DRIFTS

 

 

AARON LISTENED to Larx on speakerphone as he made his usual patrol rounds, but Larx was—for once—skirting uncomfortably around the point. Whatever had gone on with Candace, it was a big deal, but Larx wasn’t getting to it.

“So, Yoshi is pretty sure the girl is being abused,” Aaron clarified, “but he’s not sure how—”

“He’s pretty sure how,” Larx corrected, “but he’s got no proof. We’re going to have to ask the school psychologist to talk to her to see if she’ll confess to anything.”

Aaron made a confirmation noise, his stomach balling up unhappily at what Larx was implying. Right before he could ask the hard question, he rounded the curve of the highway before Olsen Road and remembered his first move on Larx that October, when he’d stopped to beg his son’s favorite principal not to risk death by running on the side of the road.

For a moment—just a second—he missed the joy he used to feel when he knew Larx might be running alongside the road.

He was brought to the present with a thump when he saw the young man in jeans and a hooded San Diego sweatshirt sliding along the icy shoulder. The poor guy had no gloves, no scarf, and tennis shoes, and he looked thoroughly out of his depth.

“Hold off, Larx. I’ll get back to you. We might have a stranded tourist or something.”

“Drive safe.”

“See you at home.”

Aaron stopped slowly and rolled down the passenger window. Unlike Larx, who’d been most adamantly not in search of help on this road, this guy looked like he needed a friend.

“Hey there,” he called, trying not to sound too cop-like. “Can I give you a ride somewhere? Did you leave a car behind you?”

The kid looked frightened for a moment, although he was most definitely out of high school. “I did. I, uh, left my car in a snowbank. By a tree. I, uh… don’t have chains. I….” He swallowed and for a moment looked ready to cry. “I don’t know how to get chains. And I have no idea where I am. All I know is that GPS said there’s a high school on this road and it looks like it might be a school for bears, because this place is, like, wild fucking kingdom!”

Aaron chuckled kindly. “I’m sure it looks that way to someone from San Diego.” He put the SUV in park and leaned over to open the door. “Would you like a ride to town? I know the tow place—they can get your car out of the snowbank and probably find a place to put you up for the night while they fix it.”

The kid gave a shaky nod. “Is that okay? You don’t have to put me in the back, do you? Because I hate these roads. I really fucking hate them. And I don’t want to be trapped in the back of your cop-mobile when you start sliding around on them.”

Wow. This kid could make coffee nervous. “The front’s fine,” Aaron said, nodding slowly. “Let me see your hands for a minute. Now pull up your sweatshirt and turn around. Just checking, okay?”

The kid did the dance on the side of the road, his boxers pulled up past the waistband of his sagging jeans, but other than that, harboring no deep dark secrets and no weapons.

“Fair enough,” Aaron said. “Hop in.”

He’d cranked up the heater before the kid had even slammed the door shut.

On closer inspection this kid didn’t look bad—he had hipster’s scruff and streaky dark hair past his ears and over his forehead, but he also had big blue eyes that seemed to be widened in a perpetual state of shock.

“So, I’m Sheriff George—pleased to meet you.” Aaron put the SUV into gear and stepped gently on the gas, the snow tires digging in deep and the chains digging in deeper so the car gave a gentle acceleration over the slippery road.

“I’m Elton,” the kid said. “Elton McDaniels. Thanks so much for stopping.”

“I take it your car is up a little ahead?” Aaron scanned the road in front of him, but snow had come in during the afternoon and gotten thicker since. Belatedly Aaron wondered if the tow truck could even get the thing out before dark fell.

“Yeah. I… I sort of panicked. I knew the high school was ahead of me, but I saw the road and thought, ‘This is it! This is my last chance to turn back!’ and while I was deciding, the car decided for me.”

Aaron bit his lip so he didn’t smile. “Well, cars will do that,” he said diplomatically. “Why would you want to turn back?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” the kid said wretchedly. “I… there was this girl.” He covered his face with his hands. “This is so dumb. So dumb—”

“Oh shit,” Aaron muttered. “Talk about dumb. Kid, this is your car?”

The kid nodded and scratched the back of his bare head. “It’s, uh, not in great shape.”

“Kid, are you okay?” Aaron pulled to a halt and looked at the car in dismay. A Datsun B-210—from way back in the day, before electronic everything—was wrapped around one of the bigger pine trees off Olson Road.

