Fixing Lia Read online

  Everything can be fixed.

  That’s what 22-year-old Lia Bissett has always wanted to believe. She hasn’t had it easy in life—some might say it’s been closer to hell—but now she has custody of her brother, and a house, and a job, and she’s making it.

  Mostly. If her brother hates her, the house is (literally) falling down, and she gets fired, well, she can fix it.

  Then Connor Hayes, a guy she wanted to forget, shows up in her life. She loved him when she was only 15, but things are different now. No way is she going to fall for him again, not after the way he deserted her when she needed him the most. Not after she saved his life and he disappeared from hers.

  But if Connor needs her, can Lia stop herself from stepping in? And what if she and her brother need him right back?

  Can they fix the mess between them? Can Lia fix her issues—her brother, her job, her house, her relationship, her past—can she fix herself?

  Fixing Lia

  Jamie Bennett

  Copyright © 2020 by Jamie Bennett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.

  We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.

  Father Gabriel Richard, 1805

  The Motto of Detroit

  Prologue

  Detroit, seven years ago

  “A pack of Allumette Golds, please.” He smiled at me after he saw the cigarettes placed neatly on the counter. “You had them ready?”

  I smiled back, so big that I could feel the corners of my mouth stretching. Relax, Lia. “I thought you might be in,” I answered. Thought? More like imagined, hoped, and prayed. “You come in at almost the same time, every night, Connor.” We had introduced ourselves four weeks and five days ago, and I loved to say his name.

  “If I buy only one pack a day, that’s all I can smoke,” he explained. “See how I set good limits?”

  I eagerly nodded in agreement. The thing I should have said was that the best limit would be not buying cigarettes in any quantity. However, that would have meant that he wouldn’t come into my uncle’s little booze, smokes, and snack store every night, Uncle Berj’s party store. Then I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to see Connor at all. And since I spent all day, every day looking forward to this exact moment, I wasn’t going to mess it up with a surgeon general’s warning.

  “What are you working on tonight?” he asked me, pointing at my textbook.

  “Huh?” I had been staring at the dimple in his tan cheek, which was almost always visible because he almost always seemed to be smiling. Even now, after the long Michigan winter, his skin wasn’t the pale, sickly white that mine was. He looked sun-kissed and healthy, despite his smoking.

  “What are you studying?” he asked me again, and I tried to pull myself together.

  “Calculus. I have a test on Friday.”

  “I don’t think I took that class until I was a senior,” Connor told me, and I shyly shrugged. I liked math. “Well, good luck,” he said, picking up his change.

  “Oh, won’t you be here tomorrow?” I asked quickly. Sounding desperate, I realized.

  “Nope. I have to drive down to Ohio to go to a salvage yard. I’m focusing on bringing the façade back to life. You know, everything can be fixed.”

  I nodded, entranced by his dimple and hazel eyes. He said that a lot about fixing things.

  “I’m looking for those stone cornices I told you about,” he continued.

  I nodded again, because I had looked it up, and I knew exactly what a cornice was and why he needed one. Or two. When Connor had graduated from the University of Michigan last spring, he had started a business remodeling old houses around Detroit. Currently, he was working on a wreck of a building in the Brush Park neighborhood. He had shown me pictures and I couldn’t believe that it was going to turn into a place where people could live, but he had a lot of faith. He had been scouring the Midwest for replacement house parts, like the cornices. Also pediments, columns, capitals, balusters, newel posts, and a whole bunch of other junk, too.

  And every time he said the name of a piece or a part, I wrote it down in my notebook, the one I had propped open next to my calc text, and I looked up the words later so I would understand what he meant. I had been spending a lot of free time reading about construction, and I had pages and pages of information in my notebook about him. Not just about the architectural elements he mentioned—almost everything he had said to me, I had written down.

  “Have a great trip,” I said wistfully. “I guess I’ll see you next week.”

  “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked.

