Rescue Me, Ranger Read online

  Rescue Me, Ranger

  Sylvia Fox

  Copyright © 2017 by Sylvia Fox

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  13. EPILOGUE: Eighteen Years Later

  Also by Sylvia Fox

  1

  Jake “Turtle” Henry, my boyfriend (and lately the “boy” part of that word was really coming to the forefront) was drunk again. Shocker. After he drank the last of the beer we had in the fridge, he’d gone out into the storage closet on the far side of our patio and dug through my things. He’d discovered a box of my special childhood keepsakes, including my diary (the first I’d ever kept) from elementary school.

  For some reason, he fixated on a section devoted to my obsession with Cade Carter. When I was seven years old. Seriously.

  “Cade fucking Carter? Are you kidding me? ‘The Cannon’? Mr. Fancypants. All that bullshit. I wonder if he knew he had a stalker. You were such a freckly chubby mess back then, he would have laughed in your face, you know that?” Jake had spat out at me. He made me feel like such a joke.

  But it was true; I’d loved Cade Carter. While classmates of mine were covering their walls with posters of actors and singers, my grade school crush was on the quarterback.

  The high school quarterback. Makes sense when your dad is the varsity head coach, right? Makes even more sense when that quarterback is Cade “The Cannon” Carter, the most swoon-worthy teenage boy to ever throw a football in the entire state of South Carolina.

  Well, to me, anyway.

  Sandy blonde hair, ice blue eyes, broad shoulders from which hung sinewy steel cables that passed for his arms, and a disarming smile all added up to the man-child everybody had called “The Cannon” all those years ago.

  We lived in a small town, so Cade didn’t get noticed by college scouts as readily as the boys from high schools like Summerville and Byrnes, but coaches had come calling when he had that magical performance in the state championship game his junior year, running for two touchdowns and throwing for three more. His celebrity started to spread after that. Even the big schools were starting to pay attention.

  A coach from Clemson called my dad to ask about Cade’s grades and to find out what kind of citizen he was.

  When the season ended, and my dad lifted that trophy, it seemed life couldn’t get any better. Cade was one of eight players who would be returning on offense, and a good chunk of the defense would be back, so little Palmetto Creek High, representing Bamberg County, would probably begin the following season ranked number one in the state.

  In the whole state!

  I started practicing my cheer routines two days after the state championship game for a season that wouldn’t begin for another eight months.

  Three days after that, all hell broke loose in Palmetto Creek.

  Flynn’s Roost was where the bad boys of Bamberg County hung out, and the Mutineers were a gang of nasty bikers. Cade’s father was a regular at the Roost, on the rare stretches when he wasn’t behind bars.

  The Mutineers rolled through, bringing a big fight at Flynn’s Roost and the next thing you knew, Cade Carter’s family disappeared.

  I don’t mean “disappeared” like it was an unsolved mystery, I mean that in the middle of the night, without saying goodbye, Cade and his momma packed up and left, one step ahead of the law. Flew the coop.

  Coach Herb Shotwell, Palmetto Creek’s legendary football guru, was understandably dismayed. His son, Seth, a varsity-playing freshman on the state-title winning team, punched a hole in his bedroom wall when the news broke.

  The little girl who lived on the other side of that wall, Darcy, wept bitterly and went into a tailspin of depression over the next few weeks.

  I’m the Darcy in this story.

  Pages of my diary were filled with sappy homages to the dreamy quarterback who appeared nightly in my prepubescent dreams. Somewhere, to this day, I’ve even kept the t-shirt that was so popular in Palmetto Creek that state championship season. It was green and gold, the school colors, with the name “Carter” across the back between the shoulders, and his jersey number, 9.

  On the front was a Civil War-era cannon, with footballs piled up next to it in a pyramid like they used to do with cannon balls. In the Fall of 1999, every kid in Bamberg county had one of those shirts. Mine had holes in it and was worn so thin, parts of it felt like tissue paper. It had traveled with me to the University of Florida and then out to Phoenix, Arizona where I’d found work as a copywriter with an ad agency years later.

  Palmetto Creek was home, but there’s something about growing up in a small town, especially in the shadow of a locally-famous dad and a big shot football star brother who doesn’t realize that his glory days happened in college, that makes you want to run as fast and as far as you’re able, if you have even an ounce of ambition in you.

  So, Arizona it was, a dry heat and the best Mexican food I’d ever eaten.

  And Turtle. That boyfriend I mentioned earlier. He’d come along with me.

  Turtle had played football for my dad, of course, and then for two years at the University of Tennessee before he punched a coach during an argument at practice and was kicked off the team. He wound up back in Palmetto Creek for a while, and we bumped into each other at a party.

  It was actually my graduation party from the University of Florida, and for some reason I can’t recall (I’ll blame it on alcohol) I fell for him. I was planning to spend a few weeks at home before starting my new job in Phoenix, so Turtle and I hung out a bit and developed some sort of feelings for each other. When I broke the news to him that I was going to be moving across the country, it took him about four seconds to realize he had nothing going for himself in Palmetto Creek and that a change of scenery might do him some good.

