Make You Mine by K.T. Quinn

54

Charlotte

Jayce and I stood on the side of the frontage road by the interstate, struggling not to laugh.

At a glance, it was obvious what had happened. Tire marks curved around the corner and off the road, leading to where a grey Honda Accord was stuck in the ditch. Two individual motorcycle tire marks had skidded to a stop in front of the wreck. The driver door was opened, with boot prints in the mud leading over to a tree.

A tree where Scott swung gently, upside-down, tied by his feet.

Completely naked.

“Will one of you please let me down!” he demanded in a voice far too arrogant for someone who was suspended 30 feet above the ground. “I demand to be released!”

“Sir,” said the policewoman standing underneath him, “your complaints aren’t going to get you down from that tree any sooner.”

“Then tell me what will!” Scott insisted. “Tell me what I can do to convince you to hurry!”

The policewoman took on the tone of a bored DMV worker. “Sir, the closest cherry-picker is two counties over. It’ll be here in half an hour.”

“That’s—no! That’s too long!”

“If you’d prefer we leave you up there…”

Scott’s mouth hung open. “That’s not what I’d prefer! That’s not what I’d prefer at all!”

“You know how to pick ‘em, Peaches,” Jayce said, turning away from the sight. I followed him back to the police car.

“In Scott’s defense, this is the first time he’s ever been strung up naked by his ankles. Usually he won’t be caught dead in anything less than a button-down.”

Dad was staring up at Scott with a small smile. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Seems obvious to me,” Jayce said.

But I shook my head and pointed. “I know that look, Dad. You did something.”

He gave a long, nonchalant shrug. “It’s possible, justpossible, that there’s a cherry-picker one county over that could have been here in five minutes. And it’s also possible that a certain sheriff made sure to call in the farthest cherry-picker because he wanted to see the man who dumped his daughter suffer a little bit longer.”

I gasped. “Dad!”

Jayce snickered and gave my dad a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I can see where Charlotte gets her attitude.”

My dad’s smile slowly waned. “Is it correct that you were a member of the Copperheads?”

Jayce’s face went serious. “Yes sir. Quit them a month ago, once I realized they were moving drugs.”

“He’s telling the truth,” I said.

Dad examined him a long time. It was both the look of a sheriff interrogating a suspect, and the look of a protective father sizing up a new boyfriend. Jayce stared back calmly, unfazed. An unspoken conversation passed between them, one in a language I didn’t understand.

“You’ll have to tell the police everything you know,” Dad finally said. “But I think we can classify you as an outside witness, rather than an active participant like the rest of the Copperheads.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“You’ll testify against the sheriff and judge, too?” Dad asked. “We need witnesses to their corruption, in case we can’t find the paper trail we need to put ‘em away.”

Jayce grinned. “Nothin’ would make me happier.”

We drove back to the station so Jayce could be formally questioned. Mindy had the diner kitchen working overtime to make sandwiches for all the police officers, so Momma and I stopped in to get some food and relax. I spent the next hour telling her details about Eastland that I’d omitted on the phone. The Copperheads, the violence around town, the drugs they moved across Georgia in big cement mixers.

“There’s one thing you’re not telling me,” she said calmly. “Jayce.”

A lump formed in my throat. “What about him?”

Momma gave me a look that said Don’t play dumb with me.

“We’ve sort of been seeing each other,” I said carefully.

“Sort of?”

“Pretty much every day. Outside of our community service work.”

“The work he finished two weeks ago, but kept helping you with?”

“Yeah. I know it sounds bad, and almost stalkerish…”

Momma laughed. “Oh, sweet pea. When I was growing up, I worked the cash register in our family’s general store after school. Your father came in every day to buy something: sugar, milk, eggs. Every day, one item. Well, I went to throw the trash away in the dumpster one day and found a week’s worth of spoiled groceries inside. Milk, eggs, sugar. Your father was spending a fortune on groceries he didn’t need just to have an excuse to see me!”

“The dumpster?” I chuckled. “Why didn’t he take them home?”

“Because your father was embarrassed and didn’t want his parents to know he had a crush on a girl.” She waved a hand. “Point is, boys have been finding excuses to be around girls they like since Adam winked at Eve. There’s nothing stalkerish about that.”

I tilted my head. “Does this mean you approve of Jayce?”

She looked out the window, and I followed her gaze. Jayce was coming out of the station. Dad was right behind him, and put his arm around Jayce while speaking softly to him.

“Your father seems to approve,” Momma said.

I scoffed. “Why do you say that?”

“Well,” Momma replied, “if you were a few years younger, your father would have thrown that boy in the back of his police car and put the fear of God into him. Seeing as how he hasn’t done that, he must approve.”

“You still haven’t told me what you think.”

“He’s not ideal,” she said with a straight face.

“What does that mean?”

Her poker face twitched, then dissolved completely. A huge grin replaced it, and Momma leaned forward on the table to whisper. “Okay, he may be rough around the edges, but he’s absolutely delicious. I could just eat that ink right off his arm.”

“Momma!”

“Don’t tell your father,” she quickly added. “But I’ve always liked a man with tattoos. It shows a level of commitment. And a kind of art.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Momma always talked about me settling down with a stable man with a respectable career. Hearing that she was fine with Jayce, and even attracted to that kind of guy, kind of blew my mind.

“So that means you approve? If I wanted to keep seeing him, I mean.”

She gave me another of her looks. This one said, That’s a silly question. “Sweet pea, that man carried you away from danger on a motorcycle at great personal danger to himself, then came back to do the same for me. If that’s not the modern equivalent of a knight in shining armor, then I don’t know what the heck is.”

I met Jayce outside the diner. “They cleared me,” he said. “Thanks to your dad’s recommendation.”

“Thanks to the testimony of half the people in Eastland,” Dad corrected. “Mindy, Flop, several bikers… They all testified that you haven’t been a member of the Copperheads for a while. When all the charges come down, I’m pretty sure the District Attorney will look kindly on you for your cooperation.”

Momma put an arm around Dad. “Come get some food so we can leave these lovebirds alone. I want you to try one of these cinnamon rolls—they’re even better than your mother’s.”

“High praise,” he said doubtfully.

As they walked back inside, Momma glanced up at the metal artwork again. “Lord, that’s hideous.”

Once they were gone, I gestured over at the police station. Two cops had Jayce’s backpack out and were counting the rolls of bills inside while making notes on a piece of paper. “Guess your stash is gone now. Do you… feel bad about losing it? Since it’s your last connection to her?”

Jayce wrapped an arm around me while watching the police count the money. “Not even a little bit. Getting Sid was worth it.” He glanced at me. “I suppose you’ll be heading home now that all of this is done?”

“I suppose,” I said coyly. We were both dancing around the final problem in all this: what to do about us. Or if there even was an us. I wanted Jayce to profess his love to me. To tell me he’d follow me wherever I wanted to go, and that he would do anything to be with me—even if it meant getting a shitty job he hated.

But all he said was, “All right.”

“I guess you’ll have to get a job,” I said, hoping to pull more out of him. I gestured at the diner sign, where one of Jayce’s metal sculptures stood. “Or you could try art for a living. Unless my Momma’s opinion has permanently damaged your pride.”

“My pride will heal,” he said. “And I’m not sure I want to do much of anything for a while. Maybe ride my bike out of Eastland finally. See the country. Some time away will do me good.”

“Tough to take a road trip when you’re broke,” I said with a laugh. Are you going to invite me along, or not?

Jayce rubbed the back of his neck and gave me an embarrassed grin. The grin of someone who had a secret he was finally going to tell.

“Here’s the thing, Peaches. There’s one more thing I haven’t told you.”