by Cd Brennan
Dick lifted his head just enough to shout, “It’s not gonna be, you big, stupid oaf!”
While Dave seethed, Sierra settled beside Dick on the bed, holding her towel closed at the waist. “I’ll work something out. I’ll work as many hours at the shop as possible, put some money away for you before I go in.”
What the hell?
“It won’t be!” Dick barked out at Sierra. Her tears were gone now, replaced with a face made of stone. As if her useless brother had drained even the emotion from her.
Dave had had enough. From his understanding, whatever Sierra did could possibly get her incarcerated, and all Dick could think about was himself. “You can get a job.”
The room went quiet, completely void of sound and movement, the calm before the storm. Dick shot up out of bed, staggered then recovered, and came for Dave, thudding footsteps in his heavy drunkenness. Dave held out his hands, “Easy, Dick.”
Dick rushed Dave and tackled him to the wall, a clumsy attempt in his stupor. He tried to hold Dave there with a forearm at his throat, but there wasn’t any girth behind it, nor did he pin Dave’s body, which would have been a strong offensive move, and his arm fell short to the top of Dave’s chest. And even though Dave could easily remove him with a good push or knee to the groin, he let Dick have the upper hand to show Sierra she did mean something to Dick. In some strange Dick way, at least.
Strong beer vapors from Dick’s rank breath assaulted Dave’s nose, and spittle rested on Dick’s mouth. But Dave wouldn’t turn away. “It sounds like your sister—”
Dick jammed his forearm into Dave’s neck, and this time it did engage his windpipe, but Dave persisted. “Has been taking care of you her whole life. You could at least—”
“She’s a fucking hacker!”
“Don’t Dave,” Sierra said and stepped up beside Dick. She placed her hand on his arm, but didn’t tug, didn’t raise her voice, completely calm as if she knew how to soothe the beast, the animal that Dave now realized Dick was. “Let Dave go. He’s only helped me.”
Dick turned to face Sierra. “You mean he’s only fucked you.”
At that, Dave pushed hard and shoved Dick onto the bed where he lay sprawled like a starfish. “Stay right there. Don’t move, or I will kick your ass.”
Dick must have realized Dave was serious and dropped his head back to the bed. Sierra stood next to Dave, and he badly wanted to hold her. Hacker or not, she was still his, and he’d take care of her. “How can I help?”
She sighed. “Nothing is definite yet. But I willingly handed over my laptop so I didn’t look suspicious.”
He turned to her and took her hand. “What’s going on?” When Dick raised his head from the bed again, Dave jammed a finger at him and said, “Stay.” He’d treat him like the dog he was acting.
Her expression unreadable, her beautiful face a blank stage, not one emotion passing, barely even a blink as she stood there. When Dave squeezed her hand, rubbed his thumb over her knuckles to soothe her, her posture finally went soft and her shoulders slumped. One part of Sierra had won over the other, and Dave waited patiently to see which one it was.
She chewed her lip, her brow furrowed, her eyes now full of pain. “I’ve been hacking since I was thirteen, just little stuff at first, like buying tickets online and stuff from Amazon. Our folks didn’t really work, and what little money we did have went to partying with their friends.”
Dick groaned on the bed. “Are you really gonna do this?”
She pulled her hand out of Dave’s and took a step back. He didn’t like the distance she was putting between them, but he understood it. “I was—am—part of a hacking group. They taught me the big stuff, and as I got better, I shared with them what I figured out how to do.”
“Like that group Anonymous that did all the Isis stuff?”
A sorta smile. “Kinda…but they are hactivists. They have an agenda, goals, and it’s an open group.”
Oh. Dave knew very little about computers or hacking. He understood the basics of a computer, but he wasn’t even techie by today’s standards. He just wanted to grow plants and flowers—dig his hands into dirt, nurture them from seeds, bring them to life.
“So you’re not a hairdresser?”
Sierra sat on the edge of the bed, finally relaxing into the conversation. At least a little bit, rather than standing like a stiff plank. And then it finally hit Dave. It must be humiliating for her to have to reveal all her private life while wrapped in a white hotel towel that barely covered her butt.
