Cherry Popper Read online

  I realized that my heart was pounding in my chest as I listened to him speak. I was trembling too, mostly with anger, at the thought of what that asshole of a father had done to those two boys when they had needed him the most. If I ever got anywhere near him, there was going to be trouble.

  “He even put his finger on the trigger. That was when Wayne walked in on us, and he…fuck—he went hog-wild. I’d never seen him like that. He was like a mad man. His eyes went black. He knocked the gun out of my father’s hand and the two of them started fighting. My dad was swinging blows and Wayne was mostly trying to evade him, but once Wayne pushed him against the mantle over the fire. Dad hit his head and—”

  Silence.

  My skin seemed to tense and tighten as he spoke, the horror sinking in. I knew at once, what he was trying to tell me.

  “We didn’t know what to do with the body. We panicked.” He shook his head. “We were stupid. We waited till it was the middle of the night and then we took him out, tied him to the wheel of his car, and drove the car into a lake outside of town. And that was that. We told everyone Dad had just upped and left one night. He was horrible to everybody so nobody cared, anyway.”

  “And that’s when you moved to Cold Creek?” I breathed the words out.

  He nodded. “Wayne thought it was best for me to get out of town. And he was right. Wayne was caught up in all sorts of shit himself with a local biker gang, and he didn’t want me anywhere near it. So he just told social services that Dad had abandoned us and that I needed somewhere new to live.”

  So that was how they ended up in Cold Creek. And to think, back then, I had been so damn sure that this man was the epitome of swagger, confidence, and cool. When all he was doing was just crushing down a mess of emotions within him every single day just to survive.

  “Now you know why I never let anyone get too close,” he admitted. “I was worried. Fuck Mia, what if I have a wife and kids and then they drained that lake, found him, and put the pieces together? What if Wayne was to turn up again, and tell me that we needed to go on the run? And what if I have kids, and they find out? How will they live knowing they’ve got a murderer as a father? I couldn’t do that to anyone I loved, so I never let myself get close to any woman. That’s why I have the garage too. It’s honest, it’s quiet, and nobody bothers me all the way out there.”

  “Have you heard from Wayne recently?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not for nearly a year now. He went and got involved with some heavy shit and he stays away from me to keep it away from me.”

  I fell silent again, my mind racing. All of this was so much to take in. His father died in a horrible accident, and he and his brother had hidden the body in a lake, and came to my small town looking for a safe haven. Where he had found it for nearly ten years. It looked as if he hadn’t told a single soul about this until now. As he’d been speaking, it seemed as though the words coming out of his mouth were unfamiliar to him, fresh and new, like he’d never imagined he would actually have to come out and speak them.

  “No one in their right mind would have blamed either of you,” I spoke slowly, almost reverently.

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong. Everyone would have blamed my brother. He was a known troublemaker. Anyway, isn’t that the cardinal sin; you’re not allowed to take down your own blood?”

  “But that goes for your father as well,” I pointed out fiercely, suddenly feeling a deep urge to protect that teenage version of Jesse who’d grown up beneath the thumb of such a monstrous man. “He was the one who hurt his wife and sons. He was the one who came after you.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Nothing anyone says or does can change the past.”

  “Listen to me, Jesse. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I argued fiercely. “You didn’t know what you were doing, neither of you did. You were kids. When I think back how I was when I was fifteen, I was just a child who had every privilege handed to her on a plate. You needed support after your mother died, and instead you got…” I trailed off. There weren’t words for how awful their father had been to them, not in my whole vocabulary. I squeezed his hand again, conveying my anger on his behalf as best I could. “You shouldn’t have to live with the fear of this anymore,” I murmured. “We need to do something to fix it.”

  He said nothing so I touched his face and tilted it around until he was looking at me. It felt like I was seeing him for the first time. “Hey, we’re going to find a way to fix things, okay? We’re going to find a way to make this better.”

  “I don’t see how,” he muttered, his jaw clenched. “I can’t take the risk of Wayne being hurt by anything I do. It will just have to be a secret that will die with me.”

  “No, it has to come out. Otherwise, you will never be free. You will always be living with the fear of a knock on your door.” I closed my eyes and felt that familiar feeling swell up inside me, even though I knew I should have ignored it—that now wasn’t the time. “I love you,” I blurted out. Then for a long, quiet moment, I was sure I’d just said the damn stupidest thing I could’ve ever said.

  To my surprise, once the shock had faded from his face, Jesse’s eyes softened as he brought his fingers to my face and stroked my cheek gently. “Oh, Mia, Mia…I love you too,” he murmured.

  I smiled. “Really?”

  “More than you’ll ever know.”

  “When did you know?”

  “I always knew you were special and I used to masturbate to the picture of you in our yearbook.”

  “Ugh, you pervert,” I teased.

  “I know. I was so in lust, but then you turned me down and I convinced myself you were just a spoiled rich girl.”

