Play It Safe

by Kristen Ashley

  “Right, Ivey, I’m comin’ to you.”

  I kept ignoring him even as my ass was suddenly off the bathroom floor, Gray’s was on it and mine was in his lap.

  I held my towel to my mouth, looked into his eyes and kept talking.

  “Something was up with him,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Gray whispered back, holding me close, holding my eyes, his holding clear concern as he kept his gaze locked to mine.

  “I never got it. Never. In the end, I thought he’d made his play just to get me back so we could go on the hustle again because he couldn’t make it without me. But I don’t think it was that. I don’t know what it was but all that money, Gray. I don’t think it was that.”

  “So you got shot of him and came back to me,” Gray said quietly.

  I nodded vaguely. “I promised you in the note that when the danger was gone, I would. But I can sense danger, Gray, and as we ate up the miles, town to town, state to state, days into weeks, I never felt it. We weren’t being followed. Casey lied to me. The way he was acting, all over me, all sweet to me, but watchful, jittery, it wasn’t right. I couldn’t get a lock on it then I thought I figured it out. I stole his car, left him behind and I went back to you.”

  Gray closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tile.

  Then he opened them and looked at me. “And you saw me with Chandler.”

  Tears filled my eyes and I nodded.

  “Fuck, baby,” he whispered, staring at me.

  “I thought you saw my note and didn’t care. I thought you moved on. I thought you didn’t want my hassle. I thought you didn’t care I had bad men after me. I thought,” a tear slid out of my eye, “I thought you didn’t care.”

  “I loved you, Ivey, and I thought you cleared out on me.”

  “I wrote you a note.” My voice broke on those words.

  He pulled in breath then sighed.

  Then he asked, “That fuckin’ brother of yours, he have the opportunity to grab that note?”

  I thought about it and nodded but added, “He couldn’t grab my stuff, though, Gray. And I left stuff. Not a lot of it but it meant something to me. I worked for it, earned it. My skirt, my dress, my heels. I wouldn’t leave that behind. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

  “Fuck, I wish you’d have fuckin’ come to me,” he growled.

  “Casey said they had guns. Said they’d shoot you. I couldn’t go to you.”

  “Okay, then, I wish you’d have fuckin’ come to me when you got back.”

  “You were with another woman,” I reminded him.

  “She was my cousin, Ivey, and you knew me better than that.”

  “You were my first kiss,” I blurted, he blinked and his arms spasmed around me.

  Then he whispered, “What?”

  “You weren’t just my first lover, Gray, you were my first everything.”

  That pain I saw earlier slashed through his features and his arms again spasmed but stayed tight around me.

  I kept talking.

  “I wasn’t experienced enough. I thought I wasn’t…” I shook my head. “I was a pool hustler virgin who you’d given her first kiss at age twenty-two. You were too good for me, I knew it and I figured you figured it out too so you moved onto better.”

  “Baby, fuck,” he hissed on a near snarl, his eyes narrowing and his arms going super tight. “there was nothin’ better than you.”

  And right then, yes again, I lost it.

  Six words that held the impact of a nuclear bomb disintegrating years of work building a wall to protect my heart. All of that gone, demolished, rubble at…six…words.

  There was nothin’ better than you.

  But I didn’t lose my temper or lose my mind or blurt my beloved friend’s secrets.

  I lost hold on my emotions. Tears sliding from my eyes, body wracked with sobs, I fell face first into his shoulder and just cried.

  Gray gently pulled the towel from my grasp, got up from the bathroom floor and took me with him. Then he moved us out of the bathroom as a whole. Then we were down on the bed, Gray’s back to the headboard, me held close, his arms tight, his knees cocked, cocooning me in all things Gray.

  All things Gray.

  I wanted to glory in this. I wanted to burn it in my brain so I’d have it forever. But I didn’t have it in me. All I did for a long time was just cry.

  Shit. Just like always.

  All these years, years of tears and Grayson Cody never leaked out of me.

  Still crying, suddenly I felt his body tense then we were up. He held me close with one arm around my back but carefully dropped the arm behind my knees. My sandals hit floor but he held me tight to him, his body still tense and I would know why when I heard, “What the fuck?”

  Lash.