With a wave of his hand, “Actually, don’t answer that. Would you like to dress first? We can have a glass of wine and talk about it?”
She perked up and stood, had graced him with one of her rare smiles when Dick, his eyes closed, said, “Well, isn’t that all lovey dovey. You’re such a gentleman. Screw my sister and then offer to buy her a drink after. What a piece of work you are.”
Dave balled his fists at his side, so ready to throttle the immature prick, but he wouldn’t stoop to Dick’s level. Sierra seemed indecisive, looking back and forth between the men. He needed to get her out of this room, out of the poison that seeped from her brother. He was bad enough when he was sober, but downright nasty after a few drinks.
“Sierra.”
At her name, she turned to Dave.
“Put some clothes on, and we’ll just take a walk.” He said it quietly, hoping that Dick hadn’t heard.
No such luck. “Ordering her around now, are you?”
Dave ignored him and gestured toward the bathroom door with his head. She picked up her bag and slipped past him on her way, her head bowed. He wanted to stop her, lift her head for her, but the faster they were out of this room, the better. Silently, she closed the bathroom door, and a second later, he could hear the soft whir of the fan, the sound muffled by the heavy fire door. She knew her brother better than Dave, but they’d both understood he was close to passing out. Just a minute more…
There. Dick had started snoring, just a rumble at first, but as he fell deeper into sleep, the snoring grew. Dave rested his bum on the dresser, crossed his arms. What he wouldn’t give to get out of the same rugby shirt and shorts he’d been wearing now for over twelve hours. And sleep… He needed badly to be able to perform tomorrow in their last match. Luckily it was a later game, but he hadn’t taken care of his body the last couple of days, and it would catch up on him.
The noise of the fan ceased, and then with a soft click, she slipped out of the barely open door. Dave stood. Sierra was now in some soft shorts and a tank top, no bra, her breasts so beautiful and natural. She had a hoodie draped over her arm and looked up at him expectantly.
He held out her key card and led her through the door. She turned the handle so the hefty door would shut as quietly as possible. Which ended up being a loud clunk, but at least they were outside. He doubted Dick had heard them.
Dave grabbed Sierra’s hand and walked her down the hall to the elevators. Once on the main floor, they passed the hotel restaurant where raucous laughter and chatter came from the bar area. Still some Blues up and about so Dave aimed for the front doors, hoping they didn’t meet anyone on the way out. Not that he wouldn’t be proud of having Sierra with him, but there was no time for chatter and questions.
Once outside, he looked around. Not much for privacy. A parking lot full of cars, a main road with lots of traffic spilling by, even at the late hour, and the hotel was banked on each side by an auto parts store and a Chili’s restaurant. Even after midnight, there was the noise and blaring lights of a big city. Dave couldn’t wait to get home.
Sierra tugged at his hand and motioned for him to follow. She walked them around the back of the hotel where there was less…everything, a small employee parking lot with a row of pines strategically planted along the back for privacy. Under a couple trees, at the very edge of the property, was a picnic table. That was where Sierra headed.
“How did you know there’d be something back here?”
>
“Every company has a smoking table just off property for the employees.” She sat on one bench, her back to the table.
He hadn’t even thought of that. Dave sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. It was still quite warm and she had put her hoodie on, but he couldn’t go longer than a second without touching her.
She looked to him and let out a soft snort, but there was a whole ton of cynicism in that tiny sound, as if she didn’t believe in affection. But nope, Dave would not relent. Those who were the most suspicious of love needed it the most.
“So, tell me.”
And this time she did. “I told you how my folks were partiers when Dick and I were growing up.” She didn’t wait for his confirmation but kept going, rushing. “I got my first desktop computer when I was young. That old Dell saved me. Seriously.” She had been twisting her fingers but now clasped them tight and locked them between her knees. “That and a pair of headphones. When I wasn’t at school or taking care of the house or Dick, I spent all my time on my computer. It blocked out all the shit that was going on downstairs.”
