Dream Maker

by Kristen Ashley

  Best-case scenario (as such) was hiding it under my makeup table at Smithie’s.

  But I wouldn’t take it into Smithie’s.

  I’d never do that to Smithie.

  It seemed, all the way around, I had no good choices in this with anything.

  In order not to have any neighbors seeing me yet again lugging around a Trader Joe’s bag, probably by now expecting me to pet it and mutter about “my precious,” I left it in the car as I went in to change out of my Computer Raiders uniform and into civvies to head to the strip club.

  I stopped at the line of mailboxes to grab my mail and then dashed up the steps.

  I opened my door, flipped on my light, took one step in, my mail fell out of my hands and I stopped dead.

  My apartment was a mess.

  No.

  It was a disaster.

  The stuffing from my vintage couch, my Urban Outfitters armchair and my cute, boho velvet Target floor cushion was everywhere.

  My World Market toss pillows were decimated.

  It looked like every door to every cupboard in the kitchen was open, the contents all over the countertops, and if those contents were breakable, they were broken.

  My vinyl was skid marks across the floor.

  My books were in a jumbled pile.

  Keepsakes and sentimental knickknacks were also on the floor, some of them in pieces, because my shelves had been pulled down.

  My TV was resting on its face on my rug.

  Hanging planters and standing pots were down, dirt in mounds and sprays all over the floor where the containers had broken.

  They’d even ripped my macramé pieces off the walls.

  I was so shocked by what I saw, I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, my mind was a blank.

  And then I let out a truncated scream when fingers curled around my upper arm and I was yanked the one step I’d taken into my apartment, out of it.

  I was again inert and shocked to silence when all I could see was Mag’s face, as well as his finger pointing in mine, and he was growling, “Do not move from here. In the doorframe, where I can see you.”

  I forced myself to nod.

  Cautiously, with a gun in one hand, he pushed my door fully open and entered my space.

  Okay, all right.

  I’d been robbed.

  No.

  Um.

  Okay.

  All right.

  Someone had come after that Trader Joe’s bag and demolished my apartment!

  Oh my God!

  The instant I started reacting to this—this reaction being beginning to tremble from head to toe—Mag was back.

  Without a word, he shut my door, took my hand and dragged me to the stairs.

  He then dragged me down them to his truck that was parked in guest parking.

  He’d beeped the locks, had the passenger-side door open, me maneuvered into it, and when I didn’t immediately move to haul myself in, he picked me up, again, and dumped me in the seat.

  When he was about to close the door, my hand shot out, fingers splayed to catch it.

  “Danny, that bag is in my trunk,” I whispered.

  “It’s been popped,” he rumbled unhappily. “Your trunk is empty.”

  How…?

  I’d only been away from it for maybe five minutes.

  Whoever they were, they’d been waiting for me.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  The drugs were gone.

  “Oh my God,” I repeated.

  “Belt up,” he ordered.

  “Danny—”

  “Belt up, Evan.”

  “Danny!”

  All of a sudden, my face was framed in both his hands, he used them to yank me his way, our foreheads collided, I felt the first strum of pain there since hitting it yesterday, and his eyes filled my vision.

  “Keep it together, Evie.”

  I stared into his eyes.

  “Are you getting it together?” he asked.

  I was not.

  I nodded.

  “Good. Belt up. Let’s go.”

  I nodded again.

  He let me go.

  I settled back and belted up.

  Mag slammed my door and jogged around the hood.

  I had no idea why Mag was at my apartment complex.

  I had no idea where we were going.

  But I was very ready to be anywhere but there.

  Chapter Six

  One Day at a Time

  Mag

  Mag was driving very carefully in order not to freak Evie out even more than she already was.

  He did this while at the same time attempting to lock down the feeling boiling inside him.

  This was a problem.

  A problem about which he was aware.

  His anger issues.

  Not that what he just saw done to Evie’s pad and car wasn’t something to get angry about.

  Really fucking angry.

  But, since he got out of the military, he had trouble managing his temper.

  Now, even more than normally, he needed to keep a lock on it.

  “My keys,” Evie murmured.

  He glanced at her to see her face was pale and tight, and she had a death grip on her little bag in her lap even though it wouldn’t go anywhere because the long strap was crossing her body.

  “Sorry, baby?” he asked as gently as he could and then looked back to watch where he was driving.

  “I think…I think I dropped my keys when I dropped my mail.”

  He felt her eyes on him and glanced at her again to see they were round and filled with fear.

  Seeing this, he tightened his fingers on the steering wheel so hard, he felt the tension as mild pain up the insides of his forearms.

  “And…and, Danny, we didn’t lock the door!”

  Her voice was rising.

  She was losing it.

  But she didn’t know they didn’t need to lock her door.

  There was nothing anyone would want in there.

  Not anymore.

  If her living room was a disaster, her bedroom was a catastrophe.

  Mattress shredded. Drawers pulled out and broken. Clothing strewn everywhere, and a lot of it was ripped in the frenzy. Lamps smashed.

  Whoever had gone in there had started up front, got tweaked the longer they searched and didn’t find anything.

