Waving her fingers back and forth between them, her head twisted left to right. “It’s like you’re switching personalities.” Touching her head, her smile fell. “Maybe I did die.”
“I think if you died, we’d be somewhere nicer than a hospital room,” Ryske said, sliding a hand up her back when she sat straighter. “Like a beach… a nudist beach… a private nudist beach.”
She smiled. “Now who’s having a fantasy?”
“Think I’ll add contraception to your med list,” Bale muttered. “Have you been taking your pills? Faithfully?”
Pulling her legs up, she crossed them beneath the sheet. “What is with you?” she asked, throwing up her hands and letting them flop again. “I’m not pregnant.”
“We made a deal about ten years ago,” Ryske said, stroking her back and straightening his crooked leg, so he was more on the bed.
“What deal?”
“That he’d settle down when he became a father,” Bale said. “Stop with the illegal shit; the shit that could get him killed.”
Both Ryske and Bale had parental issues. Bale’s adoptive parents were dead. Ryske’s father had beat him. Their mother was… less than a stellar role model. Bale probably wanted to know that his niece or nephew would have a stable influence in his or her life.
“Well, I guess we should talk about that,” she said, twisting around to set her focus on Ryske who looked like he could go to sleep himself.
“You think if he goes straight, you’ll lose interest?” Bale asked from behind her.
Ryske didn’t look worried. Why would he? His confidence in his sex appeal was solid and with good reason.
“No,” she said, struggling to maintain her smile. Toying with the tie on Ryske’s pants, she kept her focus away from both of them. “Because I don’t know if I want to have children.”
Ryske didn’t flinch, but Bale seemed upset. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you want to have kids?”
“Don’t stress, doc,” Ryske said, slipping his hand between the tied sides of her gown to drum his fingers on her spine. “We’ll work it out.”
“She just said she wanted to marry you, but now she doesn’t want to have your baby. You’re not offended?”
“No,” Ryske said, shrugging one shoulder. “These things have a way of figuring themselves out. She’s already said she wouldn’t get rid of my kid, so if it happens, we’ll handle it… If it doesn’t… we’ll still be happy. All I need is my Trinket.”
That made her happy, though it pissed the doctor off. Slumping back in his seat, he squeezed the arms.
Harlow lay back down, nestling herself against Ryske. “Finding somewhere to live is going to be the priority,” she said, laying a hand over his heart. “How’s Dover?”
“Going nuts,” Ryske said. “He’s gonna take this hard.”
She thought he was underestimating how all of the crew were going to take it. Floyd’s had been their life since they were kids, and God only knew what was left of it.
“How bad is it? Is he insured?”
“Yeah,” Ryske said. “ ‘Cept if it’s arson, we could have trouble…”
Sitting up again, she searched his face. “You think someone set the fire on purpose?”
“I think that the alleyway staircase was an inferno… I know the hallway was impassable… What kind of a fire would set in a line from the door to the den? All the way along, through the bar, to the stairwell at the opposite side of the building? The front of the building is practically untouched,” Ryske said. “The firefighters are there. They’ll do an investigation, we can’t stop that… But this is going to be Dover’s life for a while.”
“And we won’t be pouring drinks,” she said, forlorn and a little overwhelmed by just how sad the situation was. They’d lost what had become a staple in all of their lives. “Is anything salvageable?”
“We’ll have to figure out if they set the trail through the basement and how sound the foundations are… There will be a structural assessment. Good news is the fire didn’t spread to the second floor. Though, I guess there will be smoke and water damage up there.”
“So, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to get out of here if I were you,” Bale said. “Everyone’s squashed in like sardines at my place… Don’t know how long that will work out for.”
“We’re used to existing around each other,” Harlow said, thinking about how it might be an adjustment for the doctor. “You’re the one who’ll be going crazy.”
“You’re not usually in such a small space,” Bale said.
