No Damaged Goods

A week of passion.

A week of pleasure.

A week of emotion bordering on pain, whenever I wrap myself around him and beg him to take me, beg to come deeper, beg him to never stop touching me with his hands, his mouth, his silver voice that’s like a physical caress every time he grinds out my name.

Peace, Peace, Peace, he growls.

God, I’m flushed just thinking about it.

And I need to keep my eyes—and my wits—on the road.

Life goes on, even with great sex and the sweet insanity of falling in love.

Honestly, I don’t know how we find time for so much sex when we’re both so busy.

Blake’s working quintuple duty.

Looking for arsonist clues, working with Sheriff Langley to put an intensive search out for Clark Patten, helping prep for the carnival and run safety checks, doing his job as fire chief with people and home inspections, and still sneaking in a radio show or two in between breathless nights with me.

I don’t know how he does it and still has the energy to sweep me into his arms.

I’m just exhausted, running around keeping up with my clients.

Everyone wants a spa day, I guess, before the big carnival officially opens. They’re keeping me busy with massage and aromatherapy sessions.

Not that I mind. It’s good money, it lets me feel useful, and—

Okay.

This is silly, but it makes me feel like a contributing member of Blake’s household, instead of a freeloader. Papa Bear let me buy groceries the other day, and it made me weirdly happy.

Like this could be everyday life, if I—if we—gave it a chance.

We could have this comfy, lovely home where we might both be busy people, but we always find our way back to the same warm place every night.

Am I just dreaming while wide awake?

Hoping for more than I can have?

I don’t know how to be a mother. A stepmother. Andrea’s honestly too old to need one; she’ll be eighteen in two years. I don’t think I offer much, really, jumping right into the terrible teens.

But I can be her friend. Hardly a bad thing to be.

Maybe it’s because Andrea’s on my mind that the girl I see as I drive past the carnival grounds looks just like her.

I glimpse her through a gap in the temporary wooden fence they’re erecting around the carnival grounds, several workers pounding tall, thin planks into the earth to form a safe windbreaker.

I don’t blame them. The nights have been getting colder, the days greyer, the Montana wind sharper with winter’s biggest roar.

I don’t think anyone could enjoy the carnival with frostbite.

Blake says we’re maybe a week or two off from a big one—a blizzard that buries everyone in place, and when people just hunker down and stay warm.

Roads get snowed in, sometimes covered by landslides.

I look up from the road just now, though, watching in my mirror as the girl leans against a familiar tall figure—Justin. He’s holding up his phone again, snapping quick selfies, before laughing and clapping her on the shoulder, watching her as she trudges off.

She heads through the open gate, pausing outside and looking briefly left to right before bowing her head into the wind and pushing forward, thumbs hooked in her backpack straps and shoulders hunched. The sharp gusts blast her bright purple rainbow-tinted hair away from her face, making her wince, turning her head away from the blast.

Wait.

What the hell.

That is Andrea.

And isn’t she supposed to be with Holt, instead of out here walking alone in the freezing cold?

I slow my car, then pitch a U-turn and go cruising back.

When I stop next to her, she doesn’t notice at first, until I lean over and put the window down. At the whirring sound, she lifts her head, squinting suspiciously.

Her face clears, and a bright smile of relief breaks across her face.

“Hey,” I say. “Looking for a ride?”

* * *

However I expected to end this day, it wasn’t with a tearful teenage girl in the passenger seat.

We’re parked at the diner.

She insisted she doesn’t want to go home, she doesn’t want to go to Holt’s. She just needs some space from stupid men with their dumb opinions and dumber egos.

And that’s when she bursts out crying, and it all comes spilling out.

Clark isn’t missing.

He ran away.

“Because Dad’s such an asshole,” she says.

Because he blamed Clark for the fires and Clark knows it, and he just wants to lay low until everything blows over and they find the real person doing this.

Andrea was sneaking out from Holt’s to see him, to bring him food, to make sure he was warm and safe wherever he’s been hiding.

But they had a fight this morning.

She’d tried to actually defend her dad.

To tell Clark that if he just talked to Blake, if he came home, her dad would listen and believe him, and that right now Blake was out trying to find Clark not because he thought he was guilty, but because his Uncle Rog is worried sick about him.