  It took me less than a week sharing a condo with Turtle to realize I’d made a mistake, that I should have pulled a Cade Carter and fled Bamberg County under cover of night.

  But I was in a new city, a new state, a new time zone, and having a familiar face around made things easier. Knowing I had a big, intimidating guy around also made me feel safe, even if he didn’t always make me feel loved.

  I brushed off the little jokes about my weight at first, but after a while, they started to sting more and more. Besides who was he to mention anybody’s weight? Football had kept him in shape, but once he quit playing, his construction jobs kept him strong, but the muscle was more and more buried under the beer and chicken wings.

  I hadn’t been exactly happy with my weight since before I first lay eyes on Cade Carter, but I felt like in college that I’d finally seen some benefit to going to the gym. Once I overcame the “freshman fifteen,” I thought my body was actually pretty rockin’. Curvy, sure, but I liked what I saw in the mirror.

  Evidently, Turtle preferred what hung out at the pool at our complex, as ogling some of our sun-worshipping, bikini-clad neighbors became one of his favorite hobbies. Had I known our unit afforded such a view, I’d have asked for a different condo.

  He got a little too friendly with one girl who seemed to live at the pool, a bleached-blonde with giant fake boobs nam
ed Amber. Why was Amber able to hang out at the pool all day instead of going to a job, you ask? Because Amber’s working hours took place in the evenings. At Larry’s Platinum Cabaret. Yes, she was a stripper. Sorry, let me correct myself before Turtle does; Amber was a dancer. As if she’s some sort of a ballerina or something.

  More than once, I caught my “boyfriend” chatting with Amber somewhere at our complex. Funny how he always seemed to just “bump into her.”

  I put up with the drinking and the disrespect because… well, I’m ashamed to say that I really don’t know why I put up with it; besides the convenience of having a man around and having his income, sporadic as it was, to help with the bills and rent.

  I wish I could say I kept Turtle around because of the sex. In my dreams. He drank so much and had put on so much weight that his equipment rarely functioned properly, and when it did it was over altogether too quickly. Foreplay to him was us taking our clothes off. Oral was a one-way street, me on him to get him going, and if ever an orgasm were to happen for me, it was with battery-assistance.

  So, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that finally convinced me to leave Turtle’s worthless ass? It’s when he got physical.

  I worked with a guy named Michael, a junior executive. Happily married, with three kids. I’d worked closely with him on a major account, and things went better than anybody imagined, so he rewarded me with an edible arrangement and a bottle of wine.

  The arrangement was delivered on a Saturday afternoon, and when I set it down on the table, I was all smiles. I knew it was expensive, and it looked delicious.

  “Thanks for all the overtime, you were a lifesaver! – Michael,” read the card. Perfectly innocent and well-intentioned. Michael was a great work friend and I’d met his wife many times. They were both wonderful people.

  When he saw the fruit bouquet on the counter, Turtle pulled a large chocolate-covered strawberry out and slurped the juice off his chin as he finished it in one bite before picking up the card.

  “Michael? Who the fuck is Michael?” he demanded.

  “He’s one of my bosses. He was the lead on the grocery store thing we were working on the past few weeks. Turns out they loved it,” I reported, excitedly.

  “No man buys something like this,” Turtle countered, inhaling a slab of pineapple, “unless he’s sleeping with her. Or wants to.”

  “Michael is married. He has a family. It’s not like that at all. We just worked well together on this project. He’s great at his job. I just hope some of that rubs off on me,” I explained.

  “Yeah, I bet you want to rub on him,” my so-called boyfriend argued. “Let me guess, he gave you that bottle of wine, too?”

  The day before, I’d arrived home with a bottle of wine that Turtle gulped down like it was water.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. It was from the company, but yeah, he handed it to me. Big deal. We’re adults, right? Maybe if you’d slowed down for a minute to ask me about it, instead of guzzling it like Gatorade after two-a-days, you’d understand.” My voice had risen an octave out of sheer annoyance.

  He ate two more strawberries, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And you expect me to believe you aren’t fucking him?”

  “I’m not fucking anybody!” I was yelling now, my frustration boiling over. “You should know that better than anyone!”

  Jake’s face twisted into a mask of rage, and he stood over me with his fists balled. He started to speak, but reconsidered. He turned to walk away, then turned and pointed a meaty finger at me. “You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong. That’s fucked up, Darcy.”

  He picked up the remains of the fruit bouquet and threw it against the wall, storming out the front door. I slumped to the floor, crying. I hated the way he made me feel, cursing my own weakness.

  I cleaned up the mess eventually, spending the rest of the day moving as if I was underwater.

  Turtle didn’t return until the next day, and offered no explanation as to his absence or where he’d been, nor an answer to why he hadn’t responded to my calls or texts.

