by S. Massery
“Where’d you learn to fight?” a girl asks.
“At home.” I keep searching for Dalton, but he’s still invisible. Griffin has left the scaffolding and stands by the exit, watching people leave. “And overseas.”
The girl sucks in a breath, but I can’t even concentrate on her. Part of me still expects Delia to appear. An even smaller part had hoped that she would be next to Mason, up close to watch me take down Ronan.
Hope dims inside me.
Mason elbows me. “Focus, dude.”
I scowl at him. “No one expects me to be warm and fuzzy.”
He rolls his eyes.
Finally, the crowd thins. A few stragglers are folding money into their wallets, laughing to each other.
“Out,” Zach orders.
They jerk around, eyeing him before deciding it’s in their best interest to listen.
“Okay,” I say in the silence, after the door bangs closed. “Where the fuck did Delia go?”
Griffin walks toward me. “She went outside in the middle of your fight.”
“You didn’t watch her?” I ask, heat rising through me.
“She’s an adult, Skye. She left of her own free will.”
“She has people trying to kill her,” I yell. Worry is a cloying scent, thick in my nose. I pace around, shaking out my arms. “Did she leave?”
I rush to the door Griffin motions to. There’s no one outside. No trace of Delia.
When I come back inside, Griffin is pained. The corners of his lips pull down into a slight frown. “Just fucking say it,” I growl at him.
He shakes his head. “You’re in no mood to hear this—”
“Just fucking say it,” I scream. “Tell me you’re glad she’s gone, that she’s done fucking with our lives—”
“Not our lives,” Griffin cuts in. “Your life. She’s gone back to her family, and you can come back to yours—us. Stop being a lovesick idiot, Jackson. She chose them over you.”
I shake my head. “No.”
Yes, a voice in my head whispers.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
My chest is heaving as I pace from the door back to them. My heart is tearing in half, and it hurts worse than anything else I’ve endured. I smack my forehead with my palms, still wrapped and bloody from the fight.
“Breathe, Skye,” Dalton orders. He’s in front of me, even though I didn’t see him coming. He grabs my hands and wrestles them away from my face. “You’re panicking. You need to breathe.”
I inhale sharply. He puts his fist in the air—one of our universal hand signals. Hold. When he lowers his hand, I let the air trickle out of my lungs. We repeat that three more times, and my heart rate slows.
I blink, seeming to come back to myself.
“You were on the cusp of beating Griff bloody.” Dalton raises his voice to add, “And while he should know better than to provoke you after a fight, he’s right.”
“Dalton,” Mason says, rolling his eyes. “You’re kidding me.”
Dalton points a finger at me while glancing at Mason. “He had just told you to take Delia back to Vegas. He had decided that he wasn’t going to go with her. And when she leaves on her own terms—”
“Was it her own terms?” I interject. “Last night—”
“She’s resourceful. I’m sorry that this is hard to hear, but she went back to her family.”
I shake my head. “How do I accept that?”
Deep down, I know it’s the truth. It radiates through me like an extra pulse. She wanted me to go with her, to stand by her side, and I just—I can’t do it. If I did, I’d lose myself.
“Fuck,” I spit.
They follow me upstairs and watch as I grab my duffle bag, shoveling clothes in. My fingers brush a t-shirt Delia had worn to bed. I bring the cloth to my face and inhale. Her scent fills my nose, and I close my eyes.
She stretches out like a cat right before she wakes up in the morning. Her morning breath is sweet, and she doesn’t object when I kiss her. Her breath hits my neck before she presses her lips to my skin. I look around. The guys have left me alone.
I exhale and curl up on the bed, exhaustion beating down on me. It’s okay if I close my eyes for a second.
My phone rings. It could be minutes later, but from the sandpaper-eyes feeling, I think I passed out for a little longer than that.
I grab for it, practically scrambling across the bed to get to where it sits on the nightstand.
