1. Etta
1
ETTA
CURRENT DAY
“ B ruce, I don’t need to stay with Oscar.”
“Your brother?—”
“He isn’t my brother,” I say, putting as much force as I can into my words, although they still barely come out as more than a whisper.
“He’s happy to have you.” Bruce says, oblivious to my tone.
“Octy and I are going to move in together once she gets to town. I’ll only be alone for a week before she gets there, and I’d be more comfortable in a hotel.”
“Nonsense, you can stay with family, that way you’ll be in familiar surroundings.” Bruce just keeps talking, like he hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.
“I haven’t seen Oscar in fifteen years,” I protest, hating how hard conflict still is for me, even when Bruce, my stepdad, is trying to railroad me.
“Then this will be the perfect time for you both to spend some time together, he is your brother after all.”
“He’s not my brother,” I repeat, hating the frisson of fear that rushes through me at just the thought of seeing my childhood bully again.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the day I’d hidden outside on the back step and covered my ears to drown out the sounds of Oscar and Bruce arguing was the last time I’d ever seen him. Now as an adult, I know that he’d turned up at the house for Labor Day weekend, and instead of destroying my bedroom and making my life hell, he’d told his dad that he would no longer be visiting our house on holidays and that if Bruce went to a judge to try to force the visitation, he would apply to become an emancipated minor.
The ensuing argument that had driven me out into the yard was the last one Bruce and Oscar would ever have in that house. It took me two Oscar-free years before I stopped having panic attacks in the weeks before a holiday, and it wasn’t until I left home to go away to school years later that I could even think his name without having a visceral trauma reaction.
When my friend Octavia, or Octy for short, called me up and said that she was moving to Montana to work in her friend Betty’s new studio, I was super pleased for her, but a little surprised that she was willing to move away from Rapid City, where she’s lived for the last three years.
We met when she was apprenticing as a tattoo artist in a Las Vegas studio. I’d just graduated from college with a degree in marketing and had been employed by the owner of the studio, who was launching a lifestyle brand, and wanted someone to help him with his social media marketing.
The first day I walked into the studio, I nearly walked straight back out again. I was twenty-two, wearing a pantsuit, sensible black-heeled pumps and completely tattooless. The girl working the front desk actually laughed when I said it was my first day and that I was the new social media marketing associate.
Octy had been the one to tell Lauren to go fuck herself. She’d taken me under her wing, befriended me, and helped me survive the first few months, when no one else at the studio would even talk to me.
Octy gave me my first tattoo and my second. She helped me find myself and stopped me from quitting a hundred times in the year we worked together. When she told me she’d taken a job at a prestigious studio in Rapid Falls, I was heartbroken. Making friends hasn’t been easy for me since everything that happened in middle school, and when she left, I’d assumed we’d never see each other again.
Luckily, Octy isn’t the type of person who leaves her friends behind, so even though we haven’t lived in the same state for years, we keep in touch almost daily. Taking a job in the same studio as her again was an absolute no-brainer.
“When will you get to Rockhead Point?” Bruce asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Thursday. My bus gets into town at eight thirty p.m.”
“I’ll let Oscar know to be waiting for you. I’m so excited for two of my kids to be living together again. Mom and I have already started looking for flights so we can come and visit you both.”
Horror rockets through me. Being in the same town as Oscar is bad enough, but having Mom, Bruce, and my younger brothers and sister here too is more than I can bear.
“I’m sorry, Bruce, but I’ll be too busy to spend any time with you guys. The studio is a start-up, so I’ll be working all the hours to get everything set up for the grand opening,” I lie quietly, hoping he can’t hear the mistruth on my lips.
Not everything is a lie. The studio is a start-up. Betty purchased the building a while back, but opening the shop got pushed back while she had a baby. Now it’s full speed ahead, despite her being pregnant again, even though her son is only a few months old.
Truthfully, for the next couple of months, my job will be a lot of planning and not a lot of action. After Lauren unexpectedly quit from the studio in Vegas, I stepped in to help man the front desk and found I enjoyed it and that I could easily do my marketing work at the same time as greeting customers and scheduling appointments. Which is why I agreed to a similar role in Montana.
