by Zahra Girard
The Army goon gives up on ringing the doorbell and hammers his ham-sized fist against the door.
“Mrs. Dunne, open the door.”
For once, I hope for my mom to be in one of her frosty moods. The kind where she’ll blatantly ignore whoever is hammering her door down or call the cops on them without warning.
Instead, she answers it.
Is she deliberately trying to piss me off? Does she want me to murder someone on her front porch?
The men loom over her.
Army guy clears his throat and then spits a disgusting something at my mom’s feet.
“It’s about time. Thought we might have to break your door down. We’d hate to damage our property.”
“My property, Mr. Howser,” my mom corrects in an icy clip. “This is still my home and you boys aren’t welcome.”
She’s met these shitheads before. And she’s kept this all to herself all this time?
“It’s your home for now, but not much longer. You knew that when you signed for the loan. Well, now it’s come due and, if you don’t pay up soon, your old ass will be out on the streets. Or worse.”
“What do you mean ‘worse’?”
“Does the English teacher need us to spell it out for her? I thought you were a smart bitch.”
My gun’s in my hand. And Tiffany tightens her grip on me.
“Blaze, put that away. That won’t solve anything for your mom,” she hisses.
“It’ll feel fucking grand, though,” I say.
A warbling shout. My mother’s voice filled with fear and anger. “Get the hell away from my house, you cretinous mental malcontents. You disgusting, rank thugs. Get away or I will call the cops.”
There’s a heavy slam as my mom shuts the door in their faces.
Low shouting erupts below. Vibrations from a heavy thud ripple through the floor at my feet. Those assholes are fucking pounding on the door.
“You stupid fucking bitch.”
The wind carries those words up to my ears through the open window. Other words follow: “whore” and “stupid fucking old cow”. And a dozen others.
Then one of them calls my mother a cunt.
Halfway to the door, gun at the ready, red burning in my eyes, I’m ready to murder and oblivious to everything else in the room before Tiffany sinks her fingernails into my arm — hard — and the sudden pain stops me in my tracks for a second.
“What are you doing?” She hisses.
“You heard them. You heard what they called her. No one speaks to her like that.”
“Do you know what will happen if you go down there and confront those thugs?”
“Yes. They’ll die and I’ll be down a clip of ammo. I think I can live with that.”
Her nails dig in deeper. Blood wells from a few pinprick breaks in my skin. Her eyes glisten bright with fear and her voice shivers with urgency.
“If you kill them, it’ll bring down so much hell on us. There’ll be the police, maybe even the FBI because three people got murdered in broad daylight by a man wanted for attempted bank robbery. Do you want that?”
Smart as she is, as persuasive as she can be, as nice as she is to look at, I’m not paying one shred of attention to her; I don’t even feel her nails in my arm, though they’re drawing blood. That sexy, hobbling, whip-smart woman — the first woman I felt like I could open up to about my past — is now far from my mind; all I can think about — all I want — is to press the barrel of my gun to the head of whichever of those sons of bitches called my mother a cunt and pull the trigger until I need to reload.
I pull away from Tiffany. She stumbles, loses her balance on her crutches, and I start toward the door, intent on a whole lot of murder.
“Blaze, wait,” she calls after me.
But I have my gun out and I’m ready for a rampage. My sight is blood red, and my heart is burning hot with murderous intent.
Then her hand’s on my shoulder again.
I turn on her; she needs to learn when to stay the hell out of my way.
Then she does something unexpected. Something I’m not prepared for. Something that roots my feet to the ground and makes the gun clatter from my hands.
She kisses me.
Chapter Eleven
Tiffany
If this kiss had meaning, it would be nothing more than ‘stop’. But this kiss — the first I’ve given in years, the first since Stanford — has no purpose beyond the minute goal of saving someone’s life, even if it happens to be with a man who used to haunt my high school dreams; Blaze needs to stay put and, if I can’t keep his attention by appealing to his common sense, I’ll appeal to his baser urges.
It works.
His focus shifts to me and, with all the intensity of a man who finds his purest joy in the middle of an inferno, he kisses me back.
Suddenly, I’m not so sure of this kiss’ purpose.
Suddenly, my back is against his mother’s desk, my stray arm is swiping from that desk every last shred of paper, and my back is flat against the hardwood, my hair a wild mess behind me, his beard scratching my face in the most spine-tingling way, his lips meeting mine, again and again, as one innocent kiss sparks a forest fire.
Suddenly, I’m moaning.
Suddenly, he’s moaning, too.
All our concerns about the world, about outstanding warrants for bank robbery or the bank-sponsored thugs just a floor below us, turn to ashes.
It’s all down to him and me.
I never meant for this to happen. Didn’t even think I wanted it. But when he kisses me, my heart raises its voice in a way that drowns out my sensibility.
It screams to me. Here is a man who knows what it’s like to fuck up, to disappoint people, to lose something you hold dear, and still keep living. Here is a man who understands you. Who won’t judge you. Who can share your pain. Who can take it onto himself and shelter you from any of this world’s burning cruelty.
