The streetlights faded out. Something awful was going on with someone I loved. My diaphragm was too tight. I couldn’t breathe.
“Just tell me,” I choked out.
He wouldn’t. Or maybe just couldn’t, he hadn’t even let me go yet.
I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could and shoved him from me. It was like trying to haul away cinderblocks with broken fingers, move a dump truck full of rocks, lift an elephant one handed. And though he didn’t even budge, my efforts at least got his attention.
“Just tell me, Charlie! Is it Elise or Tyler? My Dad? Are you okay?”
He let me go just enough so I could see his face.
“It’s fine.” He smiled. “Everything is perfect now.”
With rush hour traffic going in the opposite direction, we made it to Healdsburg in record time. Reid wouldn’t say anything to me and Charlie was making a lot of phone calls, answering a lot of texts. Of course the more I inquired, the more I worried. The more I worried, the more I was reminded of the last time I was in a car with Reid.
Then he had been taking me away from Charlie.
At least I didn’t have to worry about that.
“How bad is it?” I begged. “On a scale from 1 to 10.”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know,” Reid snarled at me. I noticed he made sure Charlie was focused on something else. “Elise has been calling you for hours.”
My phone. I probably left it in my bag and forgot to charge it pre-party, post-rehearsal. Vaguely I was reminded of something from my sleep but it faded before I could catch up, and I was left thinking about how irresponsible I had been to leave my phone behind in the first place. If Elise had been calling me, I could have answered the first time and known what I wanted to right then and there. I loathed thinking that I had been learning about beer pong when Charlie was in trouble. Nausea rose up. Had I been making friends while disaster was just around the bend?
The first thing I saw was one of the SUVs. Normally, they were indistinguishable from one another, but this one was in the middle of the driveway by itself. If it wasn’t for that and the dried blood smeared on the open backdoor, I might never have been able to tell it apart from the other SUVs. Yet instantly I could, and I barely stopped long enough to acknowledge it, running straight into the house, my heart threatening to seize at any second.
The veranda door was open, which didn’t surprise me in the least. What did surprise me slightly was the disoriented living area that Elise normally kept so tidy—was slightly discombobulated: a drooled on magazine and some of Tyler’s toys on the floor, the blaring television with no one to watch, groceries and open pantry doors, suggesting someone had been interrupted. Needless to say, it did nothing to soothe me.
“Elise? Guys?” Charlie was only steps behind me, the clutch of his strong forearm bracing me just as the panic was about to set in.
“Its okay, Vicious. Everybody is ‘lright.”
I told myself to breathe again. “The b-blood?”
“Polo cut his hand up pretty bad, but it looks worse than it is.”
I sighed, nuzzling my nose against his arm. When the coarse hair there made me sneeze, he laughed and pulled me tighter.
“You’re supposed to say ‘bless you,’” I sniffed.
He kept laughing. “Bless you.”
And though my heart trusted his word, my eyes were still somewhat skeptical. I zipped up the remaining inches of my jacket, and tried to straighten my hair, now beyond grateful that I didn’t see anyone with guns and badges around. It was only when I heard Tyler’s gentle giggling that things seemed to spin back into focus. I pulled up on the shade of the kitchen window and sure enough, sitting poolside on freshly uncovered patio furniture, were the guys and Elise.
As we walked out there, I intertwined Charlie’s arm with my own. I wanted to keep him close, if possible, never let him out of my sight.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” His face was tired but not entirely grim.
“I’m okay? Are you okay?”
He pulled me into his arms and I thought of my dream—how many of them had taken place without me even knowing it? Charlie mumbled into my hair, every other word falling behind, but I didn’t care.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“I was at school.” I laughed, but none of it was right. “Was I supposed to be somewhere else?”
Before I could say anything else, he broke out laughing, though what was so hilarious about the situation I have no idea.
“What’s so funny? What’s the emergency?”
“See, Charlie Boy, I told you she was fine.”
I heard Ben Walden’s voice beyond the muscles of Charlie’s arms. From somewhere close behind, Polo and Tyler laughed about a joke of their own.
He sighed and let me go enough to pull away, “A run we made went bad.”
“Bad? What does that mean? Are you okay? Is everybody okay?”
He sighed, pulling me to his chest. I wrapped my arms around him, taking in the smell of him and everything else. In those moments he was silent, and I knew well enough not to ask for answers. They would come later, but for right now, he needed me, and I was more than willing to be needed by him.
And though he held me, his body tensed up again, telling me that the moment of indefinable anger brewing beneath the surface was about to seep. So I held him tighter, silently trying to quash those feelings.
“We were doing a run at an airport terminal…something, someone told the cops that we’d be there.”
“Oh Charlie—”
He spoke through a clenched jaw, and though I couldn’t hear it, I could imagine his teeth grinding together, unintentionally ruining the enamel.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if you had been here when we got back.” He laughed into my shoulder, but I knew by his tone he wasn’t amused.
“What do you mean?”
He let me go, and despite my grip, I didn’t have much of a choice but to let him. Charlie started pacing, and I followed him as he backed away from the group. Running his hands through his hair, brows pinched, no one in their right mind would have bothered him then.