  The usual whirlwind of fun: shopping, dinners at fancy restaurants, parties, clubs. “I’ll be here on Saturday and Sunday to work in the stockroom and I take care of my little brother. I have to keep him out of all the stuff.” Jared was only four. “And I have a lot of studying to do.”

  “You’re busy,” he said. “You’re a hard worker.” He smiled at me.

  I shrugged again and held in a sigh. It didn’t seem like I had much choice in how hard I worked. Since my brother and I had come to live with my uncle, I had to do a lot more than before when we had been a whole family, with two parents to raise Jared. As for helping in my uncle’s store, well, it had been hard on a single guy to take in us kids and I had to pay him back somehow. “I don’t mind working and my uncle says it keeps me out of trouble.”

  “I was awful in high school. I raised way too much hell.” Connor shook his head, grimacing.

  “Really?” I picked up my pen, ready to secretly jot down some notes on this new topic. “What did you do?”

  “What didn’t I do?” He laughed. “My poor parents. I gave my mom grey hair. Once, I—” He broke off as a large group of guys came in, youngish, but older than I was. They were loud and shoving each other and they knocked over a display of prepaid phone cards. We watched them swagger down the aisle to the coolers and come back to my register at the front.

  “Hi, beautiful,” one of them said, and he put a six-pack on the counter with a twenty on top of the cans.

  I didn’t answer and I kept my eyes down, because I recognized these guys. I knew who they were, and they weren’t people to mess around with. I didn’t ask for ID, even though they were underage, and I kept one hand on the hidden panic button as I rang up the beer and pushed across his change.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  The guy was staring right at Connor, who for once wasn’t smiling. “Nothing,” Connor answered evenly.

  “That’s right, bitch.” His friends laughed.

  “Here,” I said loudly. “Here’s your money.”

  That got the guy’s attention off Connor, but now it was back on me. “I haven’t seen you around the neighborhood much. What’s your name?” he asked me.

  “Lia,” I mumbled, looking at the colorful lottery tickets under the scratched plastic surface of the counter.

  “Where have you been hiding yourself?” he asked.

  “School.”

  “High school? What year are you, beautiful?” He smiled at me too, and it scared me more.

  “Sophomore,” I mumbled, even quieter.

  One of the other guys said something about young and tight, and I saw Connor start
forward. And at the same moment, a siren sounded, probably coming up Gratiot Avenue. The guys all looked at each other and the chatty one grabbed the change off the counter as they left, telling me he’d see me again.

  “You shouldn’t be here alone at night,” Connor said. He was flushed now, with anger. “How old are you, fifteen? Sixteen? You shouldn’t be selling beer. Is it even legal for you to sell me cigarettes?”

  I carefully lined up my pen on the top of my notebook. My hands had started to jerk like they did when I was nervous or upset and I tried to control it. “I’m fine working here and of course it’s all legal. It’s my uncle’s store and he wouldn’t have me unless it was ok. I’m eighteen,” I lied through my teeth.

  We listened to the siren get louder, then retreat into the distance.

  “Lia, I’m not angry with you, ok?” Connor said solemnly. “You’re just pretty young to have to deal with stuff like that.” He looked at me and frowned, shaking his head. “You’re really, really young.”

  “No, I’m not!” I protested. “I’m fifteen!” Never mind that I had just said that I was three years older.

  He shook his head again. “Fifteen is practically a baby. When I was your age, my biggest worry was whether I was going to fail my permit test, and you’re here dealing with those guys by yourself. They’re in a gang, right? Jesus.”

  “I’m not anything like a baby,” I said stubbornly. I was an adult. I had the responsibilities of one, anyway. I took my brother to his nursery school; I cooked all our meals. I cleaned the house, I made sure my uncle was on top of the bills, I did everything that someone legally an adult would do, and I did a great job, too. “I’m a grown woman.” I looked at him hopefully. “My parents met when my mom was fifteen and my dad was twenty-two. Just like…”

  Just like we were, Connor and I, and I could see in his face the moment he understood what I meant by that statement. Holy balls! Why had I said that? There was a huge, awkward, terrible pause.