This kiss is burning out of control.
This kiss is parting every button on my shirt.
This kiss is stirring my eager fingers to action, caressing his muscled chest the second he tosses his shirt away.
This kiss will be my undoing.
“We shouldn’t,” I whisper. My too-cautious self trying to quiet the fire.
“We can stop any time. But for that to happen, you’ll have to take your hands off my cock.”
My eyes open wide. My pupils trail down my arm to where my left hand is resting expectantly over the thickness growing beneath his jeans.
“Is that so?” I say, surprised at myself and how far and fast I’ve let myself go.
“Seems like you don’t want to stop. Good. Because I sure as hell don’t want to. You’ve always been hot, Tiffany. Even back then, when you did your best to hide behind your good grades and your stuck-up attitude. But now that you’re willing to let yourself go a little? Fuck, you put all other women to shame.”
His lips travel down my body in a slow slide as he whispers to me, leaving kisses that make me shiver and moan and make my own lips betray my common sense by urging him to go further, to go lower, to go faster.
I try to fight it. Even put my hands on his chest, but my push turns into a caress, a hungry touch that traces lines across the tattoos on his pectorals and charts a path down his chiseled abs, back to the pesky belt and buttons of his jeans.
“Not too fast,” he whispers. “You’ve got such a tight body, and I want to take my time and make up for all these lost years.”
Then he grabs my wrists. Firm. Controlling. And he pins them above my head, hard, to the desk.
And, like that, the fire is extinguished.
And like that, old memories come roaring back.
Memories that I try to bury every single day, yet they always claw their way to the surface.
“Stop,” I say.
He freezes, head between my breasts, eyes looking to me with all sorts of questions sitting incandescent within them.
I expec
t him to keep going — a man like him, a situation like this, how can he not? — but he reads me. He pulls back. He puts two strong, yet gentle, hands on my shoulders.
“Are you OK?” He says.
No recriminations. No exclamations about how I’ve ‘worked him up’ and need to ‘finish what I’ve started’ — exclamations that I’ve heard once before; exclamations that led to pain and shame. Instead, there’s nothing but concern.
I’d answer him, except there are tears in my eyes that I can’t blink back.
I’d answer, except the only sound I can make with my mouth is some ugly-sob as I try to hold back the memories.
A man like him isn’t supposed to be a comforter. A carer. But he is.
“Is it OK if I hug you?” He says. Voice so low and calming I can hardly hear it.
I nod.
I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
Two warm arms wrap around me. Surround me. Shelter me from the outside world.
I spill my heart out against his chest.
And he doesn’t say a thing. Doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t offer opinions.
All I get from him is the sound of his heartbeat and the divine feeling of his arms around me as my mask of being the smart, good girl suffers the crack that finally breaks it, and everything I’ve done my best to hold back behind the rickety dam I’ve constructed inside myself out of pride, vanity, and denial, comes spilling out.
God, how I cry.
And God, how he holds me.
Nothing more. Nothing less. And it’s everything.
When his loving arms and my stubborn pride finally still my quaking heart, the men at the front door are long gone. Driven off by Eleanor’s acid tongue or the threat of the police, I don’t know. I don’t care.
Slowly, he lets me go.
Through glassy eyes, I look up at him. My vision might be blurry, but I see him as clear as I’ve ever seen anything. Behind that mask he wears — bravado, bluster, banditry — is a man who knows what it’s like to be hurt.
“Where were you back then? Where were you my senior year? Why couldn’t you have been there? Why?” My voice breaks into a sob. “I told them what happened, and they said I was making it up. That he would never do anything like that. They said it was a party, I must’ve been drunk, I must’ve wanted it and, besides, he was such a talented athlete, the football team needed him, it would be irresponsible to punish him over some made-up allegations. Why is it now that someone actually cares to listen?”
In my head and my heart, I’m screaming at the cruel fate that cursed me with my supposed-friends back then; friends who were suspicious, doubting, who heard my claims and my cries and dismissed them as hysteria and lies, the words of a petty woman.
They didn’t believe me. Didn’t care. Discarded me as so much shrill waste.
But he cares. He believes me.
I don’t even have to say what happened, and yet he understands.
“I’m sorry, Tiffany.”
That warm thunder of his voice draws me to him. My head finds its rest on his chest and I release a sigh I’ve held inside for years.
“Will you hold me?”
“Whatever you need.”
Chapter Twelve
Blaze
This life often calls for a cold heart. You can love your family, your brothers, you can let your blood burn hot when it’s time for war, but there are emotions you have to keep at an arm’s distance or else they’ll tear you to pieces.
But when that sweet woman falls apart in front of me, rests her head against my chest, and asks me to hold her? Pain that I’ve held back for years comes flooding back.
Her tears wet my chest, she shakes in my arms, and I wade through a sea of emotions from that moment all those years ago, when I shouldered the blame for one of my brother’s mistakes and saw the entire course of my life changed for good. I don’t regret where I’m at; I love my family in the MC, but sometimes I miss my old life. Sometimes I miss being a hero.
