Beautiful Rush

by Rose, Emery

  She whisked it away, saving Deacon from having to eat food he wasn’t hungry for.

  Abby, Faye, and I cleared the table and carried the serving dishes into the kitchen. Like the rest of the cabin, it was simple and rustic, with an old oak farm table in the middle, dark green-painted cupboards and a white porcelain farmhouse sink. A bunch of wildflowers in a ball jar sat on the windowsill. The view from every window in this house was green and now I knew why it was Deacon’s favorite color. He associated it with his grandfather’s cabin, with this cozy house in the woods that felt like a home.

  Abby went back outside to hang out with her dad and brother, but I stayed to help Faye clean up and stow the leftovers in Tupperware containers since I hadn’t done anything to help with the lunch preparation.

  “It’s a good thing Deacon works out,” Faye said with a chuckle. “He’d be big as a house.”

  I smiled. “I know. I guess he’s always been like that, feeling like he can’t waste food?”

  She carried the empty serving dishes to the sink and filled it with soapy water. “Not always. When he first came to live with us, we couldn’t get him to eat. He was overwhelmed by having so much choice. It was too much for him, so he denied himself, even though he was hungry.”

  It was hard to reconcile the man he’d become with the little boy who was overwhelmed by food. I heard Deacon, Abby, and Cal laughing outside. He was happy here, relaxed in the company of his family.

  “How did you get him to eat?” I asked, drying the serving dishes with a dishtowel and stacking them on the counter for Faye to put away.

  “Instead of setting out all the food on the table, we made him a plate with small portions. But it wasn’t really about the food. When he eventually realized that we weren’t going to abandon him, he started eating.”

  Deacon had a fear of abandonment and I had tried to run away from him.

  We finished clearing up the dishes and stowed the leftovers in the fridge. “You can eat them tomorrow,” Faye said, closing the refrigerator door. There was enough food in there to feed an army. “It’s so good to see him. Such a lovely surprise. And wonderful to meet you.” Faye beamed at me. When she smiled, it reached her eyes, the laugh lines around her eyes crinkling. She was the opposite of my mother in every way.

  Her red hair was naturally curly, and she wore it in a messy bun, a few curls springing free. Her skin was pale and freckled, and she had a wide mouth and a ready smile. I would guess she was in her mid to late fifties, thin but not skinny. She was wearing yoga pants and a baggy T-shirt that said Namaste, and no makeup. Faye Ramsey was comfortable in her own skin. She didn’t need Botox or anti-aging beauty treatments or expensive designer clothes to make herself feel beautiful. Her beauty came from the inside. It was the kind of beauty that wouldn’t fade over time. True beauty.

  She tipped her head to the side. “I can tell that you make him happy. That’s what I’ve always wanted for my children. Just to see them happy and finding their place in the world.”

  “I don’t make him happy all the time.”

  Faye laughed. “Well, that’s not possible. I hope he treats you right.”

  “He does. He’s good to me.”

  She nodded, looking pleased about that. “We’re so proud of him. Mind you, he was hell on wheels when he was a teenager, but I knew he’d outgrow it. Cal wasn’t so convinced. He was ready to ship Deacon off to military school.” She laughed. “Luckily, my dad took him under his wing. He gave tough love, but Deacon respected him. He was just about the only adult he listened to when he was in high school.” She smiled at the memory. “Are you close with your family?”

  “I…” I let out a breath. “It’s complicated.”

  Faye studied my face for a few seconds, and I wondered how much Deacon had told her. “Most families are, honey.”

  “I’m close with my brothers though. They’re good guys.”

  The back door opened, and I looked over my shoulder as Deacon sauntered in. He wrapped his arms around me from behind and nuzzled my neck. I tried to swat him away, embarrassed by the PDA in front of his mom. “Deacon…”

  He chuckled. “You’re so cute when you’re embarrassed, Buttercup. My mom doesn’t care.”

  His mom held up her hands. “Pretend I’m not here.”

