“Nice line.” I narrowed my eyes and rolled to the left.
I felt his hand barely grip the flesh of my right butt-cheek before it was promptly removed.
The man squealed with pain.
“Keep your ham-hocks off her,” a familiar voice shouted, but I couldn’t place it given it being out-of-context in this dive on the bad side of Paris. I spun around to find a face I never thought I’d see again. Saying goodbye to him that day in Corvallis, begging him not to tell anyone that I was still alive, I thought it had been the most final kind of goodbye.
Paul had the man’s arm twisted behind his back. “Say you’re sorry,” he ordered.
The man, who was breaking out in a sweat, did as commanded “I’m sorry.”
“Good boy,” Paul snarled, shoving him away from us. “Now get out of here, tete-mairde,” he yelled as the man scurried through the crowd, making for the exit.
His dimples set as he shrugged. “Pardon my French.”
“Paul!” I yelled, throwing my arms around his neck. “What in the world are you doing here?”
His dimples drilled deeper. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m dead, remember?” I said, winking. “You’re the responsible one with a meal ticket to the front of the line.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that one little thing.” He eyed me head to toe, rubbing his chin. “I got to say though, you make dead look mighty fine.”
I elbowed him. “Come on, tell me what you’re doing here. I wouldn’t have taken this place for your kind of scene.”
His eyes roamed the room, his nose curling. “I took the quarter off to backpack through Europe and, back at the hostel I was staying, this one guy I’m staying with came back last night talking about some hot American minx. This girl—he claimed—had eyes that a man could find meaning in and a body that would make him sell his soul.”
My eyes narrowed, having no idea how this story was explaining how he’d ended up here tonight.
“Since there are maybe three girls in the world that fit that description, I figured I better come check it out to see if the minx he was talking about was you.”
“You take a lot of hits to the head playing basketball?”
“You ever look in a mirror?” he asked, mimicking the tone I’d just used on him.
“I try not to,” I said, looking away.
A chanting that had started as a dull roar was growing to the point the plastic beads hanging in the doorways were rattling. Whether chanted in French or English, the word was as loud as it was demanding. “Beer! Beer! Beer!” the masses hollered, pummeling their empty pints against the bar, wall, or whatever flat surface they could assault.
Paul looked into the crowd as if they were a brood of hyenas—thirsty hyenas.
“There’s going to be a revolution if I don’t get the keg restocked,” I said, slamming the stockroom door the way Mikey had shown me. He didn’t keep it locked, but the door was impossible to open with a simple twist of the handle. As if requiring a secret knock, you had to slam your shoulder in just the right spot on one side while kicking the opposite side with your foot. The door broke open and I stumbled in, sprinting to the stack of kegs in the back corner as if lives depended on it.
I bent down, prepared to hoist it over my shoulder, when Paul rolled a cart up behind me and the one-hundred-and-fifty-plus pound keg I was planning to shoulder one-handed. That wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.
It seemed I blended in as well in the Mortal world as I had in the Immortal.
“Don’t be crazy,” Paul scolded, stepping in to grab the keg. “I’ll get it.” He lifted the keg onto the cart, his face showing the effort expended. Out in the dark, flashing-strobe room, I hadn’t noticed, but cast in the flood of overhead lights, Paul looked different. Thinner, paler, and . . . sickly. Six months ago he could have tossed that keg onto the cart with the ease of tossing a beanbag. Something was wrong, that was apparent from his breathing coming out in quick bursts to the way he wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
The chanting jacked up two decibels and I imagined Mikey and Tracy being strung up and stoned if the masses didn’t get their beer. “I’ve got to get out there,” I said, sticking up a mental post-it to ask Paul what was going on when the first opportunity arose.
I wheeled through the crowd and the sea of bodies parted like the Red Sea. Did I imagine them bowing their heads as the keg sailed past them?
“It’s about flippin’ time,” Mikey shouted. “Were you busy getting busy or something?” He grabbed the cart from me and commenced hooking it up, not looking back for an answer.
Paul shouldered in between a few ladies sporting dresses that had more tricks than the hookers walking the streets outside. One angled towards him, adjusting her assets so they were brushing his shoulder. The other pretended a trip, falling into his arms. I couldn’t contain my smile; leave it to Paul to attract any and every warm blooded woman within a two-block radius.
He righted the fallen damsel, flashing his trademark smile before looking at me, ignoring the women on either side of him who threw him disgusted looks before sharking through the waters looking for their next piece of prey.
“What time are you off?” he asked, having to yell over the cheers of customers gripping full glasses of beer.
“When the last person leaves.”
Paul scanned the room. “Could be awhile.”
“That and more.”
He nodded. “I’ll hang out and wait. I want to catch up with you.”
“Can I get you something to drink while you wait?” I asked. “It’s on me.”
“I’ll take some water,” he said. I glanced over at Mikey to make sure he hadn’t heard.
I leaned in, trying to whisper. “You don’t want to know what happened to the last guy that ordered water,” I said, winking.
Paul’s smile grew. He wrapped his hand around my arm as he leaned the remaining distance between us, until his mouth was against my ear. “I’ll take whatever you throw my way.”
I leaned back, careful to keep my face in check. Paul’s and my relationship had always walked a line that was so thin it was invisible. It seemed whenever I gave him more than a cold shoulder, he mistook it for flirting. Trouble was, I didn’t want to give Paul the cold shoulder anymore, I wanted a friend. I needed a friend, but I’d have to figure out a way to tell him I wanted nothing more than a friendship with him . . . again.
I drew a pint of beer from the fresh keg and dropped it in front of him. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.” I pointed with my eyes at the next customer, cursing myself for saying something that could hold a double-meaning. Knowing Paul, he’d already misinterpreted to his liking.
CHAPTER TEN
AU REVOIR
“This the guy you were dancing a little tongue tango with earlier?” Mikey eyed Paul, who’d stayed planted to the bar, waiting for me the past six hours.
“Sorry we kept you waiting,” Paul answered for me, exchanging one of those looks only guys could interpret with Mikey.
Mikey chuckled and handed me my tips for the night. “Go, California. Although the next time you decide to take a make-out break, could you please check to make sure I’m not about to be crucified to the rafters?”
I pocketed the money and threw him a warning look.
“You kids have fun. But not too much,” Mikey ordered. “Your next shift starts in fifteen hours and if you thought Friday night was busy, just wait until you experience a Saturday.”
I pulled on my jacket and motioned Paul towards the exit; eager to get out of the Rue St. Jersey before Mikey insisted I stay behind to clean the floors that were scattered with piles of substances I didn’t care to identify.
When Paul and I shoved through the exit, we both sucked in a long breath.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he said, sucking in another one. “I found myself gagging a few dozen times in there.”
“I don’t breath,” I answered, not
sure what to say or do with Paul now I had him alone.
“Wished you would have instructed me to do the same,” he said, clearing his throat twice. “I think that place just sucked twenty years out of my lungs.”
I laughed and was bending my arm to elbow him when I thought better of it. If my words could be misconstrued by Paul, a touch would no doubt as well.
“Are you staying at a hostel close by?” I asked, as we wove our way through the maze of alleys, littered with dumpsters overflowing with bottles and reeking trash.
“It’s a few miles away. I took the bus here.”
“You’re probably exhausted,” I said, trying to sound casual, taking a sideways look at Paul. He’d lost a good thirty pounds and his shoulders hunched as he walked. “Do you want to go back and sleep for awhile and then we can meet up later?”
“No, no. I’m good. I want to walk you home—there’s no way I’m letting you on your own in this area.” As if proving his point, we heard a gun shot go off. “Besides, I believe you owe me a game of tongue tango since that’s what Mikey accused us of doing when I was saving your butt from Euro-trash.” His eyebrows danced and his eyes pointed at my backside. “Quite literally.”
I couldn’t help it, this time I had to touch him. I pushed him, not thinking I’d exerted a significant amount of force, but Paul stumbled to the side.
He caught himself, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stared forward. “You also owe me some explanations.”
I’d known this was coming, although it would have been nice if we could have just picked up where we left off, no questions asked. “What’s number one on the list?” I asked, not wanting to delay the inevitable.
“I should probably ask you what you’re doing here first, but my male ego that is dying to say ‘I told you so’ has to know what happened to him.”
I stumbled, but caught myself before crashing to the ground, thrown by his to-the-point question and the way it had hit me with the impact of a million memories rushing through my mind.
Paul caught my elbow and adjusted me up. “That bad, huh?” There was regret in his voice. “You don’t have to answer that—”
“I left,” I whispered, interrupting him.
“You left him?” His voice sounded incredulous, exactly how I would have sounded if a girl like me had told me she’d left a man like William.
“I know, you didn’t see that one coming, right?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, as we rounded out of the alley onto the streets lit with nothing more than the glowing of cigarettes. “You had it bad for him the last time I saw you in the diner. You had that look in your eyes that said it was all over.”
Paul must not have taken a good look in my eyes tonight if he thought the same look wasn’t there. If anything, I had it even worse for William. Absence truly made the heart grow fonder in my case, but since my absence from him would never end, would the ache in my heart bloat to the point of bursting?
“I wasn’t right for him,” I said, for the first time verbalizing the truth. “He deserves better.”
Paul’s mouth fell open. “That is the biggest load of crap I’d heard from you yet.”
It was my turn for my mouth to fall open. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve either got a warped sense of self, are a woe-is-me type of girl, or are just downright mentally ill if you believe him, or any man for that matter, deserves better than you.” He kicked a can in our path, sending it sailing into the park I cut through to get back to my apartment.
I didn’t respond, not sure what to say. He picked up his pace so I was a step behind him. As we passed through the park’s entrance, there was a row of prostitutes on either side, two deep, hoping for one more transaction before dawn.
One of them ran her hand over Paul’s stomach in passing. “Hey baby, I got something you can do with all that pent-up anger.” The inflection in her voice was as dirty as the deed she was advocating, but Paul paid her no attention.