For the longest time, neither of us talks; I don’t know what to say and I’m so wrapped up in not saying the wrong thing that I keep my damn mouth shut, while Tiffany just shudders and sobs against me.
As she does, I slowly come to understand that she doesn’t need or want me to say a damn thing. All I need to do for her is to be here and listen if she wants to talk. And I could stay here — holding her — for a very long time.
When she pulls back, with her eyes puffy red and her nose sniffling and my heart stirring with the competing desires to pull her back into my arms and to find the piece of shit who did this to her and put him in the ground, she dries her tears on her shirt and clears her throat. “We need to come up with a plan.”
“Are you sure you want to talk about that right now? You don’t want to talk about something else?”
“I do. I need the distraction. I haven’t talked about what happened to me with anyone else… Not what friends I have left here in Torreon, not even my father. I mean, I haven’t even seen my father since Stanford, except for one time we met up for coffee. We weren’t that close to begin with, he’s not the emotional support type, and then, when I came back, I just buried myself in work, first — and for too long — temp jobs and then at the bank. Work is what works for me. So, let’s make a plan.”
I nod. She knows herself. She knows what she needs. The best thing I can do for her is to support her. “OK, let’s make a plan. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She crosses her arms and starts pacing. It’s amazing how quick she can switch gears, from shaking and sobbing to laser-focused on a problem.
“Well, first: we need more information. About who those big guys are that threatened your mother, and about what is going on with the loan. We can’t answer the question of how to deal with the debt your mother is under without knowing all the details.”
“Makes sense,” I say. “How do you think we should do that?”
“I think we need to split up.”
“What? Why?”
“We have two problems and we don’t have a lot of time. In fact, we need to buy your mom more time. You can look into the people who threatened your mom, and I’ll try to figure out a way to slow the bank down and get us more time to determine just what this loan is about and how we can resolve it without her losing her home.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“I know what I’m doing, Blaze. I might not know what I’m doing with anything else in my life, but I know what to do here. Do you have any idea how tightly I’ve held on to my work? It’s all I’ve had to cling to. Until now.”
Until you, her eyes say.
I push back any other doubts simmering in my mind — she needs this, and if I’m shooting off every half-baked question that pops into my thick skull, it might set her off.
“I can look into the assholes who threatened my mom — and, before you ask, I can do it without beating the shit out of them — but how am I going to do that without being seen? I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I’m not an average guy — I’m more handsome, I’m bigger, and I’ve got the kind of ride that turns heads. There’s no way I can just slink around and not have at least half the men and women out there staring at me.”
She rolls her eyes and then a smile creeps over her face. It’s a new kind of smile. Mischievous. Devilish. I love it. “There’s a way. Do you think your mother’s thrown out any of your things since you left?”
“I don’t think my mom has thrown out anything since I’ve left.”
“Have you grown much since high school?”
My stomach tightens a bit as it sinks in where she’s heading.
“Not taller.”
“But wider?”
“Not wider. Don’t say it like that. But I’ve been to the gym more than once or twice.”
“And your style in high school was a lot different from what you’re wearing now?”
“It was. But that doesn’t matter. I know where you’re going and we are not do
ing this.”
“Unless you have a better idea?”
“We both know you’re the brains of this operation. But there’s got to be something else we can do.”
She raises an eyebrow and gives me a look that’s half defiance, half amusement. “Go ahead, I’m all ears. And if you need some time to put your idea together, that’s fine. It’s not like we’re under a tight deadline with your mother’s house — and possibly even her life — on the line. No pressure, Blaze.”
“I do have a better idea: I’ll follow them like I normally would, and I’ll be careful.”
“Your solution is a vague promise? Wow, you know, if we make it out of this mess, you might have a future in politics. No, Blaze, what I think we need to do is go check out your old room — which I’m sure is still exactly as you last left it — and get you a disguise.”
She’s taking way too much glee in this. But it sure does make my heart beat to see even the smallest smile on her face.
I nod. Can manage one word. “Fine.”
Her hand slips in mine and she squeezes it tight. “Come on, let’s go see what Declan Dunne’s high school room was like.”
My old room is just down the hall from my mother’s old office. It takes some pushing to get the door to open; the hinges are rusty and squawk squeaky protests after years of disuse. Inside, buried beneath a layer of dust and the smell of musty mildew, everything is exactly as I remember it. I pause in the doorway, still holding Tiffany’s hand, and feel a surge of memories come flooding back. I’m taken to a time where I was just an innocent kid with an attitude and the inclination to get himself into trouble; there were no assault convictions, no criminal record to speak of. The kid who lived in this room is a stranger, now. Innocent — to a point — and with the whole world ahead of him. He’s made a fucking lot of mistakes on the way; he wouldn’t recognize the man standing in his doorway, but he wouldn’t regret too much how things turned out, either. Finding a family like the MC, after everything I’ve been through, means I’m a damn lucky man.
