The man at the door nodded us inside. Just before we went in, Sean leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Get enough for everything we need. Lights, chemicals, all that shit. Not just the rent. You don’t want to have to come back to this guy.”
I swallowed and nodded.
The inner office held just a desk, a few chairs and a safe. There were also a few large potted plants, the leaves luxuriantly green and healthy. They made me feel better for a second. Then I saw they were plastic.
Behind the desk, tapping at a laptop, was a man who was...wrong.
I knew it as soon as I saw him. Anyone would have: the aura of it pervaded the room like a bad smell. I felt a physical urge to turn around and run. The scariest thing of all wasn’t how strong the feeling was, but the knowledge that everyone who came in here must feel the same way...and yet, given that the guy was still in business, they didn’t run; they stayed. That’s how desperate his customers were.
That’s how desperate I was.
He wasn’t frightening, physically. He was a little overweight and, standing up, he couldn’t have been much taller than me. He was maybe fifty, with a bald spot that was growing and gold-rimmed bifocals. His shirt had dark sweat patches under the arms. He looked most of all like someone’s dad. There was nothing in his appearance you could pick out that was threatening...and yet being in his presence was almost unbearable. To not run, I had to fight every instinct I had.
I sat down.
Sean sat next to me. “This is Murray,” he told me. “He’ll give you a loan.”
Murray grinned at me. “Absolutely.” He kept grinning. He wouldn’t stop grinning. It was the sort of smile a wolf might give a young fawn, just before it went for its throat.
“Tell him how much you need,” said Sean.
“Twelve thousand dollars,” I said shakily.
Murray just kept grinning at me. He looked right into my eyes and—
Guys mentally undress you. That’s what they do. Every woman’s had it. But this wasn’t that. This was deeper and dirtier. More violating. He wasn’t just undressing me, or even imagining fucking me. He was sizing me up like a piece of property. Figuring out what I was worth.
He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “For how long?”
“Six months,” I told him.
He turned to the safe, spun the dial and opened it to reveal stacks of banknotes. He slapped two thick bundles on the desk, then counted out some more bills. “Twelve thousand,” he said. “I’ll give it to you for six months at four hundred percent.”
I stared at the money. It was more cash than I’d ever seen in my life. Everything that we needed to get going. But… “Four hundred percent?”
“We’ll take it,” said Sean. I whipped my head around to gape at him, but he gave me a warning look. Murray chuckled. “We’ll take it,” said Sean again.
I remembered what he’d said outside, but this was insane. I shook my head, leaned across to Sean and whispered. “Have you any idea how much that is? That’s, like, thirty thousand dollars, by the time we pay it back!”
“Twenty nine,” said Murray smugly.
“That’s crazy!” I said. “No way!”
“Just take it,” grated Sean. I could hear the rising anger in his voice.
Murray sat back in his chair, still grinning. “I could offer you a much better rate—” he started.
Sean leaned across the desk towards him. “You shut your mouth right now,” he said in a low, dangerous tone.
Murray smirked at him. “You want me to call the boys in here?”
“She’ll take the four hundred percent!” Sean snapped.
“Don’t you think she should at least hear her options? It’s her name on the loan.”
“What?” I asked. “What are my options?”
“There are no other options!” snapped Sean. “Let me handle this!” I could see the muscles of his back standing out through his tank top: he was a heartbeat away from taking a swing.
Murray threw his head back and laughed. He didn’t look scared at all. I realized that this was fun to him. He was baiting Sean—he wanted him to lose it and hit him, just so he could have the fun of watching his heavies beat him up. It was going to happen unless I did something. “Sean’s right,” I said quickly. “Four hundred percent is fine. I’ll take it. Where do I sign?”
Murray laughter died away. He shook his head, a man denied his ultimate prize, but he didn’t stop grinning. Sean sat down, still glaring at him.
Murray printed off a document and slapped it down in front of me. While he took copies of my driver’s license, I read it thoroughly. Twice. With Sean looking over my shoulder. But it was just a standard loan agreement, save for the ridiculous interest rate. I signed, my hand shaking, and Murray pushed the cash across the desk to me. I scooped it into my purse.
“See you in six months,” said Murray cheerfully. “Or before.”
Sean glared at him, pulled me to my feet and swept me out of the room, then out past the two heavies and into his car. Then he just sat there clutching the wheel, knuckles white.
“Sorry,” I said quietly. “I should have just agreed as soon as you said.” It was hitting me now how close we’d come to disaster. Another few seconds and Sean would have been in a fight with Murray’s two heavies. Even if he’d won, we sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten the loan.
Sean nodded silently. “It’s okay,” he muttered at last. “You didn’t know.”
“What...was it?” I asked tentatively. “What was my other option?” I thought I had a pretty good idea. “Did he want to have sex with me, or have me give him a blowjob or—”
Sean spun around to face me. There was more anger in his eyes than I’d ever seen and his hand crushed the steering wheel so hard I thought he was going to break it. It was intimidating...but not frightening, because it didn’t feel as if he was angry at me. “No,” he said in a strained voice. He turned away and started the engine.
