Chapter 4
PARKER
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
“Where the fuck is your ring?”
The thunder did little to drown out my father’s shouts.
He’d come home an hour ago, and for the duration of that hour, he’d been yelling.
At my mother. At the dog. At the beer for going warm on his way home from the liquor store—his routine pit stop after spending all morning at the bar.
Outlaw’s Watering Hole was more a home to him than this shack was.
Although “shack” was giving the single-wide with holes in the roof and a decaying foundation a little too much credit.
A shed would be warmer than this place. Probably quieter, too.
“I had to pawn it so I could pay the gas bill!” my mom shouted back.
They were always screaming.
As much as I hated my dad going out drinking and spending money we didn’t have, at least when he was gone, the house was silent. My mom didn’t talk to me much, unless it was to complain about the bills piling up or other adult responsibilities a parent should never put on their child.
The gas bill she’d pawned her only piece of jewelry for was from four months ago.
They turned the gas off yesterday.
“It ain’t even fuckin’ cold in here, Tris,” my father shot back, the fridge opening and closing for the sixth time, like he couldn’t quit checking to see if the beer had chilled yet.
It probably hadn’t. I think the power was turned off, too.
We didn’t have a TV, and I was told not to turn on the lights unless I absolutely had to. Instead, I had a flashlight. Too dark to brush your teeth? Shine the light in the mirror—lights up the whole bathroom. Making dinner past sunset? There’s a lantern on the kitchen counter.
As a child, I thought it was normal. Until one time, when I was out walking at two a.m., I saw the Bronsons’ house lit up like the Fourth of July. After that, I tried to avoid Beckham coming to see me after the sun went down.
I stared at my flip phone lying on the pillow next to me as lightning struck somewhere in the distance, causing another roll of thunder to shake the house.
I’d mucked one hundred fourteen stalls to save up for that phone.
It was cheap, it had a shattered screen, and the green was coming off the call button, but it worked.
A door slammed, but I didn’t flinch. I was used to the crashes that came out of this shell of a home, given that my parents threw a lot of things when they were angry with each other.
Never at one another, but at a wall or the floor.
For two people who could barely afford food on the table, they sure liked to break a lot of our belongings, as sparse as those were.
“That’s because you’re fucking drunk,” my mom chastised from somewhere closer to my room. They must’ve made their way down the hall, my mom likely hot on his heels as he headed to their bedroom to change or piss or do whatever the fuck he usually did when he was wasted.
“I ain’t fuckin’ drunk!”
His denial was a slur.
I grabbed my phone off the pillow, rolling to my back and flipping the screen open and closed with my thumb. I didn’t want to be here, but I also didn’t want to call Beckham and have him hear the commotion in the background.
My only escape from all of this was either him or a walk on the back roads.
When he discovered I went out on those empty roads alone, he told me to stop.
I’d asked him why, and all he’d said was it wasn’t safe for me to go by myself.
I’d told him I couldn’t simply call him every time I was sad, and he’d said I could.
He bought me a can of pepper spray the next day.
My screen lit up the room each time I flipped the phone open. A door opened, then slammed, then opened again. My dad was trying to get away from my mom, and she wasn’t going to allow it. She liked to fight for some reason. I didn’t see the appeal.
The bickering continued as they went back to the kitchen, and I took that as my hint that this would likely go all night. I had school in the morning, and it was already past eleven p.m. I’d never get any sleep at this rate.
Shoving off the bed, I grabbed my thin jacket to protect me from the rain.
The temperature inside didn’t vary much from outdoors, so I figured it’d be enough for a short walk while I called Beck.
Chances were he was already asleep, though.
He was a senior, myself a junior. We went to the same school, so some days he’d give me a ride.
I always asked him how he’d slept, and he’d somehow always manage to include what time he fell asleep.
I think he did that so I’d know I could call him late if needed. I still tried not to.
My parents were too busy arguing—my father buried in the fridge, my mother berating him where she stood at his back—to notice me leaving. Their shouts were too loud to hear the creak of the front door shutting behind me, or the broken screen slapping back against the frame.
The wind howled through the trees, the sky lighting up with another strike.
I walked under a nearby oak, opting not to choose the carport as protection from the rain, as its pounding was only amplified by the metal roof.
I flipped open the phone as my shoes squished wet leaves and pressed the number one.
Beckham was the only contact I had on speed dial.
He was the only person I called in general.
After hitting the fading green button, I held it to my ear, scanning the dark expanse around me. We were the only single-wide on this road for about a mile, and with us having no porch light or neighbors, the black night was suffocating.
Beckham answered after the fourth ring, his voice rough like he’d been sleeping. “Park?”
“Were you asleep?” I asked.
A distorted sound came from the background of the call, but it was hard to hear over the storm. If I had to guess, though, it was the sound of him sitting up in bed.
“No. Are you in the rain?”
My eyes froze on the telephone pole at the end of our driveway before I quickly cupped my hand over the microphone and my mouth. “No.”
“I can still hear it, Park.” Beckham sighed, likely checking the time. But he wasn’t sighing at me. He was sighing because he knew exactly why I was standing in the middle of a storm. “I’ll come pick you up.”
“Beck, no, that’s not—”
“You have your pepper spray?”
As if the weapon heard him, the weight of it in my pocket suddenly felt heavier.
“Yes,” I reluctantly admitted. Beckham would always worry about me, but I hated that carrying it made me feel like there was a reason he had to be concerned.
