Page 5 of Ly to Me

“Will do.”

I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, then turned on the radio. Not a lot of stations played out here, and the few I remembered from another lifetime ago had all since changed. I settled for static that let in a sweet country song between the white noise while I finished my smoke.

At some point today, I’d have to find somewhere to get cleaned up before going to see Jamie again. But the only other place I could think of was the same place I didn’t want to step within a hundred feet of.

I put out my cig, crushing it into my car’s ashtray. Going back to that hole was inevitable, but it wouldn’t be today. Jamie’s suddenly sounded much better.

Anywhere buttherewas always better.

TEN YEARS AGO

“Lyyraaa!” His voice liquified my bones and petrified my body. “Lyyyyraaaaaa,” he said softer, though still loud enough to penetrate the thin windows of my bedroom from the front porch he was lingering on. Not even past the front door yet, and he was already hollerin’ for me to come outside my room.

I jolted from my bed and locked the door, then curled up along my bed again, pushing my back into the far corner. Pinching my eyelids tight, I pictured being anywhere but here. Anywhere but where my mama left me to finish my last year of school with her ex-boyfriend, who used to be like a stepfather to me. Until she left and he became…desperate.

‘You’re a big girl now. You don’t need me anymore,’ she had reminded me. ‘You’ve always been better than me at this shit, anyhow.’

Perhaps that was true.

Maybe I was old enough at seventeen to make my own decisions and take care of myself. I’d been doing it for years now—cooking, keeping the house as tidy as I could, making sure I got to school on time every day. Things my mother had never been good at.

Now, losing all the money I brought in? She was real good at that.

Almost better than Chet.

I wished she’d just taken him with her when she left.

“Pretty girl, where’d ya go?” Chet was creeping closer, humming eerily down the small hall that had but three doors leading to three rooms—a shared bathroom, his bedroom, and mine. Three options, yet I knew the one he was coming for was the one I wished would turn invisible. I could almost feel his hot breath on my neck as he taunted me from the hall, could smell that putrid rum and coke slipping through his thin lips. Compared to other men, Chet was lanky and long like a wire, butunlike other men, I didn’t dare try to coerce him into giving me money by using my looks—he’d have none, anyway.

So I buried myself deeper into the corner of my bedroom, clutching my thin blanket up to my trembling chin.

“Quit hidin’.” Chet jiggled the doorknob, and I cowered further until there was no more room left between the walls and me. “I will git you one day soon, pretty girl. You mark my words.”

The threats were always the same. He’d go out on binges, sometimes for days, and he’d come back when the money was gone, and the IOUs were no longer keeping him afloat. And when he came back, he was desperate to have his other needs met.

The doorknob jiggled fiercely. “Open up the fuckin’ door!”

I pressed a blanket against my lips, wanting to scream into it, but kept silent, hoping he’d go away like he always ended up doing. The bed shook, my legs quaking in fear of this maybe being the night he finally busted the door down as he’d promised to do on more than one occasion.

“You better be savin’ yourself for me. You’re mine, ya hear me in there, Lyra?”

I scowled at the door as my fear turned into white-hot anger. How dare he think he can just have me because I lived under his roof, right where my mama left me. If it were possible, I’d be gone already. But with only a few months left of school, the least I could do was ride it out and then get the fuck out of here. For good.

He laughed maniacally on the other side of the door, the sound of his forehead rolling against the wood a telling sign he was giving up soon. Finally. “You want me. I see it all the time. You can’t keep your eyes from me, pretty girl.”

Fear crept back in, making tears roll down my cheeks.

A few more months. That’s all. I could do this.

I could do this.

3

Carver

The Coyotes

The Florida heat was getting to me, the water hissing from the sprinklers surrounding the barn doing nothing to cool me down as I walked through them. Jamie was lingering somewhere inside the facility, taking his sweet-ass time talkingwith the operations manager who should’ve been done taking inventory by now. I was ready to get in there and tend to a new strain I was testing without having my nosey business partner breathing down my neck.