“Worse than that?” I asked hesitantly.
He put the car in gear, but didn’t drive off straightaway. “Promise me something,” he said. He looked round at me again and this time he didn’t look angry: he looked scared. I’d never seen anything scare him before. “Promise me you’ll never go back there.”
I nodded slowly. “I promise.”
We moved off. It took several minutes for the mood to ease, which gave me plenty of time to think about what had just happened. He obviously hated Murray, had hated introducing me to him. But that alone didn’t explain how angry he’d gotten at the thought of me being ensnared by the creep. But I knew what would.
I didn’t know exactly what Murray had been trying to bargain me into, but it was obviously sexual. What if Sean was protective because he wanted me for his own? Was he expecting to bed me...did he think that was his right, in return for helping me?
What was really scary was...I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I knew I should be outraged but the idea of him fucking me had been scalding my brain since the first time I’d met him. And the darker idea of him fucking me and me not having a choice about it was, if I was totally honest with myself, also pretty hot. I need him, a little voice inside me murmured. I’d have to do anything he wanted….
God, I’m disgusting.
Was that it? God, that was it, wasn’t it? That totally explained why a bad boy like him would help me. I was going to be his sex slave for the next six months. I turned and stared at him, making it obvious, so that he couldn’t help but notice. I wanted to get it over with. I wanted him to know that I knew. I wanted him to just turn around and lay it out for me, and then pull over by the side of the road, order me into the back seat and tell me to take my clothes off and—
He turned around to look at me.
I forgot how to breathe.
“What?” he said. “You’ve been staring at me for five bloody miles.”
My heart was hammering away and my face was scalding hot. “I—” I swallowed. “I just—”
<
br /> “What?”
We stared at each other. Am I your sex slave? I nearly blurted. But looking into his eyes, I knew I was wrong. There was lust there, for sure. But there wasn’t the edge of cruelty I remembered in Murray’s eyes. I couldn’t believe he’d force me into sex. I dropped my gaze, my face going scarlet. “Nothing.”
A lot of things flooded through me: humiliation, relief...and just a tiny bit of disappointment.
We drove on in silence, my brain working overtime. I’d just remembered something else, from Murray’s parking lot. After the anger, there’d been that other look he gave me, when he got me to promise I wouldn’t go back there. He’d looked scared. There was only one thing that explained him getting angry and scared.
He was protecting me.
As crazy as that sounded, the guy whose reputation was built on breaking things and scaring people was trying to shield me from the worst of his world. As if he didn’t want me tainted by it. Was that it? I looked across at him but his expression didn’t give anything away. The idea that he felt something for me made my chest go unexpectedly light. Was it possible? Him?
“You keep staring at me, I’ll make you get out and walk,” he muttered.
“Sorry,” I said in a small voice. I faced front.
But I kept stealing glances at him the whole way home.
Louise
“School work?” asked Kayley in dismay. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head and handed her another pile of worksheets. “You’re missing a lot of school and you’re going to be missing a lot more. I want to make sure that big brain of yours gets a workout.” I smiled and tried not to stare at how pale she looked, how sickly. I knew it was just the side effects, that the chemo was doing her good, long term. But part of me wanted to just rip the needle out of her arm and whisk her home.
Kayley studied a pack of worksheets on the Civil War. “I hate you,” she muttered.
I leaned in and gave her a hug in response. It went on a lot longer than I’d intended: I just couldn’t let go. “Okay,” she said at last, her voice muffled by my hair. “Enough, already.”
I let her go. But right at the last second, as I pulled back, she awkwardly clung to me again.
“You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral. “Like, the food’s okay and everything?”
“Sure. Except they only have lime jello. You know how I feel about lime jello.”
I looked into her eyes and I could see the fear there. But I could also see the determination: she really, really didn’t want to break down and cry and she begged me with her eyes to help her.
I nodded, stood up and slung my purse over my shoulder. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do about the lime jello. And do the worksheets. When you get back from Europe, I want you to slot straight back in as a grade-A student, you hear me?”
She made a big show of sighing and rolling her eyes but she looked relieved...just as I’d intended. I wanted to convince her—okay, convince both of us—that this was just temporary, a glitch. That before the end of the year she’d be a normal teen again, heading back to school.
Because the alternative...that didn’t bear thinking about.
***
The next morning, we went to look round the grow house. Just as Sean had said, the realtor was desperate to rent. In less than an hour, the paperwork was complete, we had handed over the money, and we were standing holding the keys in the middle of the empty house.
“We can fit about eight tables in here,” I said, pacing out the living room. “And another two in the kitchen—I want to keep the sink free so I can hook up water lines. And another four in each bedroom...” I was muttering mostly to myself. “It’s almost a pity there are walls. It’d be easier if it was one big space, like a warehouse.”
Sean nodded. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “Should be easy enough.” He knocked experimentally on a wall.
I gaped at him. “I wasn’t serious! We can’t knock the walls down, we’re renting this place! There are rules in the lease! We’re not even meant to redecorate!”
He blinked at me. “I reckon we’re not meant to grow dope, either.”