I still don’t look like a typical tattoo shop employee. The tattoos I have are hidden beneath my clothes, and apart from a tiny stud in my nose, the only interesting thing about me and my appearance is my hair. One night, Octy and I got a little drunk on a bottle of tequila a client had given her as a thank you for the epic tattoo she’d done on him. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but at some point, a bottle of pink hair dye had been pulled out and my dull blonde hair had been transformed into a pastel pink color that makes me look and feel a hell of a lot cooler than I actually am. Despite it being the result of a drunken whim, I’ve maintained the color, and even years later, I still adore it.
Bruce blathers on for another fifteen minutes, until Everly, my younger sister, calls him, and he says goodbye and hangs up. Exhaling, I drop my cell on the sofa and let my head fall back into the cushion behind me.
Dealing with my stepdad always leaves me feeling exhausted. He’s not a bad person, he just sees and hears everything the way he wants to interpret it. A part of me wishes I hadn’t told my mom about my new job, because then she wouldn’t have told Bruce, and I would never have had to know that Oscar was a resident of my new town. But I’ve always been a terrible liar, and the moment Mom asked me how work was, the truth was out of my mouth before I could think any better of it.
But really, what are the chances that I’d get a job in the same tiny town he’s working in? In the last fifteen years, I’ve pointedly avoided seeing, talking, or thinking about Oscar Malik. All these years later, he’s still the bogeyman to me, and just thinking about him makes me regress to the scared little girl I’d been when his greatest pleasure was tormenting me.
Part of me knows it’s unlikely he’s still the bully he was when he was an angry kid, but honestly, I have no interest in finding out. Despite what Bruce thinks is going to happen, I have absolutely no intention of having anything to do with Oscar, and that definitely includes staying in his house.
Lifting my cell up from where I dropped it, I open up my text app and type out a message.
Me: Hi Bruce, could you forward me Oscar’s cell number so I can text him if there’s any delays with my bus, please?
Bruce: Of course, sweetheart. Here’s your brother’s number. 718-333-6782
Me: Thanks.
Pulling in a deep affirming breath, I copy the number and save Oscar as a contact, then I open a new message thread and start to type out a text. My hands are shaking so hard it takes me twenty minutes to write a message that makes sense, and I hit send before I can wimp out.
Me: Hi Oscar, this is Henrietta Jordan, Maureen’s daughter. I’m sorry to message you out of the blue, but I asked your dad for your number. Thank you so much for offering to allow me to stay with you in Montana, but I wanted to let you know that my roommate will be getting to town earlier than expected, so I’ll be staying with her. I appreciate you being willing to accommodate a stranger, but it won’t be necessary. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Henrietta.
My breath comes in short, sharp gasps that make my lungs hurt as I stare at my cell, waiting for the angry reply, or worse, for my cell to ring and for it to be him. There’s no way I can talk to him in person. Even though it’s been fifteen years since the last time I saw him, the idea of sharing a town with him and five thousand other people feels almost suffocating. There’s no way I could stand being in the same house as him.
I stare at my cell for another twenty minutes, wondering if I should text again, before I decide that I shouldn’t. I’ve done my part; I’ve been polite and declined his offer to stay with him. That’s it. I don’t owe him anything else.
For the next week, I obsess over my cell, waiting for something from him, but nothing comes. I should be relieved, but instead I find myself falling back into the pattern of dread I used to feel when I was a kid and I knew he was coming to visit.
My stomach is in knots, my anxiety is so tightly wound that I can barely sleep, and it’s all because of him. The stupid thing is that I don’t know him anymore. I didn’t know much about him even when we were kids, he was simply the boy who hated me. But now he’s a grown man, and hopefully his days of tormenting me for simply existing are over.
I can share a town with him. I have to, because Rockhead Point is where my new job is, it’s where Octy is. It’s where my future is, and I refuse to allow him to spoil that, simply because we were forced to know each other fifteen years ago.
I try to relax, but since the bus drove past the “Welcome to Rockhead Point” sign, my stomach has been anxiously churning. I’ve been riding the Greyhound for almost twenty-six hours now, and I’m more than ready to check into the hotel I booked and sleep for the next two days. My butt is numb, and my legs are cramped, even though I’m short enough to have significantly more room than the majority of the people around me.