I caught up to him and lengthened my step to keep stride. “My vote’s for the mentally ill theory,” I said. No sane person would have left William, travelled to Paris for no reason more than a pointed finger at a departure board, and ended up employed in the skuzziest haunt in the free world.
Depleted from just one of his questions, I decided to shift the conversation. “So what did everyone have to say when you told them you’d be spending the quarter in Europe?”
I looked at him from the corner of my eyes, reading his reaction from my turn in conversation.
“Okay, so I get a question and answer and you get a question and answer, so on and so forth until the questions run out,” he commanded, his voice back to normal. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“It was kind of a last minute decision to do this whole see the world thing,” he began, sounding guarded. “I never knew my mom—she left when I was one—so that was one less person to tell.”
“I didn’t know that.” I hooked my arm under his and gave his forearm a squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “My dad’s an officer in the Marines and deployed nine months of the year—more if he can help it—so he didn’t care if I was at OSU or in Timbuktu.”
I hadn’t known that either—some friend I was. I knew little, if anything, of the important things that made up Paul’s life. It was like meeting someone for the first time.
“Coach was upset at first, but he got over it once he learned I wouldn’t be much of an asset to the team. Didn’t even call to wish me a safe trip,” he finished, sounding bitter.
My eyes squeezed from my confusion. Having been the Captain last year and with the rumors of making the big-times, it didn’t make sense that his basketball coach wouldn’t want him playing every second of every game. Something was definitely wrong.
“So I answered your question.” He stopped and turned to me. “My turn again.”
I tried to warn him with the look on my face that William was off limits. He didn’t catch my drift.
“So where is the SOB?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed, trying not to think about it. “Why?”
“Because I want to slug him in the face as hard as I can since you didn’t let me have the pleasure last time.”
“That’s mature,” I scolded at the exact time I sensed something out of place. I froze my body and mind, allowing nothing but instinct to have control of me.
“We need to keep moving,” I ordered, steering him forward by his elbow. A moment later, I heard the tread of expensive-soled shoes crash into the concrete path behind us.
“Run!” I yelled, pushing him. “I’ll catch up.”
I spun around, preparing for whatever was coming.
“Run?” A silky voice came from the man standing in front of me, his outline a stark contrast from the light ghosting around him from the early morning fog. “Don’t you mean courir or couru or cour-something. I was never very good at conjugating my French verbs.”
Two more shadows came up on either side of him, leaving nothing to interpretation as to why they were here and who’d sent them.
“It took us awhile to find you, but John is as persistent as he is vengeful. It was only a matter of time.”
I didn’t recognize the voice, but the words and tone were a carbon-copy of the other associates I’d had dealings with from John’s Alliance.
Paul took a step in front of me, pushing me behind him. “Someone mind telling me what the hell is going on here?” he ordered, reaching for something in his pocket. “Because I’m about to unleash a serious case of ass-whooping.”
I pushed him aside, perturbed he hadn’t run as instructed. Paul had no idea what he was dealing with here, nor was he as sturdy as the four Immortals around him. “Get back. You have no clue what’s going on.”
“And you do?”
“Unfortunately.”
One of the men chuckled. “You consider this a trade-up in security? Going from the vigilant Haywards to
this weakling with nothing more than empty threats?”
“Alright, ass-whooping commencing.” I rammed my hand into Paul’s chest, stopping his advance. He looked at me with the same wide-eyed speculation he had in the diner when I’d stopped his charge at William like he were as ferocious as a charging lamb.
“Losing one man wasn’t enough for John?” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “He sent a few more to share his fate?”
“John’s well aware that he might not be able to finish you off . . . yet,” the man in the center said, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight “But he can destroy those around you—those you care about,” he said, eyeing Paul.
I pulled my shoulders back. “That ought to make your jobs easy since I care for no one but yours truly,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff.
“Liar,”—his lips pursed around the word—“you care for everyone but yourself. Which will make our jobs so long and so very enjoyable.”
I felt a growl trying to erupt from deep within, as if the knowledge that John would settle for the lives of those I cared about since he couldn’t have mine brought out sheer animal instinct.
The three men crept forward, two skirting around the sides to attack us from different angles.
“Each of you will die before you set one finger on him,” I warned, wanting to wrap Paul up in a bubble of protection—not just from these men, but from me as well. I’d inflicted worse damage on those I cared for than those I’d meant to damage the last time I’d been in a hand-to-hand brawl.
I heard a whoosh come from above us and my eyes shot skyward in time to see the tree branch reverberating from the body that had just catapulted from it.
“Boo,” a voice whispered from behind, flowing over my neck.
I spun around to another whoosh and a blur of light, Paul no longer behind me.
“Paul!” I yelled, my eyes bouncing between Paul and the fourth man who had him in a choke hold a hundred meters down the path.
“Rule number twelve from the first week of strength training,” the man clutching Paul directed at me. “Always expect the unexpected.”
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