Bell Buckle was a safe town. The only danger was being hit by a flying object inside my house. I was far safer out here than in there.
“You’re outside your parents’ place?” he asked, movement rustling behind his voice.
“Yes.”
“Don’t walk down that road, Park,” he warned, knowing where my wandering typically took me. “I’m on my way.”
I sighed, staring up at the branches hanging above me. Large droplets of rain splashed on my cheeks, the water icy. “Fine.”
The line went dead, so I flipped the phone shut and shoved it in my jacket pocket.
The fabric was damp, and it’d likely be soaked by the time Beckham got here, but that phone was an immortal brick.
No matter what happened to it, it survived.
I knew that because it’d once been the victim of my dad’s alcohol-induced rage.
Not ten minutes later, Beckham’s rusty truck appeared on the main road. He’d already cut the headlights, knowing the drill. It was almost embarrassing how often I called him for comfort, ending with him coming to save me.
I walked along the driveway that was more mud than gravel as he rounded the front of the truck to open the passenger door for me. I stopped, lifting my chin to find him studying me from head to toe.
“You good?” he asked. He was standing there in a black T-shirt that hugged his growing biceps just right. The rain rolled off his tan arms, but he didn’t so much as shiver. A drop clung to the tip of his nose, more accumulating on the ends of his shaggy hair.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He tipped his head to the cab, and I got in. Once he shut the door, he came back around, climbing behind the wheel. The truck was still running, so all he had to do was shift into drive and we were off.
The heater was cranked, wrapping me in its warm embrace as the wipers worked overtime to clear the relentless rain from the windshield. Once we were a safe distance away, he flicked his headlights back on.
He glanced over at me, hand adjusting on the wheel. “Wanna talk about it?”
I stared forward, ignoring the water sliding off the ends of my hair and onto his seats. “Not really.”
In my periphery, his chin dipped. It wasn’t long before we were pulling up to his parents’ house. As always, the porch was brightly lit—as if, even with the miserable storm looming over the fields, the Bronsons were untouchable.
Beck killed the engine, and we both opened our doors.
He was at mine in an instant, holding it open as I slid off the now-wet seat.
He paid the leather no mind as he shut the door and looped an arm around my shoulders, leading me up the steps.
Crossing the large porch, he opened the front door for me, and we walked inside to a dimly lit kitchen.
The light above the stove was always on at night.
I knew because I was a frequent visitor in the late hours of the evening.
We didn’t linger as he led me down the hall toward his bedroom.
Charlotte and Travis, his parents, never minded if I stayed over.
This being a small town, everyone knew the type of people my parents were.
They didn’t know exactly what went on behind closed doors, but it wasn’t hard to guess that my home life wasn’t the most fun.
And the Bronsons being who they were, they’d never turn anyone away.
Even if it involved me sleeping in their son’s room on occasion.
Of course, we’d fooled around. Beckham and I had been inseparable for as long as I could remember.
I wasn’t sure when we’d crossed that line.
He kissed me once, in the small pond out on their property, and from that day forward, we just kind of…
were. We kissed, we touched, we did a lot of things our parents likely didn’t know about.
We felt safe with each other, and while we weren’t exactly officially dating, there was a level of comfort where we knew there was no one else.
The whole town knew: Beckham and Parker were off-limits.
They could go after whoever they wanted, just not the two of us.
Beck closed the door to his room behind me, tossing his keys on the dresser while I peeled out of my wet jacket.
I laid it over the back of his wooden chair that sat a whole foot away from his desk.
I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong when I called him, and he hadn’t been asleep but rather finishing his homework.
Without a word, he grabbed my hand and led me over to his bed. He laid down, pulling me with him. I rested my thigh over his, my cheek settling on his warm chest. I could still smell the rain on him, mixing with the hints of coconut and cinnamon that always wafted off him.
His fingers ran through my damp hair as he stared up at the ceiling. The small desk lamp cast the room in a gold glow, the distant strikes of lightning sending shapes flickering across the far wall every few seconds.
“My mom pawned her ring,” I told him, the words quiet.
“Her wedding ring?”
“Mhm. My dad wasn’t happy when he saw her bare finger.”
Beck was silent, so I looked up to find his jaw working, like he was clenching his teeth. He didn’t glance at me when he said, “Maybe if he’d get a job to pay the bills, she wouldn’t have to.”
He knew the position I was in at home. He just didn’t know it involved flashlights and buttered bread for dinner.
“I know.”
“Are you okay there?” He meant with food. With blankets and toothpaste and other necessities.
“We should be okay through winter,” I told him. “She just paid the gas bill.”
“If it gets shut off again, tell me.”
When I didn’t respond, his eyes finally met mine. Still, his jaw didn’t loosen. “I mean it.”
I’d tried telling him he wasn’t going to pay my parents’ bills before, but then he’d reminded me it wasn’t only them who were enduring the life they’d created. It was me, too. And he wasn’t going to let me live like that.
I only nodded, because he was right. I still didn’t put it on his shoulders, though. He could take care of me when we left this town. Not while I was stuck in my parents’ house. If they wanted to waste away, so be it. But I refused to let Beckham right their wrongs.
“I will,” I lied.
Then I rested my cheek back on his chest, and he pulled me closer with his arm tucked tight around me. At some point, I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing. The familiar rhythm was the only way I could get any sleep as of late.
The next morning, he drove us to school.
And the next day, he brought me the wool blanket from the end of his bed.