Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe Read Free Book Online

sorry.
    There was a heavy thump against my window—the sound I imagined a cop’s fist would make. I gave myself one more second, one more breath in this pre-jail life of mine and lifted my head.
    In a black silk robe, tied tightly around her slightly thicker waist and beneath her still impressive rack, was my aunt Fern.
    She was staring at me over the edge of her half-glasses, and I couldn’t read anything in those dark eyes. Not one thing. The infamous Aunt Fern poker face.
    Fern had been an army nurse and served two tours of duty in Iraq. Completely hardcore. And she’d had no idea what to do with us when she picked us up at the bus station. Like none. So she just tried to like…sweep us up into her life. Bridge games on Wednesday. Church on Sunday, and every Saturday we went into Tampa to give volunteer medical care at homeless shelters.
    At first it had been kind of cool. The weird spots under freeways. A bus depot that had been turned into a shelter. The guys who slipped me a few joints when Fern wasn’t looking. But then it got scary. We got mugged. Aunt Fern got assaulted. Some fucking tweaker lunatic bit me.
    Fern stopped taking us after that.
    And our Saturdays just turned into battlegrounds.
    Her knuckles rapped against the glass again and behind me Max murmured in his concussed stupor. I made sure not to glance back at him, so as to not draw Aunt Fern’s attention to him. I cracked open the door.
    “I’m leaving,” I said. “I’m sorry I stopped. I shouldn’t have—”
    “Get out of the car, Olivia.”
    I was too exhausted to be dressed down by her right now. I deserved it, I totally understood that, but I was too damn tired. And time was running out. I needed to get Max to a hospital. It was time to stop pretending I could fix all my mistakes.
    “Aunt Fern,” I sighed. The messy pile of her bright red hair—never her natural color—was listing dramatically to the left. It needed to be shored up. I imagined a crew of mini-engineers with toothpicks and hair ties.
    Oh God. I’ve lost my mind.
    And then the car door was ripped out of my hand and I was pulled up into the sunshine and the hot smell of asphalt and plumeria. It was hot. Hot all over. Even the wind was hot.
    She held me in her strong hands. Aunt Fern wasn’t a big woman, but she had that former military bearing that, when I’d been a teenager and spinning with grief and hate, had been the perfect dartboard for all my teenage-girl barbs.
    And she smelled like coffee and Obsession for Women body powder.
    Still.
    But she was my height exactly and her hazel eyes met mine squarely.
    All these years later, making my own mistakes, being a full-grown adult, and I still couldn’t tell what she was thinking. What she saw when she looked at me. How awful I must appear to her, sweaty and ransacked. Bloody and exhausted.
    I held it in for as long as I could, tried as hard as I could to keep myself together. But it was no good. Seven long hours after seven long years.
    And her level stare broke me.
    I sobbed. One hard sob that jerked my whole body.
    She didn’t wrap me in her arms. There was no soft embrace for me to fall into. And I would have killed for that right now. A little comfort. Some kindness. But that was not Aunt Fern’s style. Nope. She just gave me a little snap-out-of-it-shake. My head bobbed on my neck.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes, trying to pull myself together. “Sorry.”
    “What are you doing here?” she asked.
    “I’m in trouble.” I took a deep ragged breath, trying to pull myself together. “I’m in so much trouble. And I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
    She lifted her eyebrows like she was surprised that in the seven years that had gone by, I was just as alone as when I left here.
    “Well, let’s park your car—” She turned and stopped. Her eyes on the backseat. Max.
    Stress tears. More stress tears. I could not make them stop. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my face.
    “This