The Man She Once Knew by Jean Brashear Page B

everything possible to give the illusion of experience because she’d seen something in him that had spoken to her heart’s deepest longing.
    He’s good, truly good, that tiny wisdom inside her had murmured.
    She’d overplayed her hand. At three years older, he’d been in some ways a typical sex-crazed boy, yet he’d possessed a wisdom beyond his age.
    She’d never met a boy like him, and somehow she’d understood that his goodness would fill some of the gaping holes inside her. Her mother was a lost cause, and her father was nonexistent. Callie had lived in toomany places and belonged to none. In the only way a mixed-up teen could figure out, she’d used sex to get what she needed.
    David had been a gentleman, damn him.
    She’d put her crude power on full stun. The lowering fact was that the day he’d finally capitulated had been the day she’d cried. Rough, tough, leather-bedecked and fully pierced Callie had come undone at the sight of an abandoned kitten who’d borne more resemblance to Callie than she wanted to admit. She’d picked it up, and David had driven them to the vet, but the kitten was beyond saving, rail-thin and flea-bitten.
    That could have been her, abandoned by her own mother, who’d chosen the party life the second she thought Callie was old enough to stay alone. Callie’s final act of rebellion had come after her mother’s latest lousy boyfriend had followed her to her room and nearly shoved in the door before she could lock it.
    Callie understood now that an inner survival instinct had led her to become enough of a problem to merit drawing attention from those who would demand changes. When her mother was faced with a visit from the authorities to investigate, she’d shuffled Callie off to Miss Margaret’s.
    And Callie had, unlike the kitten, been saved.
    Or she’d thought she had been—until she’d fallen too hard and taken David down with her. The grown Callie grieved that David’s descent had begun with her and hadn’t yet ended.
    But the survivor in her didn’t give up easily. It wasthe one lesson she’d learned about herself—she was many things, but she was not weak.
    She looked off in the distance where David had disappeared, and made a vow.
    It stops here, David. Your future will be brighter than your past.
     
    S HE’D SEEN Carl’s Corner from the outside before, but Callie had never even attempted to go in it all those years ago. To the kids in Oak Hollow, the bar had seemed a forbidden fruit, enticing perhaps but also a little scary with its nose-wrinkling aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke escaping every time the door opened.
    Now as she entered, Callie looked around with more than a little trepidation. She was no teetotaler or prude, but she preferred her bars to have lots of mahogany and brass, subdued music and sophisticated lighting. This place was the polar opposite—scarred knotty pine walls gone dark with age, neon beer signs on the wall, yellowed light fixtures turning complexions sallow. She was long past the age to be titillated by the rough-and-tumble; she saw plenty of that in her job.
    There was a hitch in the hum of conversation when she walked through the doorway. For nearly the space of a breath, she could hear an old Johnny Cash song as if she was standing right by the jukebox.
    Her heart slid up into her throat and started choking her.
    Or maybe that was the haze of cigarette smoke.
    The bartender was staring at her. So were many other sets of eyes.
    She knew, deep in her bones, that she’d made a mistake coming here. Why did she forget the way news traveled in a small town? There was no anonymity in Oak Hollow. People probably already knew, God help her, that she’d posted David’s bail.
    At least he wouldn’t be present tonight, not after losing his job.
    In or out? That was the simple choice, stay or go.
    She decided to stay, and took the first step inside. Sometimes brazening out the situation was the only possible course. She kept