He came to the Floyd’s apartment to hang out; he knew their setup. The apartment was almost the same size as the bar beneath it, so they did have some room to breathe. Privacy was non-existent. The crew shared a bathroom with a door that didn’t close completely. They shared a closet, where all of their things were crammed in. Their beds were in the same room. Even though it was a large one, it still led to an unusual level of forced intimacy, which had quickly become her norm.
“We’ll work it out,” Ryske said, not stressed. “Supporting Dover is a priority. Everything else is details. Everyone we care about is alive. That’s what matters.” Pulling her closer, he pressed a kiss to her hair. “Tell me my girl’s gonna be okay, doc.”
“I fainted,” she said. “You’re making a big deal of nothing. Maze said you were still inside. I was freaking out. I couldn’t breathe… It was stupid, but not a big deal.”
“You’re being treated for smoke inhalation,” Bale said. “They thought about intubating you until you woke up in the back of the ambulance and started smashing the place up.”
“They’re going to bill me for that mess,” Ryske said.
Harlow prodded his ribs. “They’ll have to find us first.”
Ryske laughed, a deep purr of appreciation. The doctor wasn’t so impressed and chose not to address her impertinence.
“They sedated you and brought you here,” Bale said.
“The firefighters forced us out,” Ryske said. “Dover and I were trying to contain it… wasn’t easy.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said. “If you’d left me to protect bricks and mortar, even special bricks and mortar, I’d never have forgiven you.”
He smirked. “Is there ever a scenario where you’d forgive me for dying on you?”
Thinking about it for a second, she came up with nothing. “No… I’ll still be pissed even if you die when you’re ninety.”
“Yeah, I can relate,” Ryske said. “I could tell something was wrong the minute I saw Maze. I asked about you. All he’d say was that Noon had taken Anwen to Bale’s… That’s it. That’s all I could get for a minute and a half… felt like a year. When he said you’d been blue-lighted to hospital… Man, baby, I didn’t know if I wanted to start shooting or throw myself off a bridge.”
“Good thing you came to check on her first,” Bale said. “You know, you guys always talk about being in love, but you’re damn quick to think about pulling the trigger on yourselves.”
Reflecting on how it had felt to lose Ryske, Harlow wondered if she’d ever be able to think back on that memory—knowing that he was alive—without feeling the chasm of emptiness. The licking flames of excruciating torture that had been her life in grief still felt as potent as they had then.
“You’ll never know what it’s like,” she murmured, drifting. “To think you’re living in the world without the other half of your whole… There are no words to describe it.”
Ryske’s arm slid around her to pull her closer. In a moment of respect for what she’d endured, no one said a word.
Their reverie was shattered when the door flew open and her family poured inside. “Oh my God!” Jean Sweeting, her mother, declared. “Harlow, what have you done to yourself?”
What had happened wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t considered what she’d tell her parents about the fire. Regardless of which facts were shared and which were concealed, there was one thing Harlow had no intention of hiding.
Ryske tried to be subtle about sitting up and sliding his arm out from around her.
Harlow grabbed his hand as it was about to leave her shoulder and pulled it back down. “It’s nice to see you too, Mom.”
2
Her mother wasn’t the only new arrival. Harlow’s father, Brysen Sweeting, and her sister, Lena, were present too. All of them looked somewhat disheveled. They’d have been pulled out of their beds at this ungodly hour by whichever orderly had decided it was a good idea to rat on her.
First responders had a habit of recognizing her. Especially since she’d become notorious as the kind social worker turned suspected murderess who’d wheedled her way out of felony charges.
There were probably cops on the fire scene. Given that Harlow had been identified by a cop on the Hagan security tape, and she’d been arrested outside Floyd’s, it wouldn’t have taken someone long to make the connection.
In children and family services, she had worked with cops. Even if someone didn’t know her personally, they’d remember her face from that damned security video. From there, her former employment, or prison records could be accessed at the touch of a button. Her parents would’ve been listed on both as her official next of kin.
