Drive It Deep by Cara McKenna

Author:Cara McKenna [McKenna, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Desert Dogs
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

What was this strange magic, banishing everything but the experience of being? Raina couldn’t guess. The haze-inducing nature of the water, maybe, or the fact that they’d both already gotten laid that day? Or the work of the heat or the whiskey? Miah himself?

She wondered these things in a state of muted awe, the question a faint whisper, not a nagging concern. In time her mind wandered to other thoughts, and they sat together, regarding the steam and sky and each other’s skin.

“What are you thinking?” Miah asked at length. Not a comment to fill the lapse, but genuine curiosity.

“Not much. Maybe, like, thirty’s such a weird age.” She studied the flames dancing across the jittery surface of the spring. Both of their voices had grown calm and dreamy, to match the night. She could scarcely recall the worries that had left her so uncertain earlier.

“How so?” he asked.

“Well, it’s like you’re still young, except now everybody suddenly expects you to have your shit together. And I still feel like as much of a floundering dumb-ass as I did when I was twenty most days.”

He laughed, squeezing her hand under the water. “Tell me about it. I’m foreman to two dozen employees now, and they look to me for instructions and wisdom and shit. Some days it’s no problem. Other days I just can’t figure out when exactly I quit being their age. When exactly I quit being some carefree kid and became the goddamn boss, you know?”

She nodded. “I want to know exactly when and how I turned into my dad. When precisely his life became mine.”

“When he got sick, maybe¸” Miah said gently. “When you went from being the dependent to the caretaker.”

“I dunno . . . Maybe partly. Except my dad’s been a bit of a wreck my whole life.”

He met her eyes. “How so?”

“I know he always seemed like the happiest guy in town . . . and he was happy. Genuinely, for the most part. Via the magic of denial. But he was also buzzed through a lot of his shifts, and he was useless at getting the bills paid or the books sorted out. I think I’ve been on a first-name basis with all our suppliers since I was about fourteen.”

“Jeez, I never knew it was that bad. He always seemed so . . .”

“Fun?” she offered. The word she heard most in association with Benji Harper.

“That, but like, relaxed, I guess. Like nothing ever got to him, not a care in the world.”

“Well, maybe he needed a few more cares,” she said. “And maybe if he’d been a little more sober a little more often, that bar could’ve thrived.”

“I remember right after he died, you mentioned you thought he was an alcoholic.”

“No question.”

“But a functioning one.”

“Yeah. He wasn’t a drunk the way Alex is becoming a drunk. He hardly ever got drunk. But he was buzzed more often than you’d have guessed. I covered for him a lot. He didn’t coast along the way it seemed like he did, just charming his way out of trouble.

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