What You Leave Behind (22 page)

As the lunch crowd storms in and forces them back to work, the question echoes in Harper’s head, and the only answer she can give it is a steady beat of, Austin,
Liam
, Austin,
Liam
, Austin,
Liam
.

Austin loses himself in the mindless repetition of the lumberyard. Cut, count, stack, repeat, and he smokes too many cigarettes out behind the warehouse and checks his phone to see if she’s called. She hasn’t, but she has texted him, and he smiles and pinches his cigarette between his lips as his thumbs reply, eager for noon and the sound of her voice. Then, it’s back to cutting, counting, and stacking.

Noontime arrives and leaves, and Austin sits in his truck with a half-eaten sandwich, a cold beer, and the classic rock station on low. He stares at his phone, at the blank screen, and wills it to ring, but it doesn’t. When the half hour is done, he sends her a message to tell her he misses her and that he’ll call her after work. She calls two minutes after he clocks back in and he feels the vibration in his pocket, but there’s nothing he can do—he’s taken his allotment of breaks for the day, and he has a lot of work to catch up on from his “sick” day.

Cut, count, stack, repeat, and all the while, he thinks of her. He thinks of her skin, how it feels against his palms, under his tongue, wrapped around him, and he nearly loses a hand to the circular saw. After that, he pays closer attention to his work and less attention to missing her, and by the time he clocks out, he needs a beer because he knows he won’t be able to see her. And he needs a beer for needing a beer for that. He can’t help but frown at the thought.

“You feeling better?” he hears from behind where he stands at the time clock. Gemma sounds like she’s smiling and he isn’t in the mood, but he doesn’t want to be rude. After all, she did facilitate his time off, and he is thankful for that. He turns on his heel and gives her a half-smile, a little shrug, and says, “Guess so. Thanks for letting me take the day off.”

“Of course. You’re one of the hardest workers we have, Hayward,” she says, toeing her way over to him on the linoleum. She’s so bright, and he knows how easy it is to get sucked into her trap of infectious optimism. He smiles and ducks his head as she nudges his shoulder pointedly. “And, you know I’m a little biased.”

“Really?” he says with faux surprise. He’s warming up and his smile is growing into one that seems natural. Gemma’s feigned swooning, her hand clasped over her heart and lashes batting rapidly, pull him out of his somber mood. “
Still
?”

“What can I say, mister. You left a hole in my heart.” They walk out of the office together, comfort surrounding them in the sound of their tapering laughter, and Austin hangs back as they near their vehicles, and Gemma turns to face him. She pulls her coat tightly around her small frame, and smiles at him. “I’m glad I can still make you laugh, Hayward.”

“I’m glad you still try.”

He looks her over then—her chin-length black hair pulled into the shortest ponytail known to man, her gleaming grey eyes and golden skin, her beaming, genuine smile—and he wishes that she could’ve been something more for him, more than just a good co-worker and a memory of childhood affection. But they were so young, and then Harper arrived, and he locked himself up emotionally. Gemma never stood a chance. He wonders if it’s weird for her, like it isn’t for him, if she’s as okay with what they’ve become.

“I haven’t been a boyfriend since you, you know,” he says absently, no longer looking at her. He lights a cigarette and leans against the side of the building, his gaze distantly locked on the dimming sky. “I don’t even know if I know how.”

“I heard about that—you and Harper,” Gemma says after a beat, and she reaches over to steal a cigarette from his pack. He lights it for her and his eyes beg the obvious question beneath his quirked brow. “Yeah, Dylan has a big ol’ mouth.” Austin nods and rolls his eyes, and Gemma laughs, but it doesn’t sound quite right. It doesn’t sound like bitterness or jealousy—it sounds like worry.

She looks down at the ground, then meekly says, “You may want to mind where you step for a little while—and who you’re stepping with. Liam’s back, you know. He told me that, too.” Austin tries to seem unaffected by the words, but Gemma knows him, has for years, and she catches the small downward tug at the corners of his mouth. “Hey, hey now—”

“No, I’m fine. I just—do you want to grab a beer or something and keep me out of my own head? I’ll buy.”

“Should you really be out and about?” Gemma asks warily, her eyes narrowing until they’re hardly visible behind the thatch of her thick lashes.