  Deacon turned me around and planted a big kiss on my lips and pinched my ass, a playful grin on his face. I glared at him. He pretended to cower. “You’re so scary.”

  I rolled my eyes and tried to suppress a smile but failed. For the rest of the day, he was charming and playful and fun. We spent it with his family, sitting on the deck that spanned the back of the house, talking and laughing into the evening and as the sun went down, the fireflies came out to play. It was easy and stress-free, and I felt the tension leave my body. The Ramsey’s were everything a family should be. They enjoyed each other’s company and the conversation flowed. I got to see firsthand what Deacon had meant when he said his parents had an equal partnership. They listened to each other and even when they didn’t agree on something, they respected each other’s opinions. It was nice and not something I was used to.

  Abby was easy to talk to as well and we bonded over our mutual love of Jax Teller.

  “I think that’s the look Deacon’s going for,” Abby teased.

  Deacon was lounging on a deck chair next to me and cracked one eye open. “Do you fantasize about Jax Teller when you’re with me?”

  I leaned close and whispered in his ear. “No. I fantasize about Batman. All day. Every day.” I winked at him and leaned back in my chair.

  Deacon sat up, eying the hot tub on the deck. His parents had told me they’d put it in last year, and I knew what Deacon was thinking even before the words came out of his mouth. “Are you guys about ready to hit the road?” he asked his family.

  Well, that was subtle.

  * * *

  “If you had told me there was a hot tub, I would have brought a bikini.” I twisted my hair into a loose topknot and secured it with an elastic on my wrist.

  “What would have been the point of that?” He lifted his beer to his lips and took a pull. He was already in the hot tub, his arm draped across the ledge. “Get naked, baby.”

  I stripped off my clothes quickly and climbed into the hot tub, sinking down in the water until it covered my shoulders. Deacon laughed. “Nobody can see you out here.”

  I glanced out at the woods, not so sure about that. I felt like we were being watched. Earlier, I had thought it was so quiet, but now my ears picked up all the strange noises I wasn’t used to. Crickets chirping. Leaves rustling. Was that an owl? It was so dark out here, with only the lights from the hot tub. There were spotlights on the back of the house, but Deacon hadn’t turned them on. “Maybe we need to turn on some lights.”

  Deacon nudged my leg with his foot. I looked across the hot tub at him, his face lit up in a soft glow, beads of water running down his chest. “Look up.”

  I tipped back my head and looked up.

  “Oh,” I breathed. Without the city lights to compete with, the sky was darker, and the stars shone brighter. I leaned back against the side of the hot tub, heated jets of water massaging my back and shoulders and watched the stars reeling in the sky. It made my problems feel smaller, almost inconsequential compared to the vastness of the star-filled sky above me. I lowered my head, meeting Deacon’s eyes across the hot tub. He was watching me, not the star-filled sky, and for a few long moments, we just stared at each other. As if a magnetic pull drew me toward him, I moved across the hot tub and straddled him, my fingers sifting through his hair as our lips met. I closed my eyes, drinking in the taste of him as his tongue swept over mine, his hands cradling my face. I could feel his erection pressing against my stomach, but he took his time kissing me. Without warning, he stood up, bringing me with him, my legs cinched around his waist and he carried me into the house and up the stairs, leaving a trail of water in our wake.

  “You’re crazy,” I said,
laughing as he tossed me on the bed and dove on top of me.

  “That’s what you love about me.” He nudged my thighs apart and settled his narrow hips between them.

  “Love is a big word.”

  Deacon pinned my arms above my head and plastered his forehead to mine. I looked into his eyes and saw his heart and his soul and his secrets. He thrust into me, slowly and deeply, and I began to rock into him, wanting more of him. Wanting everything he had to give me. I didn’t want to fall in love with him, but it was too late, and his smile told me that he knew that.

