All It Takes (2 page)

I expect Lacey to reach out and take the paper, to tell him that she’ll pass it on to the manager for him. But she doesn’t. Instead she just stands there, her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers tapping against her arm.

“Sorry,” she says, but the tone of her voice makes it clear she’s anything but. “We’re not hiring.”

The guy just kinds of stares at her. I don’t think he was expecting that, either. The piece of paper—which must be his résumé, I realize—sort of hangs there in the air between them, and the fact that Lacey isn’t even pretending to be interested in it speaks volumes. Hell, it
screams
them. After a moment, the guy’s gaze drops to the floor, and he pulls the résumé back. That’s when I notice just how worn that piece of paper is. It’s half-crumpled and looks kind of soft, like it’s been folded and unfolded again and again. This is not the first time he’s been turned down, but I’m willing to bet real money that it’s one of the rudest. And most unexpected, given the way his face falls. “Oh. Okay,” he says quietly, and neatly folds the piece of paper and slides it back into his pocket. “Thanks for your time.” He doesn’t look up as he leaves, just steps around her and beelines for the door.

Just as he pushes open the door, though, one of the customers lets out a cough.

“Killer.”

Even through the fake cough, the word is loud enough that I flinch at the sound. And if I can hear him, the guy at the door can, too. He freezes for a second, then, head down, shoves his way out the door. It slams behind him, bell jangling, and I jump as Lacey slides back into the seat in front of me.

“Holy crap,” she says, her face flushed and her eyes wide as saucers. “Did you see that?”

My stomach twists and something inside me aches for that guy. “What the hell just happened?” I ask, turning to face Lacey. She looks so sweet, but that was harsh. What the hell is going on in this town?

“Oh,” she says, and a weird little smile begins to spread across her face. She plants her elbows on the table and cups her face in her hands. Leaning forward, like she’s sharing gossip at a slumber party, she says, “Just wait ’til you hear this.”

Chapter 3

Star

I
can’t believe it.

This is just my luck.

The stupid car won’t start.

I’m stuck in the parking lot with Lacey watching from the window, and my mother’s stupid fucking car won’t start. I keep turning the key but the engine just won’t turn over. It just sputters and dies. Sputters and dies.

I give it one last shot, muttering every swear word I can think of as I twist the key in the ignition, but once again,
nothing
. Groaning, I slump forward and let my head fall against the steering wheel.

Fuck.

God. Fucking. Dammit.

What next? Just how much more am I going to have to deal with?

I already had to sit through Lacey’s entire rendition of the tragic life story of the guy she’d run off at the diner. She’d just sat there and went on and on, completely unaffected, like she was regaling me with the plot of a movie she’d just watched or something. It was shameful.

I don’t know if I’ve changed so much since we were kids, or if she has, but the girl I remember playing in the sandbox with wouldn’t have gotten so much joy out of another person’s suffering. Or wouldn’t have been so oblivious about it, as she seemed to be. Because I don’t know how anyone could cause the death of another human being unintentionally and not be suffering.

And, according to Lacey, that’s what the guy had done.

He’d killed a man. A father. A man with a family.

He’d gone to a party, had apparently gotten high as a kite and he’d driven himself home. But the party was three towns away, and he only made it back through one and a half of them before the accident. He’d made it nearly all the way through Thurould when his car had collided with the other man’s. And that had been that.

Lacey had taken such joy in telling me this that it actually soured what was left of my appetite, and I ended up pushing the rest of my food away. She didn’t even notice. She just grinned at me. “It was even bigger news around here then when the Fire Marshall’s son decided that he was a she, if you know what I mean. I mean, Avenue’s very own murderer. How insane is that?”

“Manslaughter,” I mumbled as one of the guys in the booth a little ways away started waving in our direction and calling out to her.

She glanced over her shoulder real quick, as the guy called out playfully, “Can we get some service over here, Babycakes?” then turned back at me, puzzlement in her eyes.

“What?” she asked.

“Manslaughter,” I repeated, louder this time. “Murder requires intent. Manslaughter is accidental. Unless he actually went out and tried to run someone down, he would have been charged with manslaughter. Not murder.”

“Lacey!” the guy had resorted to yelling by then, the playful tone fading out of his voice.

She twisted around in her seat and yelled “I’m coming! Keep your pants on!” at the guy, and then turned back to me.

“Whatever,” she said, waving me off and pulling herself up out of the chair and snagging the tray of food she’d abandoned earlier. “Listen, since you’re back now, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

That’s how I ended up getting dragged across the diner by my childhood best friend—who I would have been perfectly happy leaving in my childhood—and meeting a group of three guys who looked up at me like I was an alien that had just crash-landed on their planet. On Christmas. In the middle of dinner. Jesus, I was already sick of this town.

