Prologue
Brody
Six years ago…
“I had the best time tonight,” Stacy purrs as she reaches over and lays her palm on my thigh. Her touch is warm but when she flexes her fingertips, causing her nails to bite into my skin, it turns carnally hot.
The music is pulsing in the background… Black Eyed Peas… and we have the windows down, allowing the warm summer air to swirl around us as we ride down West Franklin Street. My second year of medical school starts tomorrow, and Stacy and I are blowing off steam the best way we know how. With a good college frat party and then a trip back to my apartment, where we’ll probably fuck each other to death.
It would be a good way to die, in my humble opinion.
“I love you, baby,” she calls out to me, the air causing her blonde hair to float all around her face. I have just enough beer in me to be entranced by it before my attention is diverted by her fingers sliding up my leg.
Grabbing onto her hand, I pull it up higher, pushing it down against my erection. Smiling at her, our eyes locked momentarily, filled with young love, I tell her. “I love you, too.”
We stare at each other, for what seems like minutes, but it can’t be because we’re in the car. My blood is racing from the promise of her touch, but my heart is squeezing deliciously over the love radiating off her. I’m a lucky man.
My lips quirk up and, almost by mutual agreement, we release our gazes and turn to look out the windshield.
The headlights pick up a flash of white… maybe I see some Carolina blue, getting closer. Too damn close.
The brakes are slammed hard. The nose of the car starts to dive down at the sudden deceleration and then a blur of white and blue hits the front of the car, rolls up the hood, and smashes into the windshield. I see the glass spiderweb outward, and then whatever was on the windshield is flipping up and over the roof.
We veer off the road, tires screaming loud on the pavement.
I see a tree coming closer.
Nothing to do but close my eyes and grit my teeth for the impact. The last thing I remember before I kiss the airbags… Did Stacy have her seatbelt on?
Then it goes dark.
Chapter 1
Brody
I put the last of my groceries away, fold up the brown paper bags, and tuck them in the space between my refrigerator and the kitchen wall. Turning around, I observe my little studio apartment. I see it all in just a quick glance, because it’s about the size of a postage stamp.
While I just helped Gabby move into Hunter’s house, I certainly didn’t need to ask them to reciprocate the favor. The only things I own are my clothes, and those were gifts to me from my mom. She had taken me out shopping the day after I got home from prison, outfitting me with an entirely new wardrobe. I mean… new as opposed to wearing prison garb for five years. I felt ashamed that my mom had to buy her twenty-eight-year-old son clothes because he didn’t have a dime to his name.
Past my clothes and some basic toiletries, I have no other possessions. The car I’m driving is courtesy of my parents… on loan, of course. It’s an old Chevy Malibu that had been sitting under a tarp, which Dad used to drive. They don’t use it, but it runs fine. Mom and Dad tried to give it to me, but I wouldn’t accept it. Instead, I capitulated and agreed I was borrowing it until I could save up enough money to buy it from them.
Luckily, this studio apartment came completely furnished, and the kitchen was stocked with dishes, pots, pans, and utensils. I had all the basics that I needed to survive, because let’s face it… it wasn’t too fucking hard to boil some Ramen noodles for dinner, and that was a huge step up from the prison food I’d been eating.
So with my duffel bag filled with clothes purchased by my mom, I drove my old Chevy borrowed from my parents to the grocery store and stocked up on some basic provisions. Then it took me all of five minutes to move into my new home.
A knock on my door has me glancing down at my watch.
Right on time.
In three regular strides, I’m from one side of the apartment to the other and opening the door. There stands my parole officer, Jimbo Peaks. He is six-foot-six of solid muscle, his neck as thick as a tree trunk, and his biceps the size of smoked hams. With skin darker than midnight, his light hazel eyes are spooky as shit when he looks directly at you, in that contemplative sort of way I’ve come to know over the last two months since I’ve been home.
“What’s up, Brody?” he says with a huge grin on his face, sticking his hand out for me to shake.
I take his hand, and it freaks me out how mine is dwarfed by his. I mean… I’m not a small man myself, almost as tall as Jimbo, in fact. But when comparing my muscle mass to his, I feel downright puny and I kept myself in pretty decent shape while in prison. Other than reading, working out was about the only thing that was a resourceful use of my time.
“Come on in,” I tell him as I step back so he can enter.
Jimbo walks into my humble abode and turns around once. Yup… he’s seen everything. A small kitchen on one side that merges right into my living room that abuts one wall. A double bed takes up the other wall, and the bathroom takes up another. It’s four hundred and fifty square feet of cozy living, situated right above Mabel Fisher’s three-car garage.
