Turn Up the Heat by Serena Bell Read Free Book Online Page B

moving in the space between him and the brick wall, on the red suffusing her face as she’d watched him spill all over his fist.
    More than you want sleep or food,
he amended, and was angry at himself, not for the first time, for his weakness Friday night.
    Grant was still talking. “I know how hard this must be for you. All of it. I know how much you’ve suffered. But you can’t throw away your freedom.”
    “That’s not how she would have seen it,” Kincaid said. “If she knew she could do something that would help those kids, she wouldn’t talk about throwing anything away.”
    He remembered one night when the shelter had been full and the volunteer manager had called his grandmother to ask what she should do about two kids—siblings—who’d just showed up. He and his grandmother had been sitting by the fire in their pajamas, drowsy and peaceful, with Brady the golden retriever stretched out beside him. When the call had come in, Nan had gotten dressed and driven to the shelter to pick up the kids, who’d spent the night sleeping on the pullout couch, by the fire, wearing Kincaid’s outgrown pj’s, with Brady curled up at their feet. Those kids had passed out of their lives the next day, but there had been others—kids she’d taken shopping for clothes, kids she’d tutored, kids she’d lectured, cajoled, disciplined, convinced not to give up on the idea of an education, a better life.
    And yet, she’d never been too busy with those kids to spend time with him. To help him with his homework. To tuck him into bed.
    Grant crossed his arms. “It’s too big a risk. You’re a free man—”
    Something on Kincaid’s face made Grant retrace his steps. “I know it sucks not to be able to drink or hang out in bars or travel or go back to the town where you grew up—”
    Kincaid shook his head. “It’s not that. It was me in Arnie’s house, me who grabbed that knife, me who threatened him, and me who cut him. I know I deserved to go to prison, no matter what you argued. And I know I’m lucky to be out. I’m lucky to get parole. You did good, best you could. It’s not that. But free? This isn’t freedom. Knowing he’s out there, gloating, that he hurt her and took everything away from her. Everything.”
    There were times—so many times—in prison that he’d thought,
I wish I’d killed him.
And so many other times he’d thought,
I wish I’d never gone there.
That was the rest of his life, poised between those two regrets, and remembering the horror of what he’d become in those moments in Arnie Sinclair’s house.
    Grant sighed. “You won’t be free if you go back to prison. You’ll be the opposite of free.”
    Kincaid shrugged. “There are all different kinds of free. I won’t let him take away what belongs to those kids.”
    Because I owe her that much
.
I couldn’t help her, but I can do this.
    Grant turned away, and for a second Kincaid thought he was finally going to wash his hands of him. But then Grant sighed. “I get it. Just—do only what you absolutely have to. Keep your nose clean otherwise. And if it’s illegal, don’t tell me about it, okay?”
    Kincaid nodded, feeling something loosen in his chest. Grant was the closest thing he had to a friend these days, and it meant a lot to have his support, even grudgingly given. Even with all those warnings attached.
    “And for fuck’s sake,” Grant said, “be careful.”
    —
    “Who are you looking for?”
    That was Lily’s sister, Sierra, and there was no putting anything past her. She and her husband, Reg, and their kids, Alana, Joelle, and Ben, had come into the diner for brunch. It was Saturday morning, eight days past Lily’s fateful alleyway encounter, and she was still looking up hopefully every time someone entered. For the first few days, she told herself Kincaid’s absence could be coincidence—he’d missed a day or two, they’d missed each other when she was doing a brunch shift and he’d come for