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which I hastily gathered in my arms. My mother’s box which was now empty. I scanned the surrounding area. Most of the contents were floating in puddles.
My heart sank. I dropped to my knees and lifted the note my mother had given me. The ink dripped down the page along with the last words my mother ever had for me.
My necklace! I’d taken off the sunflower pendant she’d given me. I crawled around the grass and mud on my hands and knees until something in the corner of my eye caught my attention.
I got to my feet and picked it up. It was a picture. One I’d never seen before. I stumbled over to Rusty, my glorified lawn ornament, and got inside. I shut the door and held the picture in front of me.
The photo was of my mother when she was about my age. She was standing in front of Rusty and Blue with a big smile on her face wearing jeans and a mid-riff bearing yellow tank top. 1995 was written on the back of the picture, the year before I was born. Underneath it was a repetitive watermark for OUTSKIRTS PHOTO-MAT.
Mother HAD been in Outskirts after all. Before I was born.
How was all this possible?
The picture was also proof that Rusty and Blue weren’t just bought for me recently and stored away in secret. She’d owned them for over twenty years.
Looking at that picture was like looking into the life of a total stranger. It left me with almost no answers and a thousand more questions. The entire ordeal went from frustrating to infuriating in the tick of the clock.
Mother had kept so much from me and by the looks of things she’d also kept me from so much.
Maybe she thought that somehow living in her camper, driving her truck, would help me feel closer to the real her, but the only thing I ended up feeling, sitting in the driver’s seat of Rusty, one of her many decade’s old secrets, was furious.
How could I feel close to her? I never even knew her.
The person in the picture was someone I never knew. That woman looked happy. Adventurous even. The woman I knew was frail. Weak. A doormat who never stood up to my father or the church.
Not for herself.
Not even for me.
“Why didn’t you just leave him?” I asked out loud to my smiling mother in the picture as the anger started boiling in my gut until it bubbled over and I found myself shouting at her. “Why didn’t you just leave him?” I repeated, tearing the picture in a thousand little pieces and throwing them out the window. “You fucking coward!” I screamed, pounding on the steering wheel.
My throat tightened and a heaviness grew in my chest like my heart didn’t know whether to beat faster or stop beating altogether. “Did you leave me all this to show me the life you could’ve had, but didn’t? Why!?” I pounded the wheel again and then again, and again and again until my vision was blurry and all I could see was the redness of my own heated rage. “You’re a fucking coward! You fucking COWARD!” I pounded the wheel until the skin across my knuckles split and blood dripped between my fingers.
Strong hands bit into my biceps, yanking me from the cab. I was spun around by my shoulders and found myself face to face with Finn. “I like it when you swear,” he said, pressing closer.
“Finn, get off me! Get off me! Let me go!” I wailed, struggling to free myself from his grip. Kicking out my legs only to connect with the air as he evaded my every move.
A growl tore from his throat. Finn picked me up and walked me to the back of the truck, setting me on the open tailgate. He pushed himself between my legs and hovered over me to keep me from leaping off.
“Let me go,” I demanded, pushing at his hard chest. “I don’t have time for your broodiness right now.”
Finn held my wrists together with one hand. “No, of course you don’t. You’re too busy tearing up pictures and screaming at no one.”
“Let me go,” I repeated.
“No,” he said between clenched teeth.
“Just go! Leave me alone. Leave meeeeeee!” I wailed as I pounded against his stone chest.
“You don’t want to hit me,” he warned, his eyes hardened.
“Then let me go.”
“Why?” He stepped in closer, unaffected by my attempt to fight against him. My inner thighs were touching his outer thighs.
“Because she did!” I screamed, my eyes sprang open to find his cold blue gaze. “She could have run anywhere and taken me with her. Instead she left him but she left me too. She was a coward who couldn’t make the right decision and I love her. I love her…but I hate her. I hate her so much…so…” I was interrupted when Finn’s lips pressed against mine, momentarily rendering me stupid. I pointed my toes toward the sky to avoid my initial instinct which was to wrap my legs around him. It was so consuming that I momentarily forgot to fight him off, but I didn’t need to, he pulled his lips from mine.