A lot had changed since she’d been gainfully employed. Harlow didn’t know if her lawyer, Greta, had lodged the papers stating Ryske was her proxy with the court. Everything had happened quickly after he’d signed them. Even if it was written somewhere official that Ryske was her proxy, no one would have been able to get in touch with him. He didn’t have a phone.
At least he was still officially alive. That was something. Although Harlow had believed Ryske was dead after the shooting, he had never been legally dead. The fact that he was breathing wouldn’t raise any questions for official agencies. Huntley Ryske had no death certificate. The crew had gone that far in faking Anwen’s death, but Ryske’s death had only been meant to fool her. Harlow hadn’t demanded paperwork; none of that had been needed to convince her.
Her parents came deeper into the room, pulling Lena between them. Then came the cherry on her sundae when Rupert walked in too. Bale was getting to his feet, greeting people and shaking hands.
“Are you her doctor?” Brysen asked.
Rupert shook Bale’s hand. “We’ve met. You’re Harlow’s friend.”
“Doctor Bale is her boyfriend,” Lena said, starting with confidence but trailing off as she caught on to what the other perplexed people seemed to have noticed. They all knew the man sitting on the bed with her.
Her mother was the first to make the identification out loud. “Mr. Ryske,” Jean said.
They were used to him being more preened. Tonight, he wasn’t even clean. There was no slick suit, only hospital scrubs. Harlow didn’t blame them for being confused.
“Just Ryske is fine,” Ryske said, turning his face into her hair. “Want me to handle this?”
That was his way of asking if she wanted him to vamp. To conjure up some story that her family would buy as to why he was there and why he had his arm around her.
“No,” Harlow said, patting his thigh. “I’ve got it.”
“What are you going with?”
Sitting up, out of his embrace, Harlow smoothed her bedcovers over her thighs. “The truth,” she said and then smiled. “Ryske and I are together.”
She hadn’t exactly cleared that with him. As of a few hours ago, they hadn’t been together in the strictest interpretation of the word… or maybe any interpretation of it. Yet, there she was announcing her relationship to her folks without getting the okay from her declared other half.
The panic of nearly losing him brought so much into focus. It was enough to make Harlow sideline her grievances. Sure, she wasn’t ready to jump into full bliss. Her comment about marriage had been drug and adrenaline induced, but she was ready to call them an item and build a relationship with him.
“To… together?” Lena asked, glancing at Rupert who was at her side. “What do you mean together?”
“I thought he was engaged to Ophelia Hagan,” Rupert said.
Harlow noted how although they stood next to each other, neither Rupert nor Lena was touching the other. There was a clear foot of awkward space between them. If they’d told her parents about the baby they were expecting together, they hadn’t gone so far as to explain that Harlow knew, or if they had, her parents hadn’t taken the news well.
“No,” Harlow said. “He’s not… and he actually never was.” Ryske’s hand curved around her shoulder in a show of support… That’s how she chose to interpret it anyway. Maybe he was telling her to hold back, maybe not. It didn’t matter; she wanted everything out there. “He’s not a millionaire tycoon either.”
“He’s… he’s not a millionaire?”
Lena’s questions might be sort of dumbfounded and naïve, but at least she was managing to hazard them.
“No.”
“So, what does he do?” Lena asked. “And, why did he—”
“We’ll probably leave that up to your imagination,” Harlow said, peeking over her shoulder at Ryske to see he was smiling. After he winked, she carried on. “We’ve been together for quite a while…”
“I’ve been on her since the minute we met,” Ryske said, which was so true and so hilarious that Harlow had to laugh out loud. “What? You said truth. It’s true.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, seeking his hand to interlace their fingers. “Our relationship has been rocky, to say the least. We broke up…” When he came back from the dead. “Ryske came to SweSec, not to trick anyone, but to get close to me… He wanted to get close to me again.”
“That was months ago,” Rupert said. “That was when we…”
The way he trailed off made Lena look over her shoulder. Rupert dropped his gaze away from her.