She sighed. “But Dick chose to hang with my parents and their ‘friends.’ I tried to persuade him otherwise. I’d even download movies so we could watch together upstairs, but he wanted to be with my folks so badly he didn’t care what environment that was. Didn’t care that there was alcohol and drugs everywhere, loud music, swearing, sexist stories…”
She took a breath and continued, “So much shit a young boy shouldn’t have witnessed. It really fucked him up. He wanted to be loved so badly, to be seen by our folks, that he put himself in harm’s way to do it. He’d go to sleep way too late—an eleven-year-old boy, can you imagine?”
Dave couldn’t.
“The house was always a mess the next day. People passed out on our couches and on the floor. Empty bottles and cans everywhere. It stunk like cigarette smoke, pot, and stale beer. I hated it. So I cleaned it up. Not because they deserved the help, but it was my home too, and Dick’s, and it made me feel better.
“I couldn’t work at thirteen, but that’s where my computer came in. I met lots of people online who gave me…ideas how to get around certain systems, like Medicaid and Food stamps, even how to access my own parent’s bank account so I could get money out from their unemployment before they could spend it. Not a lot that they would notice, but enough to get Dick and I lunches through school.”
“This is your hacking group?” So very illegal, but showed how smart Sierra was.
“The first one, yeah. They only did small stuff. But the older I got, the more I learned. I upgraded hacking groups and—” She stopped abruptly, then continued. “Anyway, I’m still with that same group. They are my only family other than Dick. My parents don’t count.”
“But if you work as a hairdresser, do you still need to do…all this stuff?”
“I’m only a hairdresser for show. It was the fastest course to get me working out of high school. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. It takes care of most of what I need, but I still need money for Dick. And…I don’t want to stop. I love the challenge.”
Dave grunted. “Dick is a grown man. He can take care of himself.”
“Not really. Mentally, he’s probably still a teenager.”
Dave agreed with that.
She turned to face him. “Did you know that kids who are abused often stop growing mentally and emotionally at the time of abuse?”
“I didn’t.”
“Yep, and that’s what happened to Dick. I know most of the Blues can’t stand him, but they don’t know what he’s gone through.”
And now Dave would be easier on Dick because of it. And what Sierra had gone through. Did she not see it for herself? It was amazing she had turned out so normal. And it must have been her online friends and her own motivation that had kept her sane. Sane enough to mature into a beautiful, caring woman.
“So what did the cops find?”
She crumpled, her shoulders slumping. Dave curled his arm and pulled her closer so that she laid her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t know. They questioned me about the Camaro rental and some other small hack stuff. But it wasn’t the cops. It was the FBI. The cops just brought me in, but it was the feds that questioned me. I think they have something on my group. They’ll probably ask me to name names, and I won’t do it.”
“Can you leave Nashville?”
“They said I could, which seems odd.”
“How will you get your laptop back?”
“They said they’d mail it back. They didn’t have a subpoena or anything for it. Like I said, I handed it over willingly. I thought it was the best thing to do.”
“It was.”
She sat upright. “Was it? I won’t give up my hacking family, not after all they’ve done for me.”
He rubbed her back to soothe her. “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing.” Her voice hitched as she began to cry. “I don’t want you involved.”
Dave tugged her onto his lap, wrapping a leg on both sides of his. She tucked into his shoulder and sobbed. “Who will take care of Dick when I go to jail?”
Dave rubbed her back. “You won’t go to jail.”
“I will.”
“You won’t, but if you do, I’ll look after Dick.”
She lifted her tear-stained face, the glow of a nasty yellow parking lot light casting bad shadows onto her face, aging her by twenty years. “Thank you. That’s the nicest thing anyone has done for me.” She kissed him gently.
“You’re welcome.” He kissed her back, and this time Sierra opened the kiss, her mouth moving over his. Their tongues danced, and his cock grew hard. When she started rocking onto him, he slipped his hands up the back of her shirt and hoodie to feel her soft skin. She rocked against him again, and he pressed on her shoulders to feel the pleasure of her crotch hard on his dick. When she groaned, Dave lost it. He moved his hands around to her front, slid them up her belly, and palmed her tits in his hands.