“Skye,” I answer, hoping it’ll be Delia. Praying it’ll be Delia’s voice that hits me.
“Jackson, it’s Aaron.” Disappointment is a sucker punch. Aaron Seltz is my boss, who basically decides which fires I go to and when. “I know you requested some time off, but I need you to come back. This Montana fire is ramping up to be the biggest of the season.”
I sigh. Really—where else would I go? “Okay, I can get there tomorrow morning.” Checking my watch, I realize it’s almost six o’clock in the morning. “This morning,” I correct. “You’re calling pretty early.”
“Fire doesn’t sleep,” he says. “You know this. You okay, Skye?”
I shake my head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Attaboy. Head in the game now.”
“I’ll see you soon.” I click off the phone and throw it onto the bed with a grimace. This is so not where I want to be.
I finish tossing everything into my bag and yank it closed. In the main room, only Dalton lingers.
“Everyone else asleep?” I ask.
He nods.
“Why are you awake?”
He gestures to the empty ashtray in front of him. “Addiction never sleeps.”
“Neither does fire.”
“So that’s it? You go when your boss beckons?”
I set down my bag and shrug. “That’s all I can do, Dalton. Why don’t you get that?”
He snorts. “There’s nothing to get, dipshit. You’re running away from your problems.”
“I’m not the one running away.”
“As soon as Delia leaves, you leave. Where are you running to this time? California? Washington?”
“Montana.” I grab the chair opposite him and drop into it. “What are you going to do?”
“Say fuck the bosses and hang out with my brothers for another few days,” he answers, winking at me. “Shoot the shit, get into trouble before I have to get back to Miami.”
I squint at him. “You think I should stay? I wouldn’t have a job to go back to.”
He laughs. “What the fuck happened to you, Skye? You’re working a job made for a saint—but you’re not. You’ve sinned along with the rest of us.”
“You’re more haunted by those sins than me,” I say. “Then again, you got to catalog their faces in your scope before your bullet blew their brains out.”
He winces and stands, moving to the window and sliding it open. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it while he sits on the sill, blowing his smoke outside.
“Fuck you,” he mutters.
I exhale. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“Yeah, well, you did. You may as well go, Skye. You somehow manage to destroy relationships with just a few words, and you have no idea how to keep friends around.”
The anger starts as a spark and grows from there. I stare at him from the dining room table. “You’re just as much of a destroyer as I am. What’s wrong with me? You should look in a mirror,” I yell.
Dalton shakes his head. “We used to be best friends. Where did that go?”
“We were doing okay up until now.”
He rolls his eyes. “We’ve had issues since you decided to abandon us. Fuck the Montana job. Do you even care about it? Besides your sense of loyalty—I’ll commend you on that. You don’t leave a job until it’s complete.” He puts the cigarette to his mouth and blows out smoke. “But once it’s done, damn. I should tell them to watch out.”
“You’re in a mood to fight,” I say without moving. “Typical, for you.”
“You’re a stereotypical sniper,” I say. “Can’t let anyone get too close. Danger zone. Push and push until they leave.”
“You were already on your way out,” he murmurs. “And let’s psychoanalyze your fucked-up brain, shall we? You can’t make decisions on your own. You were a good little soldier. First the military, then Wyatt ordering your ass around, and as soon as that was off the table, you run to find the first asshole who will tell you what to do.”
I flinch.
He takes a drag of his cigarette and blows out another long stream of smoke. “Tell me that isn’t true. Tell me you aren’t fucking terrified of deciding something for yourself. That’s why you’re a hot mess, Skye. That’s why you won’t man up and go after Delia.”
I stand. “I love you, brother, but you’re in a mood, and I don’t want to deal with this.”
“Scurry off to safety then,” he says.
I shake my head. “Goodbye, Dalton.”
Hurt flashes through his eyes.
For a split second, I debate staying. My friends are reckless. If I wanted to be bad, to break the law—I would’ve followed her.