“Stop doing that,” I said. I pushed him off but he stayed between my legs, his hands on my bare back just under the hem of his big t-shirt I was wearing. His gaze hardened. I could see the conflict written in his lined forehead and the deep V between his eyes. I had no doubt the conflict had everything to do with me.
And kissing me.
“It’s your fault that I do it,” Finn said, his voice deep and smooth against my chin and then my neck.
“So that’s your plan? Kiss me every time you want to shut me up?” I asked, still feeling every bit of my anger but also feeling something else. Something that sent tingles between my legs and an ache in my core. “Thank you for saving me. Really. Thank you. I appreciate it,” my voice cracked. “But you can just leave me alone now. And please, STOP kissing me,” I said in almost a whisper.
“I’m going to kiss you whenever I want to kiss you,” Finn stated as if I didn’t have a say in the matter.
The early morning sunlight highlighted the beads of sweat trickling from his shoulders down Finn’s broad chest and across the valleys of his defined abs. He was standing so close that we were breathing in each other’s air. “Whenever you want to kiss me?” I laughed. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this. You’re always mad at me. Why did you save me? Why do you keep kissing me when you’re always mad at me?”
“It’s when I’m pissed off at you that I want to kiss you the most,” Finn said, his voice flowing over my skin like a silky blanket. He slid me closer so I could feel the outline of his rigid erection as if he were proving a point. He lowered his lips to mine and consumed my mouth in a greedy kiss that had me shaking with need and spinning with confusion.
“Do you always kiss everyone you hate?” I asked, yanking my lips from his.
“Does this feel like hate to you?” he growled looking between us as if he could see the connection there.
His nostrils flared. He pulled me flush against him so I could feel every bit of him. Almost like he was showing me how it could feel if only it weren’t for our clothes between us.
“I know what it feels like to be hated,” I assured him as he brushed his lips over my jaw and licked his way around to my neck, stopping to suck the sensitive spot behind my ear.
I didn’t have on anything underneath his oversized shirt that hung off my one shoulder and I knew if I moved he’d be able to see the evidence of how he affected me soaked through the light cotton fabric.
“What exactly does that mean?” he pulled back again, staring daggers into my eyes. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing. Forget about it,” I answered, regretting my sudden overshare and wishing I could take it back.
“Sawyer. Tell me. Who hurt you?” he growled. From the murderous look in his eyes, I knew there was no way he was going to let this go.
“My father was very involved in the church and the church believed that women were secondary to men. Dad took that very literally. Mom and I were both second class citizens in our own home. He treated us both like children who needed to be disciplined on a daily basis. The more he drank…the worse the discipline became.”
“He hurt you,” Finn confirmed, softly rubbin
g the pad of his thumb under my eye. “How could he hurt YOU?” he whispered.
The softness of his voice melted around me, wrapping me in its soothing warmth. “Not just me. My mom. Well, mostly my mom.” I looked over at my mangled camper. “It was always worse during a storm. The sound of the thunder outside masked what was really going on inside.”
“That’s why…” Finn said, his voice trailing off as he registered the reason for my freak out last night.
“Yeah, that’s why.” I pointed to the wreckage. “They can be quite destructive.” I looked to Finn. “But not quite as destructive as my father.”
Finn threaded his fingers through my hair and held the back of my head as if he was afraid I was going to pull away. “Who were you yelling about before? Who left you?” he asked, searching my eyes for answers. I evaded his eyes but he held me by the back of my head. “Who left you?” he asked again, tugging slightly.
“My mother,” I answered on an exhale, feeling the anger bubbling to the surface all over again.
As if he could sense my shifting emotions, Finn kissed me again and I was lost in the sensation of his skilled lips. His hand snaked its way under the hem of my shirt and slid up my torso, his fingertips grazing the underside of my breasts.
My breath hitched. My nipples tightened. Like a reflex, I tightened my thighs around Finn’s legs, pulling him closer. “What are you doing?” I gasped.
