Chapter 5
DAN
Carson
Hi it’s me Carson can you pick me up pity please? No worries if you can’t! Violet the skate ref said she could drive me after she gets her fiend from work but you said to call so if I need and I ned a ride thanks you!
Oh I’m at SkateTown USA in Spencer!
No rush, I made friend!
Also it’s Carson!
Ihad a feeling Carson was tipsy when I got her texts, but I am not prepared for the swaying, smiling woman, cheeks flushed and curls limp around her shoulders, slumped on the curb outside the roller rink.
I park my car, my headlights landing on her and the tiny woman with purple hair standing beside her.
“Who are you?” the tiny woman barks as soon as I’m out of the car.
“Dan,” I tell her.
“And you’re here for…” She arches an eyebrow like this is a test.
“Carson.” I glance down at my sister’s best friend. She’s smiling up at me, her deep-blue eyes a little watery, and something in my chest goes watery too.
“It’s okay, Violet. He’s not a murderer,” Carson slurs.
She pushes herself up from the curb and nearly makes it to standing before pitching forward.
I throw my arms out to catch her, but the tiny woman—Violet, apparently—beats me to it.
She wraps an warm around Carson’s waist to right her.
Then she lifts her phone and snaps a photo of me, the flash lighting up the night, blinding me.
“If she’s not home in forty-five minutes, I’m sending this photo to the cops.”
I tower over this woman. Could probably do biceps curls with her. But something about her tone tells me she knows plenty of ways to hurt me that I’d never see coming.
I respect it.
For the first time since I got Carson’s texts, filled with silly little typos and too many exclamation points, I let out a sigh of relief.
The thought of her being drunk and at the mercy of that idiot asshole in a truck, in need of a ride in the middle of the night, had every muscle in my body tensed for a fight.
A big part of me spent the drive here prepared to pull up and throw hands.
I’m already in legal trouble, so what’s a little more?
Marcel would lose it, but I think it would be worth it.
But it’s clear that Carson found someone to look out for her until I could get here.
“Thanks for staying with me, Violent,” Carson says, then reaches her arms high over her head, yawning and stretching like a cat in a sunbeam. “I mean, Violet.”
“Hey, my derby name is Violet Rage, so it’s all good. You were close,” she says. She gently pulls her arm away and lets Carson test her drunk legs. “But seriously, text me when you get home. I put my number in your phone. And I’m serious about tryouts. I think you’d make a killer blocker.”
The fact that this tiny fighter plays roller derby makes a lot of sense.
Carson snorts. “Sure thing.” She takes two steps toward the passenger door and trips. Violet and I both lunge, but Carson catches herself. “Whoopsie,” she giggles, then climbs headfirst into my car.
“Sorry, I gave her a sip from my flask to take the edge off. I didn’t think she’d chug,” Violet says after the door slams.
“Where’s the leash kid who brought her here?”
Violet barks out a laugh. “Hey, I like you,” she says, pointing a finger at me. “He ditched her. Apparently his ex came a-calling and he went a-running.”
“Thank god,” I mutter, though as happy as I am that Carson isn’t ending her night with that asshole, I still want to rearrange his face for treating her like that.
How did he not take one look at her and know what a lucky fucker he was to spend an evening with her?
How did he listen to her voice and not know that he had a rare opportunity?
“She dodged a bullet with that one. He looked like the kind of guy who owns one towel that’s never seen the inside of a washing machine.
” Violet rolls her eyes, then looks at Carson through the window.
Her cheek is pressed up against the glass, her eyes fluttering shut like she’s seconds from passing out.
“Anyway, drive nice. I need her in one piece. I think she might be the secret to our season.”
I hope Carson will remember what that’s about in the morning, because I have no idea.
And I don’t want to waste time asking, because Carson is clearly walking that line between sleepy drunk and barfing drunk.
And while I’ll take care of her no matter what happens, I’d prefer it if my BMW didn’t end up smelling like a frat house.
Violet gives me one last look that I think is meant to convey that she knows several places to hide a body, then heads over to a battered old Toyota parked at the end of the empty lot.
I start the car, but before I can pull out of the parking spot, Carson reaches over from the passenger seat and tugs at the collar of my T-shirt.
“Wait, do you have a tattoo?”
I was in bed when she texted, scrolling through old work files, and I threw on an old, worn Princeton shirt. The collar is loose, and it reveals the edge of the abacus I have tattooed below my collarbone. She swipes at the edge of the ink with her warm finger, raising goose bumps on my skin.
“A few,” I tell her, clearing my throat and trying not to focus on the spot where she touched me.
“Any I can see?” she asks.
“No.”
“Oh,” she replies, and I silently kick myself for being so abrupt.
