Kicking It

Kicking It


Faith Hunter



A Holly and Andrew Story





BY RACHEL CAINE





It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up to a cross burning on my front lawn, but it was definitely not my favorite time, either.

The first I knew about it was the sudden violent movement of the bed as my boyfriend, Andrew, jumped out from under the covers. When Andy moved like that, I instinctively moved, too; I wasn’t battle-tested like he was, and I didn’t have gunslinger reflexes, but I could throw myself facedown on the floor with the best of them.

“Goddammit,” he growled, and twitched the curtains aside a little more. I caught a glimpse of firelight. “I’m about to shoot some sumbitches, Holly.”

I lifted my head from the floor, crawled to the window, and peered out through the bottom. Yep. Cross, burning on our lawn, and a beat-up red pickup zooming down the street, full of heroes wearing black ski masks, armed with cheap beer and attitude. “No shooting,” I told him. “This may be Texas, but we don’t like to have gunfights in the streets.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll just follow ’em home and shoot ’em in their own yards. That’s civilized.”

Andy’s voice was tight, and I couldn’t really tell if he was just being scorchingly sarcastic. After all, he’d been born into a different time—a time when it was perfectly okay to take your grudges all the way across town, and also to shoot up Main Street on a Saturday night, just because it was Saturday night. And if you lost your gunfight, you might be displayed in a stand-up coffin for a day or two with a sign around your neck as a lesson to others.

Andy was Old West at its best, and sometimes at its worst, too.

He’d been brought back from his long-ago death a while back, but he still hadn’t quite adjusted to modern life . . . and I was sometimes afraid he never would.

He was yanking jeans on now over long, lean legs, and his eyes were narrowed and glinting like stone in a hard-set face. Handsome man, Andy Toland—broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, an old-fashioned kind of handsome that had an interesting dash of mischief to it. And history. The scars on his chest, some still red, were a road map to a hundred tales, most of which I knew I’d never learn.

But he could hold a grudge. Oh, yes.

As he pulled his checked shirt off the hanger in the closet, I scrambled up and put a hand on his arm. That stilled him, just for a few seconds. Long enough for me to say, “No, Andy. Stay here. Stay with me.” It was a magic incantation, something I said to him almost every day—sometimes a murmur on the edge of sleep, sometimes caught on a breath during lovemaking. But it meant something to me, and to him.

He shot me a guilty look as he put on the shirt and quirked a quick smile in apology. “All right, I ain’t going,” he said. “Rubs me sandy to let them get away clean, though.”

“Hey, they did the hard work of building the damn thing, hauling it, sticking it in the ground, and setting it on fire,” I said. “It’s the least we can do to let them drive off drunk and run into a tree.”

He hugged me, his shirt still hanging open. “And that is why I love you, Holly Anne Caldwell. Because you’re just so saintly about it all. Hey, what is that you have on?”

“Nothing,” I said, and put my arms around his neck. “Why? You like it?”

“I think it suits you fine,” he said. “Wish I could take you back to that bed and tell you plain, but—”

“But the neighbors might be scandalized.”

“Mostly by the burning cross we left burning.”

I pulled away from him, reluctantly, and dressed quickly—underwear, because going out without it would scandalize the already-butt-hurt neighborhood, and then a pair of jeans I could afford to get dirty and a work shirt I normally chose for gardening. Thick work boots, too.

By the time I was dressed, had grabbed my cell phone, and went outside, Andy was already using our fire extinguisher on the cross. I called 911 with the report and took a cell phone picture before the fire was out completely, then a few more with the flash for good measure.

It wasn’t a huge cross; I guessed our harassers hadn’t been especially ambitious this time. But our neighbors were awake and watching, though no one came out. My house was in a quiet suburban neighborhood, one of those that kept the sidewalks clean and had association meetings about “bad elements.” I was not ignorant of the fact that I was one of those bad elements, especially since not one of those watching came out to see if we were okay.

Not one.

“Holly,” Andy said, in a much different sort of voice—a sober one. “Better come see this.”