As she closed the fridge, I pressed my palm against the door and finished shutting it. She gasped and spun around, wedged between the fridge and my body. I fucking hated the look she was giving me.

“You’re avoiding me, Woodstock.”

She shook her head, drew her eyes away and scooted to the side. I pushed my other hand against the fridge. She was trapped, and it was killing me not to touch her. Her long lashes lifted, and she peered up at me like a frightened, blue eyed kitten. Her lips were so damn bitable I had to clench my jaw tight to stop thinking about kissing her. Kiss, hell, I’d be lucky to get out of the lunchroom without her handprint on my face. But I was never one for common sense when a beautiful girl was involved. And this girl had knocked me fucking senseless.

“I’d like to eat my lunch, please.” There was a slight tremble in her tone, as if she didn’t trust me, which I hated even more than the angry way she was looking at me.

“Just figured since you’ve seen me naked and everything, we should at least be friends.”

Her blue eyes flickered with sudden shyness as I brought up that day in the locker room. It had been locked down tight in my thoughts. I could still feel her fingers pressing against my skin as if she was touching me right then.

She lifted her shoulders, pushed out a defiant chin and tilted her face up toward mine. “Nope, I’m pretty sure seeing someone naked doesn’t automatically qualify them as a friend. Hope that clears up any misconception.”

I stared down at her. “There she is—the other Tashlyn. One minute you’re Cinderella, waiting shyly in the corner for your prince to come, and the next, you’re fucking Xena the Warrior waiting to cut down any man in her path. Lots of layers, darlin’.”

“Yep, I’m complicated and—” She paused and pulled her eyes away, the shy Tashlyn returning without warning. “I can’t—We can’t be friends.” She moved to duck under my arm, but I mirrored her step.

“Ask me anything,” I said. I was digging my own fucking grave here. Normally, I would just have said fine—not friends—big fucking deal. But I couldn’t just let this go. “I know Everly has filled your head with all kinds of shit about me. Ask me.”

She finally lifted her face to mine. Her attention went to my scar. “How did you get that scar?”

“I was spending time in juvenile hall, and I mouthed off to the wrong guard. He smashed my face into the chain link fence surrounding the yard. In all fairness to the guard, I deserved it, and he didn’t see the sharp barb sticking out of it. The upside was that I got to spend three days in the infirmary where the food tasted less like shit and more like cardboard, a taste bud step up for sure. The downside was that the infirmary doctor was an old guy who’d retired from medicine decades before but decided to volunteer. His eyesight was bad and his fingers were shaky.” I lifted my hand long enough to point at my scar. “That’s why it’s so damn pretty.”

Her face softened some for the first time since I’d kept her captive against the fridge. “You were just a kid,” she said softly.

“Sixteen.”

“The guard was pushing around a kid. Don’t think he deserves any fairness qualifier.”

I looked down at her. Some of the tension was easing. “Shit, Woodstock, never know exactly what’s going to come out of that beautiful mouth of yours, but you never fucking disappoint.”

Her face was just inches from mine, and my will was breaking fast. I leaned closer and was sure she’d slide out under my arm and flee. She didn’t. As my mouth got dangerously close to hers, her soft breath caressed my lips as she spoke again.

“What were you in juvenile hall for?”

It was a question that stopped the kiss . . . for now. “Robbery.”

Her gaze hardened again. “So, Everly was filling my head with the truth about Jem Wolfe.”

“Sort of. But not everything is as it seems sometimes, you know?” I wasn’t about to tell her that I’d taken the fall for Dane because he was eighteen. He’d been the one to steal the cash from a gas station, but I’d confessed to it. Sending Dane to jail would have ended in tragedy. He couldn’t have survived it.

She stared back at me. “I don’t know. As far as I can see most things in life are pretty black and white.”

“Really? Cuz it seems there is nothing black and white about you or why you ended up in this town.”

Her eyes flickered with an emotion I couldn’t quite recognize. I lowered my arms. I was sure she’d walk away. She stayed there tucked between me and the white, whirring refrigerator. There wasn’t one inch of her I deserved to touch, but fuck, did I want to.

  She took a deep breath as if she was steeling herself for something else, another question. “Sixteen years ago, my dad’s truck went off the side of the road. He burned to death in his truck.”

“I’m sorry about that, Tashlyn. Really, I am.”

She shook her head. “That’s not my question. You said to ask, so . . . What the hell does your dad have to do with his death?” She’d braced herself, but her voice trembled as she spoke.

I stared down at her and tried to figure out what she was asking. “What are you talking about?”

“I went to Alice’s shop to find the local newspaper article about his death. In a strange, and frankly, scary coincidence, your dad had come in just before me and taken that one paper. Out of all the damn papers in her collection, he took that one.”

Each word was sucking the wind from me, and my gut rolled into a hard knot. I couldn’t speak. Inside, I was always being eaten up by pieces of crap from my past, ugly stuff that was easier to ignore than explain, stuff that I’d pushed out of my head to save my sanity. But I had no fucking clue why my dad would have taken that paper.

Tashlyn blinked up at me waiting for a logical answer, but there was nothing fucking logical about my dad. “Wish I knew what to say.” My voice cracked from my dry throat. My appetite was gone.

I turned and walked out. I reached the metal shed where the saw blades were sharpened. I stood and stared at it for a long moment. My own reflection stared back at me, warped and hazy between the wavy metal walls. I lifted my arm and threw my fist into it, leaving a hand-sized dent in the aluminum siding. My knuckles throbbed and thin lines of blood trickled between them. My hand hurt like hell, but throwing my fist into that wall felt fucking good.

Chapter 13

Tashlyn

During the heart of the workday, when the machinery was running and the men were shouting over the din, the place was chaos, an organized pandemonium, but chaos, nonetheless. After closing, when only a few men were left to finish up whatever needed done before the following morning, the sawmill transformed into an eerie graveyard for dead trees.

Hal had graciously offered to let me stay in the office until it was time for my bus. He’d even given me the option to do some work for overtime pay, and there was certainly enough to do. I’d finally gotten the place somewhat organized. Now there were calls to make on overdue payments, a job I didn’t really relish but Hal had let his books fall into disarray. It was a wonder the mill had been running so smoothly for so long.

Today, as Hal was leaving, he’d mentioned that the days would soon be getting shorter and it would be pitch dark by the time my bus came. He suggested I start thinking about getting a car, a notion that seemed pretty far off financially at the moment, but he was right. I was already uneasy staying alone here when there was still faded daylight. I didn’t want to sit on the bus bench alone in the dark, especially after the nightmarish story Everly had told me about vanishing girls.

I looked out across the yard. It seemed the last worker had gone home. The sun was dropping low, teasing the mountain peaks with its last spray of light before dusk. I pulled on my sweatshirt, an item I’d bought at Everly’s insistence. My faded denim jacket was useless against the chilled mountain air. Like Hal’s mention of the car, Everly had cautioned me to start saving for a proper winter coat.