“My neck’s a little sore,” Elton confessed. “And I’ve got a seat-belt bruise. And my stomach’s bruised. And I’ve got a headache.” He fingered his forehead, and once he pushed his hair back, Aaron could see a bruise forming. “And….” His voice grew a little wobbly. “I still don’t know where in the fuck I am.”

“Oh Jesus.” Aaron closed his eyes and tried hard not to freak out on this kid like a parent. If this was Kirby’s car, he’d be losing his shit. “Okay, Elton. We’ve got a small hospital about half an hour away. I’m going to call in and take you there, okay? Then I’ll call the tow-truck place, but the snow is getting sort of thick, and they might not be able to get to your car until tomorrow, and maybe not until the day after that if tomorrow’s as bad as the weather prediction. Do you have someone you could call?”

The kid made a sound perilously close to a whimper. “No. My folks don’t know I’m here. I left school, you see? I… I know it’s stupid. She’s totally an adult, and it was only one night, but I thought we had something, right?” Elton rubbed his stomach and closed his eyes. “But she wouldn’t talk to me afterward, and I thought I’d connect with her again after Christmas, but she just up and left school.”

Aaron’s head started to pound. “Elton, what were you doing, looking for the high school again?”

“The only things—and I mean the only things—I know about this girl is that she’s from this tiny town and has a sister. And her dad works at the school.” He blinked. “And her cat died right before she came to the party where we hooked up.”

Welp.

Aaron let out a sigh. “Okay, Elton. Let’s get you to the hospital, and I’ll see if we can get someone to come sit with you while they’re doing the tests.”

“Why would you do that?” Elton asked, but he sounded too close to real tears for Aaron to take exception.

“Because being in the hospital sucks, kid, and it’s worse when you’re alone. Now here, let me call in.”

 

 

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later, Aaron excused himself from Elton’s bedside where he was being held for observation and debated. On the one hand, he should call Larx.

He should really call Larx.

But on the other hand, Larx wasn’t the one who’d had the one-night stand and gotten knocked up either.

Debate, debate, debate….

“Olivia?”

“Hi, Aaron.” She sounded drowsy, like she’d been napping. “What’s up? Is my dad okay?” Her voice sharpened. “Is he hurt again?”

Larx had been the one to get grazed by a bullet that fall, but apparently they were all carrying scars.

“No, hon. But someone else you know is in the hospital for observation, and he’s alone, and he’s scared, and he apparently drove for fourteen hours to get from San Diego to here, only to crash his car on Olson Road.”

“Oh no,” she said, her voice small.

“Oh yes. Olivia, unless you tell me—right now—that this kid has done something to harm you, something to harass you, something to make what’s going on in your life miserable, I’m going to have to ask you to put your grown-up pants on and get over here. Your dad can drive you if he needs to, but this kid’s had a hell of a day, and he could really use a friendly face.”

When she spoke next, he could hear the tears in her voice, and for a moment he was afraid. Larx, who was so good at facing his responsibilities, at doing the grown-up thing when it was called for, had been so proud of his daughters owning up to their own lives.

If Aaron had to tell him Olivia chickened out here, it would kill him.

“Christi just got home,” she said softly. “I’ll be there in an hour. Is he okay?”

“He’s got a mild concussion and some bruising. They need to make sure nothing’s internal.” Aaron tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “They weren’t sure he was coherent, but I’m thinking he’s just sort of naturally that way.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, and he heard the echo of the happy, pretty girl he’d watched grow up in the town where he lived. “Elton’s sort of got the mind of a poet, and he doesn’t have a filter for it. He’s really smart, but his teachers are always sort of surprised.”

“Well, he surprised the heck out of me,” Aaron said shortly. “It sounds as though you like this boy.”

“I didn’t want to….” Her voice choked. “I was on the pill, Aaron. This wasn’t his fault.”

Aaron closed his eyes and counted to ten.

“What are you thinking?” she asked nervously.

“I’m trying not to speak like your father,” he muttered.

To his shock—his utter shock—she laughed. “Oh give it the fuck up, Sheriff George,” she said. “That’s one of the things you and my dad have in common. It will kill you not to try to parent me. I dare you.”

Aaron glared at the white wall of the corridor. “I can’t now. You sound too much like your father. I’ll leave it for him to do.”

“You haven’t told him, have you?” she asked, the horror in her voice telling him everything he needed to know about what a close call he’d almost had.