Miss Mabel is older than Methuselah but has been a friend of our family’s since I was a baby. She’s eccentric, rich as hell, and loves to thumb her nose at polite society.
And by polite society, I mean those people here on the islands that look at me in disdain because I killed someone.
Not Mabel though. She was at my parents’ house within forty-eight hours of my return home, giving me a hug and a papery kiss, then making me sit down while she drank tea and filled me in on all the Outer Banks’ gossip for the past five years. She’s a trip… a breath of fresh air, and one of the few around here willing to give me a chance. When she offered to rent this apartment to me for a ridiculously small amount, I couldn’t say no.
“Nice digs man,” Jimbo’s deep voice rumbles. “All moved in?”
“Yup. Bag of clothes and some groceries. I’m settled.”
Jimbo chuckles and moves to my small kitchen table that seats only two people. Sitting down, he motions to the other chair so I do the same. “How does it feel to be out of your parents’ house?”
I crack a small smile and tap my fingers on the kitchen table. “It’s good. I mean… I love my parents, but it was time for me to get my own place.”
“Heard that,” Jimbo agrees, and then transitions into his next question. “How’s work going?”
“Going great,” I tell him, because it is. I enjoy working at Last Call, and I’m thankful as fuck to my brother that he gave me said job. Most parolees struggle to find work, or get shit jobs that scrape the bottom of the barrel. When they can’t find work because no one will take a chance on them, they go back to a life of crime. If I had a nickel for every repeat offender I met in prison, who was there just because they couldn’t make an honest living on the outside, well… I’d be buying Mabel’s house from her rather than renting this apartment.
Jimbo doesn’t seem satisfied with my short answer, so he delves a bit more. It’s his job to make sure I can acclimate to life on the outside, so I’m not bothered when he asks, “Any problem being around the alcohol?”
“Nah,” I tell him genuinely. “No desire to drink at all.”
“That’s good,” he says with a smile. “Seeing as how that’s a condition of your parole.”
“Look, man… doesn’t matter if it’s a condition or not, there is nothing on this earth that could get me to drink a drop of alcohol.”
“And why is that?” he asks, but he knows the answer.
I tell him anyway.
“Because it shattered my life. Because it killed a man. It left a mother without a husband and a little boy without a father. Do I really need any other reason?”
“No,” Jimbo says quietly, staring at me with those light eyes. “That’s a good enough reason.”
I hold his gaze, waiting for the next question. We’ve had this same meeting on three other occasions since I came home, but today it’s being done at my new home so he can check it out. As a parole officer, his role is part jail keeper, part counselor. It’s his responsibility to keep me on the straight and narrow, but to also do what he can to make sure my head is clear when I’m making my choices. So that involves talking… a lot. Just to make sure that the emotional and psychological toll of reentering the real world doesn’t cast me in a downward spiral.
Yeah, I talk a lot to Jimbo. He knows more of my internal struggles dealing with life on the outside than my family does. For whatever reason, I’ve been able to open up to him—somewhat—in a way that I just haven’t with my family. I suppose that boils down to the simple fact that Jimbo asks me questions… asks me how I’m feeling and how I’m coping. My parents, my identical twin, Hunter, my baby sister, Casey… while they love me more than the air they breathe, well… they’re just not sure what is open to talk about and what may be taboo. So they walk on eggshells around me.
“Tell me some of the problems you’ve had adjusting?” Jimbo leads in.
Heard this question before too, and my answer the last time was, Not anything to tell.
I start to tell him the same thing, but the look on his face stops me. It says, And don’t hand me any bullshit, either.
I suppose I can skirt the real issues only so long before Jimbo is apt to put me in a headlock and beat the information out of me.
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, I decide to go ahead and lay it out. “I wake up at five AM every day, no matter what time I get to sleep the night before. It’s because I’ve been getting up at the same time every morning for the last five years… because I had no choice but to get up every morning at five AM. I don’t even know how to have a leisurely morning where I sleep in. When I go to sleep at night, I can hear metal cots squeaking and my cell mate rubbing one off while he tries to stifle his groans into the two-inch piece of flimsy foam that’s called a pillow. I hear the newbies crying, and I hear the hacks yelling at them to shut the fuck up. When I’m awake… out in the real world, I can’t walk around a blind corner without my palms sweating, because I’m expecting someone will be there waiting to jump me. I was always on alert in there, waiting for one of the prison wolves to try to jump me. Two months out and I’m still always on alert. The air smells too fresh, the food tastes too good, people talk too loud, and I’m having a hard time letting people touch me. It’s overwhelming and that’s just for starters, Jimbo. So yeah,” I say with some sarcasm as my eyes drop to the table. “I’m having a bit of an adjustment problem.”
