A short stream of air leaves my nose. I walk to my truck, lean in the open door, and retrieve a card from the center console.
“Here.” I hold it out to her.
She takes it cautiously, her gaze going over the words. “Connor?” she asks, looking up at me. Her voice is sweeter now, wrapping around my name, like the attitude she had one minute ago never existed.
I nod. “And you are?”
She opens her mouth to speak but hesitates, closing her lips. “Brynn,” she finally says, nodding once as she says it.
“It was nice to meet you, Brynn. Call me if you can’t find a job that lets you take selfies and post them all day.” I keep a straight face, even though her jaw drops. Her eyes are rough waters in an instant, as though all I had to do was snap my fingers.
She gives me a nasty look and stomps past me. For a second, I fear she’s going to reach out a hand and rake her fingernails down the length of my truck. She disappears around the bumper and then I spot her on the sidewalk. She walks quickly, her head ducked.
“Fucking ridiculous,” I mutter, climbing into my truck and slowly peeling it off the fire hydrant and back into the street.
Now there are two crazies for Cassidy to warn her neighbor about.
3
Brynn
Fucking hell.
I’ve been all over this town. Nobody is hiring. At least not for what I’m qualified to do. Fat lot of good my degree in event planning is doing for me now. All the jobs that don’t require some type of education or degree have been snapped up by college kids home for the summer.
I have some money socked away, but I need more. I can’t just depend on my parents’ money. Their fishing business is lucrative, but there’s a chance they’ll have a bad season. It’s unlikely, but there’s always a chance. I need to cover a few bases without them. Namely, just enough to get me on a plane to somewhere in South America. Probably the Brazilian beach town I visited a few times as a child.
I’ll figure it out more once I get there, but my plan is to buy a bunch of beach chairs and rent them out every day. Same inventory, new money. I saw it happening when I went to Costa Rica for Spring Break my sophomore year of college. At the time, even dazed from shots of a liquor I didn’t know the name of, I saw what was happening and thoughtduh.This person knows what they’re doing down here.
It’s not exactly my dream job, but when life goes to shit, choices must be made.
Connor Vale’s business card has been staring at me for three days. I put it in the trash when I got home the night I played chicken with his truck, but the next morning I dug it out. Now it’s sitting on the kitchen counter, reminding me of a man with light brown hair and kind eyes.
And a job that pays in cash.
That means no W-2’s, no social security number needed, and most importantly, no background check.
The last thing I need is someone up here knowing what happened.
“Uggghhh,” I groan, taking my cell from my back pocket. I type in the number on the front of the card and stare at it, my thumb hovering over the screen. With a swipe, I cancel the call and put the phone back in my pocket.
I can only imagine what Connor thinks of me. I stepped in front of his car, for goodness sake. He might think I was frozen, the proverbial deer in the headlights, but no. It wasn’t a good night. I’d wandered through town, watched the families eating ice cream from the hand-dipped place, and listened to the music. It was too much for me. My mind raced, wondering what she was thinking that day. How someone could make that choice.
So I tried it too.
I saw the truck coming, the driver nothing but a shape behind a wheel. I wasn’t trying to kill myself, even though I knew that could be a consequence. I’ve never been able to understand why she stepped in front of my caron purpose. She didn’t trip in the street. She wasn’t a distracted pedestrian. Through the windshield, she met my eyes. She knew what she was doing. She made the decision.
It cost me everything.
My life, my job, my friends. It didn’t matter that I was innocent. That’s the day I learned the life-crushing impact held by headlines. Nobody reads the whole story when the soundbite is so sensational.
All my dirt came to the surface, like sunken ships resurrected by a hurricane. Troubled youth. Underage drinking citation. And then, the big one. Cited for driving under the influence. It didn’t matter that I was stone sober when it happened. My name was dragged through mud, spit at, and desecrated. The worst headline of all got the most clicks. They must have delighted in watching the numbers tick higher and higher.
Baby-Killer.
It didn’t matter that I was innocent, and due process had understood that from the beginning.
The article made it clear I didn’t kill the baby, but nobody reads the article. All it took was one unflattering photo taken at a college party, alongside a picture of the scene of the accident, complete with the stroller crushed like an accordion, and people assumed I had been drunk-driving and killed a mother and her baby.
