Page 1 of Heart Throb

CAMILLA

“Darlin’,” Tucker drawls with a piece of loose hay sticking out of his mouth, “I’m the pick of the litter, sweetheart.”

One more cheesy nickname and I might punch him. I’ve been considering it for the last ten minutes anyway, but now that he’s called me sugar, baby, and dumpling, we’re running out of options. “Listen, Tucker,” I try not to make eye contact, “I just don’t think we’re right for one another. We’re toothpaste and orange juice.”

He snakes an arm around my waist and I can smell the whiskey on his breath as he nuzzles up closer to me. “We’re peanut butter and jelly,” Tucker adds in what he thinks is a clever way.

I try to make my example a little more pointed. “Baking soda and vinegar,” I announce as I squirm out of his grasp. Why didn’t I carry my taser with me today? Right, because there are metal detectors at the town hall.

“We’re explosive, baby,” he grins. “You just get me.”

I’d like to get him with a car. Preferably with the front wheels and then with the back. If I check the rearview mirror and he’s still moving, I’ll throw it in reverse and get him again. “I think you’re missing what I’m saying, Tucker.”

He shakes his head no as if he could never misunderstand me. “Nah, sugar tits, I think we’re on the same page.”

Adrenaline hits me like a Mac truck straight to the chest. I ball my hand into a fist and raise it, ready to strike. My saving grace is a little voice in my head that says the Graves family can’t afford to have both my dad and me in jail. “Do us both a favor and walk away.” I grit my teeth so hard that my jaw hurts. I need to refrain from doing anything that’ll bring further shame to the family name, including but not limited to giving Tucker the beatdown he deserves.

“Baby, please. Your daddy would have wanted this. I was his number one,” he begs.

Tucker doesn’t need to remind me that I wasn’t a priority with my father. I am well aware that his preference went to his dealers first. I was a distant memory if I was a memory at all. He only thought about me if I came into the trailer when he was bagging his product. “My father is in jail, Tucker. He’ll likely be headed to the state pen when sentencing is done with him. You keep talking about your association with him and when I’m on the stand, I might let it slip that the two of you knew each other.”

It’s a veiled threat that’ll never come to pass. For starters, Tucker has a lot of friends on Bourbon Peak. Granted plenty of them are rednecks, I reckon enough of them will knock out a few of my teeth in repayment if I spill the beans on what he and my dad were doing. But I still make the threat because I’m sick and tired of his pawing at me. He did it when he was at the trailer and he’s doing it now under sick sense of ownership now that my father’s been imprisoned. News flash, bucko: I’m nobody’s piece of property.

“Listen, bitch,” Tucker grabs me by the forearm and pulls me toward him. It catches me off guard and I crash into his enormous figure. “I need a place to stay. I counted on the sales I made from your daddy’s stash to pay my rent. Now that he got himself caught, I’ve got no money and no way to make any. So I’m staying at your shitty ass trailer whether you like it or not.”

I’ve got a few options here. I could let him stay at my place and with it comes the unspoken implications. Tucker will not only use my trailer until he’s back on his feet, but he’ll use my body for his perverted dreams and fantasies. Or I can fight him. He’s got a foot on me and fifty pounds of muscle. I don’t have much of an advantage. Even if I get out of this situation, the cops stripped our home of all my father’s guns and weapons. Excluding the taser I had on me the day they came because I was at work.

But my father always instilled in me the value of fighting for what you believe in. He believed in making meth, I believe in saving myself for the right person. So like any self-respecting woman, I knee him in the groin.

Tucker drops like a sack of potatoes. All that muscle is useless in the face of blinding pain. “You little bitch,” he says between tears from the ground.

I hightail it out of there. My flip-flops beat in staccato against the cement as I run for my life. I can feel fire in my chest, but I don’t stop to look back and see if he’s following me. The second I do, it’ll be like a horror movie. I’ll trip over my own feet or he’ll be right there to catch me. I know it’s broad daylight and he can’t do anything to me, but I don’t care. I just keep going.

The uphill path eventually gets to me and I have to slow down, but I feel a confident distance away. I’m closing in on the rundown little trailer park that I call home, where the poor degenerates of Bourbon Peak live out their redneck dreams. We’re tucked away behind trees and signs warning the normal people to stay away if they value their things.

When I enter the trailer park, nothing feels off. Kids are roughhousing in the streets and their parents are drinking on the lawn. Teenagers collect in gangs on the front steps of forgotten mobile homes and plan nefarious deeds. Some older men are out mowing their lawns. Some women sunbathe. Some homes are closed up tight as their owners are either off at work or simply inside with no desire to cavort with the neighborhood. Everything seems normal.

The trailer park is large and encompasses nearly two hundred modular homes and about twenty actual pull-behind trailers. We live in space 112, which isn’t at the very back but isn’t near the front either. So while I have a good view of the activity of the neighborhood, it takes me a few minutes to make my way home. And when I arrive, I find a face-off.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but Camilla and I are bumping uglies, old man. Get the fuck out of my way.” Tucker has a bat, but he doesn’t look confident staring down the barrel of Griffin Mitchell’s gun. In fact, he flinches when the safety comes off.

“Tell me you’re fucking my goddaughter one more time.” Griffin takes a step forward as if there was any room to move. The barrel of the gun is now touching Tucker’s forehead. “Tell me you are putting it to Camilla one more God damn time.”

Tucker is either the world’s bravest son of a bitch or the world’s dumbest. “She and I are in love. We’re gonna get married. Her father loved me.”

Griffin’s laugh is low, slow, and dangerous. Tucker hasn’t been alive long enough to know that he needs to get out of this situation before he loses his life. “You were one of his dealers, weren’t you?”

“You don’t know me,” he clenches the bat by his side even tighter. “We had a connection.”

Before this gets ugly, I stroll up. I have to before my house is a crime scene again. Griffin will blow Tucker’s brains out on my front lawn and the police will board up my place and I’ll have nowhere to go. “Stop it, both of you. Griffin, put the gun down before someone calls the police.”

Tucker flashes me a look and I see elation mixed with anger. He’s glad I’m here, but he hasn’t forgotten what I just did to him. I reckon he found himself a car, drove here, and he was going to beat my ass for kicking him in the dick back there. Good thing Griffin was here, I guess. “Baby,” he says with a smooth, snake-oil salesman tone, “tell your uncle to calm down. We’re practically married.”

I don’t know how he keeps graduating from one level of thinking to another, but it’s astonishing. “You need to go. You can’t live here. If you come back, I’m telling him,” I point at Griffin. “And if he comes back with the gun, I’ll let him shoot you this time. Is that clear?”

Tucker narrows his eyes at me. “I’m a catch, Camilla.”

“Then I’m throwing you back because I don’t like fish. What part of this is hard for you to understand?” I need an aspirin. My god. My head hurts just talking to him. “Just leave. Please. Before I let him loose on you right now.”

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