Page 14 of Old Flame

Pepper sighed and shook her head. “You’re not Dolly. Hell, I’m not Dolly. She’s innocent, pure, kind; she loves pink, and she doesn’t even curse, for Christ’s sake. She is the kinda special a man like that gets a taste of and he is done,” Pepper told her. Then she waved a finger between herself and Amethyst. “You and me? We ain’t. We curse, and there ain’t one thing about us that’s innocent. We don’t win the love of the bad boy who loves the bachelor life more than he does playing with his balls.”

I was losing that patience and fast. “Amethyst, go,” I demanded.

“I’m not doing this anymore, Tex,” she cried.

Yeah, she would. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this bullshit. Yet she always sauntered back and got on her knees. And I fucking let her.

Pepper rolled her eyes, then looked back at me. “You gotta cutthat one loose. She’s verging on the crazy line, and you pushed her there.”

“Pepper,” I snapped, “tell me something.”

She pursed her red lips, and her expression could only be labeled asfuck you. Then she put her hand on her hip. “Fine. I’ll tell you, but only because what I do know and what you just told me makes me…curious. She’s got an interview tomorrow at The Urban Art Canvas. It’s an art gallery down—”

“I know where it is,” I said. “What time?”

“I don’t know. Hell, Tex, I didn’t ask for her full schedule. You want to see her? Get up early and go sit your ass in the parking lot,” Pepper said, then spun on her boot heel and walked away.

Was I really going to do this? Or let it go?

She was married. She’d left town and not said a word. I had told myself it was for the best and drunk so damn much for months that I didn’t remember much about that time. Cindy—or maybe her name had been Mindy—had been throwing herself at me. She was the secretary at the garage I worked at. I drank too much and let her do what she wanted one night. Then it all went to fucking hell from there.

In the end, Salem was gone. Chasing her dream of painting. Just like Mom had wanted her to do and the reason she’d asked me to let Salem go. So, I had.

Going to see her tomorrow wouldn’t result in anything. I would never get real closure, and she clearly didn’t fucking need it. She was married. Belonged to another man.

I needed something stronger than a goddamn beer.

6

Tex

Twenty-One Years Ago

Friday nights in the fall used to mean football, then parties after. Now, it was working until close, which was seven, and getting drunk at the apartment with friends before heading out to do whatever stupid shit we could afford. It was getting old. I missed football.

My boss walked in while I finished up replacing the oil line on a Harley that had been brought in for an oil leak.

“What was the issue on that one?” he asked as he dried his hands off on a towel.

“Damage to the oil line. Just regular wear. I replaced it,” I told him.

He nodded as he walked over to study it, then went on to look at the other two bikes I’d worked on today. “You’re good at this. Fastest worker I’ve had in years. Might be that you actually graduated high school and went to trade school for this,” he said the last bit with a smirk.

I shrugged. “Eh, I enjoy it. I’ve been taking shit apart and putting it back together since I was a kid.”

He chuckled. “You’re still a kid. Many miles to go before you’re a fucked-up adult like the rest of us. You got that hope in your eyes that diminishes with time.”

Brick was a big man. He wore his dark hair in a ponytail thathung down his back and was covered in tattoos. I wouldn’t say he was any older than thirty, but he had served time behind bars.

One of his former inmates had come in a while back to catch up. They openly talked about their time in lockup. From what I overheard, Brick had been put in at twenty-one for cracking some guy’s skull over a woman. He had gotten out after twenty-eight months on probation for good behavior. The other guy said he had been in there for four years, but Brick joked that he couldn’t tame his tongue and kept pissing off the guards. They never said what he had been in for. The guy’s name was Grinder, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how he had landed that name. I was almost positive he hadn’t been born with it.

“You real attached to Ocala?” Brick asked me.

I shrugged. “Not necessarily. My mom lives in McIntosh, and she’s single. I didn’t want to get too far in case she needed me, but I didn’t want to stay there either,” I explained. Satisfied with my work on the Harley, I stood up.

“Miami too far for you?”

Miami? The image of hot, bikini-clad females all over the beach came to mind.

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