“Are you going to?”

He heard defeat in her sigh. “Yeah. Yeah. Let me come out, talk to Elton. Explain that it’s not his fault, any of it. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No,” Aaron murmured. “No, he didn’t. But I think he’ll be happy to hear it from you. I mean… fourteen hours, Olivia. He drove in the snow. I don’t even think he knows what snow is.”

“I’ll be there,” she promised. “Give me an hour. I….” He heard her grunt, like this had just occurred to her. “I should shower and dry my hair.”

“Understood. I’ll be here until you get here,” he told her. “Maybe grab a sandwich on your way out of the house.”

“I’ll make one for Elton too,” she said. “He doesn’t like institutional food. Conformity freaks him out.”

Aaron crossed his eyes. “Of course it does. See you soon.”

“Yeah. Uh, Aaron?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for calling me. I… my dad thinks I’ve got it all together. Thanks for giving me a chance to tell him… I… I sort of fucked up with Elton.”

Aaron leaned against the wall, grateful it was the end of his shift. He could sit by Elton’s bed and use his tablet to fill out some of his paperwork.

“Nobody has their shit together all the time,” Aaron told her gently, meaning it. “I’m surprised your father hasn’t told you that.”

“The thing with Dad….” She cleared her throat. “The thing with Dad is that he’s sort of larger than life, you know? I mean, sure, he’ll tell you he’s lost his shit before, but he’s always had a plan. He’s always seemed to know exactly what to do. Even when he was trying to feed us something godawful because he hadn’t learned to cook yet, there was always a can of refried beans, some cheese, and some tortillas, you know? He just didn’t want plain. He wanted awesome, and he got it a lot. So… so when I really screwed up….”

Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hear you. Shower, honey. Get over here. I’ll stay until you’re here. Bring some jammies if you want—they’ll let you sleep on a cot.” Aaron glanced over his shoulder to where Elton was playing with his IV tube and scowling suspiciously at the bag hanging from the stand. “I think they’ll be relieved you’re there.”

 

 

AN HOUR later, Aaron looked up from his tablet where he’d been filling out his paperwork and greeted Olivia at the door of Elton’s room. Elton himself was dozing, the almost-blue circles under his eyes a testament to a really long day with a fairly climactic end.

Later, Aaron would say the look on Olivia’s face at that moment was a signal of all that was to come.

The tenseness around her eyes and mouth that had aged her since Christmas eased up, and she bit her lip, a softness in her chin telling him all he needed to know about her “random hookup” and what had followed.

No matter what her state of mind now, no matter how she’d felt when the relationship began, she cared for this boy. She cared a lot. All that remained to see was why she’d pushed him away.

Aaron stood and opened his arms, like he did for Christiana and his own daughters, and Olivia rushed into them without hesitation. It was a gift, he thought, from her father, that she could accept affection so easily—at least from father figures.

“How’s he doing?” she asked quietly.

“He’s sore and tired.” Aaron shrugged. “Hurt.”

Olivia grimaced. “Okay. My job. I need to fix that. I’ll wait until he wakes—”

“Olivia?”

That quickly, her attention was diverted. “El? You okay?”

She wiggled out from Aaron’s arm and snagged the chair he’d been sitting in so she could pull it close to the bed. Aaron stepped in and lowered the rail so she could talk to him intimately—he got the feeling they were at that stage.

“You’ve got snow here, Olivia. What in the fuck is snow doing in California?”

She hmmed and stroked his hair back from his eyes. “What in the fuck is a desert dweller doing in the mountains?” she chided. “Seriously, El—what were you thinking?”

The hurt on his face was hard for Aaron to see. “I was thinking I missed you. We hung out for months and… and one good night and… bam. No you. Wanted you back.”

“Aw, Elton,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I… I put off, you know. Being with you. ’Cause….” She swallowed. “I wasn’t in a place to be with anyone, you know?”

Elton nodded, then grimaced, and Aaron moved back toward the door, torn between going to get him a nurse with some pain meds for his head and staying here and watching through this intimate window to get a glimpse of what was going on inside Larx’s daughter.

“You kept saying,” Elton said. “And I didn’t press, and then, Thanksgiving and you were so sad and—”

“And I… I just wanted to make the pain go away,” she finished, her voice choking. “And you were so kind. But I didn’t want to pull you down with me. And then things got complicated. I’m so sorry. I know I hurt you, but I thought you’d get over me. I just… I didn’t want to keep hurting you, because I’m… I’m not good inside.”

