“We just left Papa’s,” Beck whispers to him, and then she hoists the car seat to her arm and heads towards the house. I will be relieved when they are behind a door with a lock on it and Dustin is fucking gone.
Standing to face him, I find it telling that he squares off his shoulders tomerather than trying desperately to get a glimpse of the son he’sallegedlyhere to see.
Ingram clears his throat. “Burns, we good here?”
Dustin spins around incredulously. Using the lapel of his untucked and blood-stained shirt, he blots his lip. “We arenotgood here. This motherfucker hit me.Twice. I want him arrested. I want to press charges.”
Ingram looks only at me. I know Beck and Jett are still on the porch because I never heard the house door open and shut. “Are we good here, Burns?”
I show him my palms in a silent promise to be good, then shake his hand again. The eager deputy takes mine again too. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Burns,” he smiles, nodding, his eyes fixed on mine.
Money makes people act weird. Having tons of it usually means no one can behave like a regular human. I hate it. And the cruel and ironic other side of that sword is that it’s benefitting me right now.
The deputy gets inside the cruiser as Ingram finally approaches Dustin. He covers his eyes with his shades before speaking to him like he needs a barrier between them before he faces Dustin’s stench.
“I believe Mr. Burns would like you to get off this property.”
“I do,” I add, folding my arms over my chest.
“He assaulted me,” Dustin gripes, his whiny tone the emotional equivalent as a foot stomp. “I want to press charges.”
Ingram’s gaze moves over Dustin, I’m sure taking in his disheveled state. I may have hit him twice, but I didn’t get him drunk, pump him full of weed, and put him behind the wheel. Dustin did that all on his own.
And Dave Ingram has been the Sheriff of Oakcreek for years. Something tells me that he sees Dustin as a walking DUI as opposed to an assault victim.
He rests one hand on his utility belt, the other on his radio, thumb tentative on the call button.
“Why don’t you come on back to the cruiser and blow for a blood alcohol reading,” Ingram commands using a calm and collected tone. “Looks like you’ve taken a few tumbles. That’s what’ll happen when you day drink. You’ll end up really roughed up. Confused, too.”
The three of us stand there as Dustin’s inebriated mind parses out the meaning of Ingram’s speech.
“Unfuckingbelievable,” he grits, stomping off through the lawn toward his SUV.
“Wait a second there, bud,” Ingram stops Dustin with a palm straight to his chest. Dustin glares at Ingram’s hand.
“Do you know who I am?” Dustin seethes, practically vibrating he's so angry. Glancing past Ingram’s shoulder, he looks to Beck on the porch. “You really gonna let this happen?”
She doesn’t say anything, but for those few seconds, I’m angry with her. He’s here because ofher. She went to him for something, and—fuck this guy.Fuck him!
Ingram walks Dustin back to the cruiser where he proceeds with the breathalyzer as promised. I don’t stay and watch, I know he’s drunk and he’s minutes away from being out of my fucking hair, that’s good enough right now.
She’s not on the porch when I turn back around, and when I enter her house, I find Jett jumping from a door frame, his legs tucked into a bouncing apparatus.
Beck is sitting in the corner, in a chair facing the window. Our eyes lock and the surface of my skin heats, and I don’t know how much is lust or how much is anger. But I feel both, and more.
She rises from her chair. “We need to talk.”
20
Beck
“I didn’t bring my pump.”
“You said you grew up here?”
He nods, thoroughly confused as to why after everything that just transpired, this is relevant.
“Did you go to school with that Sheriff? The blonde one who was in charge?” My hands worry with anything that crosses my path—my hair, the hem of my shirt, the frayed ends of the decorative pillow adjacent to me. My eyes, though, never leave his.