No. It’s time for me to go home.
He doesn’t watch me leave. I write a note for the others and slip out into the stairwell.
In the rental car, I program the drive to the airport. I’ll be able to ditch the vehicle and get away from any memory of Delia. I imagine her sitting in the passenger seat with her feet propped up, grinning.
I’m five minutes from the airport when bright headlights fill my rearview mirror. I raise my hand, blocking the light. The car gets closer, and an unexpected thrill rushes through me.
We come up to an intersection, the glow of the green light reminding me to focus on the road.
A car comes from my left, gunning through the red light. I brace myself as the car slams into me, lifting my vehicle off the ground. Pain erupts through my body, my window glass shattering over me, and there’s a moment of suspension before I’m upside down. The car slides against the asphalt, steel screeching.
Everything goes blurry, black spots dancing across my vision. Blood runs down my face.
I exhale and let the darkness sweep me away.
Part II
19
DELIA
I stand in the house I grew up in and wonder how I ever fit inside it. It’s familiar—the same hardwood floors, the same wallpaper on the walls of the foyer. The smell is different, though: chemicals layered on top of death.
On my way inside, I avoid looking at the living room. The doors are closed, thankfully, but I don’t know whether the bloodstains have been cut out of the carpet. Ghosts dance around me, inhabiting this space that I’ve left empty for too long.
My family has filtered in behind me. Alexa and her husband, Oliver, her sisters, Kaitlyn and Sorellina. Lauren and a few of her siblings. We’ve suddenly become the oldest in the family.
I clear my throat. “I can only bear to tell this story once. Now is not the time.” Part of me is still saving the story for Jackson. He deserves to know as much as my family does. I still can’t quite breathe without him near me. I thought the distance would make it easier, but it’s been the opposite. I feel the distance tugging at me. I order, “Leave me.”
They filter out without question, and a rush of exhilaration nearly knocks me on my butt.
“Delia?” Lauren says. “Do you want to be alone?”
I turn toward her and force myself to smile. “Not all alone,” I clarify, holding out my hand to her.
She takes a few steps forward and grasps my hand, threading her fingers through mine.
“I missed you.” Her gaze moves toward the living room door and away. “Oliver and Alexa were the ones who found…”
I shake my head sharply and pull her toward the kitchen. The ghosts are quieter in here. “I ran to survive,” I tell her softly. “Otherwise I would be as dead as them.”
“We buried your father. Margaret’s will said she wanted to be cremated. Your uncles were also buried in the family plot.” She sucks her lower lip into her mouth. “I thought you’d want to know. All the paperwork for it is on the desk upstairs.”
I notice that she distances herself from her own father. He was murdered in front of my eyes, and yet she’s the one who can’t bear to think of him. Dead. Alive. He’s just dust, swept away. I vow that the same won’t happen to my father.
“Who organized the funerals?” I ask.
“James.” Lauren smiles. “He’s been a godsend, you know. Picking up the pieces…”
The pieces you let fall, she doesn’t say.
It only took two weeks for Lauren’s thorns to grow. Her barbs sting.
Still, I smile at her and open the refrigerator. “James is at work?” I stare at the chilled butter dish and empty pitcher of water. Otherwise, the shelves are bare. Who chills butter? I pull back and close the door, turning to Lauren. “He is still practicing law, I’m assuming.”
Drained bank accounts. Broken promises. He is a traitor, if only I can prove it. It’s a mystery that I’m able to talk about him with a straight face. I almost break, myself. I almost tell Lauren that he’s the reason for all of this.
You need proof.
“He’s taken a step back from the law,” she says carefully, her forearms against the island.
Bits and flashes of my childhood rest on that island: making cookies with Margaret or Aunt Rachel, Lauren’s mom, chopping vegetables for dinner, doing my homework alongside Alexa. It’s tainted by what happened here. If I squint, I can remember the way I scrambled around the island to get away from them. The crushing fear. Blood in my hair, on my skin.
