by Hope Stone
Carl held each ring up, peering at them through the loupe for a long time. I watched silently, wishing that I was spending my lunch break eating something instead of dealing with this.
“I’ll give you thirty-five hundred for them,” he said. I scoffed; I couldn’t help myself.
“I know for a fact that those rings are worth twenty thousand dollars,” I argued. “Thirty-five hundred is insultingly low.”
“It’s the best I can do,” he said, handing the box back over.
I took it and headed for the door. If I had to, I’d sell it online or something.
I was almost to the door when he called out, “Okay, okay. I can go a little higher.”
I turned back around. “Eight thousand.”
Carl laughed, “No way. I’ll do four.”
“Six.”
“Five, and that’s it.”
It wasn’t nearly as much as I hoped to get, but it would cover the fake IDs. That was what really mattered.
“Deal.”
I completed the paperwork and walked out with the money ten minutes later. I would go by the bar to drop off the payment tonight.
The next day was my first Mommy and Me class. Dominic had been reluctant to agree to it, uncharacteristically whining and stomping his feet, but I talked him into participating.
“You all set for this?” Swole asked, coming to the yoga room where I was getting ready while Dominic did somersaults on his yoga mat to pass the time.
“I think so,” I said. “It might be a little chaotic at first, depending on whether or not the kids cooperate, but I’m hoping that’ll be part of the fun.”
“Fingers crossed,” Swole agreed. “By the way, the meth lab has been cleared out. I had a come-to-Jesus talk with your neighbor, strongly suggesting that she kick her man to the damn curb and making it clear that we’d be keeping an eye on her.”
“So you think it’s safe to go back?”
“I think that I scared the hell out of her, and Rage—that’s the piece of shit that was cooking in the house where his girl and kid lived—doesn’t want the kind of trouble that he’ll have if he pulls this shit again in the same place.”
I wasn’t completely convinced, but I trusted Swole and was sure that if she tried to intimidate Talia, she’d succeeded. The woman could probably scare a demon.
“Thanks. I guess we’ll go back tonight.”
Or maybe tomorrow. We had been staying with Trainer for the last couple of days, and I was enjoying myself. It was nice to fall asleep in his arms every night and wake up to a freshly brewed pot of coffee every morning. He was thoughtful in a way that I’d never experienced before.
“Okay, I’ll bring the dog by and drop him off then,” Swole said before leaving.
The class started, and as I predicted, it wasn’t quite the calm experience of my other lessons. But the kids seemed to have fun, and their moms got to practice poses the same as always. If we kept doing this weekly over time, it should become more routine and run more smoothly. But I still counted our first attempt as a success.
For the first time, I had a student in class that I knew. Elaine and her son Glenn attended. I hadn’t seen her since the day that our sons had met at the library, but Dominic had a great time at her house. He’d talked about his new friend for days.
“This was a great idea,” Elaine said at the end of the class. We had rolled up our yoga mats, and the rest of the class was leaving the room in good spirits. “I’m always looking for ways that Glenn can be more active. And yoga is so good for stress levels too.”
“I’m glad to see you guys here,” I said as we watched our boys chatting animatedly.
“You know, Glenn would love to have a sleepover. He’s been talking about it since we had Dominic over for the day. Is it too last minute to maybe have one tonight?”
I looked at Dominic, the easy smile on his face and how relaxed he was. It was like he was with his best friend.
“You know what? That’d be great.”
Elaine gave me her address so that I could drop Dominic off after packing a bag. As she and Glenn left, I squatted next to Dominic.
“Hey, buddy. Do you want to stay the night with Glenn? I know it can be a lot of pressure when your friend’s standing right there, but you’ve never spent a whole night away from me. Do you think you’ll be okay?”
“Yeah, Mom. I think it’ll be fun. Did you know that Glenn has hundreds of Spider-Man comics? It’s so cool.”
“That sounds cool.” I smiled. “But if you get scared in the night at any time, even if it’s three in the morning, have Elaine call me, and I’ll come right over to get you, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed.
We left the fitness studio, stopping at the duplex for the first time since Swole had delivered the news of a volatile chemical lab in the neighbor’s basement. We packed up an overnight bag, and I took Dominic to the address that Elaine gave me. I was unexpectedly emotional as we said goodbye for the evening. It hit me how fast he was growing up, and I wasn’t sure that I liked it. It was one of those things that I couldn’t do anything about, but it still bummed me out.
I had a plan for the evening. To thank Trainer for being so great and letting us stay with him, I was going to make him dinner at his place. An electric ball of anticipation gathered in my stomach. This would be the first time we had been alone together since our stolen time in my car behind the fitness center. I wanted to take things further tonight.
I knew that Trainer had a meeting with the Outlaw Souls, so I sent him a text message telling him to meet me at my place afterward.
I stopped at the grocery store and bought a couple of steaks. I wasn’t sure what Trainer’s favorite food was, but I figured I couldn’t go wrong with ribeyes.
