To Claim the Mountain Man

Chapter 20

HEATH

The heavy stench of cigarettes hung on my clothes as I pushed through the trailer door. It swung open with an earsplitting creak, colliding with the aluminum siding and rattling the entire mobile home.

I doubted the noise bothered my mom. I'd left her passed out in her bedroom, half-buried beneath a mismatch of fleece throw blankets and dirty laundry. It took a few days for her to calm down after an episode, but once she did, she slept for hours on end. A fire alarm blaring through a megaphone wouldn't wake her.

With a deep sigh, I closed my eyes and leaned against the old mobile home's rotten porch rail. I needed a break. It'd been non-stop for the last four days after I'd received a call from one of my mom's neighbors in the complex. Apparently, she'd had a fight with her boyfriend of the month, and it sent her over the edge. Again.

I kept my eyes shut and willed my mind to wander away from this trailer park—away from my mother and her demons—toward the only memory that had brought me peace in the last few days. The sweet scent of lavender. Isla's delicate fingers tugging at the hair on my nape. Her soft lips sliding over my own, tentative yet needy. My heaven in the midst of this hell. Something to look forward to when this was all over--

"How's she doin'?"

I wrenched my eyes open to find Kat approaching the trailer, her thick brown hair knotted atop her head. She wore tiny shorts that had stopped fitting her four summers ago, and a tank-top that could've passed as a bra. It showed off her slim stomach, her ruby bellybutton piercing catching the sunlight, and her nipple piercings poked through the thin fabric.

I combed a hand through my hair and shook my head. "Better. She's sleeping now."

"That's good. Maryann was asking if you'd like more of her chicken noodle soup for your mom tonight." Kat sashayed right up to my mother's trailer's porch, leaning over on the railing until her breasts nearly toppled out of her tank top. The sight didn't bother me, since I'd seen it all before--more times than I could count. "Course, I told her that even a belligerent drunk wouldn't want her soup twice in one week."

Despite my exhaustion, the corner of my mouth curled in a smile.

I'd known Kat for the better part of my life. We grew up as neighbors in this trailer park, the only two kids at Laurel Peak High School who came from the undesirable part of town, and dated on-and-off throughout high school. Occasionally, we hooked up to let off steam or scratch an itch.

Because of our history, Kat felt comfortable calling my mother a belligerent drunk. And, because her family was as fucked up as my own, I didn't mind.

Kat's dad worked at a gas station just outside of Laurel Peak, where he'd found each and every one of the women he'd married and divorced a year or two later. Maryann, wife number five, just moved in a couple of months ago. Needless to say, the unstable environment throughout her youth messed with Kat's head, but it also gave us something in common.

"My mom likes Maryann's soup," I countered, turning my attention back toward the gravel road that connected over twenty trailers in the complex. It had become more dirt than rock in recent years.

Kat snorted. "Those cigarettes must be affecting her tastebuds."

I chuckled. Of all of my mother's vices, her love of Marlboro was the least destructive.

"I'll bring some over later," she continued. Her too-sweet, drug store perfume wafted over me as she leaned closer on the railing. "You'll still be here, right?"

"I'll stay one more night, I think." It was Saturday afternoon. Smokey and I hadn't been home in four days. Leaving my mom after an episode was too risky, especially because her piece of shit boyfriend would crawl back as soon as he saw my truck gone.