Page 63 of Small Town Hunter

Get McCall.

Alive? Sure. Across state lines? No problem.

I asked Roman what made him so sure I wouldn’t just take the prize for myself when I got McCall.

“You know as well as I do that there’s no hiding when someone wants to find you,” he said. Then he paused, his dark slanted eyes reminding me of a man I had killed once. “And because you’re a man who does the right thing.”

I didn’t like that. Beingread.

And was that my reputation? Lately, doing the right thing seemed like a sure way to pile more burdens on the damnedprecarious stack I was juggling. Once people knew you’d do the right thing they had you by the nuts.

I ought to do the wrong thing sometimes.

I would love to break this halo I was given for no reason but a uniform, to take everyone’s expectations and light them up like a bomb in the night.

Breathing too hard.

Slow, slow.

Deeper.

To the house I built for Pa when I came home, the smell of wood still fresh as the day I cut it. To the days of bright sunlight where every flower and hummingbird made a beauty so fierce it hurt, but it did make me stop thinking about the thick rope in the garage slinging over a heavy beam.

When I came back from my last tour, I swear I didn’t sleep one night for two years. The only time I got any shut-eye were those summer afternoons, in the heat and the bugs, watching the birds pass in the garden like nothing I had ever done or would ever do mattered at all.

The garden always smelled of roses.

Like Trina.

I slam a foot on that trapdoor again, but this time she slides through the cracks like a vapor, surrounding me in a sweet musk as I lay there on the floor.

Her sweet, innocent kiss. The way she trusts me—

My fists clench.

The way she trusts me.

Better she stay a virgin all the way to California.

But what if I was selfish? What if I didn’t do the right thing. If I got up and trapped her in that bed. Maybe she’d run from the very thing she was just begging me for. I could wear her down. I could hold her down, if it came to that.

But I’m not that man; never was. And Trina’s made it plain that if I climbed up there and started kissing and petting on her, she’d open like a comb of wild honey. I don’t think she’d stop me at all.

That’s exactly why I can’t move off this floor.

“Crash?”

No. No, don’t ask me again. Don’t make me say no again.

I’m so close to climbing in that bed and taking my rights with her. Pulling off those damned ugly things I forced her to wear. Lifting her knees up on my shoulders…

“Crash, is the heat on?”

“The whole unit’s broken.”

“It’s so cold. Aren’t you cold?”

“Get another blanket.”

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