Elton raised a shaking hand to her cheek, and Aaron took his cue to go get the nurse. It wasn’t until he felt the cool air hit his own cheek that he realized he was crying too.

Oh, Olivia. Why couldn’t you say something?

 

 

AARON HAD pulled himself together by the time he got back with the nurse, and Elton squinted up at him as she added some painkiller to his IV.

“Olivia, I thought your dad worked at the school?”

Olivia sniffled and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, smiling a little when Aaron offered her a Kleenex. “This isn’t my dad—he’s more like my stepdad. But he’s nice too.”

“Your stepdad. But… but you don’t live with your mom….”

Olivia’s mouth twisted in amusement, and she raised her eyebrows at Aaron, mouthing “Five… four… three… two… one….”

“I don’t understand,” Elton moaned.

“He’s my dad’s boyfriend,” she said, holding her face carefully neutral, and Aaron suddenly knew what that cost her.

“Oh.” She had her back to Elton, but Aaron saw the sudden comprehension his face. “Oh! Oh! I get it!” He looked confused again. “Why didn’t you tell me? That’s sort of cool!”

Her shoulders relaxed, and she turned toward him again. “That’s sort of cool that you think so,” she said. She took a step toward the bed and squeezed his hand. “I’m going to go talk to Aaron for a minute, then I’ll come ba—”

“I’m going to get to meet him, right?” Elton asked. He smiled apologetically at Aaron. “You were awesome, Mr. Sheriff George. I mean…. Dude. You’ve been great. But. You know. I’ve heard about her dad all year.”

“I’m new,” Aaron said, liking Elton more every time he opened his mouth. “And yes.” He looked at Olivia with meaning in his eyes.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding back. “You’ll get to meet Larx. It’ll be fun.”

“A laugh riot,” Aaron muttered just as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He stepped in to hug her and took a sec to ruffle Elton’s hair—gently. “Hang tough, kid. I gotta get home before the snow’s too thick.” He hugged Olivia again. “Call us before you start home—especially if you’re bringing Elton with you. We’ll fix up my house—you guys can have some privacy.”

She nodded, biting her lip. “Thanks, Aaron. You… you’re really really like my dad, you know that?”

Aaron grunted. “It’s the dad thing. It takes over our personalities sometimes.” He checked his phone and winced. “And I really gotta go.”

He took a step toward the door and turned back to her. “Olivia?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t keep secrets from your dad. I’ll tell him a friend from school wrecked his car coming to see you, and you know what he’s going to say?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Tell him what you need to.”

“As long as we’re clear.”

She nodded, and he left just as Elton muttered, “But what does that mean?”

Well, as much as he’d love to be a fly on the wall for the rest of that conversation, it wasn’t his place, and it wasn’t Larx’s either.

He hoped Larx felt that way too.

He hit speakerphone as soon as he was outside and had warmed up the SUV. “Larx? You’re home, right?”

“Yeah—all of us except Olivia. Christi said she took off in her car—”

“Uh, yeah. Don’t worry about Olivia. She’s safe. I’ll talk to you when I get home. Do you need me to bring dinner?”

“We’re on it, Deputy—eggs, chips, and—” He changed the pitch of his voice. “What are we doing for a green again?”

There were a few moments of absolute silence.

“Uh…,” Larx said into the phone, as though at a loss.

“Sautéed green beans with bacon,” Aaron shot back, because bacon.

“Microwaved brussels sprouts with fakin!” Larx crowed, like his answer was better because his was healthy.

“No,” Aaron said in numb horror, relieved when Kirby and Kellan echoed the sentiment behind him.

“God, no! Larx, please!” Kirby wailed.

“Larx—it smells like chicken farts!” Kellan voiced, and then, on the heels of that, came Kirby’s voice again.

“Dude, you are getting way too friendly with our chickens.”

“Shut up! You know what I mean!”

“He means it smells like raw sewage,” Kirby said resentfully.

“Not with butter and Bac-Os!” Larx told him, all enthusiasm. “Trust me! A little garlic salt, it’s practically parmesan wine sauce!”

“No, it’s not,” Aaron muttered.

“No, it’s not!” the boys wailed.

