by James, Ella
“It’s like a fish bowl, but with beer, and it’s craft beer. Really good shit.”
My body freezes, muscles seizing, as I hear that same voice say, “What do you think of your friend’s new dude?”
What the fuck does that mean?
Barrett’s arms are wrapped around me, and I’m shaking. He’s gentle and strong and sweet, but he can’t shield me from this.
Craft beer.
Gemütlichkeit.
Beer bar.
I was at a beer bar New Year’s Eve 2012.
The realization stops my shaking. I manage to pull myself together before Bear calls Helga.
I know now. I know now. I’m not crazy. I’m…remembering.
* * *
December 20, 2015
‘Blue is in D.C. now. With the G. Have him tracked if you don’t believe me. It wasn’t him, Bear. Thank you for the dream catcher, by the way. I keep forgetting to say so.’
‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. You’re welcome.’
I blow on my numb fingers, then slide my glove back on and take aim one more time. The .38 is steadier in my right hand than it used to be. I hit the target this time. My phone buzzes in my pocket.
‘Why would he? We’re brothers, man. Remember that. You and me, we’re out now, but we’re still bros. We protect each other.’
I see the little bubble indicating Dove is typing, then he sends another message.
‘I’d think you would know that, Bear.’
Rage billows up inside me, followed quickly by remorse.
‘You know how Blue is. He’s scared of the fucking G.’ We try not to say General in text transmission, no matter how encrypted these messages are supposed to be. General Broomfield of all people can probably take a peek whenever he wants.
‘Blue’s still batting for you, brother.’
‘Bear…’ another message says. ‘His father’s guys know what you’re doing. He’s working his ass off to keep yours safe.’
I call right away, turning around toward my car, in the gun range parking lot, as if keeping my eyes on it will help me reach it faster. I start running. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“They watch you, Bear, like common fucking sense would dictate. You knew they might. We all knew.”
“What do you mean, smart ass? They watched me and what, Dove? Goddamn it!”
“They know that something’s going on with you and her,” he says quietly. “It’s like we thought it would be.”
“Meaning what?” I snarl as I throw my driver’s side door open.
“Meaning they’ve been eyeing both of you for the last week or so. Blue wanted to learn a little more before we told you. No one’s on you right now, Bear. They peeked in, botched that shit with Gwen that day, and left. Blue’s on it.”
“Blue is fucking on it. Like hell. FUCK!”
I hit the wheel so hard it groans and the airbag light starts flashing.
“Oh, fuck. Fuck, Dove. Do they think I told her?”
“They don’t know. Your correspondence with both me and Blue is being watched by more than one set of eyes. Blue told me that today. You should answer his calls, you know.”
“Is this why he was coming down this way?”
“He came and left, yes, a little while back. So he could tell anyone who asked that everything seems okay. I reassured him about it, too. So he could tell the G’s team things are safe. Tell me I’m not wrong, Bear.”
He’s not wrong. We’re all still safe.
“I can’t tell her,” I breathe. “I couldn’t. It would— It would…wreck things.” I laugh, desolate as fuck. “Dove.” I yank at my hair.
“It’s okay, dude. We’ve got you. Who would they send? Some contract fucker? Bart or Greene or Whissle from the SEALs?” He laughs. “Who would they send to take you out? That guy—the one who hurt your girl? It wasn’t Blue. It was probably one of them, just trying to sniff shit out and do a little data mining. If you don’t tell her, she’ll be safe. I don’t think the G would take a civvie out for no good reason. This is all just G keeping his asshole baby-fresh clean.”
I snort, even as my tires spin out on the dirt road that leads away from the gun range.
“Think of this, too. They won’t get your lady twice for data mining. That looks weird to the local oinkers.”
“True,” I breathe. “That’s true.”
We spec ops don’t want to draw the eyes of local law folks if we don’t have to. They tried to get information from Gwen once; they won’t try again.