  So they got ugly at the back.

  “On it,” he said to Evan, releasing his grip on the steering wheel and using his thumb to maneuver the buttons to get to his phone on the computer on the dash.

  Auggie, by virtue of his name, was the first on the list.

  So Mag hit go.

  “Yo, brother,” Auggie greeted. “Did you go—?”

  He didn’t let Auggie finish.

  “Listen, I got Evie with me. Her place has been tossed. I got there a coupla minutes after she did, and she’d just seen it. I pulled her out of there, but she thinks she dropped her keys. Can you call Lottie or Mo, get her address, get over there, get her keys and secure her place? And a call would be good to Hank, or Eddie, Mitch or Slim.”

  Auggie repeated Mag’s earlier words, “On it,” and immediately disconnected.

  “Thanks,” Evie whispered.

  “Not a problem,” he replied.

  Evan said nothing.

  Mag did not share that Hank, Eddie, Mitch and Slim were cops.

  He’d get into that later.

  For now, he assured, “It’s gonna be all right.”

  “Unh-hunh,” she mumbled.

  She didn’t believe him.

  But it would be all right.

  Seeing as he was going to make it that way.

  The feel of the cab was unpleasant, anger coming from him, fear from her, which only served to notch up his anger, they both remained silent the rest of the drive to his place.

  He guided his truck into underground parking, slipped it in his spot, and shut it down.

  He angled out of his seat quickly, and after
he’d rounded the bed, he saw Evan was already out.

  He reached his hand to her, and she took it without hesitation, holding on to his fingers like she was dangling over the side of a building and he was the only thing keeping her from falling, her fingers squeezing his so hard, they bunched together with a sting of pain.

  Mag’s teeth clenched and he had to force them to release to say, “You’re safe, Evie. Yeah?”

  She looked up at him and nodded, but he knew she did not get behind her affirmative.

  He tugged her to the elevators, and they were in them, Evan still holding on tight, when his phone rang.

  He dug it out of his cargo pants, saw the screen said, MO CALLING, and he knew that Auggie had been communicating.

  He took the call by saying, “Hey, brother. She’s with me, I got her and Auggie’s on the way to her pad.”

  Mo’s two words were so weighted with anger, they felt like boulders landing.

  “She okay?”

  “No.”

  Mo didn’t reply.

  That was good because Mag wasn’t in the mood for conversation except to say what he was going to say next.

  “I need you to talk to Hawk, Mo,” Mag said. “You with me? Brock or Mitch, Hank or Eddie, I don’t care who can do it. I want it arranged. You know what I mean. I want to talk to him. Yesterday.”

  “I’m with you,” Mo replied.

  Mo then disconnected.

  And Mag had a feeling he’d be having a sit-down with her brother ASAP.

  The elevator doors opened, and Mag got Evie out of it, down the hall and into his condo. He then took her directly to the fridge.

  Still holding her hand, he opened the bottom-drawer freezer, pulled out the bottle of Fireball he had in there, closed the freezer with his shin and moved her to the cupboard.

  He had to release her to do what he was going to do next, but considering she still had a grip of steel on his hand, he knew she needed that connection. He got close, lifted her hand to his chest, pried her fingers from his and then pressed her hand, palm flat against his heart.

  “Stick with me,” he murmured.

  She was staring up at him and nodding.

  She kept her hand where it was as he reached to the cupboard for a shot glass, nabbed it, opened the Fireball and poured her a shot.

  He covered her fingers over his heart with one hand as he held the glass to her with the other.

  “Shoot this,” he instructed.

  “I…I can’t. Smithie doesn’t like us to drink on the job. And I…Danny, I gotta get to the club.”

  She wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “Evie, you’re not dancing tonight.”

  Her eyes got large.

  He ignored that and repeated, “Drink this. Fast. It’ll warm you up, smooth you out.”

  She shook her head. “I have to get to Smithie’s.”

  “Baby, right now, you need to look after you and Smithie’d be the first person to say that. Now take the shot and let’s—”

  “I can’t lose out on my tips.”

  “Evie—”

  “I need my tips.”

  “Honey—”

  “I think I need a new TV and…and…” She took a deep breath, and he thought she was doing it to get her shit together, but then she screamed, “Everything!”

  He set the glass down and rounded her with his free arm, wrapping his fingers around her hand at his chest and keeping hold.

  It was a good call.

  She lost it.

  Tears and struggling.

  “Calm down, honey,” he murmured, trying to contain her struggles without hurting her.

  “It’s all gone!” she cried.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask right now but you need to chill out, Evie. We’re gonna sort this.”

  She suddenly stopped moving except to tip her head back, her pretty, warm brown eyes shining with tears, and she screeched, “Everything I worked for! Gone!”

  Yeah.

  It was gone.

  Her cute, personality-plus boho pad.

  Her clothes.

  Her trunk jacked open on her car.

  Even her medicine cabinet and linen closet had been raided.

  All because of her fucking brother.

  He let her go and lifted his hands out to the sides.