“How does all of that make you feel?”
My eyes slowly rise to meet his. “I’m pissed off. All the time. I’m withdrawn, moody, and restless. I have all this wide-open space available to me, yet I’m having a hard time straying too far from the things that make me feel safe. So I go to work, and I go home. That’s it.”
Jimbo gives me that contemplative look, and I can see the wheels turning inside his head. I’m prepared for him to launch into a pep talk, about how I have a chance to make something of my life… to atone for my mistakes and put the past behind me. Instead, he says, “You know… there’s something odd about you.”
My eyebrows shoot up and, for a moment, I consider being affronted by that statement, but then I just mentally shrug my shoulders.
Odd is just one of many things that I am.
“How’s that?” I ask.
“I’ve been doing this work close to twelve years now… and I can count on one hand the amount of parolees I’ve had that don’t try to convince me that they didn’t do it… or they were framed… or hell, even if they did do it, they blame a corrupt system for sending them away.” He pauses, his green-gold eyes flickering back and forth between mine. “But not you. You accepted responsibility and never once tried to blame someone or something else for your lot in life. It just makes you… odd.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I lean back in my chair. “No one to blame but myself.”
“That’s right,” Jimbo says with a nod. “No one to blame but yourself, and you’ve done a remarkable job accepting responsibility. In fact, you’ve done such a good job at it… some might say that it would help you have a clear conscience.”
“What’s your point?” I ask, genuinely curious as to where he’s going with this.
“My point is that if you truly took responsibility and had a clear conscience, then you should have some measure of peace.”
I scratch my chin absently, pondering his words. I did the time. I took my lumps and accepted my punishment. Should that give me peace?
Jimbo’s probably right. In those circumstances, maybe my soul should feel a little lighter… more free. If I truly was remorseful for what happened, and I truly had done my penance, I shouldn’t be struggling the way I am.
Except… my circumstances aren’t exactly the way Jimbo describes it. He sees my sorrow and guilt, but he doesn’t see past that. Because there’s a whole lot more that makes up Brody Markham’s fucked-up world than just the aftereffects of a few years in prison. My issues started before I even got sent away.
“Yeah, well… I imagine I’m just having a hard time adjusting to a different routine,” I say casually, wanting to turn his probing gaze away from me. “I’m sure with time it will get better.”
“Of course it will get better with time,” Jimbo muses. “But you need to work on it. If shit is eating you up, you need to get it out. Does no good to hold on to stuff.”
Those freaky eyes are staring thoughtfully at me again and, for a moment, I think he can see past the bull I’ve been feeding him and see below to what’s really haunting me. And it has not a damn thing to do with prison or my inability to adjust thereafter.
When I don’t say anymore, Jimbo gives a sigh and pushes forward. “Your community service. You got to get it started. Like yesterday.”
“I know. I’m trying to figure out where to do it.”
“It ain’t that hard, dude. You look at the list I gave you and pick one. I expect you to have an answer for me by tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I say, although the thought of picking up garbage on the side of the road doesn’t appeal to me very much. I suppose the saying is true though… beggars can’t be choosers.
My thoughts involuntarily drift to Alyssa Myers and her offer to volunteer at The Haven, her non-profit, no-kill animal shelter. Of course, that type of work is right up my alley since I love animals. But the thought of spending time with her… talking to her, being in her presence, well, it doesn’t set well with me.
I know I’m judging her and stereotyping her based on one terrible experience I suffered, but my already fragile psyche doesn’t have the aptitude to push past this bias right now. On top of that, she’s far too beautiful for my senses, which just makes everything else fucked up in my head. Being physically attracted to someone I despise is another hardship I don’t need to deal with right now.
Yeah, I don’t need that shit in my life. Standing up from the table, I tell Jimbo, “Just pick something out for me and let me know where I need to be and when. I’ll get the time worked out with my brother.”
Jimbo stands up and holds his hand out. Taking it, I give it a shake. “Alright, Brody. I’ll call you with the community service info, and we’ll meet next week. Same time and place.”
“Sure,” I tell him with a small smile. “See you next week.”
After Jimbo leaves, I walk over to the couch and sit down on it. Staring at the ceiling, I have to wonder to myself if this is all there is to my life. Am I going to be able to push forward, knowing how great everything was that I left behind?
I sure as hell don’t know the answer to that, but I’m hoping time will bring clarity.