“Blue’s ass is safe,” I say. “I hope the G’s guys know that. You guys fixed it up okay.” My throat tightens. A wave of heat moves through my cheeks, making my eyes feel hot.
“You’re really fucked, you know that?” Dove asks me a second later. He’s using his gentle voice, which alone is scary.
“I know,” I rasp.
“What you gonna do, Bear?”
My eyes blur. I exhale roughly. Inhale. “What can I do?” I manage in a steady-ish voice.
I can’t be honest with her—ever.
“I can’t leave her, Dove. I…can’t.”
“You love her.”
“She’s everything.” Tears drizzle down my cheeks. I don’t bother to wipe them.
“Maybe you could…swear or something. Swear that to the G. Maybe all of us could meet with him or something. Get him settled down. I don’t know. We could fly up for dinner. I’ll be thinking on this, Bear. We’ve got you covered. You can never tell her. That’s the only caveat. You give her everything else, man. Do what you have to do so you’ll be fucking happy. Breck would want that.”
Do what I have to do, but lie. And keep Gwenna in constant intermittent danger. Whenever G starts feeling nervous, or if Blue moves up the ranks and into politics just like his fucking family, I’d be putting her at risk. I would be at risk, and so if she loves me like I love her—and she does; my God, I don’t know why, but she loves me—then I would put her heart at risk.
“Thanks, man.” I get off the phone with Dove, and he says he’ll keep me posted.
I can’t do this. That’s my conscience talking. My heart.
Leave her.
Keep her safe, dumb fuck. She’ll find somebody else.
I pick her up from Helga’s. No one’s on my tail. No one’s on her. Gwenna is quiet as we Christmas shop. She’s soft and warm and quiet, her hand tight in mine. She tells me she loves me more than usual as we buy gifts for all her family. The plan is to spend Christmas at her Mom’s, and then fly out to California to see Kellan and Cleo sometime after.
But I’m not surprised when we get to her house, and she starts on lasagna, and says, “Bear?”
“Yeah?” I kiss her forehead, smiling gently down on her.
“I need to tell you something.”
My gut clenches. “Okay, Pig.”
“I think I want to go to Colorado after Christmas. Maybe you can go to California without me and we could meet up after.”
“Breckenridge?” I ask her.
Her face pales a little. “I do it every year,” she tells me, setting the lid back on the pot.
“You don’t want me with you?”
“Oh, no.” She looks up, her eyes wide and round and…wanting. “That’s not it. I just—”
“You think I’d leave you on your own?”
I wrap my arms around her from behind and press her up against me. “Pig. We’ll go there first and California later. It doesn’t matter. Kellan doesn’t care.”
She nods, turning to me. “Barrett—thank you.”
She looks troubled, though. Through dinner, too, and after, when we take a bath together. She seems unhappy. Distracted.
On Christmas Eve, as we sleep underneath the glow nights in her bedroom with our gifts piled on the couch, the refrigerator stuffed full of food for tomorrow, I learn why.
She talks during a dream, and I hear names I know.
Michael’s.
Niccolo’s.
>
John’s.
And mine.
Chapter Eighteen
Gwenna
December 31, 2011
11:39 p.m.
I step back inside and am greeted by the sound of “Pumped Up Kicks” coming through the ceiling speakers. It seems the band is taking a break and they’re playing radio. As a musician, I like this song. As a person, I’m not sure. I haven’t analyzed the lyrics or anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s about kids running from a school shooter.
Should I hum along with it?
I’m not sure I can help myself.
I press my lips together as I walk past the bar. The taste of Marlboros in cold weather takes me back to K-ville at Duke. I can smell the mix of stale material—sleeping bags and tents, the whiff of body odor (even though everyone in our tent tried to shower when they weren’t on shift), the lingering pall of smoke and tang of liquor. I can almost smell our textbooks, see our phones’ lights as we lie there like sardines in sleeping bags, trying for weeks to stake our claim to UNC or one of the other tented games. That’s Duke: basketball, and being there for years, that’s what winter is to me.