“Why not? Harper knows there’s nothing going on with you and me. She wouldn’t—”

“I meant because of Liam.” The lot’s overhead lights flicker on, as if to illuminate Gemma’s point. “What if he heard what I heard? What if he knows? What if he sees you out and just… snaps?”

“He already knows.”

“And you’re still breathing?” Gemma’s eyes widen comically and smoke drifts slowly from her O-shaped mouth. “Jesus, he’s a bigger pussy than I thought.”

“Are you, like, hoping he kicks my ass or something?” Gemma says nothing, only bats her lashes, and Austin takes a final drag of his cigarette and flicks it pointedly at Gemma’s feet. It hits the toe of her boot and bounces off, no damage done, but she continues her dramatics and gapes at him in mock horror, motioning from boot to boy with both hands over and over. “Stop it. Put that face away. It seems like you want me to get my ass kicked.”

“Rumor has it he’s a little unhinged, that’s all,” she tells him gravely, all traces of humor gone.

“No shit, he’s unhinged. He walked out on the best thing he’ll ever have.”

“Which is why you should watch your back.”

“He left. Not me. He made that choice,” Austin palms his keys and presses the unlock button on the fob, ready to drive far away from this conversation. “I shouldn’t have to watch what I do.”

“That may be, but you’re with his girl, now.”
His girl.
Austin hopes she’s misspoke, that she’ll spit out a retraction, but she doesn’t. Instead, she says, “Just be careful, okay?”

With the radio turned up loud and his fingers gripping the wheel until his knuckles go white, Austin points his truck in the direction of the pub. It’s close enough to walk and he arrives in less than no time, but he likes the safety of having a quick escape—Gemma’s words have gotten to him. He looks for Liam’s car in the lot, and as much as he hates to admit it, his stomach churns with relief when he doesn’t see it there. He pulls his truck into a parking space with a sigh and hurries inside.

It’s early still and the bar has yet to fill up, so Austin takes a seat in a booth made for four and kicks his boots up on the seat across from him, dropping errant sawdust all over the vinyl. He thinks about calling Harper, but he doesn’t want to be 
that guy
—the clingy boyfriend who can’t go a few hours without hearing her voice—but, he is that guy and he knows it. He just misses her, and that’s the simplest way he can put it. He rakes his hands down his face, through his unfamiliarly short hair, and tries to keep himself in check, to keep himself from messing things up with the only woman he’s ever wanted and is now lucky enough to have. But he misses her skin, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he drinks.

He orders a beer, drinks it down, and sends her a text message—
What’s a guy got to do to get his girl in his arms? Dylan doesn’t snuggle quite as well as you do
. Over the span of three beers, an hour, he waits and plays darts by himself in the back corner, and checks his phone far too often, feeling ghosts of vibrations in his pocket every few minutes. She replies after his fourth beer with, 
I’ll be there in a few. Tell that Dilly guy to make me funnel fries and get your arms ready
, and he can’t stop the warmth that washes over him. Smiling, with the slosh of beer in his unfed gut, he gives Dylan her order, then ambles out the front door to smoke a cigarette and wait for her, sitting in the same spot where she officially became his. He smokes one cigarette and then another, and all the while, the smile remains.

“Those’ll kill you, you know.” Harper comes out of the darkness of the lot and into the light with a matching smile on her mouth, and she’s quick to approach him and press her lips to his. He flicks the cigarette away, darkly reminded that she’s already lost one man to cancer, and wraps his arms around her, pulls her onto his lap, content to have the only vice he really needs back with him again. He slides his lips against hers, licks at her mouth, and waits for her to pull away. “Seems like you missed me,” she muses, and he only nods. “Come on. Buy your girlfriend a drink.”

Austin lets himself be tugged inside by her hand, their fingers laced together, and does as she asks as she waits behind him at the packed bar with her hands wrapped around his waist and dipped into his front pockets. With their drinks held by their necks in one hand and her basket of funnel cake fries in the other, Austin turns and is quick to press his lips to hers again—her payment for the beer and fries—and she laughs into his mouth as she takes her bottle from his fingers and steals a fry. They retreat to the dartboards and start up a game, kissing and touching between throws. He’s happy and she’s happy, and everything is so very right.

Until it isn’t.