  My face, still stuffed in Gray’s chest, turned and I saw Lash.

  The problem with that was Lash saw me.

  And he lost his mind.

  Quickly advancing, he whispered menacingly, “What the fuck?”

  “Calm, man,” Gray warned, his arm coming up, held straight, palm down, a caution at the same time a placating gesture.

  “You did it to her again. She used up every fuckin’ penny in her savings account to cover your ass and here you are and here she is, a fuckin’ mess again because of you,” Lash shot back and as he spoke, Gray’s body got tighter and tighter.

  “Lash –” I whispered, shifting to go to him but Gray’s arm locked tight.

  “Calm down and I’ll explain,” Gray ordered.

  “Fuck that, let her go and get the fuck outta here and for fuck’s sake, if you ever gave even one, little, microscopic shit about her, stay out of her life,” Lash returned.

  “It is not what you think,” Gray told him.

  “It’s exactly what I think, asshole. You did not pick up the pieces. You probably enjoy your birthday when every year that fucker comes around, she locks her shit down so tight so it doesn’t come flyin’ apart it’s a wonder she can move. You do not take her back day and night, keepin’ the wolves at bay so she won’t get a wild hair up her ass, let one of ‘em in, give so much of her heart there’s nothin’ left so they can destroy her again. Do not fuckin’ stand there with her in your arms, her face red and wet and tell me I don’t know what this is. I know what this is, motherfucker, and I know you need to get out.”

  “I thought she was yours,” Gray lied quietly, for Lash, for me and I felt something warm glide through me, shocking my system as it drifted through a cold I thought would never go away.

  But Lash’s head jerked, realizing what he gave away before he covered.

  “Rue’s not anyone’s. She’s Rue’s.”

  Gray let it slide and told him, “Somehow, we got played.”

  “What?” Lash clipped.

  “Somehow…we got played,” Gray repeated with an added hesitation and some emphasis.

  Lash crossed his arms on his wide chest. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I see, she’s with you, that what’s gonna go down next is not gonna go down well with you but before she took off, Ivey left a note I did not get explainin’ what went down with her. I thought she bailed on me. She did not. So someone played us. We don’t know who but Ivey just figured out her brother was more than likely involved. Knowin’ her brother, and I don’t know you, man, but I hope you’ve been saved meetin’ that piece of shit, this is undoubtedly true. This rocked her and it’s rocked me. Worse, Ivey came back and saw me with my cousin. She didn’t know it was my cousin but it was. Chandler’s livin’ in Denver now but I show Ivey a picture, it’ll prove what I say is true. We got played then there was a misunderstanding and we lost seven years to that shit. So what’s gonna happen next, you love her like you obviously do, you’re gonna have to give her and at the same time you’re gonna give it to me.”

  Lash was staring at him clearly as stunned and thrown as I was, pain also in his face, understanding, heartbreak, all of this for me but Gray didn’t give him
any more time.

  His arm that was still held out toward Lash, a gesture of holding him off as well as pacifying him came to me, his hand cupping my jaw, tipping my head back until he caught my eyes.

  Then the pads of his fingers dug in and the look in his eyes, the burn there, burned through my insides.

  “We cannot take this further with him here. But we gotta talk about this, Ivey. We were played. I don’t know who or why or how but I got some good fuckin’ guesses. Someone took you away from me and used Casey to do it.” His faced dipped close and that burn in his eyes grew hotter corresponding to the heat in me. “Never before, never since have I felt for any woman, fuck, anyone the way I felt about you. I want that back. I want my girl back. She’s in there, Ivey, I saw her and you got it in you to give her to me. But you gotta make that decision, dollface. You gotta think about it, make your decision and I hope when it’s made, you’ll come to me. You know where I live. I’ll be waiting.”

  Then I lost sight of his deep blue eyes with their beautiful russet tipped lashes when his face moved in close. He touched his mouth to mine then he let me go, strode by Lash, through the room and disappeared out the door.

  My eyes moved to Lash who was twisted and looking at the door.

  Then he twisted back and his eyes came to me.

  Mine again filled with tears.

  “Fuck,” I hissed, lifting my hands to cover my face.

  I felt Lash’s arms close around me and heard his whispered, “Babe.”

  “Fuck,” I repeated, that word breaking.

