Next to Never (Fall Away #4.5)

I sped down the street and took a left on Main, cutting through the downtown and driving until the businesses and pedestrians were behind me. I couldn’t see everything as clearly at night, but I could tell that the manicured lawns of emerald green had now turned brown and patchy, and the houses became smaller and older as the neighborhoods changed. The once-white siding of a trailer was tinged yellow under the porch light, and I couldn’t help but feel disgust at the garbage lying on some of the lawns.

After a few minutes, I finally pulled up on Truman Street and slowed my car, seeing number fourteen across the street. The house was dark with no lights illuminating the outside.

I gazed around the neighborhood, picturing my son inside one of these trailers or dilapidated houses. There was no way in hell.

“We could’ve been arrested!” I heard a woman shout.

I followed the voice and saw a girl across from number fourteen, leaving a trailer and carrying a small child. She chased after a man walking away from her.

It was them.

She adjusted the child on her hip, holding the poor kid close, since he didn’t have a jacket. It looked as if they were picking him up at someone else’s house.

“What would’ve happened to our kid?” she shouted after the guy, the father, I presumed.

He crossed the street, heading to number fourteen, and she trailed behind, carrying the child. He opened the door and disappeared inside, leaving her out there alone.

What a fucking prick. She was just a kid.

And the kid had a kid. I couldn’t have her arrested.

Taking out my cell phone, I dialed a number and held the phone to my ear, waiting for him to answer like he always did.

“Hi. It’s Jase,” I informed him when he picked up. “I need all the information you can find on the residents of Fourteen Truman Street.”

“Okay,” Brown answered, and I knew he was probably writing the address down. He was on the company payroll, and an investigator my father’s firm used often. “I’ll get back to you within forty-eight hours.”

“Twelve.” And I hung up.

• • •

Dylan stops reading there, but I can see her eyes move across the page as she silently reads.

“Hey,” I complain. I was listening to that.

I walk over and throw myself onto the bed, landing on my stomach next to her. Dylan turns to me, cocking an eyebrow.

“She tried to steal his car,” I explain, “and now he knows exactly where she lives. You can’t just stop there.”

We hover close, both of us reading to ourselves.

***

Jase . . .

A week later, I walked into Denton Auto Repair, a piece-of-shit shack probably built in the thirties with chipped white paint and a dank cement floor in the “lobby.” The walls were stained yellow, probably from old cigarette smoke, the blue counter was cracked, and the two vinyl couches were ripped. I held back my sneer, trusting in the fact that the place had been in business a long time. It probably had a good reputation.

But under normal circumstances I would never step foot in such a grimy shithole whose mechanics would probably take my car out for a joyride after they talked me into leaving it overnight. I had other business here, though.

I closed the door behind me, the sun setting outside and evening approaching, and pulled out my handkerchief, absently wiping off my hand before stuffing it back into my pocket.

Two men loitered around the lobby, and when I looked to the front counter, I found it empty. This was where she was supposed to work. I’m not sure what she did, though. Clean, maybe?

“Mr. Hutcherson,” a female voice called, and I jerked my head to the left.

A young woman strolled behind the counter, coming in through the door leading in from the garage area, and heat immediately warmed my chest. I watched as she stapled paperwork and offered the man who’d stepped up to her counter a smile.

Jesus.

Her dark brown hair shone, tied up in a messy ponytail, and I caught hints of red in the strands around her oval-shaped face that I hadn’t noticed last week. Her chocolate eyes were deep and warm, and I swallowed the lump in my throat, staring at her full bottom lip.

I clenched my fists at my sides, and tried to breathe normally, like I didn’t want to walk right over there and . . .

She wore jean shorts that weren’t too tight but just short enough to see a good amount of thigh, with a white V-neck T-shirt tucked into them that kind of drowned her. Did it belong to her boyfriend?

I walked slowly forward, as if on autopilot, and stepped into line behind the other man, Hutcherson, I would assume, to await my turn. She smiled at him and handed him his keys as he paid the bill. I noticed she had a grease stain on her neck as well as a few black smudges on her shirt and several on her hands. She must’ve worked on cars, too.

It was dark that night, and I didn’t get a good look at her then, but seeing her again, I knew . . . it wasn’t the adrenaline that night or the cold weather or the frustrated state I’d been in after fighting with my father.

I didn’t want to punish her. Or help her. I’d wanted to see her again, yet I shouldn’t have come. But my family was out of town, and I’d told myself it was just curiosity. That’s all it was.

You’d be surprised how another woman can . . . Can what, Dad? Can tempt me like this? Can distract me from everything I hate in my life and make me feel alive again? For just a few minutes?

It was a bitter fucking pill to swallow that he might’ve been right. Everything had become paint-by-numbers in my life, and for the first time in a long time, the lines were blurred. I felt like I could stretch out my arms and not run into a boundary.