But I was hardly in my right mind.
“We got back and Elise said you hadn’t showed up. Nobody thought nothing ‘bout it, but then you weren’t picking up your phone…” He continued to pace, mumbling something to himself I didn’t quite hear.
“What—but I texted her and told her I’d be here in the morning…” I reached for my phone and searched the message. The one I sent to Elise wasn’t there. Then the epiphany hit and I went for my home phone.
Sure enough there was the message I sent to Elise. Only it wasn’t to Elise, it was to the next number in my contact list. I had accidently sent it to Harpsten.
I could have kicked myself. “Oh God.” I closed my eyes, swearing quietly to myself. “I sent Elise a text; it just went to the wrong number—”
Charlie threatened to laugh but stopped when I began staring at him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think. How sloppy and reckless—”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t.
“It’s ‘lright.” He laughed. “Really.” He held out his hand, and I took it without hesitation, intertwining my fingers with his.
“I was just scared for you.”
I rammed my head into his chest. “You were scared for me? I was terrified for you.”
“What? Why?”
“Reid storming my dorm at the crack of dawn…I just assumed the worst.”
He groaned. “Sorry ‘bout that. I would have gotten ya myself—”
“No,” I insisted. “It’s good you didn’t. Campus police have guns too, you know.” I swallowed hard and he chuckled in my ear. “You lettin’ that imagination of yours go AWOL again?”
I nodded, the words were against me and I didn’t want to battle them any more than I had to.
“I’m glad I ain’t imaginative like you.”
&nb
sp; “Why is that?”
“‘Cause you run through my mind all damn day as it is—”
I blushed so hard my skin was like flames.
He must have known how his words would affect me when he took my chin in his hand and brought my lips to his. I swallowed hard and let him. I tasted the panic in his kiss and took it for the both us, just grateful that we were both safe.
“Aren’t we a pair?” He breathed into me, fueling me with something other than anxiety.
I sighed. “We definitely are.”
We sat around the pool despite the weather. It was crisp and frosty, but we all seemed to need something to distract us, something to complain about other than our own worries. Elise wore a fur coat, whether it was real or not, I didn’t know. And though my own arms were covered, Charlie kept me secure in his.
“So…” Elise rubbed at her temples, obviously tired by the dark circles under her eyes and lack of makeup. Looking at her only made me feel worse for the slight scare, so I avoided eye contact with her, focusing on rubbing the callused pads on Charlie’s fingers instead. “Explain this to me again.”
Ben Walden sighed, wrapping his arm around Elise’s shoulder. He looked tired too, but not nearly as tired as Elise. “Someone got there before we did.”
“Could you have gotten some bad information?” I asked.
“No,” Yuri added, “we reconfirmed before we went in.”
Ben continued, “The warehouse was ransacked and the sirens began a moment later. We were lucky to get out of there when we did.”
They all nodded in agreement except for Polo, who was too preoccupied with picking the fresh bandage wrapped around his hand. I was assured his injury was the only one, and of his own doing, but it still made me uneasy to be reminded of the mortality of my friends, to see they were just as vulnerable as anyone else.
“Someone from security must have seen you break in.”
“We paid off the only ones who matter. They know they don’t get paid if somethin’ happens to us, and they risk getting caught themselves,” Charlie explained.
Elise tried again. “I thought you had a safeguard for these things.”
“Don’t you get it? Someone got to the shipment before we did.”
“I’m afraid Reid is right,” Ben said. “Things were too ransacked to ignore. It was probably a larger group.”
“Bikers?” Yuri asked.
Ben shook his head. “Much too organized for a gang.”
“Yeah.” Reid started punching his hand. “They knew when we were there and how many of us there’d be.”
“How?” I asked.
“That’s the problem,” Charlie said. “We don’t know.”
“I hate this,” Elise said. “I absolutely hate this.”
When she got up and stormed back into the house with Tyler on her hip, Ben went after her, but the rest of us stayed silent in the stillness, listening to the end parts of their arguments and muffled curses back and forth.
“Oh man, oh man!” Polo shook his head.
“I hear ya, buddy. I hate when Mom and Dad fight, too.” Yuri slapped him on the back in camaraderie, but it was Reid who asked the obvious question.
“What are we gonna do?”
No one said anything.
Reid threw his arms in the air. “Does anybody have a Goddamn clue?”
More silence.
“Well,” Yuri said after a minute, “I’m not going to sit around all day and yell about it.”
“Me neither,” Charlie said. “I’m going to bed.”
Reid slapped Polo’s hand away from the other. “Knock it off.”
“Yeah.” Yuri rested his head against the glass table, and I wondered if he’d fall asleep right then and there. “You’re an infection waiting to happen.”
When Charlie stood up, his hand was still tangled in mine. I was okay with going inside, walking alongside him until the stairway became too narrow and he followed behind me, his eyes trailing my lower extremities. Every instinct in me wanted him in every possible way. And from where I was standing, nothing was going to keep him from me, or keep us from each other. I stopped abruptly and grinned at him. His face, sleepy but happy, grinned back at me.