For the hundredth time since I boarded my first bus in Las Vegas, I wish I was brave enough to actually get on a plane, because the flight from Vegas to Bozeman is less than four hours, instead of the multiple buses it’s taken me to get here.
But I’m not brave, I never have been.
The one and only time I ever tried to get on a plane was when Bruce booked us all a vacation to spend Christmas in Mexico. I was so excited to go, until Oscar spent the three days before we were due to leave torturing me with videos of plane crashes and all the horrifying ways people have died when the planes they were on malfunctioned. By the time we got to the airport, I was hyperventilating and crying so hard that I was struggling to breathe. I managed to get all the way onto the airplane, but the moment we sat down, Oscar forced me to watch a video of a plane just like the one we were sitting on crashing and then showed me pictures of the rows of body bags that had been retrieved from the wreckage. Keeping me pinned to the seat, he replayed it over and over again, until I had a panic attack and passed out.
According to my mom, the air stewardesses called an ambulance, and we were all escorted off the plane. Since then, even airports cause me to have a trauma response that makes my chest tighten and my vision dim.
As the bus pulls into the small roadside station, nausea pulses through me in waves until I have to suck in deep gulps of air to stave away the sickness I can feel rising in my throat. With my cell clutched tightly in my hand, I follow the two other passengers down the steps and onto the sidewalk. Circling to the luggage storage area, I wait for the driver to open the hatch, then grab my case and wheel it backward out of the way of the people milling around.
It’s only a little after eight thirty p.m., but it’s dark, and there’s a chill in the air that has me wrapping my newly purchased jacket around me to ward off the cold. There’s still plenty of people wandering down the streets as I pull out my cell and start to type the name of my hotel into the Maps app.
“Hello, Henrietta,” a deep male voice says from behind me.
Startled, I spin around, and my gaze lands on a broad chest. Tipping my head back, I look up into the face of an older but terrifyingly still-familiar Oscar Malik.
“Oscar?” I breathe, my voice barely a whisper.
“It’s Oz. The only person who still calls me Oscar is my dad,” he growls angrily, his beautiful full lips pressed into a hard line.
I feel my eyes go wide as I take in the very real man in front of me. During the years we knew each other, I did my absolute best never to look at him. Even before he disappeared from my life, I don’t remember the last time I’d been brave or stupid enough to look into his face. Fifteen years ago, I’d thought that hiding from him would lessen the risk of provoking him, but it never worked. For some reason, the less he saw me, the angrier he seemed to be when we were forced to be in the same room at the same time.
He looks different now, but I can still see the features of that boy in the face of the man before me. His hair is still a deep red color, and his cheeks are still dotted with freckles. His eyes are still that eerie shade of green, like a cat’s eyes, and his lips are still full and pulled down into a sneer.
But he’s not a scrawny teenager anymore. Oscar is a very tall, very muscular, fully grown man. In my memories, he always felt tall, but I’d wondered if he was as big as I remembered or if it was just his looming hostility that made him seem larger than he actually was. But now that he’s standing in front of me, so much taller than me that I have to tip my head back to look at him, it’s clear that it wasn’t just fear that morphed my memories.
Seeing him after all this time is weird. We’re both adults now. Fifteen years have passed since the last time we saw each other. We’re strangers. But even though he doesn’t look the same, what feels exactly like it did when he was the monster of my childhood is the rage that’s emanating from him in waves.
Familiar fear rushes over me, and before I can think better of it, I step back, pushing my case between us, like a suitcase full of my clothes can protect me from this hulking beast of a man.
I feel the heat of his eyes as they rake over me, his nostrils flaring as something that looks like disgust pulls down the corners of his lips into an even deeper scowl. “Let’s go,” he growls, grabbing the handle of my case, ripping it out of my hands, and pulling it with him as he turns his back on me and walks away.
“What?” I gasp, hating that I can’t seem to speak any louder than a whisper.
“I said, let’s go. I don’t have all night,” Oz growls, snapping his fingers at me like he expects me to rush to heel like a dog.
“Go where?” I ask, not moving.
His huff of annoyance is so loud, and the glare he flashes at me when he slowly turns to face me makes me want to pee my pants.
“Home,” he growls again.
“Didn’t you get my text? I thanked you for the offer, but my roommate is going to be in town soon, so I booked a hotel.”
“No,” he snarls, shaking his head before spinning around and continuing to walk away.
