Make You Mine by K.T. Quinn

14

Charlotte

It was ten minutes to five and our shift was nearly over when my phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out.

Scott.

I stared at the name on the screen. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to deal with him right now.

“Well?” Jayce snapped. “Are you gonna answer it, or make me listen to your ringtone?”

I hit the ignore button and shoved it back in my pocket. “It’s a spam call.”

He grunted and bent back to his section of the road.

The phone was silent only for a few seconds before ringing again. Jayce glared over at me. “I can’t control who calls me,” I snapped back.

“You can control whether your phone is on silent, Peaches,” he said through gritted teeth. His tone made the lighthearted nickname into a curse.

I switched it to vibrate and shoved it back in my pocket. Then I waited to see if it would ring a third time, or if it would vibrate once to indicate a voicemail. A minute passed, then two. If it was a voicemail, it was a long one.

Finally it vibrated once. I pulled my phone out, but instead of the voicemail notification I saw a text:

Scott: Can we talk?

I ignored it. My nerves were still frayed after what had happened with Jayce and the bikers. I definitely wasn’t prepared to tackle the knot of snakes that was my ex.

My ex. I hadn’t really thought of him that way until now, but that’s what he was. My ex-boyfriend. Someone who used to occupy a huge part of my life. The hole in my stomach twisted even worse.

I just want this day to be over.

We drove back to town in silence, except for the wind howling through the broken window. We could barely see through the smashed windshield, but Jayce drove slowly. He still cradled his injured arm against his body, but he wasn’t wincing with pain anymore. He pulled up next to the community center and slammed on the brakes. I opened my door and wondered what I should say to him, but the moment my foot hit the ground he was already driving away.

“Long day?” Mindy asked inside the diner.

“Something like that.” I started to tell her what Jayce had called me, but didn’t want to sound like I was whining. “I met Sid today.”

Mindy’s eyes widened.

She sat across from me in the booth while I told her everything that had happened. Her lips grew more and more pursed to the point that I thought her mouth would disappear inside her face by the time I was done.

“You’re lucky,” she said. “Jayce’s lucky, really. Sid could kill him whenever he damn well pleases, but he’d rather toy with Jayce. I don’t know why that boy doesn’t just ride out of town and never come back.”

“He does have the community service to finish.”

Mindy snorted. “The penalty’s a small fine. Nothing worse. That ain’t worth dying over.”

A motorcycle rumbled in the distance, but it was a different sound than the Copperhead bikes I’d heard earlier today. Jayce’s motorcycle came into view down the road, distinctly him thanks to his flowing dark-and-sandy hair, and the way he held the handlebars with just one hand, cradling the other in his lap as he rode. He passed the diner, rode another block, and then turned down a small dirt road that led into the forest.

“What did he do?” I asked. “To upset the Copperheads. Did he backstab them, or something?”

“Something like that.” The kitchen dinged to announce a plate of food was ready, and Mindy rose from my booth. “Now you see why I told you to stay away from him?”

I smiled up at the hard woman. “I can’t stay away from him when we both have community service.”

“That,” she said, “is not what I meant.” She gave me a long look before going to get the food.

Jayce’s motorcycle reemerged from the dirt road a few minutes later. It slowed down as it turned onto main street, then shot away with reckless speed.

Why don’t you run? I wondered as I ate my food.

*

“Hi sweet pea,” Dad said on the phone. “I’ve got more bad news.”

I groaned as I sat on the motel bed. “Don’t tell me.”

“There’s nothing I can do. Nobody will go anywhere near Eastland, not even for a favor. The law isn’t strong there, I hear.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I’m so sorry,” Dad said. “You know if I could do anything I would…”

I didn’t blame him. After what I’d seen today, I was beginning to understand why everyone steered clear of Eastland. The last thing I wanted was for my dad to poke around asking for favors and upset the wrong guys.

“I’ll be okay, Dad. Honest.”

“Have you noticed anything dangerous?” he asked in a different tone. The voice of a sheriff casually brushing someone for information. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not really,” I lied. “It’s just a quiet little town with a power-tripping sheriff. You know the kind.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were poking fun at me.”

“Just teasing, Dad.”

He put Momma on the phone. “Do you want us to come pick you up this weekend?” she asked. “Bring you home, give you some home cooked meals. Are you eating well? What is the food like in that town?”

“I’m eating fine, Momma.” I sighed. “And as tempting as it is to go home for a weekend, I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I’ll never want to come back. It will just remind me how crappy I have it here. Plus, Mindy says I might be able to get some community service hours on the weekend. Better to knock as much of it out as I can and come home sooner in the end.”