“But...what happens in six months, when we move out?”
He tilted his head to one side and he gave me a look that told me just how naive I was being. And yet it didn’t feel patronizing at all. It felt as if he thought my innocence was adorable. “You let me worry about that,” he said.
Fine. This was why I’d asked for his help in the first place, after all, because he knew all this stuff. I checked out the windows. “We’ll need to do something to stop the light getting out.”
“A lot of people cover them with newspaper,” said Sean. “Or use blackout blinds. But it looks obvious. Who has their blinds shut all day, every day?”
“So what do we do?”
For once, he looked almost...shy, like he was admitting a weakness. “I’ve got this idea,” he muttered. “Might not work. But I’m gonna give it a crack. Okay?”
“Of course,” I told him.
He nodded quickly and went off to his car to get his sledgehammer. I gathered up the few items the previous owners had left us: some scarlet, fake velvet drapes in the living room, a saucepan with no handle I found in a kitchen cupboard and a solitary coffee mug. A few moments later, the demolition began.
I knew what he was famous for, of course. I’d imagined, plenty of times, how he must look swinging the thing. But imagining isn’t the same as seeing...or hearing.
At first, it was fine. I stood there open mouthed as he tore through the place. Huge chunks of plasterboard went flying, wallpaper flapping at their edges. Cinder blocks shattered, chunks of stone and clouds of dust arcing out across the room. The muscles of Sean’s back bulged and flexed hypnotically under his tank top as he swung, his tight core powering him round. I couldn’t take my eyes from his hard ass as it stood out under his jeans.
But as he worked, the mood changed.
It wasn’t that he got angry. That would have been okay. Everyone likes to unleash some healthy rage when they do something like knock down a wall. But you do that with a silly grin on your face—you yell and scream and it’s cathartic, but then you laugh at yourself.
Sean wasn’t laughing. I could see the rage throbbing through his body, see it in the way he gripped the hammer and the way he pounded it into the walls with single-minded determination. It pulsed out of him like a heat haze and, every time the hammer struck, it reverberated through the room and soaked into every surface. This wasn’t just demolition; Sean was ripping through the house the way a hurricane rips through a town, changing it forever.
I called out—I’m not even sure why. Maybe to get him to slow down. Maybe so I could tell him I was going to wait outside. Mainly, though, I just wanted to check that I could stop him, that he was still in control. And immediately, I wished I hadn’t.
Because he didn’t stop.
Either he didn’t hear me or he was so used to ignoring the pleas of the people whose home or business he was destroying that he tuned me out. The air was full of choking dust, now. Sean stopped for a second to peel his tank top from his gleaming body and I wanted to yell again, but I was too busy coughing. Through the dust, I saw something: I’d thought he had no tattoos aside from the sleeve, but now I saw there were some on his back: twisting black lines that fanned out like flames from between his shoulder blades. In the circular space where all of the lines converged, there was another tiny tattoo no bigger than my thumbnail, and it didn’t match the style of the lines at all, as if it had been drawn at a different time. A shamrock.
The destruction started up again and this time I got really scared. It wasn’t just that he was angry, that the destruction was letting something dark and dangerous pour out of him like a river. It was that he was enjoying it. His lips were drawn back in a tight, hard smile, a look of savage victory. By destroying, he was winning—or he believed he was. The sight of it chilled me: I�
��d never seen anyone take such pleasure in carnage before. And this is the guy I’ve teamed up with. The guy I’ve let into my life. “Sean!” I yelled between choking gasps.
No response. He’d completely forgotten I was there. I was starting to really choke on the dust, now, my fear was making me hyperventilate and that was making the coughing worse. Sean was between me and both doors and I didn’t dare get in his way. I had to snap him out of it. I darted forward through the clouds of dust to bang on his shoulder and—
Too late, I saw the head of the hammer swing back towards my head—
I let out a cry as the iron head came straight towards my face, heavy and fast enough to shatter bone. I ducked and twisted, losing my balance, and slapped Sean on the shoulder, all at the same time. The hammer whistled past my face close enough that I felt the waft of air against my eyelashes, and I wanted to throw up. Then I thudded into his wide, solid back, my feet skidded between his legs, and I was on my back on the floor, looking up at him.
He turned and looked uncomprehendingly down at me. The raw emotion in his face made my chest tighten: not just anger but hate and shame, all spilling out of him. My fear of him eased a little. What the hell’s going on inside him? I had this overwhelming urge to tell him it’s okay.
And then he came back to himself. His jaw dropped open and he flung the hammer down on the floor and fell to his knees over me. “Ah, Christ! Did I hit you?” The anger in his eyes evaporated in a second, to be replaced by sick fear. He started patting my body. One hand stroked my head. “Did I hit you?” he asked again.
I shook my head, panting at how close he’d come. “Not quite,” I croaked, and coughed on the dust. We were both covered in it and more was settling on us as the air stilled. It clung to the sweat on his body, painting him gray, until he looked like a huge stone statue hulking over me. I tried to speak again but the dust had caught in my throat and I couldn’t stop coughing.
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