“No? No, what?” I stammer.
Sighing, he stops walking, turns around, and marches back to me. “No, you won’t be staying at a fucking hotel,” he snaps, making me take yet another step back until I’m teetering on the edge of the curb, my arms windmilling furiously to stop myself from falling and ending up on my butt in the street.
He moves so quickly I don’t even have time to flinch before his fingers are wrapped around my wrist, and he’s pulling me off the edge and frog-marching me down the sidewalk to where he abandoned my case.
“Oscar, stop. What are you doing? Let go of me,” I call quietly.
“It’s Oz,” he growls, tightening his hold on my wrist until we reach a huge, black Jeep Gladiator pickup truck parked at the curb. Somehow, without releasing his hold on me, he lifts my case up and into the truck bed without showing any signs of exertion.
Grabbing the door handle with his now free hand, he opens the passenger door, then lifts me off my feet and deposits me into the truck, leaning over me and strapping my seat belt in place before he closes the door and quickly climbs into the driver’s seat.
“Osca—Oz.” I correct myself, sucking in a deep breath and hoping my fear isn’t too obvious. “I’ve booked a hotel. I appreciate you offering to allow me to stay, but I’d rather not inconvenience you. We’re strangers, and my friend will be here in a couple of days. It’ll be easier if I just stayed at a hotel till then.”
“No,” he says, pressing a button on the dash that makes the door locks click into place.
My mouth falls open as I twist to look at the door, my hands instinctively reaching for the handle. Before I can curl my fingers around it, the truck engine starts, and we pull away from the curb so quickly I’m slung back into my seat, my hand falling away from the door.
“Osca—Oz,” I pant, panic making my voice even smaller than normal.
“I don’t like this any more than you do, but I said you could stay with me, so you’re fucking staying with me.”
Dumbfounded, my lips fall open, and I start to speak, but he turns his head and flashes me a look that’s so reminiscent of the way he’d look at me before he’d do something cruel to me when we were kids that all of my words melt to dust on my tongue.
Dropping my gaze to my lap, I feel like a scared little girl hoping that the monster beside me will just go away if I make myself as small and unobtrusive as possible. After several long moments when neither of us speaks, I pluck up the courage to look over my shoulder. The lights of the small town I arrived in only minutes ago are getting smaller and smaller as we leave the hustle and bustle of the town behind us and turn onto a quiet, dark road.
Swallowing the lump of fear that’s filling my throat, I force myself to speak. “Osc—Oz, I really think it’d be better?—”
“No,” he interrupts. “You’re staying with me, end of.”
There’s something so final and unarguable about the tone of his voice that silences me, and I become the scared little girl I was the last time we saw each other. Only I’m not twelve anymore. I’m twenty-six, an adult, and more than capable of saying no to this man and meaning it.
Well, in theory, I am. In practice, I’m not really very good at expressing my opinions at all. I’m great at my job, but in my personal life, I’m so non-confrontational that sometimes I feel like a bit of a doormat.
Which is probably why instead of throwing open the door and insisting Oscar stop the truck, I sit placidly in my seat while we get further away from civilization and my hotel. My fingers are shaking as I pluck at the fabric of my shirt, twisting and untwisting the fabric in an effort to calm down and center my thoughts.
I do not want to be here—not that I’m even sure where here is. I don’t have a car, and we’ve been climbing uphill and away from the town for the last ten minutes.
My chest starts to tighten, and when I pull in a breath, it feels too shallow and ineffectual. Having a panic attack in the car with Oscar is completely out of the question. It’s been years since I had one, but when I do, I need a calming presence, not a terrifying one. There’s no way I’ll be able to pull myself out of a panic spiral and slow my breathing if he’s looking at me and judging me for being just as much of a pathetic little girl now as he accused me of being back then.
Pinching the skin on my hand with my nails, I focus on the pain and will my lungs to expand and allow the air I desperately need to stop me from toppling over the edge and passing out to fill my lungs.
Thankfully, it works, and I spend the rest of the drive focused on slow, controlled breathing, right up until we slow to a stop outside a house. A part of me had been worried he was taking me to the middle of nowhere, but despite being at least twenty minutes from town, we’re parked in front of a row of houses, like a mini suburb.
