes, of course, and later there was…Collin.” Even saying his name made her feel cold. She crossed her arms and tried to ignore the memories it summoned.
He popped two pieces of bread into a toaster oven with some cheese. “Wow, I didn’t know you could turn a name into a curse word, but I am pretty sure you just managed it.”
“Well, there are some who deserve it.”
The toaster oven dinged, and he tugged the bread out. “Do you want to talk about it?”
The face of a sinfully attractive guy in a leather vest making promises as he backed her against a bike filled her memory. The feel of rich hands on her hips and the way her lipstick had looked on his mouth. More images of screaming in the middle of a cool winter night and him riding away on that very same bike.
“That’s a pretty firm no.”
“All right. Are you a mayo or Miracle Whip girl?”
“If it’s turkey I’ll have the Whip, otherwise mayo.” She meandered away from the table and back to the bookshelves. There wasn’t any dust on the book covers. That surprised her. She’d seen plenty of libraries. They usually belonged to the wealthy and the distinguished, filled with old books with older sentiments wrapped in gilded leather. Most of them were decorated with dust, proof that the owners wanted them just to have them, not to love them. It made her smile to see that he didn’t just have the books, he cared for them.
“Why did you leave?” she finally asked.
“Have you ever been on a reservation?”
“No,” she admitted, wondering why she felt guilty about that. “I can’t say I have.”
“I won’t say it’s all bad. It’s not. There are some really great things about living there. You never really know the meaning of community until you see someone go through a tragedy on a reservation. When my dad left, we had the whole tribe coming around and offering any kind of help or comfort they could. If I was ever hungry, I could just wander over to a friend’s house and food would happen. If I needed some supplies for school and my mother couldn’t cover it, someone else just happened to have bought extra. That kind of thing. You feel like you are part of something.”
“But here you are.”
“Here I am, living alone and breaking the law.” He plopped the sandwiches together and brought a plate with a couple of single-serving bags of store-brand potato chips out to the living room.
She followed and settled herself on the couch next to him as he placed the plate between them. It was the second time she’d be sharing sandwiches and chips with him, she realized. This felt more intimate than their time together at the Deli, bickering about whether or not he should have gone off with a model.
Finn took a bite of his sandwich before continuing. “Like I said, it was good to feel family, community, and being surrounded by people who looked like me. But there is some shit, too, not the least of which is poverty.”
She thought back to the many years living in white-trash central. Her family rode the poverty line fairly hard. She could remember weeks at a time when dinner was hot dogs out of a forty-pack and the cheap quick-cook macaroni and cheese. “How bad?”
He didn’t quite meet her eyes when he said, “Bad enough. There aren’t a lot of what you might call career opportunities on the reservation. You pretty much have two choices: stay there and get drunk as often as possible, or get out.”
She picked up her sandwich but suddenly didn’t much feel like eating. “You got out?”
“I did,” he admitted.
“Just grabbed a bike and left?”
He laughed and laid his head on the back of the couch, staring up at the ceiling like he was remembering something. “Well, that came later. First came four years at NSU.”
She blinked, wondering if she heard him right. “You went to college?”
He took another healthy bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “I did. I studied education and history.”
“That sounds a lot like you wanted to be a teacher.” She looked at him now, really looked. Could she see him standing in front of a classroom full of kids talking about the world that history books showed? There was a distinct possibility. He had a good voice, a good sense of presence, and if big bad biker guys and police officers didn’t intimidate him, certainly a group of kids wouldn’t.
He took a long drink. The sunlight caught the bubbles that swam through the beer, making them look like tiny pearls caught in amber. “Some of the few good people I remember on the reservation were the teachers. They tried really hard to be good people. They were some of the few role models we had, and I guess it made an impression. It doesn’t matter, I didn’t make the cut anyway.”
It was his turn to take a daily phrase and make it sounds like a curse. She found herself reaching out to touch his shoulder. “What happened?”
He put his hand on top of hers, giving the fingers a light squeeze that she interpreted as gratitude. “Discrimination doesn’t really stop after high school. I made the mistake of adding in a little too much off-the-books history while trying to get my training hours together.”
“Off-the-books history?”
“Some of the things I was taught growing up.” He finished off the last of his sandwich and chased it with beer. He shook his head and let out a breath that could almost be called a sigh. “Weirdly enough, most parents don’t want their kids coming home crying about the other side of Thanksgiving and other aspects of colonization most prefer to be glossed over.”
She winced and rubbed her thumb across his shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”
He shrugged and sat forward just enough that her hand slid free from his shoulder. “It’s partly my fault. I was asked to apologize, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t think I should.”
“You got proud.” She didn’t mean for it to come out as an insult, but it did.
He eyed her. “You might know a thing or two about the difficulty of eating a share of crow.”