It wasn’t very private. Even less private than in the car behind the semi at the rest stop. He didn’t want Sierra to feel like she was just a quickie to him, whatever spot they could find to get themselves off. But he couldn’t control himself. Not around her. And it seemed, by her initiating the intimacy the few times, she couldn’t either.
Sierra gasped when he pinched her nipples, so he did it again, the sound turning him on. She was humping him so hard he was going to come. She must have been close, too, since she began to rock faster, rubbing her crotch along the length of his dick.
He yanked her shirt up and took one breast in his mouth, then the other. “Come for me, Sierra. Come hard.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned, pressing her tit into his mouth. When he pinched the nipple of her other, she threw her head back and yelled out. “Dave! Oh, God, Dave!”
And then he climaxed too, spilling into his own shorts like a teenager. That’s what happened to him when it came to Sierra. He became blind with lust and hunger, lost all of his 28 years of control. His orgasm finally subsided, but he knew he’d want her again. But not like this.
She hugged him tight, her head cuddled into his shoulder. He rubbed her back as they breathed to regain control.
“I love you, Sierra.”
She jerked back, still panting. “No.”
“I know it’s too soon, but—”
“No.” She stood from his lap and pulled her shirt down. “No. I’m no good for you.”
“Yes, you—”
“No!” she screamed, her hands in fists at her sides. “No!” She took a deep breath and calmed herself. “Dave, you are good to your bones. You deserve a woman who is all things good just like you.”
“But you are. Don’t you see it?”
“No!” she yelled again. “I’m a criminal, Dave. I don’t belong with you.”
But she did. Dave was certain of it. More so now with her denial. He’d felt it at the beginning; he felt
it now. Love. “Sierra…”
“No. Never.”
Chapter 11
The words had fallen out of his mouth. Bloop. Out there into the world. And whoa, talk about awkward after that. The silence. The strained walk back to her room. She wouldn’t let him hold her hand, didn’t say one word. Not one. After her initial outburst, she hadn’t acted angry or disappointed or…anything. Any emotion from her would have been better than none. She’d totally shut down.
Dave was an idiot, a clown. Like he couldn’t have chosen a better time or place to express his undying devotion and love than after he came in his pants on a peeling, lopsided wooden picnic table in the parking lot of a chain hotel? Fantastic. To ease the embarrassment that he felt as strongly as he had in that moment, he rubbed his forehead furiously.
Shit! He thumped a fist onto the counter and shoved another yellow rose into the vase, not using any care like he normally would. He couldn’t even deal with design at the moment. And he loved his job.
Dave let his head fall back. Goddammit. And his stained crotch as they’d walked through the reception area… He relived that night constantly in his head, and it sucked.
But he wouldn’t take the words back, and he didn’t care it had been barely twenty-fours that he’d known her. She was life—fun, excitement, laughter, pleasure…pain.
Dave stripped off the ends of the greens and inserted one then the other into the vase. He stood back to get the overall design and then…sighed. It looked like a bouquet out of the eighties, lots of chrysanthemums and mini roses, but minus the baby’s breath. That he wouldn’t use if someone put a gun to his head. But all his creative energy had gone into the bouquets he’d made for Sierra and then promptly destroyed. It was cathartic for him to get her out of his system. So many things reminded him of Sierra so he put that into the design, but they were only for her, and for him, so he couldn’t get himself to sell them in the shop.
The current arrangement was for a funeral. How fitting. He’d scrap the entire design in front of him, but he had two other orders to do yet before he left for rugby practice. Luckily Krissy was working today so he could hole himself up in the back room, listen to some soft rock on the radio, and nurse his mortified heart. He pulled out a dahlia from the bouquet to reposition but couldn’t find the energy to finish. He threw down the stem, ripped off his apron, and yelled at Krissy to lock up as he headed out the door.