While I’m taking in our surroundings and trying to figure out how the hell to get back to town, Oscar kills the engine and climbs out of the truck without even glancing in my direction. I don’t want him to think I’m waiting for him to open my door, so I fumble with the seat belt, eventually managing to unclip it and throw open the door just as Oscar pulls my suitcase from the truck bed.
“I can get that,” I say, pointing to my case that’s gripped tightly in Oscar’s hand.
His lip curls as he looks me up and down. “I seriously doubt it,” he sneers. “Come on.”
Glancing down at myself, I try to figure out what he’s finding so distasteful, but other than being travel creased and tired, I don’t think I look too bad. I’ve been on a bus for over twenty-six hours, and I’ve dressed for comfort over style, so I’m in super soft cream sweatpants and a matching cropped hoodie with my new jacket over the top and Ugg boots on my feet.
I guess my outfit is kind of basic, but who dresses nice to ride the Greyhound across the county?
“Yo, Oz,” a male voice calls, right as the front door on the house next door to the one Oscar is walking toward swings open and a giant man steps out.
“Danny,” Oscar calls back, his scowl melting away and instantly replaced with a wide grin. The change in his demeanor is startling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Oscar smile. The only time he was ever happy was when he was making me miserable, but even then, he didn’t smile, he leered.
Right now, he looks genuinely pleased to see the hulking beast of a man from next door. I try to hold in my surprise, but I know he notices my reaction because he snaps his head in my direction, and all of his happiness dissolves and is replaced with hatred in the blink of an eye.
Sucking in a sharp gasp, I step back, crossing my arms over my chest in a futile attempt to protect myself.
“Hey, you must be Henrietta,” the guy from next door, Danny, says with an easy smile as he jogs over to me and holds his hand out to me to shake.
Oscar is tall, but Danny is even taller, closer to seven feet than six. His shoulders are broad, and he clearly spends a lot of time in the gym because the fabric of his shirt clings to his bulging muscles like it’s stretched so tight it’ll rip apart any second.
It takes me a moment to realize that he’s still holding his hand out to me, and I’m just staring at him. My eyes move quickly to Oz, and I find him once again scowling at me. “Sorry,” I mutter, turning to focus on Danny again. “You can call me Etta, I haven’t used my full name in years,” I say quietly, managing to force the words out of my mouth despite how shaky I feel.
“Etta,” Danny says, rolling my name over his tongue in an oddly appealing way. “Cute. So, how was your trip? I don’t think Oz mentioned where you were coming from. It can’t have been far if you rode the bus,” he says, sounding genuinely interested, his smile so bright and wide that I find myself relaxing a little and smiling back at him.
“It wasn’t too bad. I came from Las Vegas,” I tell him, trying to force some confidence into my voice despite Oscar’s looming angry presence behind me.
“Vegas?” Danny barks, his brow furrowing. “Fuck, that’s a hell of a drive. Could you not afford the plane?” His question is so blunt, I actually blink.
“I don’t…I don’t like to fly,” I admit meekly, surreptitiously glancing at Oscar from the corner of my eye and grimacing when I hear him scoff.
“So, you rode a bus for twenty hours instead? Were you on your own? That doesn’t seem safe for a tiny little thing like you,” Danny says, either not noticing or simply not commenting on his friend’s annoyance.
“It was just over twenty-six hours, but it could have been worse,” I tell him, not mentioning the weird man who was so pushy, asking for my cell phone number and where I was going, that I pretended to be asleep for six hours until he finally got off the bus.
“Well, I was going to suggest we go out for dinner to welcome you to Jumpers Row, but I’m guessing you’re probably not interested in going back into town if you’ve been stuck on a bus for so long,” Danny says, glancing at Oscar, then back to me.
“Jumpers Row?” I ask.
Danny’s brow furrows, and he turns and looks at Oscar before focusing his attention back on me again. “Oz didn’t tell you? That’s what we call this place.” He spreads his arms wide, motioning to the cul-de-sac of houses. “Jumpers Row.”
Unwilling to look at the man who has barely uttered a word to me since he stole my case and dragged me to his truck, I just shrug. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Oh, well, obviously it’s on account of everyone who lives here being smoke jumpers,” Danny says, like he’s expecting me to understand what that means even though I still have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Smoke jumpers?” I question.