  I frowned. “I turned you down because I thought you just wanted to add me to your list of conquests.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Wow! What a missed opportunity that was?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, but then I came back to your garage.”

  “And how you came back. Hell, I couldn’t even think straight when I saw that bead of sweat that ran down your neck and into the valley between your breasts.”

  I laughed. “Are you serious? You were getting turned on by me sweating?”

  “You think I’m joking. You were the girl I had jacked off to, all through high school and you were standing in front of me in a tight white tank top and all I could think of was you on top of me without the tank top, sweating.”

  “Yeah, but when did you know you loved me?” I asked eagerly.

  “I think I knew I was falling for you when we were in the shower. When I kissed you and it felt like you had reached into my stomach and squeezed it. All I could do after that was tell myself I couldn’t let you get close or I would hurt you with my past. But it killed me when I woke up and found you gone. I realized that what I’d said and not said the night before had been what made you leave.”

  “So why did it take you so long to come find me then?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to be with a mechanic. I wanted to give you all the things you had grown up with, taken for granted.”

  I put my fingers against his lips to stop him from carrying on, but he caught my hand and moved it away. “This needs to be said, Mia.”

  “Okay, but you’re wrong. I don’t need any of that stuff. Look around you. I could have been living in the biggest apartment in the best part of town, but I wanted to make it on my own steam. I don’t care about money. I would be happy with you anywhere. Even back in Cold Creek.”

  “Would you be happy in Silicon Valley?”

  I jerked my head back. “Silicon Valley? What do you mean?”

  “Well, after you left, I realized I wanted you to be proud of me and more than anything, I wanted to give you everything I could. I wanted to take care of you and I definitely didn’t want you to try to live off the meager money I made from running the garage. It was okay for me, but it wouldn’t have been okay for you, so I followed my dream.”

  I stared at him. “What dream?�
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  “You know how I’ve always loved cars and motorbikes. Well, some years ago I started designing an electric motorbike. Not a functional one, but something the world has never seen before. It’s a work of art. So I sent a DM on Twitter to Elon Musk and attached a part of my design. I said I had a very interesting proposal for him and would he be interested. He got back to me within twenty-four hours. I was on a plane to meet him in three hours and he hired me on the spot.”

  I threw my arms around his neck. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it. That is so amazing.” Yes, this was a mess, a bigger mess than I had ever anticipated finding him in, but now we had the foundations to build a life upon. And my mind was already racing with what exactly we could do to make the past right after all this time. I was determined that we were going to be happy together. We’re going to watch our kids grow big and tall and when we were done with that, we were going to watch our grandkids grow.

  Chapter 30

  Jesse

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Wayne yelled.

  I had expected this from him. I knew this secret had weighed as heavily on him as it had on me over the years, and I had known that telling him the truth of our intentions was likely only going to freak him all the way out.

  “Wayne, listen,” I spoke quickly. “You can come with us, or not, but I’m doing this. I want this done with, once and for all. You hear?”

  “You’re crazy,” he snapped from the other end of the line, his voice cracking like a whip in my ear. “You’re going to get us both arrested, you hear me?”

  “I’m sitting outside the sheriff’s office right now,” I told him, glancing up at the building and feeling my heart punch in my chest at the sight of it.

  Mia was waiting outside the car. She was wearing a large pair of shades to deflect the sunshine, and an expression on her face I couldn’t read.

  “Get away from there,” he snarled. I knew that if he had been right in front of me he would have grabbed me by the collar as he spoke, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing!”

  “I won’t mention your name,” I promised him. “If you don’t want me to. I’ll just tell them what happened and that the body’s in the lake, and you don’t have to be involved at all. I’ll tell them I did it. How does that sound?”

  “You better keep my name out of this,” he warned me. “Last thing I need is an excuse for the cops to come knocking on my door again.”

  “I will,” I vowed. I’d hoped that he would be supportive of this, but I had always known the chances were slim, but he still deserved to know I was finally going to dredge up the family secret that I had done my best to hide for him all this time. I wasn’t going to do this without at least making sure he knew about it first.

  “Jesus, Jesse,” he muttered. “Just…be careful, all right?”

  “I will. Look, I have to go in. I’m getting this over with.”

  “Good luck. And don’t get arrested.”

  I hung up without answering. I still had no idea how this would go down. Mia had assured me, over and over again on the drive down here, that there was no way they would arrest me for this. I was a panicked kid. It was an accident. So much time had passed. The lawyer we contacted had said nothing would happen. Mia’s father knew someone who knew the local Sheriff.

  The sunlight bounced off Mia’s lips making them shine. I wished I was back in bed with her, sucking on those lips. I took a deep breath. If I kept Wayne’s name out of it, especially considering that he was on their watch list already given his current activities, it should be fine.

  At least, I prayed, it would be.