How is this my life?

“This is Preston,” she said, laying a plate of steak and eggs in front of the guy closest to her, the one with the blond hair and bright green eyes. Damn, I think. Apparently Lacey isn’t the only one that embraced the whole small-town-golden-child thing. I nodded at him, like his name was supposed to mean something to me. “Preston’s granddaddy owns this Mary Lou’s. Has for years. Preston,” she said, turning back to me and waving her hands at me like she was presenting some kind of door prize. “This is Star. We went to elementary school together.” He nodded at me, and I felt kind of like I’d just been dismissed by a dignitary or something. Who did this guy think he was? “And this,” Lacey continued, oblivious to how uncomfortable I was “is Clay.” She set another plate of food on the table, this time in front of a guy who I suddenly realized looked exactly the same as Preston. How the hell had she been able to tell them apart? “Clay is Preston’s brother,” she said to me, because apparently I was blind on top of being an alien.

“Much to my dismay,” the guy said, giving me a little smile before turning to his food. Okay, I liked this one a little better. But beside me, Lacey scoffed and whapped him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “You be nice, Clayton,” she said. Then turned to me. “Preston’s my boyfriend,” she said. Ah, that explained it. “And Clay is just jealous.”

“Of course I am, Lacey. Of course I am.”

He clearly wasn’t, but Lacey didn’t seem to notice that, judging by the grin she had spreading across her face. “And that’s Barry,” she said, pointing at the other guy at the table who had broad shoulders and close-cropped brown hair. And who, mercifully, didn’t look anything like the other two. “He’s been friends with Preston and Clay since forever. He’s back from college for the summer. He’s on a football scholarship. Quarterback,” she said, her voice ripe with emphasis, much to my confusion. Did I look like someone who cared about football? I was pretty sure I didn’t.

“You know,” she said, turning to me with a strange little smile pulling at her lips, “since you’re here for the summer and Bear’s here for the summer, maybe you two could go out sometime.”

That was when my brain clicked back online and I realized I had to make my escape. I could see where she was going with this and I wasn’t about to let myself be led like a lamb to the slaughter of a summer full of bad blind dates. Quarterback or not, I was out of there. Before she could get another word out, I made my excuses, grabbed my stuff and tossed a twenty on my table—more than enough to cover my crappy BLT platter when I’d actually ordered a bacon cheeseburger in the first place—and hightailed it out of there before Lacey could stop me.

Unfortunately, my escape only got me as far as the parking lot where my getaway vehicle is refusing to start and sounds like an old woman with bronchitis and a three-pack-a-day habit. Fantastic.

I’m trying to decide whether screaming or crying would be a better option for venting my frustration before I freaking explode when there’s a knock on the window next to me and my entire body jerks.

I whip around in my seat, heart slamming in my chest, and find the guy that Lacey had all but kicked out of the diner standing there, looking at me through the driver’s-side window.

Great. Just great.

Ash

I
fucked up. I know that.

But for some reason I hadn’t expected it to follow me around for the rest of my life.

It’s not like I’ve ever stopped thinking about it. It’s hard not to, when your fuck-up costs another man his life. But I’d just assumed that when I got out of prison, it would be over.

It is never going to be over.

No one is ever going to let me forget what I’ve done.

What they don’t seem to realize is that they don’t have to bother. I’ve been living my mistake every single day for the past five years.

It had been stupid, so goddamn stupid, but by the time I’d figured that out, it had been too late. The guy was already dead.

Peter Hanlon-Wright. Father of a son with another baby on the way. His face is burned into my brain, and will be for the rest of my life.

I’d been out at a party that night. And like all the parties I went to back then, there had been booze and drugs everywhere. And if it was there, then so was I. I don’t even remember the party itself, only that I’d been there with Gina, my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend now. I can only remember flashes. Throwing back a beer. Doing a line. The flash of Gina’s red hair as she tossed it over her shoulder. Bit by bit, I’ve tried to piece that night together for the past five years, only to realize that most of it is gone forever.

I’ll never know why I chose to do what I did, why I snagged the keys to Gina’s car and drove home, instead of crashing on the guy’s sofa like Gina had. I don’t know why I felt like I just had to get home, why I had to drive through three fucking towns instead of just sleeping it off in the backseat.

But I did. I don’t even remember the drive, not really. But I remember the crash. The sound of metal on metal. The screams that I took forever to realize were actually coming from me.

The pain.

The flash of the lights from the police cruiser.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, it’s like a goddamn puzzle laid out in front of me, but it’s missing half the pieces and it doesn’t match the picture on the box.

