Page 64 of One Last Chance

“A murder he didn’t commit.”

When she didn’t say anything, I could feel the anger boil in my stomach, a hundred degrees of hurt and fury and guilt. “Momma…you know he didn’t kill Hunter.”

She sighed. “I know that, Daisy. Kash was like a son to me. Like a brother to Hunter. I know that Kash could never…but none of that matters, does it? It’s what people think. It’s what the cops think. What your dad thinks. What most of this town thinks.” She paused and went back to massaging her temples. “Go get ready for work, Daisy. It’s getting late.”

I didn’t want to leave the conversation there and I still had several minutes before I had to leave. But she looked so drained, her eyes so hollow and her mouth so drawn, that I dropped the subject long before I was ready to and with no idea whether or not we’d ever be able to pick it back up.

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

I kissed her head and left for work, my head heavy with a cyclone of thoughts all spinning too fast for me to capture. The only one to make it through to my conscious mind was that she was covering for me. If dad found out about that, her punishment would be even worse than mine. Not that I would tell on her. I knew my mother. She’d try to defend me and, in doing so, would put her own neck on the chopping block. I didn’t want to be the cause of her pain. I really needed to be more careful.

I hadn’t been at work for an hour before Kash came in. I was re-shelving books in the mystery section, out of sight of the door and the main desk, when he started fake-perusing the slasher books.

“Good to see you alive,” he said under his breath. “What happened?”

I blew out a breath. “She didn’t tell him. She’s as scared about it as I am. I think she thinks if she tells him he’ll assume that she knew about it all along and take it out on the both of us.”

Kash swore under his breath and pretended to read the back cover of a novel. “I knew that was a bad idea,” he said. “What now? Back to sneaking out, or are you ready to rip this band-aid off?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. About the sneaking out, anyway. I definitely don’t think we should tell him. You should have seen how scared she was, Kash. Really. She’s terrified of him.”

His jaw jumped and he glared at the book he was pretending to read. “So are you. If I ever find out what magic he’s using to keep you both in check, I’ll be a god darn millionaire. Seriously!”

I glared at him. “There’s nothing magical about intimidation and violence, Kash. Nothing at all.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, his eyes flashing. “Violence? You told me he hasn’t hit you since you were a kid.”

“He hasn’t,” I said quickly.

“Then what violence are you talking about?”

I stumbled over my words, second-guessing them even as I said them. “Just, you know—putting holes in walls and throwing things and stuff. Violent gestures. It’s only one step over to go from throwing things at walls to throwing people at walls.”

His face was expressionless, and I felt stupid. Of course that wouldn’t sound like violence to him, he’d just spent six years behind bars with people who had hurt people, violently. His definition would obviously be narrower than mine, and maybe his was more accurate. But my father hit my mother and even though she didn’t bruise or lose a tooth, he still hit her. I wasn’t going to say all that to Kash, though.

Embarrassed, I turned my full attention on my work. When I looked back at him, I saw a look in his eye I hadn’t seen in a long time. He was plotting something and it scared the bajeebers out of me.

“Kash,” I said desperately. “You aren’t thinking about selling drugs again, are you? We’ve been over this. It won’t help anything.”

He shook his head slowly as calculations flickered through the depths of his eyes. “No. Not that.”

“Then what?”

An excited grin played around his mouth. “I’ll tell you what it is when it works. I gotta go.”

“Damn it, Kash, promise me it’s not drugs.”

He huffed impatiently. “It’s not drugs, Daisy. I promise. Look, I’m not about to let your old man get away with controlling you forever. I’m also not planning to let that damn PO live up my ass for the next nine and a half years. I’m honestly over it. All of it. Which only leaves me with one option. I’m going to fix it.”

“Tell me how,” I demanded.

He looked around, made sure that we were out of sight, and kissed me quickly on the mouth. “How about I tell you later?” he said. “You’ve got work to do.”

“Kash, wait.”

But he was already gone, slipping through the stacks of books like a sexy ninja. Sighing, I went back to re-shelving books, my brain buzzing with a million suspicions.

I spent the rest of the day distracted and irritable, having convinced myself that Kash would get himself blown up in a meth accident before the end of my shift or shot by the sheriff at high noon. But noon passed without a single wailing siren outside, and the end of my shift arrived before anything blew up in town.

---