  I went to work Monday morning after he’d left for a job, and when I walked in the door that evening, it was to find him sitting in the living room with my diary in his hand.

  Sick of his shit, I waited until his initial barrage was over to reply.

  “Yesterday, you were jealous of a happily married guy I work with. Today it’s of a guy who disappeared twenty-five years ago, who I wouldn’t know if he walked in here right this very minute.”

  Turtle stared me down emotionlessly and flipped through the diary to an entry where seven-year-old me went on and on about how blue Cade’s eyes were. Turtle read it aloud in a faux-little girl voice:

  “Cade’s eyes are the bluest blue of all blues bluer than the deepest bluest part of the ocean and bluer than the bluest blue sky.”

  If I wasn’t so angry at him, I’d have been cringing hard. But hey, I was seven. I never claimed to be a third-grade wordsmith.

  I stormed across the room and went to pull the diary from his hands, but he stood up and sidestepped me, letting me trip and fall onto the sofa while he held the diary up over his head as if I were a small child.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I was so angry, and I stood up on the sofa to where I could reach his outstretched hand, but he gave me a gentle forearm shove with his free arm and I fell to the couch again. The push wasn’t violent exactly, but still; he’d used his body to put me somewhere I didn’t want to be, which didn’t sit well with me.

  Satisfied that I’d stay where he put me, he started flipping through the book again to find another passage with which to humiliate me.

  Fuck. That.

  I leapt from the couch onto his back, arms around his throat.

  “Give me that, you fucking asshole!” I shouted.

  He staggered forward a few steps before shrugging me off.

  “Don’t you ever put your hands on me, bitch! I’m the man around here!” he growled at me.

  “You’re no sort of man, you’re a limp-dicked drunk and I wish I’d left you behind in Bamberg County!” I screamed, even as I heard the neighbor pounding on our common wall for us to quiet down.

  I was on my back, blinking away flashes of light and wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth before I realized what had happened.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay down there until you’re ready to apologize,” Turtle threatened, confirming how I’d wound up there.

  He’d slapped me.

  I was scared, furious, and felt like throwing up. My face was hot all over.

  “Here. Hope it was worth all this.” He tossed my diary to the floor, where it landed by my left knee. “You’ve got just about the ugliest cry face I’ve ever seen, Darcy.” He stood there, looking disgusted, then shook his head and walked into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

  I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

  I scooped up my diary, grabbed my purse, and stormed out the door. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I had to get away.

  Interstate 10 took me south and east out of town, and once I cleared city traffic, I was flying. I had no particular destination in mind, but I seemed to be in a major hurry to get there. I screamed more than sang along with the radio, and I had just reached the outskirts of Tucson, the better part of two hours away, when the car dinged to let me know it was thirsty.

  After filling up, I sat on the trunk, drinking a Dr. Pepper and taking stock of the situation. I checked my phone; not a call or text from Turtle. It was getting dark and chilly, and all I had with me was my purse and the clothes on my back, scratchy work clothes I’d been dying to get out of a few hours ago.

  I found a mall and bought some comfier clothes; jeans and yoga pants, two t-shirts and a hoodie, and a pair of flats.

  I still didn’t have a plan, and my stomach was growling, so I headed for the familiar green and white checkerboard sign of a Waffle Hut just
off the interstate.

  2

  “Man trouble, darlin’?”

  The waitress asked me this as I struggled with whether one pecan waffle would fill the hole Turtle had put inside me, or if it would take two.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, looking up from my menu at Peg, a woman in her forties who could have passed for her sixties. She was hard around the edges, but there was a softness, a sympathy in her eyes.

  She tapped her pen against her left cheekbone. “Somebody put a good wallop on you, girl. I just figured it was a man. And you’re in a Waffle Hut, alone, this time of night, during the week? It adds up to man trouble by my experience.”

  Her “experience” appeared to be considerable. The politest way I can think of to put it is that she looked weathered.

  I touched my cheek right below my left eye and found it tender to the touch. I’d looked in my rear-view mirror in the parking lot at home to clean the mascara that I’d cried down my cheeks, but where he’d hit me hadn’t begun to swell yet. The clothes I’d bought were all in my size, I hadn’t bothered trying them on.

  “A little concealer and nobody will be able to tell, honey. The little girl’s room is right down that way.” She motioned behind me to the far corner of the restaurant. “Let me know what you’d like and I’ll have it waiting for you when you get back.”

  I felt my stomach drop. I was the exact kind of Bamberg County trash I’d gone to Florida and then Arizona to escape becoming.

  “Double pecan waffle and a sweet tea, please. Actually, make it a double chocolate chip waffle. Thank you.” I stood up to walk to the bathroom, purse in hand.

  “There ain’t much in this world a double chocolate chip waffle can’t cure,” Peg replied knowingly as she scribbled my order on her pad.