  Lash’s arms got tight.

  More tears came.

  Lash had forgotten to take something to the gym and came back for it thus missed his Jacuzzi, sauna and salon appointment so he could deal with me.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Keycard

  Lash Caldiwell

  Eight hours later…

  “Dude does somethin’ to piss me off, can I lay him out?” Freddie asked, him driving, Lash in the passenger seat watching the orchard trees pass by as they neared the quaint farmhouse.

  “I’m thinkin’ you’re not gettin’ who this guy is to Ivey,” Lash replied quietly.

  “Right,” Freddie said and Lash knew he saw him as Lash did. Sitting on his porch swing, arm stretched out resting along the wide back of the swing, beer bottle in his hand.

  Grayson Cody.

  Ivey didn’t have a picture of him but she’d gone into detail describing him.

  Lash thought she was glorifying a memory.

  But she had not come close.

  The faded jeans, the tight, gray t-shirt stretched across the wall of his chest, those shoulders, that hair, that ass, those long legs, those fucking eyes.

  Jesus.

  He was not Lash’s thing, too butch (way too butch) but that didn’t mean Lash couldn’t appreciate all that was him.

  Freddie parked behind a rusted out, old, light blue pickup truck that really needed to be put out of its misery.

  As they drove up, parked and even now, Grayson Cody’s long body kept swaying in that swing but his eyes never left the car.

  Lash turned to Freddie, pulled in a breath and stated softly, “Okay, my man, in a minute you are gonna hear a bunch of shit that’s gonna knock your socks off. So, two seconds to prepare, Ivey is my best friend, outside you my only real one, as you know. What you don’t know, she is not my lover. She’s my friend. And I’m gay. You tell anyone, I’ll shoot you and you know I’m not fucking with you about that. Deal with it. We gotta move on, like, now.”

  Freddie’s eyes were big but Lash didn’t have time for Freddie, he turned and folded out of the car.

  Then he walked through the thick, green grass to stand at the side of the porch opposite Grayson Cody.

  He’d scanned his surroundings while they drove up so he kept his gaze steady on Cody.

  But he got it. He got it just with that man. With the way he looked and with the way he held her, touched her and spoke to her. He also got it with all that was around him. The peach trees, the faraway mountains, the fields that were waves of green and wheat brown, this house.

  He got it.

  He got why this man was the one and only man for the beautiful Ivey Larue.

  Now Grayson Cody needed to get it.

  He heard Freddie get out, his door slam and he knew Freddie was leaning against the car.

  Cody’s eyes flicked to Freddie then back to Lash.

  Then he asked the right question.

  “How is she?”

  “Not good,” Lash replied and watched Cody’s square jaw go hard even as his body remained relaxed, lounging and swaying in that porch swing.

  Ivey would look cute, curled up against him in the crook of that arm thrown wide.

  It was time to get this party started so Ivey could live a life, curled up against her man, in that swing, in the crook of that arm thrown wide.

  “She’s Ivey so she told me what she told you about me,” Lash shared and Cody stared at him a second then jerked up his chin.

  He gave him no more.

  Lash crossed his arms on his chest and settled in.

  Then he stated, “Now I’m here to tell her secrets.”

  Lash watched with no small amount of fascination as his body went alert.

  Very nice.

  Lash went on.

  “I do this for her and that means you get something out of it. She has no clue we’re here. She finds out I did this, it could swing either way for me. But what I know of her, how she feels about you, the opening you gave her, I’m hoping she’ll find it in her to forgive me. But you’re about to get a gift and if you don’t handle it with care, you answer to me and Freddie. Not now, but eventually, you have my promise that you will pay if you break her again. We will make you hurt worse than the hurt that has crushed down on her her entire life. Not just the seven years she’s been jacked up about you but all the twenty-nine she’s endured. And when I say you handle it with care, I say that the next twenty-nine and beyond better make up for every minute of the last and if you don’t break your back to do that for her, I’ll break it for you. Do you understand me?”

  His gaze was laser sharp, he was listening, he was hearing, he was beyond interested but Grayson Cody didn’t say a word.

  Lash decided to take that as an affirmative and kept going.