The memory evaporates as I blink at a brunette who’s planted in my path. She’s tall; I have to look up to see her face, which is oval-shaped, with pretty lips, and framed by brown curls. As I look at her, her brows narrow.
“You’re the model?”
“Huh?” I catch my cheek between my molars. I’m about to ask her if we know each other when she shakes her head and bursts out laughing.
“Sorry! I’m Marina. Where I’m from, in San Juan, there is this big, big billboard. You’re wearing a beige dress?”
I smile, nodding. I remember that shoot.
“And the Alexander McQueen clogs.”
I nod, half-sad because McQueen is dead now, half-impressed because this girl knows her shit.
“Are you a model, too?”
She shakes her head. “The bartender, he’s my friend, he heard you telling someone you’re a model. I want to be one too.”
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at the bar with Marina, jotting down phone numbers for her on the back of a bottle-cap-shaped coaster.
I’m still there when someone taps my shoulder. I turn, my stomach taking flight, hitting my throat, but it’s just Jamie.
“Let’s go! Do you want to? I spilled beer on myself and I want to go back home before it gets more cold and gross. Nic is coming too,” she says in an excited whisper. “Problems at his house, so works out perfectly for me.” She wiggles her eyebrows, and I glance around the bar.
I don’t see my guy.
“I’ve got this scarf…”
“Stylish,” Marina interjects.
I give her a smile. “It isn’t mine. If I tell you what this guy looks like, will you give it back to him for me?”
“You got it from a guy?” Jamie’s mouth is hanging open.
“Never mind,” I tell Marina. I sigh. “If I don’t see him as we walk to the door, I’ll give it to Nic. Does Nic know the guy who was sitting at our table while we danced? Dark, curly hair?”
“The hot as sin one?”
I smirk. “Yep.”
“It figures he’d have eyes for you.” She pokes me with her finer and then turns to our new friend. “This girl is honey to the boys.”
“They’re bears or bees.” I look from Jamie to Marina, finding that the girl is smiling.
“Are you a model, too?” she asks Jamie.
Jam is still gloating over that—in her teasing way, of course—as we walk toward the car. I didn’t see the guy again. Barrett, Nic said his name is. I’m still wearing his warm, wool scarf as I get into the Range Rover.
* * *
Gwenna
December 25, 2015
“Ho, ho, ho,” I murmur, nipping at Bear’s earlobe as I reach into his boxer-briefs and wrap my hand around his sleepy cock.
He makes a hoarse sound, and I feel him swell in my grasp.
“Pig?” His eyelids flutter. His hips shift. I pull his underwear down with my free hand, hooking the fabric underneath his heavy balls.
Bear groans. “Jesus…”
“It’s his birthday,” I say, laughing.
I scoot up a little on his strong thighs, rubbing his head against my wetness, framed by holiday red crotchless panties.
His eyes open… They rove down me, dark and dazed…
I feel his cock twitch. It’s so fucking hot. I rub my fingertip along the rim, then let the tip of him part my lips, skating through my slickness. He loves that—and I love his desperate moans. His eyes are half shut, but I smile down at him, causing my Santa hat to flop down by my cheek.
“Let me in,” he rumbles.
“Soon.” I giggle.
His hand wanders up my teddy-clad chest, his fingertips finding my nipple—which isn’t difficult to do: it’s peeking out through a circular hole in the teddy, lined with fluffy white.
I shift a little, and his thighs flex under me. I cup his balls and his face tightens.
“Oh God,” he grits. “Gwen.”
There’s this little thing I do with my thumb…teasing his balls. I do it while I pump his shaft just underneath his head, and Barrett grunts, his ass coming up off the bed.
“Santa,” he murmurs. Then he arches up and takes my breast in his mouth, sucking as I work his cock, until he’s thrusting at me, looking wild-eyed.
“I’ve been good,” he rumbles, and I guide him so he’s right there where I need him. Then I sink down on his thick cock, gasping as his head fills me.