  * * *

  I woke up to sunshine and a warm mountain breeze streaming through the open windows and a warm body wrapped around mine, our limbs tangled, his arm around my middle. We had lazy morning sex and Deacon made us breakfast—eggs, toast, bacon, and coffee that we ate at the farmhouse table. After breakfast, we packed a lunch, drove to Overlook Mountain and climbed a steep, rocky trail through the woods that was mostly in the shade. Two miles up the trail, we stopped to wander around the ruins of an old hotel. Trees had grown inside the frame and through the windows, and I thought the skeletal ruins were tragic and beautiful, especially after Deacon told me the story.

  “The first building on this site was a lodge in the early 1800s. Business never took off, so they closed it. A new developer came along and built a luxury 300-room hotel. Four years later, it burned down. Then two brothers came along and rebuilt it. That one burnt down in 1921. For the third rebuild, the guy figured it would be better to use concrete. But he gave up and never finished building it. In 1970, there was another fire on this site, but the concrete withstood the blaze.”

  He told me this story as we climbed a staircase leading to nowhere and I had “Stairway to Heaven” playing in my head.

  We ate our lunch on the mountaintop, with views of the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains. We still had a few hours to spend together, but I was already sad about leaving.

  “We can come back anytime,” Deacon said, making it sound like we had a future together, that this wasn’t going to end on top of this mountain. Or after we drove home separately.

  That was the day I stopped fighting it, stopped fighting the idea of an us. Because I wanted there to be an us. Not just today, but tomorrow and the day after. I wanted all his tomorrows.

  19

  Deacon

  “Open up,” Keira said, holding a lychee she’d peeled for me in front of my mouth. I opened my mouth and she fed it to me. The girl loved feeding me. Earlier, we had eaten Dim Sum and drank Oolong tea at a tea parlor circa 1920s. She’d fed me roast pork buns and shrimp Siu mai across the Formica table and ordered almond cookies for dessert. After dinner, we wandered around a Chinese grocery store and she bought bagsful of lychee and dragon fruit.

  Now we were roaming the alleys and side streets of Chinatown, eating lychee in the drizzling rain. I tossed our collection of fruit pits, mine and hers that she’d spit into my hand, in the garbage can as we passed it and wiped my sticky hand on my jeans.

  “Are you coming over tonight?” she asked.

  I shook my head. She sighed loudly, not bothering to hide her displeasure.

  In the week since we’d been back from the Catskills, I hadn’t been to her apartment once. I didn’t trust Sergei and I didn’t want any of Dmitri’s crew to find out where Keira lived. Chances were, I was being overly cautious. But she should feel safe in her own apartment. After a lifetime of being tailed and having stalkers, Jesus Christ, the last thing she needed was to constantly be looking over her shoulder.

  If anything happened to her because of my job, I’d never forgive myself. Before we left the Catskills, I gave her money to get an additional lock installed on her door. She didn’t want the money or the lock. But she did it. For me. And she took a photo to prove it. She also took a taxi to meet me tonight, although she claimed that the subway had felt safer than being in the back seat of the taxi.

  “He was a crazy driver.”

  That made me laugh.

  Pell street was a riot of color and Keira snapped photos of red Chinese lanterns hanging in front of a restaurant and a pink neon-lit barber shop. We stopped at the corner to cross the street and she leaned in close, snapping a selfie that captured both of us. “I won’t show anyone until our undercover affair is over,” she assured me. “I just want a picture of you in my phone. Since I can’t have you in my bed.”

  There was nothing I wanted more than to be in her bed, but it was safer for her if I stayed away. I draped an arm around her shoulders and guided her across the street. In the past week, I’d given a lot of thought to the story she’d told me, about how she was raised and what her life in Miami had been like. It explained a lot about Keira. It helped me understand her better. And in turn, I had poured out my whole story, entrusting her with information that could potentially jeopardize my whole assignment.

  Love was a crazy thing. It wasn’t logical. It didn’t play fair. And once you were in it, there was no such thing as playing it safe.

  As I was thinking this, Keira’s phone buzzed and she slid it out of her pocket, checking the message. A big smile lit up her face. We ducked under an awning and stopped walking. Keira held her phone between us so I could see the messages and photos from Ava and Connor.

  Ava: We got hitched!!!!

