“How would you light the fuse?” By some miracle, my voice was steady.
Leo leaned in close, his piercing pale eyes darkening. “With my tongue.”
Chapter One
Cassandra
Six weeks later . . .
“Hey, it’s me,” Olive said in her voicemail. “We were thinking of going out for some beers tonight at that new brewery, so this is your five-hour warning. You’ve been holed up in the library all weekend. Did you even come home last night? Close the books. Come home for a nap. Then get ready for some fun.”
I shoved the phone into my pocket and stared out the door’s glass window to the driveway.
Olive didn’t know that I was in Clifton Forge. I hadn’t told her or anyone when I’d left Missoula before dawn yesterday. She thought I was off studying, when really, my entire world had come to a screeching halt and I’d come home.
But there was a lot I’d hidden from my friends lately, like the fact that I’d been kidnapped and held captive by a motorcycle gang. And that according to the pregnancy test I’d taken three days ago, I was pregnant with an asshole’s baby.
“Cassie?”
I jerked, startled by my mom’s voice, then turned away from the door where I’d been standing for ten minutes. Stuck.
“I thought you left already,” she said, drying her hands on a dish towel.
“Forgot my notebook.” I lifted the object in my hand. I hadn’t forgotten it, but I didn’t want to admit that simply leaving the house and walking to the driveway took every ounce of courage I had these days.
“Honey, you can ask us to walk you outside,” she said, coming closer. Mom was like a bloodhound when it came to sniffing out a lie.
“I’m fine.” If fine meant scared, humiliated and pathetic.
The fact that I was standing at all was a miracle. Most of me wanted to curl up in a ball and never leave my bed again.
“I’m sorry the barbeque didn’t go well.” Mom put her hand on my arm, motioning me in for a hug, and like I had a million times, I fell into her embrace.
Mom’s hugs worked wonders. They made me feel safe and loved and warm. These hugs, and the ones from Dad, were the reason I wasn’t comatose or in a constant state of tears.
“Why don’t you stay here and rest?” she asked. “You can watch movies all day on the couch. I’ll buzz to the store and buy the ingredients for that spinach and artichoke dip you love so much.”
I gagged. The mention of artichokes threatened to send me racing to the bathroom for another session with my head in the toilet. “Movies later. I think it will be good for me to get out of the house.”
This trip to the coffee shop was a test. I was challenging myself to do something normal. To prove the bastards who’d snatched me from the very driveway I’d been staring at hadn’t beaten me.
“Okay.” Mom rubbed my back, then let me go. “I’m here if you want to talk.”
There was a plea in her voice, the same one that had been there since the kidnapping. But I didn’t want to talk about that day or about the pregnancy. Not yet.
Not until I could make sense of it myself.
Normally, Mom was on the receiving end of the floodgates. When I needed to rant about a course or professor or classmate, I called Mom. When I celebrated a good grade, I called Mom. When I’d sat in the bathroom of my house in Missoula, holding a positive pregnancy test, I’d called Mom.
But the kidnapping . . . I wasn’t ready to unload that one. Not on her. My mother’s shoulders could carry a lot, but that was a weight I wouldn’t add.
Besides, the pregnancy was enough. For now, that had to be the focus.
At least it had been easy to track down the father. I’d been prepared to go to The Betsy and ask around about Leo. Turns out, all I’d had to do was cross the street.
“Do you think it’ll stop being embarrassing?” I whispered.
“Oh, Cassie.” Mom’s expression softened.
“I feel so stupid, Mom. I mean . . . safe sex isn’t rocket science.”
“And you hate feeling stupid.”
More than anything else in the world, I hated looking like an idiot.
And Leo Winter had made me a fool.
I’d spared Mom the erotic details, but she knew that I’d hooked up with a guy here in town the weekend I’d come to study with Olive. I’d confessed to going to The Betsy and though she’d tried to hide it, there’d been a hint of disappointment in her face. Then she’d asked about the father.
If not for the kidnapping, I wouldn’t have hesitated in telling her about Leo.
But . . .
Leo was a Tin Gypsy.
And for now, he was my secret.
After the kidnapping, Dad had been in a constant rage toward anyone who rode motorcycles. Even older couples who rode recreationally he now considered criminals. My kidnappers had belonged to the Arrowhead Warriors—a notorious gang from Ashton, a town three hours away and nowhere near Clifton Forge—but my parents wouldn’t be able to separate them from the Tin Gypsies. They blamed the Gypsies for bringing trouble to our street.
They weren’t entirely wrong, though I didn’t want them to hold a grudge against Scarlett.
She hadn’t meant for me to get dragged into this disaster.
The Warriors had come to Clifton Forge, searching for Scarlett. She’d been hiding across the street at the chief of police’s house. The details of why she’d left Luke’s were hazy but when she’d come out of the front door, I’d been in the driveway, home for another weekend of study—sans Olive.
The Warriors had taken her, and I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Before I’d been able to call the cops, they’d nabbed me too.
It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Leo’s fault.
It was mine.
I shouldn’t have gone to The Betsy.
“One mistake, Mom. One. And I threw my future in the garbage. What was I thinking?”
“Sweetie, your future is not in the garbage. It is possible to go to school and have a baby at the same time. Fall semester will be done by Christmas. You can take the spring off, and after the baby, we’ll be there to help. We can move to Missoula if we need to.”
“No.” I sighed. “I can’t ask you to move. You love Clifton Forge. It’s home.”
Both of my parents had grown up here. They were high school sweethearts and not once had I ever heard them mention moving.
Besides, Leo was here. If he did want to be involved in the baby’s life, wouldn’t it be better if we lived in the same town?
That was a big if, especially given yesterday’s confrontation.
I really, really shouldn’t have gone to that barbeque.
“We love you more.” Mom touched a lock of my hair, the coppery-red color nearly the same as hers.
“I love you too. I’m going to go.” I raised my notebook, steeled my spine and turned for the door.
The only reason I managed to turn the knob was because she was behind me. Then, one foot in front of the other, I stepped outside. It was a beautiful summer day, the sun shining bright on green lawns. The sound of children playing in their yards echoed through the block. Three doors down, a Subaru Outback pulled into the driveway and a family piled out, each member dressed in their Sunday best.