“Will arguing with you about it for another ten minutes change your mind?”

“No, Momma.”

“Then I accept your decision. Have you talked to Scott?”

I rolled over on the bed and buried my face in the sheets. “He called me today,” I said, voice muffled by the pillow. “Didn’t leave a voicemail. Sent a text saying he wanted to talk.”

“And did you?”

“I don’t want to talk to him, Momma.”

“I know,” she said in a soothing voice. “But eventually you’ll have to. What’s going to happen with your business? The food truck? Have you broken your shared apartment lease?”

“I don’t know, Momma.”

She let out the sigh that meant she knew she wasn’t going to get through to me. “Take all the time you need. But you know you can’t run from your problems forever, sweet pea.”

“I know, Momma.”

We chatted about more lighthearted things for a while. Momma had a way of talking about her day—her Meals on Wheels route, the post office lady whose son was accepted into Georgia Tech, the arthritis in Dad’s knee—that was soothing in its normalcy. It helped me pretend like everything was going to be all right. That there were things going on besides the crappy little town of Eastland and the remaining hundred-or-so hours of community service hanging over my head.

After that, I went back to the motel lobby to buy something sweet. There was a new six-pack in the fridge, which I eyed for a moment, but then grabbed a Diet Coke and a pack of M&Ms instead. I carried them over to Billy, who was surfing the web on the old lobby computer.

“You checkin’ out?” he asked without looking away from the screen.

“No, why?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “You ain’t paid for tonight. So either you’re checkin’ out, or you’re tryin’ to stiff me.”

I groaned. “I’m not trying to stiff you, Billy. I forgot.” I pulled my wallet out.

“Good,” he said with a harsh nod. “‘Cause it’d be a real mistake rippin’ off the sheriff’s motel.”

“The what?”

“He’d hunt you down across Georgia to get you to pay your bill. Seen him do it.”

“The sheriff owns the motel?” I patted the desk. “This motel?”

He blinked as if it was never in doubt. “Of course. Not that it means much. We don’t get hardly any business, except when he catches some fool speedin’ through town.” He chuckled. “Like you.”

I bit back a curse. So that explained why he’d found an excuse to pull me over on a rainy night, and why the judge had suspended my license and given me so many community service hours. To essentially condemn me to this town for a few weeks.

“On second thought,” I said, “I’ll take the six-pack instead of the soda.”

I cracked open the beer in my room and thought about what momma had said. She was right about how I was running from my problems. That was exactly what I was doing. It was easy to pretend like I was focusing on getting this community service out of the way before dealing with the rest of my life, but deep down I knew that was just an excuse to avoid Scott.

I drank half my beer while staring at his text. Can we talk? Simple. No greeting or apology. That was the thing about Scott: he knew when to get to the point.

After thinking of half a hundred ways to text him back, I decided to listen to the rest of the voicemail from the other day instead.

“Hey,” came Scott’s voice. Even though it was the same message, tonight it sounded uncomfortable and regretful. “It’s, uh, me. Listen, Charlotte. I didn’t want you to find out that way. I should’ve told you about Tammy. We’ve been seeing each other for a month. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but we just sort of hit it off. You know? I wasn’t sure how to tell you because I was afraid of hurting you. That was my biggest concern in all this. You know I care about you very…”

I hung up and drank the rest of my beer. I couldn’t listen to any more of it. They just hit it off? When had he found the time? We’d been working eighteen-hour days since buying the food truck. Was he seeing her in the middle of the night, slipping away while I was asleep?

I drank half of another beer. Like the first can, this one didn’t possess any answers. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Scott was seeing someone else, and it was over, and I was stuck in this crummy motel in this backwater town.

I heard a rumbling. The same sound I’d heard earlier today, like a swarm of bees, but deeper. More ominous.

I went to the window and drew back a sliver of curtain.

A line of motorcycles approached in the darkness, two-by-two based on their headlights. Just like today when they’d visited Jayce. But this time there was something else with them. In the middle of the pack was a larger vehicle, its headlights spaced too close together to be two separate bikes. As it came into the light of the motel sign I realized it was a huge construction vehicle. A cement mixer with a football-shaped drum on the back.

Slowly it came down the road, passing the motel. At least twenty bikes followed behind. A strange little redneck parade.

They disappeared around the corner, the sounds of their bikes still in the air long after they were gone.

I drank the rest of my beer in three long gulps. I had no idea what was really going on in this town, but I didn’t think I wanted to.