  Connor: At the Elvis Chapel in Vegas

  Ava: It was epic

  Keira scrolled through photos of Ava and Connor’s left hands, infinity symbols tattooed on their ring fingers. Another photo showed them sitting on the hood of their Mustang convertible with the Nevada desert in the background. I chuckled at the messages in the group chat.

  Eden: I’m never speaking to you again. You cheated us out of a wedding?!

  Eden: Oh, and CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

  Keira: Love you both. Did you get a live Elvis performance?

  Connor: “The Wonder of You”/Because that’s Ava Blue/And we love you too

  Ava: You sound like Dr. Seuss

  Connor: Or a lame rapper

  Killian: Thanks for asking me to be best man

  Connor: You’re the best man I know

  Ava: Okay, we’re on our honeymoon. Catch you later…

  Keira pocketed her phone and smiled at me, rocking back on her heels. “My brothers found true love.”

  “And what about their sister?”

  “What about her?” She winked at me, avoiding the question. “She’s pretty special.”

  “I can vouch for that, babe.” I hooked my fingers in the belt loops of her ripped black jeans and pulled her closer. She was wearing a black crop top that said Babe under a red and black plaid button-down shirt, exposing a strip of her tanned stomach. She looped her arms around my neck, the plastic bag of dragon fruit still clutched in one hand, and we kissed on a street corner in Chinatown that reeked of fish heads and rotting garbage. Her lips were soft and warm, and her skin was smooth and silky. She tasted sweet, like lychee, and smelled like ripe apricots so I didn’t notice the stench on the street.

  “The Bat phone is ringing,” she murmured against my lips.

  “Fuck the Bat phone.”

  “I’d rather fuck you.” She pulled away and I checked my phone. Dmitri.

  Two seconds later, a text came through. Where the fuck are you?

  Keira looked over her shoulder at the souvenir shop we had stopped in front of. “Hey. Take your call. I need Chinese fans and paper lanterns.”

  I took the bag of fruit off her arm and she waved over her shoulder as she entered the shop, a bell over the door chiming to announce her presence. My phone started ringing again and I answered Dmitri’s call, watching Keira through the shop window.

  “Where are you?” he asked, skipping the greeting.

  “What do you need?” I moved closer to the window and leaned my shoulder against it. Keira was wandering around, trailing her fingers over every item on display. Paper fans and lacquered rice bowls and chopsticks, miniature replicas of a Buddhist temple. T
he fat, smiling Buddhas caught her eye and she stopped in front of them, picking up each one and studying its face before setting it down and moving on to the next one. From here, they all looked the same.

  “I need you to come to my apartment. Tonight, we celebrate.”

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “Not on the phone. You’ll find out when you get here. I have good news.”

  He had sounded downright giddy. This was it. This was what we’d been waiting for. He had hooked up with someone who could help him flood the streets of my city with drugs and weapons. Dmitri had millions of dollars sitting in shell accounts, waiting to be spent on his last hurrah before he retired to his McMansion. He was looking for a supplier who could sell him at least two hundred kilos of cocaine and heroin. Bonus points if the supplier coughed up enough Fentanyl to kill a few million people.

  A few minutes later, Keira joined me on the sidewalk and showed me the laughing Buddha she bought. “It’s so ugly. I love it,” she said with a big happy smile. “It’s supposed to be good luck.”

  Keira and her superstitions. “Are you going to rub its belly every morning?”

  “Exactly. And make a wish. Maybe it’s like a genie.” She dug around in the bag and came out with a smooth, oblong stone, shades of brown swirled with white, and pressed it into my hand.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Warriors used to wear them on the breastplates of their armor before they went into battle. It’s to protect you and give you strength and courage.”

  “That’s a lot to ask of a small stone.”

  “I know but…keep it in your pocket, okay?”

  She was serious. She wanted me to carry this stone in my pocket for protection. I smiled and slipped it into my pocket. “Thanks. I feel safer already.”

  Keira chewed on her lower lip and looked down the street. “You have to go, don’t you?”