It doesn’t seem right that a night you can barely remember can change your life forever, but apparently fair and right don’t apply to a guy who killed a father because he was too drugged up and stupid to keep away from the wheel.

I let out a shaking breath and light my cigarette as I try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do.

No job. People in this town aren’t going to give me a shot, and I can’t blame them.

No home. Parents kicked me out. Living out of my car.

No girlfriend. Gina kicked me to the curb immediately after the crash. I was still in the hospital when she dumped my ass for good.

I’m fucked. No doubt about it.

I take another drag and lean back against the brick wall of the diner when all of a sudden the diner’s front door flies open hard enough to send it slamming against the wall and a figure races out.

I watch as the girl I’d noticed—the really hot one with the long dark hair and the tattoos—rushes out of the diner like she’s got a herd of raptors on her tail. She has a kind of ratty-looking bag thrown over her shoulder, and it bumps against her hip as she hustles across the parking lot. Toward the crappiest looking station wagon I’ve ever seen. The thing is ancient, and a fucking eyesore at best, all beige and peeling. My car isn’t exactly in tip-top shape after five years in my parents’ garage, but it’s a damn sight better than that thing. It’s a wreck.

The girl doesn’t seem to notice or care, though. She just jerks open the door and throws her bag inside fast enough that I’m starting to wonder if she held up the joint or something. I smirk at the thought. It would serve them right. Also? If it was her, it would be kind of hot. All Thelma-and-Louise old school. Not that I watched that movie or anything. At least, not since I grew out of having TV night with my parents.

I lean back against the brick wall and take another drag from my cigarette, waiting for the girl to gun the engine and peel out of there like a bat out of hell. But instead of the epic getaway, the car just sort of…coughs.

Well, that was fucking anti-climactic, I think as I watch the girl’s face fall and hear the car sputter again. Yeah, that’s not good.

I watch her for a moment, see the flurry of emotions pass over her face as she realizes that her car isn’t going anywhere. Hope. Confusion. Anger. Defeat. She glances back at the diner and I wonder just what made her want to book it out of there like that. I look over myself, glancing over my shoulder as I stub out the butt of my cigarette, and see the blonde peeking through the window. Ah, that makes sense.

I stand there for a moment, running the options through my mind, before I let out a sigh and push myself off the wall and make my way over to her.

What the fuck are you doing? A voice in the back of my brain asks. You weren’t welcome in the diner, what makes you think you’re going to be greeted with open arms when you approach her, you creeper? I tell the voice to shut the hell up and reach over and tap against the driver’s-side window. The girl jerks like she’s been electrocuted, and spins around to look at me.

This is such a huge mistake, the voice supplies, and I plaster on what I hope is a nonthreatening smile and motion for her to roll the window down. I sink my hands into my pockets and shift my weight around, because apparently five years in prison has completely killed every ounce of smoothness I ever had. But the girl rolls down the window, anyway, and I’m suddenly struck by the fact that I have no plan here, no idea what I’m going to do or say.

So, even though this is a horrible fucking idea, I blurt out the first thing that comes to my head.

“Car trouble?”

***

Luckily for me, it was the battery. Because, while auto shop was the only fucking class I stood a chance of passing in high school, I’m more than a little bit rusty. So the fact that the battery just needed a boost was a godsend. Seriously. One look under the hood almost sent me running for the hills, it was such a mess. I don’t know what she’s doing with that car, but it sure as hell isn’t right. It would be merciful to take it out back and shoot it.

But of course, I’m not about to say that to the extremely hot girl, who is apparently the only person in Avenue who’s willing to talk to me. Seriously, she’s even hotter up close. It’s criminal.

“Okay,” I say, attaching the booster cables to the battery and pulling my head out from under the hood. I wipe my hands on my already-filthy jeans. Damn, I need to go to the laundromat. With what money, I’m not sure. The money Dad gave me isn’t going to last much longer at this rate. “Give it a try.”

I’m starting to wonder if staying in prison maybe wasn’t a better life plan for me.

The car groans a little, but then the engine turns over and it hums back to life. I grin and remove the jumper cables, letting the hood fall back down with a slam. The girl’s eyes widen and a smile breaks out across her face and something in my gut jerks.

Fuck off,
I tell it. I’ve been in prison for five years. Of course seeing a hot girl smile at me is going to get me revving. She’s not interested, jackass, I say to myself.
Maybe if you hadn’t been such a fuck-up, you might’ve had a shot. But there’s no way now. You’re lucky she’s even talking to you.

She leans her head out the window, her long, inky black hair whipping around her face in the wind. “Thank you
so much,”
she says, reaching out and taking the cables back from me before dumping them into the passenger foot well. “I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t get it to start.”