I can feel his legs tremble. Or is that my legs?
“You feel…so good.” My voice shakes as I clench around him: thick enough to spread me open just right. I lock my thighs to keep from sinking all the way down. I need him deep inside, but first, I want to see him beg.
He twines his fingers through mine, squeezing. Then his lashes lift a little, and he gives me this sexy-as-fuck little smirk that says I know you want all of this.
He rocks a little; I take more, and then—oh God—he grabs my hips and lifts me off him.
“No!”
He chuckles as I try to work myself back down on him.
“What do you want, little Piggy?”
“You,” I gasp.
“You’ve got me.”
“This…” I grab his cock; I rub his head. His eyelids sag.
“Fuck me with it. Fuck me, Bear…”
I gambled correctly. His eyes open: blazing. “You want to be fucked, Piggy?”
“If you can…” I quirk a brow. I can feel Bear’s tip rubbing between my lips. I don’t look down; I just hold his eyes: a challenge that I pray will get me off.
I see his jaw tighten. Then I’m blinded by a hard, smooth thrust.
I cry out as stars explode behind my eyes. I hear him chuckle. Then he’s got my wrists… He’s holding onto my hips. His strokes are deliciously forceful. My toes curl. My legs go weak. I’m panting so hard I can’t breathe.
“If I can,” I think I hear him laugh.
Then I’m dizzied. I’ve been flipped over, and he’s on top now, driving into me, lifting my legs. He drapes them over his big shoulders, finds my clit with his thumb. I can feel his balls slap my taint as he pounds me. My cries meet his grunts. It’s Christmas and I’m being worshipped. Oh, sweet sacrilege…
I’m smiling with my front teeth on my lower lip as I fall into the abyss, and Barrett makes a soft sound, then his warmth spreads through me, and it’s Christmas.
* * *
Christmas at Mom’s house is overboard as always: first world at its finest, with more food than anyone can eat, enough gifts to produce five huge, biodegradable garbage bags full of wrapping paper, and two bottles of Château Léoville-Barton from Dad’s wine cellar to go with dinner, which is roasted duck and truffle butter chicken, with all kinds of extravagant sides.
Mom makes Barrett feel like family. Not everyone gets a sculpture at Christmas, and this year, it�
��s only him and me. She gives him a small bear, curled into a hibernation pose, and me a tree where a bird sits perched on a branch. If you sit the pieces beside each other, it looks like the bird is looking down on the bear.
I can tell it means a lot to him by the blank look that crosses his face when he pulls it from its hand-wrapped box, followed by a quick swallow before a very earnest “thank you.” He sets the piece on his knee while we open presents, his hand cupped loosely around the little bear. I see my mom notice the way he’s holding it. The whole thing makes me giddy.
Rett and Barrett talk for a long while about duck hunting, which culminates in plans to go sometime in January. By the time we leave, I’m wine drunk and Barrett is laughing his ass off because he hardly drank at all. It’s started to drizzle, so he carries me to his Jeep and when he plops me down in the passenger’s seat, I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him until I’m dizzy.
“You’re a funny drunk, Pig.”
I smash my palm against his nose. “Am not.” But I’m giggling.
“You are,” he says with conviction. I feel his lips tickle my forehead. Then his arms are locked around my shoulders. He’s pulling me against him. Silence throbs around us.
“God—I fucking love you, Gwenna.”
“I love you.” I love his smell, the feel of him… I’m smiling as he slides into the driver’s seat. He takes my hand.
I feel him doing something with it. I look down. There’s something heavy…
“Merry Christmas, Piglet.”
I hold my arm up to my face and see three thin bracelets. They’re smooth and dark. I sit up and flip the visor down. They sparkle.
“Oh my God. Did you—” They’re bangle bracelets made of polished wood, and in the center of each bracelet is a line of tiny diamonds. My eyes fly to his. “You made these.”
“Yeah.” He smiles. His fingers touch the bracelets. “From a tree along our property line. Don’t worry, it had fallen.”