It felt weird to be back at my house, even though I was only gone a couple of days. Without Dominic and Trainer, it felt too empty. It was lonely, even with Gizmo there. I needed some noise. So I turned on some music on my phone while I cooked. My dad had always been into older rock bands - Styx, Genesis, Rush - and growing up listening to that stuff had made me a fan too. So I was dancing around my kitchen barefoot with a pair of tongs in my hand while the steaks sizzled in the pan and singing I Can’t Dance when the music suddenly cut out, and the phone rang.
I answered it without even thinking to look at the caller ID. So few people had my number that it didn’t seem necessary.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Eve.”
Time seemed to freeze as cold fear took a hold of me. My blood pounded in my ears, and I couldn’t breathe.
“Nothing to say to your husband?” Jeff’s voice was too soft. It reminded me of the calm before the storm. Bad things were coming. “I’m disappointed.”
He was always disappointed. I couldn’t do anything right in his eyes.
“H-how did you get this number?” I asked, my voice strangled. I hated that the fear was so clear in my voice. I wanted to be stronger.
“You didn’t make it easy. I’ll say that much. But giving your new phone number to Olivia was a stupid mistake.”
“Is she okay? What did you do to her?”
Olivia was Dominic’s personal tutor. Jeff wouldn’t let him go to a public school where he could actually make friends. Instead, he’d hired a private tutor to come to the house and teach Dominic there. She was the only friend I had, but I was so stuck under Jeff’s thumb that we weren’t free to be as close as I would have liked. The day that I left, I bought my burner phone and gave her the number so that we could keep in touch. Jeff was right, it was a stupid mistake, but I had been feeling sad about completely abandoning my life as if Eve Donovan never even existed. So I’d left one connection that I didn’t imagine in a million years Jeff would be able to find.
“Oh, she’s fine. Very concerned about you and Dominic, though. After all, you’re so unstable and have all that history of mental health problems.”
“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn
’t have a history like that.
“That’s what I told her, you dumb cow.” There was the familiar anger.
Damn it. I should have told Olivia everything so she wouldn’t fall for that. All I had told her was that things weren’t working out between us and that I was scared of him. Jeff could be so damn charming I should have known he’d convince her of something like this.
“What do you want, Jeff?” I asked, lowering myself in a dining room chair because my legs were trembling.
“What do I want?” he repeated, his voice coated with rage. “I want my goddamn wife to know her place. I want you to get back here where you belong and beg me to forgive you. I want my son back-”
“No,” I interrupted. It must have shocked him because he fell silent. “You’ll never get Dominic back, do you hear me? He deserves so much better, and he’s going to get it.”
“You think he deserves to be stuck with you? You’re worthless. I swear, you can’t do a thing right, but you think you’re fit to raise him on your own? You don’t even have any skills. How will you get a job and support the two of you? I have the money to take care of the boy.”
“Raising a child is about a hell of a lot more than money. He needs love, something that you’re incapable of.”
“He is mine,” Jeff snapped. “You both are. You belong to me. Do you understand that? I OWN you!”
By the end, he was yelling and I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Leave us alone.” I shouted too, my emotions overpowering my ability to even attempt a real conversation.
“Never. I’ll never leave you alone because you’re mine, Eve. I’ll find you and drag you back here where you belong.”
I couldn’t stand to listen to another word, so I chucked my phone across the room as hard as I could. It bounced off the wall and hit the floor in two pieces.
My head was spinning, and the longer I sat there, the closer I got to panic. I had an idea that he would still be looking for me, but it was different to hear it in his voice. He sounded so sure of himself.
I had to get the hell out of here. Pain ripped through my heart at the thought of leaving, but I had to. What if I’d messed up in some other way, and he could find me? The feeling of safety I’d been clinging to since I’d arrived felt like an illusion now. I was in danger. Dominic was in danger.
That got me moving. Standing from the table, I rushed upstairs and started packing. We needed to leave tonight.
Trainer
When Swole told me earlier in the day that Erica could move back into her apartment, I was less than pleased. I liked having her and Dominic around. My apartment was way too small for it, but I knew I was going to miss sleeping with Erica in my arms.
So when she texted me asking that I come to her place for dinner, I had been happy. When she mentioned that Dominic would be staying at a friend’s house all night, I couldn’t fucking wait. It was well past time for us to take things to the next level physically.
That was my mindset when I arrived at Erica’s house. The sun had just gone down, and it was a humid evening. The wind helped to keep me cool when the bike was in motion, but as soon as I parked, the sticky heat clung to my skin. I whipped my helmet off and walked up the porch steps. I hesitated at the door, not sure if I should knock, but in the end, I decided against it. She was expecting me, after all.
As soon as I walked in, the smell of burning meat greeted me. I frowned. Walking toward the kitchen, I saw a haze in the air just before the smoke detector in the kitchen started going off.
“Shit,” I mumbled. Hurrying to the stove, I used the oven mitt to grab a pan with a couple of charred steaks and move it off the heat. I turned up the fan on the hood and took the battery out of the annoying smoke detector.
Where the hell was Erica?
“Erica?” I yelled out.
Something was seriously wrong here. I became even more certain of that fact when I walked out into the dining room and saw her phone on the floor in pieces. Tendrils of panic started to take hold of me.
