The Outskirts (The Outskirts Duet #1)

Most of the time it was paralyzing, but in bed with Sawyer it wasn’t screaming in my ear as it usually did. Instead, it was merely a whisper in the background.

Josh had said Sawyer had been through a lot. I didn’t know what, but the way she acted like I was going to hurt her in her camper that first night gave me a good idea.

Yet, Sawyer was still out there doing all she could to have a life. In a strange town. With strange people. All alone.

And then there was me. Doing all I could to throw my life away and forget I ever had one.





Chapter Twenty-Two





Sawyer





When I woke up in Finn’s bed the morning’s first light had yet to make an appearance.

I’m alone?

My lips were still swollen from Finn’s kisses. It was the only way I knew what had happened was real.

My stomach flipped. My mind raced.

I sat up slowly, holding the sheet over my breasts, tucking it under my arms.

Finn’s room was small, just large enough for the simple queen-sized bed and a tiny dresser. The sheets were navy blue and soft and so was the matching blanket.

There was no closet, just a stack of folded clothes, mostly jeans and undershirts on the floor next to the dresser.

Thin strips of white slatted wood made up the walls, running horizontally around the room. Some of the strips were broken in places. Some were missing completely exposing the sheets of wood separating the inside of the house from the outside.

I got up slowly, taking the sheet with me, waiting for a moment before attempting to take a step.

No pain.

No dizziness.

I grabbed one of his shirts from the pile and tugged it on. It was huge, covering my thighs completely.

The coffee table had an empty whiskey bottle laying on its side. The walls were the same slatted wood as in the bedroom which was the only bedroom from what I could see.

A small three cushion sofa sat in the middle of the room. There was no TV, but in the corner, was a stack of well-read paperbacks right next to a shotgun and a tall fishing pole leaning up against the wall.

There wasn’t a single picture or knick-knack to be found. Nothing personal at all. The old hard wood floors were stain and polish free. They creaked as I stepped over them through the tiny kitchen that could barely be classified as a kitchen with only a two-burner stove and a mini fridge on top of a base of cabinets with no doors and a few drawers. A single shelf lined the wall above and the only thing it held was dust.

Unlike my camper which was…

My camper!

I sprinted to the front door and ripped it open. The sun had just peeked above the tops of the trees, a big beam of its first rays illuminated the pile of twisted metal that used to be my home.

“No!” I darted across the lawn and slid to a stop before I crashed right into it.

All around the camper was everything I owned. My new clothes 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.”