I expect Carson to quickly fall asleep to the purr of the engine, but we’re barely to the highway when she starts talking. The words come fast, her drunken brain spitting out sentence fragments, and I only get part of the story.
“—tried to make me eat a veggie burger and, like, whatever, vegetarians, I can get down with a black bean burger but this was clearly fake meat and I’m so sorry to the Earth but fake meat is the worst, or at least this was, and he sucked, Dan.
He, like, sucked out loud. So who cares that he left to meet another woman.
I mean, I just feel sorry for her because I cannot imagine that Gabe has ever heard about the clitoris, not to mention knowing where to find it.
And I’m done having sex where I don’t come.
I know I can! I’ve done it by myself so many times!
But these, these boys are just hopeless. ”
My foot slips off the gas pedal.
And of course now she stops talking, and I worry it’s my turn to talk.
But I have no idea what to say to that. I mean, she’s right—that guy definitely doesn’t know where the clit is.
And burgers made of fake meat are terrible.
I should probably go with that. If I start talking about the clit with Carson, I’m going to have to pull this car over, because it will be unsafe for me to drive.
But before I can say anything, Carson sighs.
Then sucks in a deep breath.
Then shouts into the night, “I just wanna get fucked, you know?!”
Thank god there’s no one on the road at this time of night, because I swerve clear into the other lane. Carson doesn’t even seem to notice.
God bless tequila.
“Everyone around me is just so disgustingly in love. Grace and Decker, Wyatt and Owen. And I want that. I do. Love seems great. But that’s not what I need right now.
I don’t need a great love. Great love will find me eventually.
It’s never too late. I’m not in a rush. But in the meantime, I just want to have great sex.
And I never have! Not even close! My boyfriend in college, Kyle, was very sweet, but he seemed to think I was made of candy glass and he always called it ‘making love,’ which, like, gag, but also it was just boring in and out.
I have yet to encounter a man on Hinge or even in the wild who can, like, really give it to me, you know?
They’re all trying too hard or not trying hard enough or chasing after their exes, and I’m so tired of these disappointing men and all their stupid large fish. ”
I’m not sure if fish is a euphemism for something or if she’s somehow dated a string of disappointing fishermen, but I’m not going to ask.
Couldn’t even if I wanted to. My voice is trapped in my throat, and I need every ounce of my focus to keep this car on the road.
Because while my mouth can’t form words, my brain has plenty.
You could give her great sex. You could pull this car over right now and erase all those disappointing memories. The back seat is tight, but you could make it work. For her.
Absolutely the fuck not. Not with my little sister’s best friend.
Not while I’m living in her house. Not in my car on the side of a rural Indiana highway.
Not when there’s a semi-decent chance that if their lawyers are good enough and my lawyer is bad enough and a judge is annoyed enough, I could wind up spending some time in a federal prison.
Not when my life is probably over even if I escape conviction, even if this whole case goes away. I’ll probably never work in finance again regardless.
But that doesn’t stop me from spending a few miles of dark, empty highway imagining what it would be like to show Carson just what she deserves and how much I want her.
It was almost two years ago that I saw her, really saw her, for the first time since she was a kid.
Everything in New York had just fallen apart.
I’d lost my job, my friends, and I’d had to put my condo on the market.
The legal implications were only just starting to become clear, and I’d already started draining my bank accounts trying to defend myself.
All I knew then was that I needed to get out of the city, and with no money and nowhere else to go, I went to the last place I ever wanted to be.
I went home.
I walked into the Half Pint one warm summer day, and there she was, sitting at the bar with my sister, her golden hair shining in the dim light of the bar.
I didn’t recognize her at first, not as the roly-poly little kid who used to spend the night in Grace’s room, the two of them making up dance routines and giggling way too loudly.
It had been a long time since I’d been home, nearly five years.
And I hadn’t seen Carson—or maybe I just hadn’t noticed her—for years before that.
But there she was. Unmissable now, and a total knockout.
That was how I felt when I saw her: knocked the fuck out.
Over the last two years, as I’ve moved back and forth between Cardinal Springs and New York, trying to salvage my career and my life, trying to avoid prosecution or prison, I’ve tried to keep my distance.
Tried to ignore the way I feel every time our paths cross in our tiny hometown.
I’ve done what’s always come naturally to me—kept quiet.
But now I’m living with her, this luminous woman who just told me she wants to get fucked.
God, is she asking? Because if that’s what she wants—not a great love, but great sex—I could be the perfect person for her.
I’m not a permanent fixture here, and I’m sure as shit not the love of her life.
I could give her what she needs and then disappear so she could find the great love she desires.
I could just…fuck her.
If that’s what she wants.
But she has to ask. She has to want it. This can’t be about what I want.
As if in answer, I hear the sound of light snoring from the passenger seat.