“Can we use the butter powder, Dad?” Christiana chimed in, because apparently Larx had them all on speaker now. “It’s better for us, even if it’s higher in sodium.”

“Suck-up,” Kirby told her bluntly.

“No, no, she actually has a point,” Kellan said, and Aaron called out “Traitor!” because that boy had been his last best hope.

Larx cackled and told them to get to it, and then Aaron could hear the change of venue as he moved from the kitchen into the quieter living room. For a moment, as Aaron peered through the darkness and the thickly falling flakes of snow, he could picture Larx tucked into the corner of the couch, his feet pulled up under him, one arm wrapped around his knees as he tried to hide in the shadows of his own house. Olivia had called him “larger than life”—but then, Larx had always tried to make himself dependable to her. She never got to see Larx tired, vulnerable, second-guessing his every move as he tried to pilot his ship of family through the reefs and shoals of real life.

That was Aaron’s job now.

“So,” Larx said into the sudden quiet. “Where’d Olivia go?”

“A friend of hers came up to visit from school and plowed his car into a snowdrift,” Aaron said. “She’s staying overnight in the hospital to keep him company.”

“Oh.”

That was a very dangerous sound.

“Yes.”

“A friend.”

“Yes,” Aaron answered promptly.

“A male friend?” Larx clarified.

“I believe I said.”

The next sound Larx made was a very careful breath in through his nose and out through his mouth.

“Was this a specific kind of male friend?”

Aaron knew this was deadly serious, but he fought the urge to chuckle, because Larx had not originally been a patient man—and sometimes his white-knuckled grip on his fly-off-the-handle self was damned entertaining.

“Yes, Larx. That male friend. He’s a sweet kid, actually—he got lost because all he knew about Olivia was that her father worked at Colton High. She….” Aaron hated to be the one to tell him this. “She sort of treated him badly. If nothing else, he deserved an answer to why she bugged out after Thanksgiving.”

“Mm.” The sound lost a lot of Larx’s original starch.

“‘Mm’ what?”

“Not a bad kid?” Like Aaron’s opinion really mattered.

“You’ll like him,” Aaron promised. “He’s sort of a doofus, actually—but a sweet doofus. He wasn’t stalking her—I think he was just worried. I guess they’d been friends all semester and she….”

Oh God.

“She what?”

For a moment Aaron peered into the darkness and drove, making sure he had total control over his vehicle on the icy roads and his tongue on the suddenly slippery terrain of his relationship.

“She said the reason she put off having a relationship in the first place was that she wasn’t feeling right. Like she was depressed all semester, and then Thanksgiving, and—”

“The fucking cat,” Larx muttered.

“Yeah. The cat died and she wasn’t home. And, you know….”

“Comfort,” Larx said. “With someone safe. I get it.”

“And kind,” Aaron felt compelled to add. “Larx, he’s really sweet. I think… I think if Olivia can get her head on okay, he’ll be a good person to have in her life, no matter what capacity.”

“That’s very diplomatic of you, Deputy,” Larx said dryly. Then he heaved a big sigh. “Thanks for telling me. I mean, you could have just told me it was Olivia’s business—”

“I told her I’d tell you,” Aaron said, absurdly proud. “I don’t keep secrets from you. I couldn’t from Caro; I won’t from you.”

Larx hmmed. “Okay. That’s reassuring, actually. Except you do manage to be pretty tight-lipped when there’s danger, but we’re working on that, so that’s okay.”

Oh thank heaven. “You’re not mad?”

“Mad?”

“That I called Olivia and not you?”

Larx snorted. “So I could go get a shotgun and make that varmint marry my helpless little girl?”

And Aaron had to laugh. “Guess not,” he said softly. “Larx?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how you said you loved me because I wasn’t going to torture the guy with the ganja prescription?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you because you knew why I called Olivia first without even asking.”

“This is good,” Larx said, sounding pleased. “This is promising.”

It was Aaron’s turn to snort. “Promising? Like me moving my chickens in wasn’t sort of a promise?”

“Well, yes. You did come with a trousseau, Deputy, but there were particulars to work out.”

“Shit!” The SUV bucked and tried to get away from him, and Aaron steered it back on track. “Larx, how about we save the rest of the convo for when I get home. This snow is getting thicker by the minute, and I need to watch the road.”

“Love you,” Larx said. “Stay safe.”

“Love you back.”

Aaron peered into the darkness, being very careful to take care of Larx’s property the whole time.