A Punishing Breed by DC Frost

Author:DC Frost
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939096180
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2024-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 32

Wake Up!

“I took a life. I was drunk and I hit a young girl. And I went to prison for it.”

Fern stared at Danny, not wanting to believe him, still waiting for his denial.

Instead, she saw pain, the edge of a deep and yawning chasm that lived inside the man that stood before her.

Fern turned, walked away, sure he would call after her, explain that none of this was real. But he didn’t stop her. And if he didn’t call after her, she couldn’t turn back. Each step carried her away from him, from what she felt, the jolt of recognition that this man would mean something, be someone to her.

Thunder rumbled across the sky as she reached campus. She headed toward her residence hall and saw police cars surrounding Sliming; one car pulled away. Fern had texted the younger detective she would come by for an interview this afternoon. Instead, she made a quick detour up a path behind the McKeon Medical Center and caught the first stairway up the hill.

Why had she thrown herself at a stranger after the disastrous evening with Professor Bounty and then the attack in the olive grove? What was wrong with her?

The sky opened, rain drenching her hair and clothes.

The breakup with her ex-boyfriend, Jim, had unmoored her, wrecked her self-confidence. Fern didn’t know where she fit, who she was anymore.

Jim never had that problem.

“Things have changed.” His words still stung. “My feelings have changed.”

Over their summer apart, he had studied in Brazil, working in the slums of Rio De Janeiro. His texts and Skype calls slowed, then stopped.

Fern had spent the summer in Upland with her dad, working at a local restaurant. Upland was forty miles away but might have been a thousand. She picked up extra shifts, saved every dollar for senior year. Her father, grateful his daughter was home, bent his now graying head over the Los Angeles Times each morning, reading aloud anything that might peak Fern’s interest. “Listen to this . . .” An ache flickered in her chest, wanting everything in her life to change, yet remain exactly the same.

Her boyfriend had changed. When they saw each other again, he had already recast his future; Fern wasn’t in it.

“This summer,” he said, “I felt alive. I’d forgotten what that was like. This place, Hesperia, and us, I’ve outgrown it. It’s just not enough for me.”

Fern’s face must have shown her devastation.

“Oh, sweetie,” Jim said, “don’t feel bad. We are who we are, where we come from. It’s not your fault. What you want, what you need . . . we’re just so different.”

His words stung. Even now. Her wants and needs? Were so very different from his?

Fern reached the top of the stairs soaked from the rain. She had gone through several stages of grief over being dumped. Shock, depression. Now anger took root. Her ex-boyfriend didn’t need to work all summer at a mind-numbing job so he could buy schoolbooks. His parents were wealthy New Yorkers, his father a Wall Street investment banker.

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