“It’s a complicated story, but I didn’t lie to you,” Harlow said. “I intended to do what I told you I would.”
Clarity raised Rupert’s chin. A straight, accusatory finger ascended too. “He’s the one.”
“The One?” Harlow asked, pulling Ryske’s hand to her lap. “I don’t know if I believe in all that soulmates stuff. He’s an arrogant prick most of the time, but—”
“No, the one you said you were with in the city. You told me you were with another man.”
Harlow nodded once. “Yes.”
“He’s the one who likes to see you with other men.”
Jean and Lena both squawked.
“Uh, no,” Ryske said. “That’s not what she said. She said it pisses me off and that she likes pissing me off… Both of those are true.” He kissed her shoulder. “This truth stuff is cool.”
“Oh my God, you were listening to us,” Rupert said on a gasp. “You were there in the hallway and after you… Both of you took a long time to come down the stairs.”
“Yeah, she was giving me head.”
Squeezing hard, Harlow dug her nails into the back of his hand. “We don’t need to share every truth, honey.”
If it was just Rupert, or even Rupert and Lena, she wouldn’t mind so much. But, it was clear that her parents were in shock. Adding more illicit details wouldn’t help them recover.
“You’re together… You’re with this man,” Jean said. “Were you with him tonight? We… we got word you were in a bar fight, I—”
“Fire, Mom,” Harlow said. “The building we were in was on fire. They brought me here by ambulance, but I’m okay.”
Rupert’s finger was still pointed at Ryske until he swung it around toward Bale. “I don’t understand, who is he?”
“A good friend of both of ours,” Harlow said. “Bale and I were never together. He came to hang out with me after I learned Ryske had been an asshole again. It’s sort of a recurring theme in our relationship.”
“This is… this is shocking,” her father said and clung to the end of her bed. “You were never going to invest with us.”
“I’m invested in your daughter,” Ryske said. “Sw
eSec is safe from me and mine.”
Harlow hadn’t confirmed how Ryske made a living. From her father’s pallor, she assumed he was reaching his own conclusions. Ryske had sold himself well. Brysen had been drawn in, something that he’d claimed wouldn’t happen to him.
“You’re together,” Rupert said.
“Gonna get married,” Ryske said, picking up her hand to kiss the back.
“Well, we’re going to talk about it,” she said, making him mutter something that was probably about her being the one to have brought it up or being fickle.
“This is… I don’t know what to say,” Rupert said.
“You were in a fire?” Lena asked. It was nice that at least one person was paying attention to her predicament. “In a bar… Why were you in a bar in the middle of the night?”
“We live in a bar,” Ryske said.
“Oh my God, you live with him?” Rupert snapped. “You wouldn’t live with me until we were engaged. Despite his claims, I don’t see a ring on your finger.”
Was he offended? In her worrying about her parents’ reaction, it hadn’t occurred to her that Rupert’s would be this strong. Before Harlow had learned about him and Lena, she might have been more sympathetic to indications that her relationship hurt him. But the man had impregnated another woman and was planning to marry her. He couldn’t claim ownership over her anymore.
Her curiosity about Rupert’s reaction was tempered when she realized that Ryske was sitting up straighter. She could feel him begin to tense. Before her love could say anything, or act, Lena spoke up.
“Why do you care who she’s marrying? You’ve been broken up forever… Isn’t that what you told me?”
“I… I wasn’t saying that I cared,” Rupert said, though his reaction had said it for him.
“Doctor,” Jean said to Bale. “You are a doctor, aren’t you?” Bale nodded. “What’s wrong with her? Will she be okay?”
“We think she’ll be fine. We do want to keep an eye on her for a day or two,” Bale said. “The fire was intense and the smoke may have damaged her lungs. We’ll want to take some more pictures of her chest, just to make sure nothing sinister develops.”
Go All In (A Go Novel Book 4) Page 2