She laughed and began to eat a sandwich that went down a lot better than swallowing her pride. “Mmm. Good sandwich. Well done. Did we ever get around to talking about why you have a metric ton of books?”
“Nice segue, very smooth.”
“I try.” She fastidiously wiped a few crumbs from her fingers and set the plate aside.
He patted her leg and nodded. “I’ll let you have this one as you are clearly having a crappy day.”
“I appreciate it.”
He lifted an arm in an invitation for casual snuggles.
She eyed him dubiously. “I’m not really here to get cozy.”
“Maybe you aren’t,” he said, wrapping his arm around her and tugging her close. “But you haven’t finished the food I made you, and you pretty much broke down outside. So, I’m going to say you need some coziness. I promise, I won’t get handsy with you…and I’ll tell you all about my amazing book collection.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It is a very good sandwich.”
“You keep complimenting my food and I’m going to think you like me or something.”
She slumped her body against his. He smelled nice, like spice and cinnamon and man. Cora wasn’t sure if she hated how easy it was to curl up with him on that old couch in the middle of nowhere, or if she was comforted by it. It was probably a little of both.
“Tell me about the books.”
“Like I said, we were poor. No television, and Wi-Fi wasn’t a big thing. But there was a little bookstore, new and used, just on the edge of the reservation. One day a month you could get four used books for two dollars. I could usually cobble that together. It started with those novels where the kids get to change into animals and just kinda went from there.”
“That’s pretty adorable.”
“I was an adorable kid. Do you read?”
“I’ve been known to flip through some pages. Not as many as you. But as I said before, I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of friends.”
He squeezed her close, and it felt good. It was so easy to get lost in him—too easy. That had been half the problem this morning. He had been there, and she’d nearly fallen asleep with his body tucked up against hers. It was too much far too soon.
“So why the cooking?” she asked. He tensed, and she was close enough that she could feel it. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”
“How about we go back and forth. You tell me something about you, and I’ll answer your question.”
“You wanna go all quid pro quo on this?” She lifted herself off his shoulder just enough to see his face. His eyes, so damnably blue against all the gold-brushed terra cotta of his skin, peered down at her. She felt a spike of lust run itself through her body with enough force that it nearly hurt.
“Yeah,” he said, unblinking and direct. “I do.”
She took a very long drink of beer before sitting up all the way, putting enough distance between her and Finn that she didn’t feel her skin humming. “All right, what do you want to know?”
“Tell me one hobby of yours.”
“Hobby? People have those still?”
“Are you trying to dance around my question?”
She sighed softly. “Okay, okay. Yes, I have hobbies. I don’t usually have much time to enjoy them, but from time to time I do have fun.”
“Beauty salon stops don’t count.”
“Fat lot you know,” she snipped. “There is something very soothing about having your hair and nails professionally done. But those were not the vices to which I was referring. I, as you know, enjoy vegging out with horror movies and playing cards with my little brother. I also enjoy a nice cozy mystery novel when I have a few hours to spare, and a good long drive.”
“A drive?”
She motioned in the general direction of her car. “What, did you think the car was just a prop? There is a reason I spent half my income one year on that beauty.”
“All right, so you like horror movies and fast cars, and you wanted a big family.”
She nodded, finishing off her sandwich and waving the now empty plate at him. “That’s me. So, what about you? Why the MasterChef routine?”
He reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. His muscles made a tantalizing play of the simple act. “My mother has…issues. The kind she needs medication for. She doesn’t like taking it, and when she doesn’t…well. Shit happens. She locks herself up in the bedroom or the bathroom for a couple of days and cries about everything. My sisters and I would split up all the chores when it happened. I ended up with kitchen duty.”
“I’m sorry about your mom.” She meant it. Having a dramatic mother who couldn’t handle anyone else getting attention was one thing. Cora could only assume that having a mom with a legitimate debilitation was something entirely different.
He nodded. “It happens. She lives with my sister Melanie and her husband now. Melanie is a nurse and makes sure she gets the care she needs.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.” He stood up suddenly. “So, tell me something, Ms. Anderson…why are you here?”
“What?”
“This morning you made it pretty clear that you didn’t want me around, at least not personally. Yet there you were, not eight hours later, crying in my arms. So, what’s up?”
She perched her arm on the back on his couch and palmed her cheek. “God, I nearly forgot why I came here. It was Oliver.”
His brows drew together. “Oliver? What happened with him?”
Cora opened her mouth to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come to her mouth. This was the moment she had been waiting for. This was the very thing that had her driving over here at the speed of fury. So why didn’t she want to say it? Oliver’s blackmailing antics were something he needed to know, deserved to know, but the words got caught somewhere between her brain and her mouth.