While I open one of the cabinets and pull out a glass, Lauren continues, “He said that running the businesses has been so time consuming, it wasn’t fair—”
I hold up my hand. “No need to explain.” On the inside, I seethe. There are still threads that need chasing, and standing in the kitchen, dancing around sensitive subjects…
“I think I need to go visit my father’s grave,” I murmur, filling the glass with sink water. It has a mineral taste to it, but I don’t want to disturb the silence in the refrigerator—someone went to great lengths to clean it out. I take a sip and then say, “I just…”
I bite my lip and wait for her to fill in the blanks.
“I’ll let you be all alone then.” Lauren circles the island and puts her arms around me, tucking her head onto my shoulder. “You’re so strong, Delia.”
I stroke her hair. “You are, too.”
She shudders and pulls away. “I’m not. But call if you need me.”
She kisses my cheek and lifts her purse higher on her shoulder. I watch her walk out the door, down the hallway, until the front door closes.
I throw the glass against the wall.
It cracks on impact, water exploding across the wall and floor. Taking a deep breath, I square my shoulders and step over the glass. I try not to run out the back door, to let the ghosts know that they’re getting to me.
The shed behind the pool house is untouched. The few people who knew of the secrets it holds are dead or gone, and I’m guessing the police didn’t see a need to search it. Maybe it was a bit of misdirection by James.
I type in the combination, and the door swings open under my fingertips. The small room illuminates automatically, the fluorescent overhead light flickering on as I step inside. There are too many weapons to count, meticulously arranged on the walls. Drawers hold ammunition, suppressors, holsters.
I run my hand along my father’s favorite gun, a sawed-off shotgun that he got when he was eighteen. He cleaned every millimeter of that weapon whenever he was stressed, upset, anxious… if he disappeared before a big meeting, I always knew to find him at the desk in this windowless room.
Some people thought he craved the darkness so much, he couldn’t fathom the sun. He lived his life in the shadows, after all, and he dragged the rest
of us there, too.
Still, he was good. I remind myself of this as I touch the wood-and-metal barrel that’s been polished by his hands more times than I can count. He held my hand when we lowered my mother into the ground. He lifted me and twirled me around when I got my first straight-A report card in the ninth grade. Held me when I cried after being stood up the following year for a dance and promised revenge. Wiped the tears from my cheeks after he slit my ex-boyfriend’s throat.
He promised me that our family didn’t get involved with people who hurt others. I watched the news one night when eighteen girls were found locked in a shipping container, bare-breasted and on the verge of death. It hurt my soul to see those girls’ faces, so I begged my father to steer the family away from that life.
He agreed, kissing the top of my head.
It didn’t stop the weapon smuggling, the few cousins who dealt drugs, the extortion and gambling, coercion, bribes to get certain people what they wanted.
I learned at twenty-three, when he walked me into the business and uncovered every half-truth I’d lived with up until then, that my father dealt in promises.
How much would you pay to see this person lose his job? At what price should I kill a man, or clean up a crime scene, or sway a politician’s vote?
Failure to live up to those promises meant dealing with every harsh consequence.
One gun is missing. I don’t know where it ended up, but I touch the spot where it’s supposed to be all the same. I take the revolver next to it, clipping a shoulder holster on and loading it before I slide it into place.
My plan is slowly clicking into place, as surely as pins releasing in a lock.
My first stop: the cemetery.
The soil at my father’s grave is still fresh. I bend down and press my hand into the dirt and exhale. He’s next to my mother, where he belongs. A few yards away, in either direction, are Uncle Ricco’s and Uncle Angelo’s plots. They’d always framed my father on either side like good soldiers—in death it’s no different. The sky flashes and rumbles, the first storm in too long. Vegas cycles through drought and monsoons. I straighten and open my umbrella as the clouds let loose.