Liam sees them the moment he enters the bar and he’s stills, his body in a rigid pose of disbelief and shame, anger, everything. He knew they would be here, if not somewhere else, having purposefully sought out their trucks as he drove to all of their old haunts, one after the other. He knew it would feel like this—a fist to the heart. He knew, but the feeling still throws him and he’s paralyzed by it. Gradually, and then suddenly, the feeling gains speed until he puts his pain in motion, and Dylan’s right behind him, because he knows where this is going, how Liam looks like he’s out for blood. He shouts, but Liam doesn’t stop, and despite the warning of Dylan’s bellow, Austin and Harper don’t see him coming. When they do, it’s too late. Beer bottles drop and everything moves in half-time and double-time all at once, and Austin swings at Liam while Harper screams and tries to get between them— the tragic irony of the position she finds herself in is not lost on anyone.

It ends with Liam on the floor, blood, and quickly blackening bruises, and Harper tucks herself against Austin’s side when it’s done, shoving him toward the backdoor. The sirens are already blaring outside on Main and as he hauls Liam up from the floor, Dylan shouts for them to get outside, to go, but they’re already gone. Liam comes out a few minutes later, a towel full of ice pressed to his left eye, and skirts past them with his head hung low. He looks ashamed and Austin almost wants to hit him again, but Harper’s hands are so soft and that’s all it takes to hold him back, her fingers laced with his.

“I’ve got ‘em,” a voice Harper can very clearly identify as that of her ex-Uncle Pete says into his shoulder radio as he comes around the corner, into the patio area.

It’s clear as can be that Austin and Liam participated in whatever altercation was reported, fresh blood dripping from their split lips and the normally sharp features of their faces distorted by welts. With Austin tucked behind her and Liam halfway to the parking lot, she’s hopeful Pete will just let them go their separate ways.

He doesn’t.

“You get back over here,” he shouts at Liam’s back, and Liam does as he says, his feet slowly shuffling him back toward where Harper and Austin stand watching. Pete reaches for his holster as Liam approaches, but Harper stops him, and Austin reaches out to stop her. They’re all on so many different sides and the lines are so very blurred. Pete stands firm, though, and he pushes a finger into Liam’s chest, right over where the tip of Hilary’s blade pressed prior. “You’re spending the night at the station.”

“Pete, for fuck’s sake—”

“Want me to take him, too?” Pete threatens as he cuts her off, his eyes on Liam all the while. “Austin, you know how much I love putting you in cuffs.”

“Pete—”

“Who started it, Harper?” Pete interrupts again, his finger still pressed into Liam’s chest. Harper doesn’t answer and Austin implores her with a stare, and a squeeze of his bloodied hand in hers, genuinely frightened by Pete’s threat. “Harper, who threw the first—”

“I did,” Liam says quickly, his eyes flickering only briefly to Harper and Austin, from his otherwise downcast stare. “It was all me.”

Pete hauls Liam off without a fight or a word, and as the red and blue lights of the cruiser fade into the distance, Harper releases one long breath. They don’t talk about Liam’s lie, just let it hang there, and with his bruised lips, Austin kisses her forehead before leading her out to the parking lot. She follows him back to his apartment, the shrill echo of the siren sounding in her ears no matter how loud she makes the volume on her radio for the mile drive.

When they arrive, Austin is all hands and lips, blood and bruises forgotten, and she’s eager to lose herself in his touch, use her own to take away his pain, and she unbuttons his pants before he even unlocks the front door. Inside, before the door can swing fully shut on its hinges, he presses her back against the wall where he first tasted her lips, and she takes his, coppery-flavored blood and all, wherever they land on her—neck, lips, shoulder, breast. As his mouth roams, she’s toes out of her boots, pushes down her jeans, then his, and as if they’ve done it endless amounts of times, in one fluid motion, she wraps her legs around his middle and he fills her. It’s frantic and messy, and she lets herself be everything he wants and needs, bent over the sink, on her back on the sofa, and on her knees in the middle of the living room. When he cums, it’s with a bloodied fist wrapped in her hair, holding her mouth in place as he releases against her tongue. It’s salty, but sweet, fast and slow, and all of the contrasts drown out the other half of her heartbeat and remind her that though she’s let the pleasure beat the pain, it will return when the dawn breaks.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN