by Rea Winters
“But whether she knew or didn’t know about the loan, it still happened and the rest of the score needs settling.”
“The rest?”
“Well,” McCreery continued, scratching his head. “We’d worked out a little deal with Tony. He was working off his debt by pulling jobs for us. But then a friend of his got some heat on him out of blue and promised Tony that he’d pay us what’s owed on his behalf, if Tony took the fall for the guy. Seda goes in the box, but the friend never shows with our money and poof, there goes his deal with us.”
“Try as he might, it’s looking like he can’t earn us our money back from Camp Concrete.”
“Which brings us back to old reliable.” McCreery reached to touch Amie’s hair, but she slapped his hand away. “Ooh, still feisty, too. You know if you had just lost the attitude a little, you woulda done way better in the clubs. Coulda erased your daddy’s debt after a handful of dates like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And still had plenty left over for yourself. But you like doing things the hard way – grindstone and all that. I can respect it.”
“Hopefully, this will speed up the process.” Mikey showed her a picture on his phone. A picture of Tony Seda bloody and curled up on the ground in a prison hallway.
“Bastards,” she hissed through gritted teeth.
“Hey, he brought it on himself,” Mikey defended. “If he’d just told our inside guy where you were when the gentleman asked nicely, he wouldn’t’ve got caught between the ropes.”
“You’ve got five days, Aims. Fifty-five grand and not a nickel less.”
“That’s impossible—”
“And if you miss our little deadline, not only will daddy have another bad day at school, but Spartacus in there…”
On McCreery’s cue, Mikey continued the slide show, showing pictures of her and Caspar around town together.
“We’ll be forced to put her between the ropes, too,” McCreery finished. “Just so you know we mean business.”
“Don’t go near her,” she warned with a scowl.
“C’mon, you know me, fello of my word. We won’t touch her. Unless, of course, you leave us no choice. And remember, if or when things happen not to work out in the next handful of days, we can always work out some other…method of payment.”
Amie’s stomach turned at his leering look up and down her body.
“We’re asking nicely here, aren’t we?” Mikey interjected. “So, let’s not make things ugly.”
“Five days. Fifty-five Gs. Got that, Aims?”
Amie couldn’t speak over the lump in her throat, so she nodded and that was good enough to get them to walk away. Overwhelmed with a cross between fear and anger, she slid her trembling fingers over her hair and gripped it at the roots.
“Shit! Shit, shit…”
A few tears got away from her, but she quickly nipped the urge to break down. After a few deep breaths, she cleaned her face and reminded herself who she was. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been here before. She just had to think and plan and execute. She could fix this, just like all those times before.
At the loud click of the exit door closing behind Amie, Jo Becker picked herself off the ground on the other side of the dumpster and watched the two goons strut off into the parking lot.
✽ ✽ ✽
Despite her efforts, hot poker-like panic prodded Amie’s insides when she couldn’t find Caspar in the crowd. Then a large hand grasped her shoulder, making her jump.
“Amie?”
She whipped around and surged into Caspar, hugging her tight and laying her head on the taller woman’s chest. Caspar, confused and concerned, secured Amie in her arms and felt her shudder. Pulling apart just so, leaving Amie’s hands on her waist, Cas gently cupped the girl’s jaw and raised her head. Her eyes were still closed as she calmed her breathing, relief seeming to wash over her. But why? What was she afraid of all of a sudden?
“What’s wrong?”
Amie pulled apart some more, collected herself with a dismissive wave and forced a smile.
“Nothing, nothing. I just…didn’t know where you were. And I got this bad feeling out of nowhere.”
“Really?”
“The new meds must be messing with my head. It happens sometimes, no big deal.”
Cas palmed her cheek, looking unconvinced.
“Can we go now?” Amie asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.” Caspar took her hand and they left the building.
Amie was different the whole ride home. Quiet, but fidgety. Even when they got inside, she couldn’t muster her exact same brand of enthusiasm while greeting Roadie, though she did pretty well at faking it. They went to their own rooms without much word, as Caspar struggled to think of the right questions for the right answers and Amie was clearly, though oddly, not in the mood to talk. But just because Cas couldn’t settle on what to say didn’t mean she was settled with saying nothing. After three attempts, she gave up on sleep and stared at the ceiling, sparing glances at the door.
Suddenly, soft music cut through the quiet and a woman crooned in a Zhu dialect over a moody R&B melody. Cas got out of bed, slipped on sweatpants and a thin sleeveless undershirt over her bare chest, then went to investigate.
She found Amie swaying alone in front of the fireplace, hugging a beer bottle against her shoulder. Roadie gave Cas away again, alerting Amie to her presence when he jumped off the couch and ran to her. Amie’s smile was dim as she reached out of her hand. “Dance with me,” she said. Her movements were languid, fatigued, but she couldn’t have been intoxicated. They hadn’t drunk any alcohol at Lucky’s and the only bottle of booze in plain sight was the one in her hand.
Caspar stood in front of her, pulled the half-full bottle out of her light grip and set it down on an end table. Her face drawn with worry, she cupped Amie’s face and urged the girl to look up at her.
“You’re not okay, are you?”
“I’m good. Just couldn’t sleep.”
Cas wasn’t convinced. The confliction in Amie’s eyes struggling to be covered up with a forced grin betrayed her. But Cas’ next series of questions were cut short when Amie raised up on her toes and planted her lips against hers in a soft lingering kiss. Chills avalanched down their spines and a delectable heat surged through the core of them. Her hunger now unleashed, Caspar took hold of Amie’s waist and pressed their bodies closer, bending down just so as their kisses deepened. A sweet moan escaped Amie’s lips at the tickle of Caspar’s tongue. The girl hooked her arms around the ladda’s shoulders just as strong arms hooked around her thighs and wrapped her legs around her waist.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Caspar woke entangled in her sheets, naked and alone.
“Amie?”
Roadie’s grumble answered her call. Caspar met his pre-growls with tired grunts and hoisted herself out of bed, careful not to trip over the strap-on phala on the floor. She slipped on a new undershirt and a pair of clean sweatpants. Her body still spent, she was too groggy to notice that Amie’s clothes were no longer strewn across the bedroom floor beside her own as she shuffled through the essentials of a hygiene regiment, then followed Roadie to the door and let him free.
The first thing to catch her more lucid attention was the quiet. No humming or shuffling from the art room or anywhere else in the house. If Amie had gone for an early swim, Roadie would’ve been with her, so Cas figured she had gone back to her bed.
To check or not to check? She hadn’t been fooled by Amie’s hard attempts to act like her normal self after they left the bowling alley. Not even after last night.
A sheen of sweat coating their tangled flesh, they huffed and moaned into each other’s mouths. Cas thrusted harder, holding her tighter with every plunge and Amie rolled her hips in taut short waves in sync with her rhythm, gripping the ladda’s hair as they pounded away…
Cas had had a number of salacious encounters since she was sixteen years old, but nothing could compare to last night. It was love and hurt,
frustration and desire, all tangled into one explosion of passion the likes she’d never felt before. That should strike her as the beginning of something special, yet something about it—about Amie—made it feel like a goodbye. But Cas had tried not to dwell on that part as she held Amie’s sleeping form against her chest that night.
She had read up on transplants and rejection meds after their talk about Aaron Jacobsen a little while back. While anxiety could be a side effect of it all, she had her doubts that it was the case here and now. Hopefully, Amie was ready to tell her what was on her mind.
“Amie?” Cas knocked on the door three times. No answer. Was Amie ignoring her? Did she regret how far they’d taken things? Or had it not meant much to her to begin with? Being a woman of so few words, she always thought actions alone could convey meaning just as well. But some people needed words. Clarification, affirmation. For the first time in her life, she found herself being one of them.
“Amie.” She knocked four times. Still no answer. So, she opened the door anyway. “Look, I don’t know what happened last night at Strikes, but…”
Amie was gone and so was all her stuff. Only a note was left on the neatly made bed.
Cas,
My days with you in this house have been the best days of my life in a long time. I don’t remember the last time I slept in without being afraid I was late for something. Or took a bath with bubbles or laid on my back eating too many sweets while watching ridiculous movies. Most of all, it had been way too long, specifically never, since I shared so much of myself with a really sweet, really tall, and very good-looking girl who took care of me when I asked and even when I couldn’t.
I’m leaving this note so you won’t freak out when you notice I’m gone. You looked so peaceful in your sleep I couldn’t disturb you. I’m really grateful to you for taking me in, but with everything you have going on, I think it’s best I don’t overstay my welcome. So, I took my bike out to go scouting for a place of my own. Wish me luck.
P.S. – Don’t forget to leave Roadie’s food and water out on the porch before you leave. I think he prefers it that way and it’s better for your rugs that he’s not cooped up for too long. Also, you’re out of those sweet biscuit bite things.
-Amie
Finding her own place shouldn’t have been a surprise to Cas, yet she couldn’t shake the sinking disappointment that their little arrangement was about to end when it was just beginning. Even stronger was her inkling that something else had to be wrong. Roadie’s barking cut into her thoughts. A sharp howl with warning growls. A second later, she heard car wheels coming to a stop in front of the house.
“Get used to it, Roads. Des never calls before coming over,” she grumbled on her way to the door. Whatever consequences Desmond was about to warn her about over that scuffle with Becker, she was prepared to contend them. She was fed up with people flinging their shit on her, then being punished when she flung back.
Cas opened the door and her expression instantly hardened with malice. She grabbed a rifle off the wall mount by the door, stepped out on her porch, and flipped the gun into place with perfect form.
“You have three seconds.”
“I just—”
“Three.” Gun cocked, she inched off the porch.
“I just want to—"
“Two.”
“Thank you. For what you’re doing for Aaron. You…you didn’t have to, so…so thank you.” Jack Kent kept his hands up by his ears as he spoke. His suit was disheveled like he’d slept in it. His face weathered, wrinkled, and eyes red from exhaustion and sadness. Behind all that weary wariness, gratitude shown through.
“No.” Caspar came down the porch with the rifle aimed right at Kent’s chest. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t ever look at me like that. I’m not doing it for you.”
“I know, I know. My so—Aaron is a good boy. He’ll be a better man than I could ever hope to be. Just like his sister—”
“Shut up!” Caspar warned, trembling with rage. She stepped closer; her breathing turned shallow. “Brother? To be my brother, we’d have to have the same father and I don’t have one of those. I had a mother. A mother who was once a kid just trying to do her best to keep her dead parents’ business intact when some company sent a liquored-up animal to buy the building in her name.”
“Please, we don’t have to—”
“I had a mother…who was punched in the face and in the ribs until she could barely move because she wouldn’t sell and the animal thought that made her a ‘smartass bitch.’”
“I didn’t mean—O-okay…” Kent winced, the barrel of the gun now digging into his chest and pushing him into his car, pinching the flesh beneath his shirt.
“I had a mother whose thighs were pushed open and held apart so hard that her muscles tore. But she didn’t even feel it because the pain of that animal forcing itself inside her was much worse.”
Tears welled in Kent’s tired eyes; his skin turned a shade paler. “It was my biggest regret, I told her—”
“SHUT UP!” Caspar roared and knocked him in the head with the butt of the gun. Kent fell to the ground and the barrel of the gun kissed his temple.
“She tried her best to love me. But by the time I was eighteen, she just couldn’t do it anymore…because I…because I look just like the monster that she spent all those years trying to forget. So, if your blood can save some kid’s life, fine, but don’t ever think I’ll be proud to have it. If I could give it all to the son you meant to make, I would.”
“Okay. Okay, kid.”
Caspar caught the glint of aggravation in Kent’s eyes as his stare flit between her and the gun.
“Try it. I dare you.”
Kent remained silent and pointed his glare to the ground. Caspar let her finger linger near the trigger a little longer. Then, as if Chea Adami’s spirit whispered in her ear through the breeze, her mother’s face flickered to mind. The times she’d laughed at Caspar’s jokes, gave her a hundred kisses before bed, hugged her tight and promised to never let go. Since her death, Cas had kept breathing for the both of them no matter how painful it was because she remembered that on her best days, all her mother ever wanted was for her little knight to do all that she had become too afraid to do. To ignite in ways that she’d lost the spark for. To live and love. For the first time ever, Caspar truly believed her chance to have all of that was real. She couldn’t throw it away on the two-second satisfaction it would bring to see Jack Kent’s head explode in the dirt.
“Do not. Come back here. Again.”
Caspar flipped the gun onto her back and marched back inside. She slammed the front door shut and moments later, breathed a deep trembling sigh of relief at the sound of wheels skidding down the hill. Then the house phone rang. She yanked it off the hook after the fourth ring.
“What?”
“I’m on my way to the hospital. You didn’t forget your appointment, did you? You weren’t picking up your cell.”
Cas silently cursed and rubbed her forehead with a shaky hand. “No, Des. I didn’t.”
“Cas…Are you sure you want to start this? No one would blame you—”
“I already gave my word. Better or worse, I have to see it through.”
“Okay, see you in a few.”
Adrenaline still pumping, she raked her hands through her hair, closed her eyes and breathed deep. The sense memory of Amie’s hand rubbing her back managed to somewhat sooth her nerves. What she needed was the real thing. She’d just have to find her first. “One thing at a time, Cas. One thing at a time.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Halfway through the Square, Amie’s cellphone chirped. After a peek at the caller ID, she quickly rode into an alley between two boutiques, parked her bike against the wall, and answered.
“Yes, I accept the charges.”
“Baby bear, how’s it—”
“Dad, we need to talk.”
“Uh-oh. ‘Dad’ means I’m in trouble. What’d I do all the
way from here, huh?” he asked with a chuckle.
She rubbed the space between her clavicle, the pictures of him bruised and bloody flashing through her mind making her chest hurt.
“Your boss at the factory, the one who gave you all those advances on your paycheck to take care of me. What was his name again?”
“Bear—”
“His name, Dad.”
“Walt…Walter. Walter Thompson. Yeah, he’s uh, just a little older than me, but we went to the same high school. That’s how we became buddies. Real tall guy, kinda looked like Clint Eastwood, you know, head full of white hair. Why?”
Amie huffed. “Tommy Walters was his name. That’s what you told me. You said his name was Tommy Walters and he was short, bald, and Catholic and that’s why he blessed you with the money for my recovery.”
“Oh…Oh yeah, Walt is another guy I know. So, I got it mixed up. What’s it matter now?”
“Two reasons: Mikey and McCreery.”
Tony paused, lowering his voice. “Sons of bitches, did they find you?”
“They dragged me into an alley and told me all about your so-called deal.”
“Those mother…are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m pissed off and scared, but I’m okay.”
“What the hell, I never told anybody where you were. I never even…oh shit.”
“What?”
“Pende--aah…guy next to me in the infirmary. We got to talking about dead wives, so I told him about my Beth and…I think I mentioned to him the name of the town where we met. He musta passed it along to those assholes and they put two and two together.” A deep sigh hissed through the receiver. “I’m sorry, bear. I really tried to keep you out of it.”
“That was your mistake. You should’ve told me the truth earlier. I could’ve fixed it before I left. After I got better, I could’ve—”
“No, no. It wasn’t your problem. This shit…the debts, the favors…none of it’s ever been your problem, bear. You’ve given up enough of your life helping out your old man. It was my turn—my job—to help you, anyway I could. So, I did.”
