She kisses each of my cheeks like someone from the highest echelons of European royalty when we’re barely meeting the middle-class qualifications of this tiny town of Storm Canyon.
Before she backs away, she growls in my ear, “Straighten your back. You’re slouching.”
She steps away with a smile that doesn’t betray how disappointed she is in me for reasons that I’ll never be able to change. “I just wanted to stop by and remind you that tonight is that date with… oh, what’s his name?”
You know his name, you set up the blind date and demanded I attend.
Caitlin rounds the counter. “Sorry, Ms. Miller, but I need Kenzie to deliver this to Sheriff Briggs. As you can see, we’re slammed right now.”
Mom leans toward me. “Colt Briggs, now he’s a fine man that any woman would be lucky to have.”
Gross.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the Briggs brothers are uber attractive –like GQ models in the Rocky Mountains– but he’s…old. Or at least too old for my twenty years, and they treat me like I’m their little sister.
Even though some people might believe otherwise here, I don’t have daddy issues and don’t need a man to be “my daddy.” The biological one left when I was a baby never to return. And the other kind sounds exhausting. I don’t want to be at the beck and call of any man and I definitely don’t need to be treated like a princess.
But this blind date my mother set me up on with her garden club friend’s son sounds about as fun as a colonoscopy. But telling my mother my opinion will go in one cubic zirconia-studded ear and out the other.
“Yes, I remember, Mother.”
“Wear that pink dress I got you for Christmas and those silver heels. Oh, maybe he’ll take you dancing tonight.”
“I don’t dance,” I mumble.
“You’ll dance for the right man,” she says with a tight mouth and then realizes that Caitlin’s staring at her. The thin lines around her mouth betray her age, but when she smiles it pulls them flat and her bleached teeth take ten years off her age.
“I gotta get going.” I grab the bag from Caitlin’s hand and almost drop it to the floor, definitely heavier than normal. I look at the clock. One minute late. Crap.
“Don’t forget tonight… seven sharp,” Mom calls out as I head toward the door.
I don’t look back. I’ve learned to only look forward in my life.
Even if there’s nothing there to look forward to.
2
Dean
This isn’t my first time behind bars. Lockup isn’t new, even if I pride myself on not getting caught… that often. But this is my first time in a cell where the bars look like something out ofThe Andy Griffith Showwith a lock so pick-able it’d be like slipping candy from this sheriff’s pocket.
Which I did.
I pop the peppermint into my mouth.
I’m not one to tempt fate though. Like their archaic sheriff’s office, their systems seem behind the times too— I’m pretty sure there’s a warrant out there somewhere with my name on it and it doesn’t look like this small town has any clue about it. I only saw Storm Canyon at night before the cuffs were slapped on me, but I know a shithole when I see one.
I can practically smell it.Is that cattle?
I need to get out of Storm Canyon. I need out of Colorado all together. I left Denver in a hurry, grabbing the first bus I could under a false name and I.D. When that ticket ran out, I resorted to old habits. Jackingoldcars is supposed to be easy game, their systems are easily wired in contrast to newer cars modded now with computers and anti-theft shit.
Funny thing ’bout old cars in the country, usually means old men with shotguns. Old man held me at gunpoint until the Sheriff Briggs came along, all while I tried to schmooze my way out of it.
They were mistaken.Why would I want a beat-up, old truck that didn’t even have a working radio?
But no one was buying my bullshit. Like how the sheriff is ignoring me now. Maybe that’s how old, small-town justice works— they bore you to death.
I’m halfway between sleeping and baiting the first badge I see when the front door open.