Home > Finders Keepers (Lost and Found #3)(9)

Finders Keepers (Lost and Found #3)(9)
Author: Nicole Williams

“What was that for?” I’d demanded, so shocked I almost leapt out of my skin. That had been my first kiss, at least the first one I could remember, and not the romantic kind a person means when referring to a “first kiss.” My mom had been gone for too long to remember if she’d ever kissed me, and the only affection my dad showed me was slowing his fist just before it landed on me. It was the first time I’d ever been kissed, and even though I was only six years old and I had a lot of life still ahead of me, I knew no matter who or how I was kissed in the future, nothing would compare to that one on the bus.

None never had.

“It looked like you needed one,” she’d replied before moving back to her seat up front.

Slamming the brakes, I pounded my forehead against the steering wheel. “Fuck me.” I’d turned into the bleeding heart, nostalgic chump I’d had nightmares of becoming. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d managed to repress all of those memories and feelings for so many years I’d almost convinced myself I’d forgotten them. Boy, had I been wrong.

So why now? Why those memories? Why couldn’t I contain and control them? The longer I thought about it, the more questions cropped up. Loads of questions, zero answers. If Jesse wasn’t two states over, I might have raced to his place and forced his ass out of bed to keep me company and get my thoughts off their current track. But no, the pu**y-whipped sucker was probably cuddled up beside his girlfriend—correction: fiancé—having pu**y-whipped sucker dreams about white picket fences and honeymoon destinations. As much as I wanted to tell him he was making the biggest mistake of his life marrying Rowen Sterling, I couldn’t. Marrying the woman he loved at twenty-one wasn’t a mistake for a guy like Jesse Walker. Shit, Jesse could have married the woman he loved at any age and it wouldn’t have been a mistake. Jesse was the marrying, loyal, loving type.

Me? It didn’t matter what age I was or how much I thought I loved the woman. Marriage, rings, and vows were not created with people like me in mind.

Other than Jesse, Rowen wasn’t bad to talk to, but since she was where Jesse was—spooning two states away—she was out too. There was Brandy, but she and I never did much . . . talking. At one time, Josie had been one of my most trusted confidants. Given she was the one I needed to talk about, not to mention the one I had to keep my distance from, I had to scratch her off the list, too. After that, there was no one. I had three people—well, two—I could talk to about things that needed talking out.

My dad had figured it out twenty-one years ago: I was a good-for-nothing bastard.

Pounding the wheel one last time with my forehead, I was about to punch the gas, hoping that Clay left a few swigs in his bottle before he passed out, when something in the distance caught my attention. A bright ball of color lit up the night. Almost like someone had started a huge bonfire in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nothing but hundreds of acres of barren land and our trailer. Which meant . . .

I punched the gas so hard my truck fishtailed out of control. I eased off the gas just enough to regain control then tore down the bumpy road, watching that ball of light get bigger and brighter. I was still a half mile back when I saw the actual flames rolling off of the trailer. We had a not-quite-dried-up well, but it was clear by the time I slammed the brakes in front of the lawn chairs that there was nothing left to salvage. The entire thing was engulfed in flames, close to the point of being unrecognizable. Everything was burning. Everything was gone.

“DAD!” I yelled, throwing the truck door open and leaping out. Panic settled in my stomach. Dread soon followed. It was after two in the morning, which meant he was passed out drunk. Since he only left the trailer to restock his liquor supply, he couldn’t be somewhere else. His truck had been repo’d years ago, his license revoked years before that, and no one in our county or the next one over would loan him a car. As much as I wanted to cling to the hope that he was somewhere, anywhere else, I knew exactly where he was.

That was when an explosion rocked the trailer and vibrated the ground below my feet. Probably one of the propane tanks. My body and mind flipped to autopilot and, despite the beating I’d taken earlier, I sprinted toward that trailer like I was good as new. I was still a good ten yards back when the heat hit me. The fire was so hot it scalded my face. The bruises and slashes from earlier probably didn’t help any. A few yards closer and even if I wanted to breathe—which I didn’t because the air was so hot it burned my nostrils and lungs—I couldn’t have. The fire had sucked all of the oxygen out of the air.

As I moved closer, I squinted and covered my nose and mouth with my arm to keep the smoke from hitting me full force. The closer I got, the more I realized nothing was left in that trailer to save. The man I’d lived with for twenty-one years wasn’t going to be draped over his chair in the back, snoring and unscathed. I knew that, but the autopilot I was on wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t have stopped moving forward even if I wanted to.

By the time I made it to the burning door, I was coughing so hard I felt like I was expecting a lung to come up. I didn’t think—I simply reacted. Grabbing the handle, I pulled on it as a scream ripped through my body. White hot pain shot from my hand up my arm, so intense I felt close to passing out. The only time I’d felt pain close to that had been when that behemoth brahma down in Casper had come down on my shin a few years back, fracturing my femur.

The smell hit me next. That acrid, metallic scent was so thick in the air I could almost taste it . . . and I knew what it was. I didn’t have to have smelled it before to know that human flesh was the only thing that could smell as unforgettable as that. I reassured myself it was my flesh, my palm, causing the smell. Nothing or no one else.

   
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