  I opened the door and stepped out. Mia smiled at me and I again, saw the future that we could have together threatening to fall away because of something I should have been able to keep my mouth shut about. I wanted to grab her, throw her in the car, and put the pedal to the metal. Leaving this all behind and forgetting I had said a thing. We’d drive away to Mexico, or somewhere nobody would find us.

  I stood staring at her.

  When I’d woken up that morning the day she’d left, I knew exactly why. I’d deflected her questions about me and reminded her what we had was nothing but fun even as it ripped me apart to say the lie. She’d left that party for me, walked away from all her fancy friends to be with me, and that kind of acceptance of who I was and the life I led made my heart hurt. I knew I loved her, but I didn’t know how much until she was gone. Without her, I felt completely lost. I couldn’t even function that day. I went to work and ended up burning myself with battery acid. For two days, I walked around like a damn zombie. It was hell on earth. Then I realized I’d drag myself through anything to get out the other side as the kind of man that she should be with.

  So here we were, outside the sheriff station in my old hometown.

  I’d never come back here before, terrified about what it would do to me, as though it could drag me straight back to the person I’d been when I was here; terrified, bullied, hidden inside myself. But with Mia at my side, it was just a place, just somewhere I remembered parts of and forgot chunks of too. Mia made it feel safe. And now Mia was here, sitting outside the interrogation room, waiting for me to tell the truth.

  My palms started to sweat. Shit, I didn’t want to go to prison, but then I looked at Mia, at the woman I loved, the one waiting for me to get started on the life I wanted to live with her, and I knew I had to do it— I had to make this work.

  I took one step and then another until I reached her. She caught my hand, smiling up at me. “Come on, baby, you can do this,” she encouraged softly.

  I fought the urge to contradict her, to scoop her up, bundle her back in the car and hit the road before anyone could figure out the horrors I had committed. But I managed to push the panic down. I was a frightened, abused kid when I ran away. I was a man now and I would face up to the music. The two of us made our way up the steps of the sheriff station and into the conversation that would change my life for good.

  It all happened fast after that, and that was a good thing. Everything ran so quickly I didn’t have time to get stuck on what a crazy idea this was. I was called in to make my confession as Mia stayed in the waiting room and paced hard enough to make her legs fall off.

  I sat opposite the Sheriff.

  He recognized me. “You’re the younger Cooper boy.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said.

  He nodded and switched on the recording machine. “Let’s hear it then.”

  I began to talk.

  “You sure it was you and not your brother who pushed your father?” he asked at the end of my confession. His eyes were hard and unblinking. He could probably guess that Wayne had been the wild one since he was involved with less-than-savory operations from back in the day. That he had been the one to pull the proverbial trigger on our father, but since he didn’t come in to confess and I was saying I did it, they could hardly pin it on him.

  “Wayne had nothing to do with it. It was all me.”

  “So you dragged your father’s body out to the car and drove it out to the lake?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “How much did your father weigh?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I was a pretty strong kid.”

  He exhaled. “Right.”

  An hour later, I was sitting in a police car and taking them out to the lake. They brought the heavy machinery and dredged it. I couldn’t look as they pulled the car out. It was rusted and covered in seaweed, but I knew it was the one.

  I was right. He was in it.

  They didn’t charge me with any crime. I wondered, as they dealt with my papers and got me to recount everything I could about him, if they had suspected this. My father had plenty of run-ins with the law over the years, and they must have assumed something bad had happened to him.

  “You’re doing so well,” Mia said when we went outside so I could have a smoke and steady my ner
ves. The day was turning into night. “You’re doing amazing. It’s almost over, Jesse.”

  “I keep on feeling like they’re going to whip the carpet out from underneath me and charge me with something.” I shook my head. “Like, surprise, motherfucker, you thought you were getting away with it but you’re not.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” she promised. “They just need your help putting this all to rest, and then it’s over. For good. You never have to think about it again, or come back to this place.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” I smiled at her. “I don’t think I could have done any of this without you.”

  “You’re a good man, Jesse. You didn’t deserve to have had to keep this secret all these years.” She shivered slightly. “God, I can’t wait for it to be over and get you back to bed.”

  “Me neither,” I admitted. It felt as though I was hacking my way through a field of trees, waiting to come out the other side and for the branches to stop hitting me square in the face as I went.

  We stuck around for one more day, at my suggestion. I wanted to see him buried. I had no idea whether it was a good idea or not, and we were the only people who turned up to put him to rest, but it felt right. Mia gripping my arm tight as though to let me know that she was right here beside me….that she wasn’t going anywhere.

  I watched as they lowered his bones into the ground. I silently sent the image to Wayne, letting him know it was over. He couldn’t hear me or see it, but I knew he would know, somehow. I didn’t know how I felt watching my father finally get lowered into his grave. Relieved? Guilty? Glad? Angry? I would figure it out, eventually.