“Erica!” I shouted louder as I started to climb the stairs.
“Trainer?” I felt a small relief at the sound of her voice, but it wasn’t enough to erase my concerns. She also sounded off somehow.
At the top of the stairs, I turned left, straight into her room. What I saw there stopped me dead in my tracks.
She was fucking packing. There were two suitcases open on the bed, and she was throwing things into them in a frenzy. I could see that her hands were shaking, and when she looked at me, her eyes looked crazed. It reminded me of a cornered animal.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I have to go,” she said, her voice just as shaky as her hands. “I’m sorry, really. I wanted to stay to make this work, but I don’t have that luxury. I married the wrong man, and now I’ll pay for it forever.”
“What happened?”
“I have to go,” she repeated. I wasn’t even sure that she was hearing me. She was so freaked out.
I stepped into the room, my strides long and steady as I drew closer to her. I rounded the bed until I was standing in front of her. I put my hands on her shoulders, stopping her from moving back and forth to and from the closet.
“What happened today? Why are you so freaked out?”
Erica looked up at me, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “He called me.”
“Jeff?”
She gulped and nodded.
“What did he say?”
“He’s coming to get me.”
“He knows where you are?”
“I don’t think so, not yet. If he did, he wouldn’t have bothered to call.”
“I don’t understand. If he doesn’t know where you are, why are you so freaked out? It sounds like an empty threat to me.”
Erica shook her head and stepped backward, out of my reach. I could have followed, but I wasn’t going to force the issue, not when she was feeling attacked already.
“You don’t get it. You don’t know him.”
“No, I don’t. But I do know that you’re not going to have much of a life if you keep running like this. And neither will Dominic.”
“I have to keep him safe.” She said the words like a mantra. Then she returned to stripping her closet of its contents.
“You can do that here. Come on, Erica, you’re overreacting.”
Her back was to me when she froze in place, dropping the clothing she had been holding to the floor at her feet. With her back ramrod straight and her face painted in lines of fury, she turned and looked at me.
“Overreacting? OVERREACTING? Who do you think you are? Mister Big, Tough Biker Dude thinks he’s seen it all and knows everything. Well, tell me, did you know that I’ve had broken ribs six times? Or that when we first met, there were black and blue bruises up and down my back? Or that Dominic used to have nightmares every night that I died?”
Every word she spoke was fuel for the fire within me. Jeff had better hope that I never met him in person. The most powerful protective instinct I’d ever experienced made me want to wrap her in my arms and never let go. I couldn’t let anything like that happen to her or Dominic ever again.
“So think twice next time you try to tell me how to feel about my husband.” God, I hated that they were still married. “If I don’t leave tonight, I’m basically taking a stand here. I’m choosing to stop running, and I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I’m strong enough, damn it.”
With every word she spoke, the anger seeped out of her, leaving a deep-rooted fear behind.
“I believe in you,” I said, brushing a strand of hair off of her forehead. “And I’m here for you.”
Erica shook her head. “I can’t ask you to do that. This is my fight.”
“And you’re my girl,” I argued. “Aren’t you?”
Erica looked up into my eyes, and the atmosphere in the room shifted to something else. Electricity crackled between us, invisible but effective. Without overthinking it, I pulled her b
ody into mine, taking her lips in a bruising kiss. I poured everything I was feeling for her into it, trying to tell her without words how much her packing up to leave scared me and how much I cared about her.
Erica’s hands explored my body freely, traveling under my shirt, where she traced my abs with her fingers before running her flat palms over my pecs. Then she just pulled the shirt right off, getting it out of the way. It was hot as hell that she was taking the lead, doing what she wanted, and letting me know that she liked my body with the way that she couldn’t stop touching it.
Breaking our kiss briefly, I knocked the half-full suitcases into the floor before guiding her backward until she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She reached out and grabbed my belt buckle, pulling me forward until my hard erection was only inches from her face where it hid behind my zipper.
“I told you that it would be your turn this time,” she said, licking her lips slowly.
I was so hard for her that it was almost painful. I watched as she used her nimble fingers to unbuckle my pants and open them. When she shoved them down, the only thing keeping my cock contained was the thin fabric of my boxers.
Erica brought both hands up on either side of my hips and gripped the waistband. Keeping her eyes on the prize, she pulled down my boxers, and my aching erection jutted out toward her face. She gasped, and I felt the intake of air on the tip because she was so close. It was a sweet torture.
The next thing I knew, she had wrapped her hand firmly around it and started stroking me low and steady. Just when I got used to that, she leaned in and placed a kiss on the tip. I felt a quick zap of pleasure, but I needed so much more.
“Erica, fuck. Please, baby. Don’t torture me.”
She must have been waiting for me to ask because as soon as the words were out, she took me into her mouth. Erica went as deep as she could right off the bat, and my breath left my lungs in a burst of pleasure. She kept her hand at the base and moved it up and down with her mouth. It wasn’t long before waves of pleasure radiated from her efforts, and I felt myself building up to a climax.