  “Lia—”

  “Have a great trip to Ohio!” I said shrilly, and opened my calculus book. “I’ll see you next week.” I would, if I didn’t burst into flames of shame at this exact moment.

  “Yeah. I’ll see you next week.” He hesitated. “Be careful, ok?” Another pause. “Bye.”

  I stared fixedly at the words and diagrams, which seemed blurry. The bell rang on the door as Connor pushed it open and left, and then the page got wet, as big tears formed in my eyes and splashed down onto the paper. I sniffled and grabbed a napkin, and as I did, I caught sight of the grainy video feed on the little TV screen that showed our parking lot. I could see Connor’s tall figure walking to his truck, the one I had minutely described in my notebook. I knew every detail, from the license plate number, to the dent on the passenger door, to the old “Lamb’s Academy LAX” bumper sticker that had partially peeled off and left the words practically unreadable. I had identified it only after hours of looking online, but now I knew where he had gone to high school. That was written in my notebook, too.

  Oh, no. Besides Connor on the TV, I could also see that the group of guys who had just been in the store hadn’t driven away yet. They were at the back of the parking lot, drinking the beer that they had bought. Connor would have to walk right past—

  A white car cut across the screen and I heard the tires squeal from my place at the register, then people shouting. Then I heard the shots, but I had already hit the panic button and was running, running to throw open the front door, exactly what my uncle had told me not to do if anything like this ever happened. But Connor was out there—

  Connor. He was down by the corner of the building, slumped over, and I froze in horror. Then a shot flew so close to me that I felt it pass by my head. Shit! I dropped to the pavement and crawled over to him, pebbles and dirt and shards of broken glass digging into my knees and palms. “Are you ok?” I tried to ask, but my voice was a weird whisper and he didn’t answer. He did make a sound like a moan.

  The guys from the white car were yelling, jumping out, and I had to get him somewhere safe. I started to try to tug him into the store so I could lock the door and pull down the security gate, but it seemed like the entrance was a million miles away. Another bullet whizzed past us, so I gave up on that and dragged him around the corner of the building, into the dirty alley that ran next to the store.

  He was so heavy, I could hardly move him. I put my arms around his chest and yanked, his head flopping against me like he was dead. Was he dead? Was he dying, and moving him was making him worse? I didn’t know where he had been hit or how badly he was hurt, but I had to get him away from the parking lot. I tried to stay low and strained so hard to pull him that by the time I got us partway down the alley and around the side of the dumpster, I was crying, bawling. He was at least eight inches taller than I was, and his body was all heavy muscle. It was like moving dead weight…was he dead? “Connor?” I sobbed out, but he still didn’t answer.

  I leaned back and gave one last heave, and when his body slid on the slimy pavement, I fell, tripping and crashing flat onto my back, my shoulder and head smacking hard into the cinderblock wall of the party store. Now dazed, I managed to scoot us into the corner between the dumpster and the building. I reached up and tugged on some cardboard boxes hanging out of the dumpster until they fell down on us, wet and smelly with something I didn’t want to identify. I hugged him tightly to me, his back to my chest and his head resting on my shoulder.

  “Connor!” I whispered urgently. “Connor!”

  Tires squealed again in the parking lot and I heard more shouting, screaming. Then running feet.

  “Connor!” What was wrong with him? Why wouldn’t he answer me? I felt down his body, checking him for injuries, running my hands over his torso and—oh, I had touched his thing! I jerked away but then told myself to grow up, and felt again over his thighs. My left hand came away wet, and I knew it was blood. I carefully walked my fingers around his leg and found a torn place in his pants, and I pushed my palm over the gushing hole to stop the bleeding. It didn’t stop. “Connor, wake up, please,” I whimpered.