  “You told her you’ll be waiting. My advice, Cody, is to start gettin’ impatient really fuckin’ fast. You don’t, she’ll slip through your fingers because my girl has no intention of coming to you. You know snippets of her past, you saw her strip, you said shit then and you said shit today and she’s spent the day convincing herself that she’s done her penance for not believing in you by bailing you out and now the best thing she could do for you is let you live your life. You need to disabuse her of the notion you think she’s a step up from a whore and you need to do that quick-like.”

  That got him something.

  A clipped out, pissed off, “Fuck.”

  “Right, I get you, my man. You were her first, you’re that type of man, seein’ her do what she was doin’ would rile you. Type of man you are, pissed off, you’d share. You need to make fast work of rightin’ that wrong.”

  That got him something else. The swing tipped back as Cody leaned forward, boots to the porch, elbows to his knees, gaze still locked to Caldiwell.

  Then he said, “You need to move your fancy-ass Lincoln so I can get my truck out.”

  Lash smiled.

  Then he said softly, “I’m not done.”

  “Well, finish it, man. I don’t got a lotta time.”

  Lash’s smile got bigger.

  Then it faded from his face.

  Then he dropped his arms, took two steps forward and crossed them again.

  “Her Momma was bad news.”

  Lash heard Cody suck in a hissed breath but he kept talking.

  “You think about all the ways a Momma could be bad, Ivey’s Momma went
one better. Ivey and her brother had two different fathers. Neither of them knew their Dads. Ivey because hers is in the penitentiary for twenty-five to life for murder one. A caution, I found that shit out. She has no clue about that either and I haven’t told her. He was just gone by the time she could cogitate and her mother never shared. Casey didn’t know his Dad because even his Momma doesn’t know who his Daddy is. They did not grow up in a safe home. Only thing Casey knew all his life was lookin’ out for his little sister. Feedin’ her. Gettin’ her dressed. Gettin’ her to school. She grew up, started gettin’ pretty, with the man parade Momma had in and outta that house, his protection had to shift. He loved his sister, he grew watchful, he took her back. What he feared would happen, happened. One of Momma’s men got an eye for Ivey and started makin’ plays. Casey could only do so much. Momma was blind to that shit and even if she wasn’t, she didn’t fuckin’ care. So he kept on comin’ over. One night, Casey heard shit he didn’t like, did what he always did lookin’ out for his sister, he walked in on his twelve year old sister fightin’ off a biker. Casey took a baseball bat to that shitbag motherfucker, bashed his head in, packed them up, stole the very little there was that was worth something. Cleaned out the biker’s wallet, his passed out mother’s purse, her car, took off and never looked back. Then he did the best he could. Now, I looked into this shit after Ivey told me about it and that guy didn’t die. It was touch and go but he didn’t die. He isn’t right, surviving a head wound like that but he also isn’t dead. Still, police were lookin’ for Casey and Ivey Bailey for awhile. Years passed, trail got cold, case went stale, it’s done.”

  Grayson Cody didn’t move, didn’t even twitch but his eyes were burning laser sharp into Lash.

  So Lash kept going.

  “I know you know him and think he’s a piece of shit. What I heard, he is. But Casey saved his sister from a fate one step down from death and he did it when she was at an age where that kinda shit, shit that could fuck up a grown woman for life who was strong could seriously fuck up a sweet, innocent twelve year old girl so she’d never be the Ivey you know and I know. He kept her alive, he kept her safe and he made it so he could give Ivey to you, me and Freddie. He fucked up along the way but I think you get why she stayed tied to him, loyal and felt she owed him. I don’t know this new shit that’s come out and what she’s told me of him, I can believe he’d be involved. What you need to know is, there is one person on this earth who could tear her from you and that was him. He came to her, fucked up, face mangled, scared outta his brain. Or tellin’ her that shit. She loved him, she owed him, she went with him but you gotta get she went thinkin’ she was comin’ back. He also convinced her you were in danger and not just you, the entire town of Mustang. So, just like yesterday, she acted fast and not thinkin’ to keep you safe. And, while I’m sharin’, she thought you replaced her, you tore her shit right up, shredded, my man, tatters. She believes this entire town thinks she’s trash. And still, she got word this town was rocking and it took her five minutes to decide to lay out her savings to steady that boat.”