“I’m saying, you’re only here for a couple of weeks and then you’re getting the hell out of here. Do you want to have a saintly image of your father? Well then by all means, tell me to fuck off. You’re well within your right. But I knew your father.” He laughed, an evil noise. “I probably saw him more than you did the past ten years or so. And if you want to know more about him, you let me know. And I’ll tell you the type of man he really was.”
I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help it. An anger rose up inside me, and before I knew what was happening, my arm was raising, my hand was moving, and I was slapping him across the face.
He blinked a few times, cocked his head, and his eyes widened.
“You just slapped me.”
“Because you were being an asshole,” I stuttered, my heart pounding.
“Does that deserve—”
I cut him off. “I’m sorry for slapping you. I shouldn’t have. But you come into my house, unannounced.”
“Because your mother asked me to.”
“You could have texted me to let me know. But that’s not the point. Then you insult my father…”
“I didn’t insult him, I just said the mine contaminated the town’s water and he never told you.”
“That’s an insult in my book.”
“I’m more just making the point of how sheltered you’ve been.”
“Just…stop! Okay?”
I stepped back from Shane and looked at him with a couple of feet in between us. He leaned up against the kitchen counter top, not quite smirking, like the slap wasn’t even a big deal or something.
He shrugged, seeming unaffected.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
‘Not like’ was a severe understatement.
“I don’t even know why you’re still here at this point.”
“A weakness for favors to mothers. I’ll go.”
He stalked through the house in his noisy boots, grabbing his tank top and flannel on the way out.
“See you later, Dino.”
I watched him from the window as he walked outside, tossed his coat and shirt in the front seat.
Who goes outside in this weather shirtless, by the way? Only when you’re close to the Canadian border.
Then he lingered, hands on his hips for a few moments, staring at my house, no idea that I was looking right at him.
I wanted to hate him.
No, I did hate him.
Shane North was the epitome of sexy without trying. A mountain man by birth, he belonged in snow country.
I felt like I was watching Planet Earth: North Edition as he blew out several breaths that were visible in the cold air.
Maybe what I hated more was that he was right. I didn’t know very much about my father, other than the very few details my mom had told me. She didn’t much like talking about him.
I’d known him as a loving father who would call me once every week for a Skype chat in high school.
What kind of man was he, really, though? Did he have some secret he was hiding? It made sense to me that my father would want to present a sugarcoated version of himself to his daughter.
It dawned on me: the journals. I could read through those and try to investigate.
As I sat down to go through them, I found my mind wandering and my body buzzing.
I could still feel the sting of my hand striking his cheek. I hadn’t had much human contact this week, and that bit of contact had made my heart race.
The look of surprise in his eye when I did that gave me the chills just remembering it.
Try as I might to ignore this facet of our interaction, I couldn’t: he might be a pompous dick, but Shane North was my first crush, and that was when he was just the gangly brother of my friend.
Now, he was all grown up, well, he was what certain dreams were made of.
And not the frozen variety. Of the other, liquid type of dream which I refused to admit to while Shane still filled my brain.
He was also a huge jerk, I reminded myself. The way he carried himself, with that cocky, holier-than-thou attitude made my pulse accelerate with anger.
I could see his haunting, intense eyes in my mind, and even hear what his cocky response would be to my thoughts.
Yeah, Florida, Anger. That’s what you’re feeling. Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure how hard your pulse is racing has nothing to do with your attraction to me.
I tried to refocus and read my father’s journals, but I was all riled up.
4
Shane
“Shane, seriously?”
“So are you not going to sell it to me because I don’t have a shirt on or what?”
Marsha took a deep breath. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“What’s that mean? I live here.”
“Not last year you didn’t. You were away at college, stayed there all year.”
This is one of the things I hated about living in a small town. Everyone always had to be up in your damn business. Even at the corner liquor store.
“Back now.”
“For good?”
I shrugged.
“You gonna head back to Michigan State and play hockey?”
I shook my head. “Nah. Lost my scholarship and Mom needs me here, anyway.”
She held her hand on the top of the vodka bottle and didn’t let go until I looked her in the eye.
“Boy, you’ve got the wild spirit. You better channel that or you’ll end up somewhere you shouldn’t be doin’ somethin’ bad.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have even sold this to you. No shirt, no shoes…”
“And I still get service,” I winked as I took the bottle from her.
“Lost potential, boy. You remind me…”
Marsha trailed off as I left.
She was a good person but I couldn’t get caught talking to her for another one of her life advice rants. Not right now, when my ruminating thoughts were on a high.
Natalie had pushed me over the edge. Just seeing her brought up a stew of thoughts that had long been gone.
She had the same sandy hair that her father used to have.
I tried to remind myself that she probably had no idea about what her old man was up to, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of staying in her place any longer than I had to.
I fulfilled the promise to her mom and got the hell out of there. Even if I had to instigate to do it.
It was later in the night now, and the cold wind howled and blew cooler as I got back to my place. I brought in my tank top, coat and flannel from the front seat, as well as the fifth of vodka.
Up here when the days got short and freezing, drinking was what most people did to put up with that.
My mom did it, my dad did while he was around, and my sister, well, I wish she would have just stuck to drinking.
Me? I had cut down substantially. Almost never drank any more, but I was feeling especially wired and out of sorts after my meeting with Natalie. I needed this to calm my nerves.
The cold air felt good on my bones as I turned the key.
Yeah, I was insane and I knew it, rolling around in the dead of winter shirtless. But right now I wanted to feel the freezing cold. It reminded me that even though Louisa and my dad were dead, I was alive.
I made my trademark drink, a White Russian. I took the first sip and stared outside, into the inky darkness. Seeing Natalie had brought forth a surge of powerful emotions and memories, highs and lows, long buried in my past.