  “Where? Where’d you see him?” a voice asked.

  I froze. Footsteps got closer.

  “He was—”

  Connor moaned and stirred. I put my other hand over his mouth and tightened my arms around him. “Shh,” I breathed in his ear. “We have to be quiet. Shh.” Water—or some kind of liquid—had soaked through the butt of my jeans and was wicking up into my sweatshirt. I tried to angle Connor so that his injury was off the ground and away from the dirty wetness, but he made another noise in his throat like he was in pain. I froze, waiting for them to tear away the cardboard and find us.

  They hadn’t heard us over their argument. They argued if a man, Connor, had been there to see them, what they should do with the car now, what had happened to the girl inside the store. “Now! We gotta go, now!” one of them said.

  Go, I prayed. Go, please. Please, don’t find us.

  Finally they shut up. Footsteps pounded away and the alley was quiet. I didn’t dare to move, and I hardly breathed.

  Connor stirred a little in my arms. “I think they’re gone,” I whispered to him. “But we have to wait for a little. Just a little.” I thought I felt him nod slightly. We waited.

  It seemed like a thousand years passed but it might have been only a few seconds. “Ok,” I hissed. “I’m going to look.” Slowly and carefully, I took my hand from his mouth, and even more slowly and carefully, I pulled away the cardboard that covered us.

  My uncle’s weak security light showed that the alley was empty besides Connor and me. It also showed his face, totally pale, with so little color in his skin that I would have thought he was dead, except I could feel his pulse as I pressed on the wound on his leg. The light also showed the puddle of blood on the ground underneath his body. “Ok, ok,” I said, my voice so high and shaky that it was hard for me to recognize it as my own. “You’re going to be just fine.” I laid h
im down on his back as carefully as I could. My hands jerked as I pulled off my hoodie and tied it around his thigh, making him moan. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.” My tears were dripping again, down onto his shirt.

  “Lia…”

  “I’m here. I pressed the panic button and it calls everyone. Help is coming, ok?” Please, please hurry.

  “Tell my mom,” he said, but his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “No! No, Connor! Stay awake!” That was what they did in movies, they kept the person awake. I shook his shoulder, yelling his name, then I looked fearfully up and down the alley.

  His eyes fluttered open. “Lia? What happened?”

  “You got shot in your leg, but you’re going to be fine.” I heard a siren. His hand came up and I took it with the one that wasn’t pressing on his injury. “I’m here,” I told him, just like I did for my brother when he had nightmares. I held Connor’s hand as hard as I could.

  “Where are we?” he murmured.

  “In the alley next to my uncle’s party store.” The siren turned in and stopped in the parking lot. “Here!” I shouted. “We’re back here!”

  “Did you save me?” Connor asked, his words slurred. “Will you stay with me?”

  “I won’t leave you. I won’t ever, I’m right here. You stay with me. Connor? Connor, stay with me!”

  His eyes rolled back again.

  “Help! Help us! He’s dying!” I was screaming at the top of my lungs. “Connor! Connor! Don’t leave me!”

  Chapter 1

  Detroit, now

  My shift was nowhere near over, and already I wanted to leave. I stood on one leg and ran my foot up and down my other calf, which was cramping and tired. I had climbed the ladder too many times this morning before coming into work. Maybe I was only twenty-two, but it felt like an old twenty-two today.

  “Lia, stop dawdling,” Anson barked, rushing over to where I stood partially concealed by the bar. “The dumb girl in the front just double sat you instead of giving the four-top to Tina. Tables eleven and five,” he said, and pointed to the restaurant floor, where I suddenly had thirteen new customers at two different tables. Anson already hated the new hostess he had recently hired, as did most of the other staff at the restaurant. She continued to screw all of us servers by messing up like this, giving us too many new tables at once so it was hard to take care of everyone. And extra-special care was the hallmark of this extremely swanky place.