“He’s…fine,” she lied. She didn’t want to tell him and she wasn’t entirely sure why. Would he be angry about the pictures? Would he laugh about it? Would it put some kind of rift between Finn and Oliver? Didn’t she want there to be a rift? No, she decided, she didn’t. She didn’t like the idea of Finn being mad at Oliver. It didn’t matter. He had the right to know what was going on, didn’t he? “At least he’s physically fine,” she finally went on. “I just think we may need to be a little more involved. He wants to go to this concert and—”
Her phone rang, the loud blast of classical music wafting up from her pocket and signaling an unknown number. She frowned and fumbled for her phone. It was a local number. She knitted her brows and swept her finger to answer the call.
“Hello?”
“Is this Cora Anderson?” The voice on the other end of the line was mature, professional, and feminine.
“Yes,” she answered, “who is this?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Francesca Santiago. I’m the principal at Carson High School. According to our files, you are currently Oliver Anderson’s guardian?”
Cora felt her heart racing in her chest. A million possibilities ran through her mind. Was Oliver hurt? Had something happened at school? “Yes. That’s me. I mean, I’m his sister, but I’m looking after him. Has something happened?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Oliver never came in to school today.”
Cora barely took part in the rest of the conversation. Yes, she knew part of the agreement for bail was that he attend school. Yes, she knew she could be held accountable for this lapse in attendance. No, this would not be happening again. For a moment, everything she had been feeling before walking inside threatened to overwhelm her again.
She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. She glanced up and found Finn looking at her. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find in that look, but she found surprising support. His mouth was set in a confident line, and his fingers squeezed ever so lightly, as if to remind her that she wasn’t dealing with this alone. Cora found a small amount of tension ease out of her shoulders.
“Ma’am.” Cora tried her best to sound as calm and professional as the flurry of emotions currently running through her body would allow. “Recently Oliver has been talking about a girl named Britt. I am not sure if…”
“Brittany Callen,” the principal answered when Cora trailed off. “I am aware of their relationship.”
“You wouldn’t be able to tell me if she was in school today, would you?”
“Not without written permission of a parent or guardian, no. Otherwise I can only talk to you about Oliver.”
Cora rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. She understood there were rules for a reason, but they didn’t help her find her little brother or discern what he was up to. “I understand.”
There was a slight pause and a soft sigh on the other side of the line. “That being said, I can say that Oliver, until this last year, has been a model student. His grades were near the top of his class, and his attendance was exemplary. According to his record, all of his teachers enjoyed having him in their classes, and he was involved in several after-school activities. I would have called him one of our best.”
Cora hadn’t known any of that. How much had distancing herself from this city and everything about it alienated her from her little brother? The answer was “too much.” Cora shook her head, knowing that the woman couldn’t see it. “And did your school have an influx of new students this year?”
“As a matter of fact, we did. We don’t get many people moving into Carson. Here’s the thing, Ms. Anderson, unless you can say you are aware of Oliver’s absence and the reason for him being out was excusable, I have to say I’ll be informing the sheriff.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Cora responded, going cold. “Oliver and I are attending a family function today. I realize school is important, but this recent issue has brought to light that a family support structure might be helpful.”
“Of course.”
It was a nice lie, and both of the women knew it. They also knew Oliver was, deep down, a good kid. Recent decisions were the exception to his life, not the rule. He deserved a chance, and both of them wanted to give it. Oliver was surprisingly lucky. They exchanged a few more pleasantries before saying goodbye.
When Cora hung up the phone, she felt numb. No, she realized after taking a deep breath, she was angry. It felt like fire was rolling inside of her lungs. Her hands were trembling as she set her phone aside.
“Where is he?” Finn’s voice was surprisingly gentle.
“I-I…don’t know,” she said, levering herself off the sofa. Her feet made a quick tattoo across the ground as she started to pace. He could be anywhere. “You know this place better than I do now. Where would he go?”
“If he were at the shop, my uncle or Speed would have called me. If he was at the club, Titan would have let me know.”
“What about where we found him before? Where he was tagging?”
He shook his head. “That might be fine for late night, but that stretch of road is pretty busy during the day.”
She cursed. When that didn’t make her feel any better, she cursed louder. It didn’t help any more the second time than it had the first. Cora hated this. It wasn’t just that she’d didn’t know where her brother was, or who he was with, though there was certainly that. It was also the fact that he was giving up his entire life to skip school. And for what? Some girl? “This is ridiculous.”
She felt a hand against her cheek. It was as tender as it was callused, and it sent a shiver down her spine. Cora paused in her stomping to turn and face Finn.
“What do you need?” he asked.
It was a simple question, but a loaded one. What did she need? She needed to get back to her simple life where the most difficult thing to do was manage a difficult client. She needed a long shower and a bottle of wine. She needed her brother to not be traveling in the footsteps she had left behind. More than anything, she had to admit, she needed Finn.
“I want to go for a drive.”