  “Okay, then let it out,” he offered. “Hit me. Wail on me. Scream in my face. That shit was fucked up and you need to let it go, so let it out, Evie. Hit me with it. I can take it.”

  She stared at him several long beats, but in the end, she didn’t pound on his chest or shout in his face.

  She crumbled.

  Mag caught her.

  She sobbed against his chest, shoving her face in while she was doing it, her fingers latched onto his tee at his sides, twisting it so he could feel the fabric tighten against his skin.

  Maybe Brock or Mitch, Hank or Eddie getting Mag in to see her brother wasn’t a good thing considering, in that moment, he’d gladly beat the absolute shit out of him.

  “I don’t…I-I don’t have renter’s insurance,” she wailed against his chest.

  Fabulous.

  She tipped her head back and showed him her pretty face was still pretty, even red and wet with tears.

  “They’ve got the drugs, Danny.”

  “I’m gonna sort it out,” he told her.

  “How?” she cried. “They’re gonna hurt Mick.”

  Someone was gonna hurt Mick, and he had no issue with this.

  In fact, he wanted to be first in line.

  Before he could say anything, she tore from his arms, taking two steps back, shouting, “God! It doesn’t matter, does it? It just doesn’t matter!”

  “What doesn’t matter?” he asked quietly.

  She threw out both arms wildly. “Anything. Anything I do. How hard I work. How low I have to go to crawl out from under the piles of shit life lands on me. Do you know what my dad’s solution to this problem was?”

  “No,” he answered cautiously, though he knew by her face whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.

  “Take that bag to his house and he’d unload those drugs. Eighty-twenty split. He gets the eighty, of course,” she said snidely.

  Yeah.

  He didn’t like it.

  Jesus.

  Seemed like her dad was worse than her brother.

  “Evie—”

  She rushed him but not to get close or fall back into his arms.

  To nab the shot of Fireball.

  Once she tossed it back, in their current scenario, he really did not want to think about how cute she was when she breathed out dramatically with her eyes going big, but it had to be said, she was cute.

  She slammed the glass down on his counter and looked up at him.

  “Okay, that didn’t work. I don’t feel very smoothed out,” she announced.

  “Evan,” he whispered.

  Her face started crumpling, but she drew in a sudden breath through her nose and shook her head angrily.

  “Right so…right,” she began confusingly. Then, unfortunately, she said more words, ones that made sense, just not ones he liked hearing. “So I’ll go to Smithie’s and I’ll slither all over his stage and stick my ass in strange men’s faces and earn their bills. I’ll ask if he’ll give me another shift, maybe two, every week, and after, oh, I don’t know, a year of that, I’ll be able to replace my furniture, my TV, my dishes. But enrolling for summer semester is out of the question. Again.”

  For the first time, he wished he hadn’t unloaded all his crap after he bought Mo’s. He’d had a couch. And a recliner.

  At least she’d have somewhere to sit.

  “I need to…to call Smithie, tell him I’m gonna be late,” she declared.

  “You can’t go to work tonight, Evie,” he told her. “You’re in a state.”

  And you might be in danger, he did not finish verbally.

  “You saw my place, Danny. I can’t not go to work.”

 
“Yes, you can, because for the time being, you’re gonna be staying here.”

  She blinked.

  It just came out of his mouth.

  But now that it was out, he liked the idea.

  A whole lot.

  If she was close, he could keep an eye on her.

  “I’ll talk to your apartment manager. Get you out of your lease,” he said. “Mo’s bed is still in his room. If you don’t have rent to pay, you can save to set yourself back up, and you’ll have a TV you can watch and a place to sleep.”

  She stood unmoving and stared at him, those brown eyes again huge.

  And cute.

  “Now, I’m gonna call Smithie and let him know you’re not gonna be in tonight and why,” he continued. “You’re gonna get hammered if you want. Or I’m gonna get whatever food you want delivered and you’re gonna eat yourself into a food coma. Or, if you got more crying to do, you can have at it. Or all three. But you’re not stripping tonight. You’re lookin’ after you ’cause I’m gonna be looking after you.”

  “I can’t move in here,” she said.

  “You can and you are,” he returned.

  “Danny, I…well…” She seemed at a loss for words before she found some. “That’s very sweet. Incredibly sweet. And I don’t want you to take offense, but it’s also crazy.”

  He didn’t want to remind her that Mick wasn’t the only one fucked now that those narcotics were in the wind.

  And he didn’t want to say what he had to say next.

  But he picked that one.

  “Your bedroom was worse than your living room.”

  For a second, she didn’t move.

  Then she did.

  To reach to the Fireball and pour herself another shot.

  She threw it back and winced a little but recovered faster and put the glass down.

  “Okay, now I’m feeling it,” she muttered. “My belly’s getting warm.”

  She called her stomach her “belly.”

  And her brother probably knew that, and still, he put her in this spot.

  To cover his own ass.

  He could not focus on that.

  He had to focus on her and her brown eyes.

  “We’ll go to your place tomorrow, get what’s recoverable, bring it back here and plan the cleanup effort,” he stated. “Tonight is about mentally dealing. With me?”