We shared frantic kisses the rest of the way upstairs and down the hall, each touch more insistent than the one that came before it, every pulse more rapid than the last. His kiss finished the one that I started; my hands encouraged where he hesitated. We crushed each other like massive waves, cascading into another until it seemed either he or I, or both would drown in it.
My want was transgressing into pure desperation, but other needs were imploring for attention.
“I—” Pulling away enough to get his attention, I navigated us over in front of the bathroom. “Just, ah—” His smell was all around me, the taste of him in my mouth.
“It’s good,” he said in between labored breaths. “Take your time.” But then he changed his mind, tugging me back to him at the last second to kiss me again. We laughed together.
“Two seconds…”
“Right.” He nodded, reserved but still smiling. “Right, right.”
I didn’t intend to take a shower really, but once I took a look in the mirror, I decided it was completely necessary. My hair gave off the combination of cigarettes and Melinda’s hairspray that stuck to my scalp. And suddenly after a night of worrying and internal mayhem, I was eager to just wash it all away.
By the time I got back to the room of blue roses, Charlie Hays was asleep in my bed, nearly bare and prime for the taking. I was tempted to do to just that, but remembering his lack of sleep, I reconsidered. Frankly, it was the only thing keeping me from exploring my deviant desires right then and there. He continued to sleep soundly as I lay beside him; covering us both with the blanket I called my own. There were a million and one questions, but for now they could wait.
All we needed was each other.
When I awoke, the faint snoring beside me alerted me to Charlie’s presence, his chest beneath my head thumped with his heartbeat. I made myself pull away if only to charge my phones. I was about half-dressed when I heard the catcall from behind me, followed by a low southern chuckle at my response.
“I thought you were asleep.” I struggled to put a t-shirt on, though I secretly hoped he would stop me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I peeked over my shoulder to see him grin and look me up and down again. “I’m just an artist appreciating some art…”
I bit back my blush as I climbed back on top of him, decidedly not a wise decision, but one I wanted to make nevertheless. I thought that maybe with his physical need so obvious, I might have some essence of control, but the interlude was brief and my power fleeting.
“How bad is this thing that happened last night?”
Then the power was gone. He sighed and rubbed his knuckles against my back.
“Did you know just for aiding and abetting in California you could get a year in county jail?”
“Charlie—”
“That’s for a misdemeanor. For the felony it’s up to three years in a state prison.”
“Charlie, nothing will happen to me.”
“That’s right.” While not directed at me, the anger was back, fresh and flavored while he pushed me off of him and pinned me to the bed. “‘Cause I ain’t gonna let it.”
Above me, his kaleidoscope eyes were bright and wide. Strangely enough, I wanted him more right then than ever before.
“I ain’t gonna be tellin’ you nothing from now on. If that makes you mad, then I’m sorry, but it’s how its gotta be.”
I began to laugh, but his weight only sank deeper into me, his thumbs rubbing the veins that protruded from my wrists.
“Charlie Hays, are you trying to give me plausible deniability?”
“If that’s what it’s called,” he sighed, “then yeah.”
His seriousness made me frown. “It does make me mad. But it won’t make me leave, which is what I know y
ou were thinking.”
He grinned. “I shoulda never asked you to come out here with me.”
“You didn’t ask, remember? I told.”
He laughed. “Yeah, yeah you did.”
“And I’m not going away.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “So there.”
“Goddamn girl.” He shook his head. “What am I gonna do with you?”
My face and neck felt like wildfire. “I have a couple of ideas.”
I kissed him at the corner of his lips, threatening more with a flick of my tongue than words ever could, and when he responded, I pushed against him, reveling in the feeling of him and the touch of skin on skin. Those were the infinite seconds between pleasure and lust, between want and need, when everything else between us stopped and escalated like we weren’t even there.
As his hands tugged at the end of my shirt, I lost coherent thought; everything falling in-tune with the trace of a finger and the shaking of a palm. He brought me to the edge of the world and back, again without ever leaving the bed, and before I knew it, we were both ready to fall off the edge of the world, panting and grasping at one another like two wild borne animals.
“I-if you’re gonna want me to stop, you’re gonna have to say somethin’ real soon—”
“I don’t want you to stop. I want more.”
“Are you sure?”
I kissed his eyes, his cheeks, the brim of his nose. “What do you think?”
He groaned into me. “I can’t think.”
“Good.” I smiled, kissed him harder. “It’s probably the lack of blood flow.”
“You’re a Goddamn vixen…”
“Charlie?”
He gulped, his heart throbbing a million miles a minute. “Hmm?”
“Don’t make me wait anymore.”
We connected then, reborn and baptized in one another.
Chapter 8
Charlie was gone when I woke up, though it had obviously not been for long, since there was still a gentle imprint of his head on the pillow beside me. I smiled so hard it almost hurt, and stretched long, pulling the covers away. I listened intently for noises from downstairs but couldn’t hear much of anything. Still, I wasn’t very motivated to get dressed and hoped that wherever Charlie had gone, he would return soon.
Conviction (Wated Series Book 2) Page 10
