by M. O'Keefe
But then she shook her head, pulling the phone away from her ear.
“The number’s not in service,” she whispered and then she lifted her arm like she was about to smash the phone against the ground, and I lurched forward, straining at the handcuffs, the metal biting hard into my skin. Hard enough to draw blood.
“Stop!” I cried.
“Why? It’s useless to me. Another fucking dead end!”
“No. It’s not. It’s the only phone number he has for me. He…he might call. You were right. He trusts me and he’s got a lot of product he’s got to get rid of. He doesn’t have time to start from scratch.”
Her breath heaved in her chest.
“Keep the phone,” I repeated.
“You really think he might call?”
I nodded.
She put the phone in her pocket and shook her hair out of her face, wiping it away from her lips. Her eyes were red and it seemed like she might cry.
I could see every crack in her foundation. And they were wide, deep cracks. Nothing would repair them. I knew because I had them, too.
Joan and me—we were lost causes.
She watched me for a long moment and I watched her right back.
“What are you going to do if I let you go?” she asked.
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Kill me?”
I shook my head. An hour ago, alone in this room before she came back with Sarah, I won’t lie, that had been my plan. I’d been fantasizing about exactly how I would kill her. But now…
“No.”
She scoffed.
“I swear,” I said.
“Is that supposed to convince me?” she asked. “What does a guy like you care enough about that you swearing on it would mean something? That bullshit club with all the guys who tried to kill you?”
“No. I don’t swear on the patch.” I did. A long time ago. But those days were gone.
“I swear on Dylan,” I said. “On my little brother. On all the shit I did to keep him safe and out of the life. You understand that, don’t you?”
She watched me for a long time, sweating despite the air-conditioning.
“Are you going to hurt Fern?”
Again I shook my head.
“Are you going to go back to the club?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“Then why do I feel like it is?” She was really asking me, like I had some understanding about this connection between us that she didn’t. Like I had experience with this kind of shit.
“Why didn’t I let you smash the phone?” I asked and then I shrugged. “Stockholm syndrome?”
She laughed, a wild strange gust. “This has to be the worst kidnapping ever.”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking around the tidy and cool condo that still smelled like good, healthy sex. “I’ve seen worse.”
“I’ve done everything you wanted.”
“Except let me go.”
“Right. Not much of a kidnapper if I did that.”
I didn’t acknowledge the joke. I didn’t want to find her funny. Or brave. Or anything other than in my way.
“You have the phone, you have the number. You’re not getting anything more from me.” Already it was too much. Already it was enough to get her killed.
“I called your brother,” she said.
“What?”
“From the pay phone across the street. I called to tell him you were safe. Okay.”
“Fuck, Joan, you made me a promise.”
“And I broke it. It’s what I do. But I know what it’s like to worry about your sibling. To not know if they’re alive or dead. If they’re okay. If they’re hurt. If they’re alone and scared—” She turned away and I had to look away, too. “You must have felt that way when he was in jail?”
I felt exactly like that. “The fuck do you know about it?”
“Annie told me some of it. Your Pops a little more.”
All that time Dylan was in jail, taking the years for something I got him into. And then when shit got real for him behind bars, with the Dirty Bastards club taking retribution against Pops on Dylan…and then later with the fire and what happened to his body…I felt like I was going to lose my mind. I wanted to lose my mind. I went deep into the club, taking on every batshit assignment, putting blood on my hands like it might wash away the blood on Dylan’s.
Like somehow I could balance the scales.
It didn’t work. Nothing worked.
“He said you could go stay with him,” she said. “That you had a place. With him. Home. That’s what he called it. Home.”
I ran my finger over a scar I had on my knee. A stupid thing from when Dylan and I were kids. We’d been riding double on my bike and I hit a rock and both of us went flying. I got this rock stuck in the thick skin just over my knee cap. I told him to pull it out, but he kept gagging, because it was gross. And then I was laughing because he was gagging and then in the end, he got mad at me for laughing at him and told me to fuck off. So we walked back to the Skulls clubhouse on opposite sides of the street. Me with a rock in my knee. Him with the broken bike.
Pops pulled the rock out. Dylan almost passed out from the blood, which I thought was kind of nuts because it was my blood. There was so much even I felt a little woozy. But Pops called Dylan a pussy and I locked my legs and stayed on my feet while blood ran down my leg, into my shoe.
Because no way was Dad calling me a pussy.
I had forgotten that. I had forgotten all about that.
I had forgotten so much.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, tired of my bullshit thoughts.
She shrugged and walked over to the pillow on the floor. She picked it up and threw it on the other side of the bed.
It couldn’t be more obvious that it wasn’t my business, but I couldn’t let it go. Jesus. And she thought this kidnapping was fucked-up. Here I was, chained to the bed and worried the woman who put me here was going to get herself killed.
“Joan? You going to stay here? With your aunt?”
“No,” she laughed without any humor. “She’s made it clear we need to clear out at the end of the week. I’ll go back to North Carolina and drive down every road until I find Lagan’s fucked-up compound.”
“Why don’t you go to the cops?” I mean I had my problems with the cops, but I was an outlaw.
“When we first arrived at his little camp, after it was obvious we bought into the bullshit and were going to stay, he gave us this little bag to wear around our necks.”
Oh fuck, I knew where this was going.
“There were three pills in it, and if the police came, we were supposed to take all three pills. He told us it would make us sleep and that when we woke up, everything would be fine. We wouldn’t have to answer the questions none of us wanted to answer about who we really were. About the things we’d done. He would have handled everything.”
“Cyanide or some shit?”
She shrugged. “And the women, they were so brainwashed. Some of them came from some seriously fucked-up situations and they were just ready, you know. Ready to let someone take away all the big decisions. I mean, they’re brainwashed and abused but it’s the sly abuse, you know. The abuse that looks like love.”
“You weren’t ready to let someone else make all the decisions?”
“It was nice for a few months. But…I have control issues, what can I say?”
This time I smiled, because she was trying so damn hard to keep her head up.
“You actually think your sister would take the pills?”
“No. But I actually think he’d kill her before he let her talk to the police. It’s what he threatened me with when I left. That if I tried to come back, he’d kill Jennifer.”
There was no way to win. Lagan had every base covered.
“I’ll let you go,” she said. Her voice cracked and she could not hide the fact that she was scared.
She took
a deep breath and then tossed me the key from across the room. I caught it with my free hand and used it to pop open the handcuffs.
Fuck. I shook out my hand, rubbing my wrist. I’d cut the skin a little lunging for her when she was going to bust the phone.
“Two days. Two days I’ve been handcuffed to this bed.”
“I’m sorry.”
I got to my feet, glad I was steady. She was backing away from me, stepping into the corner between the dresser and the window. I followed her, eating the space between us.
She didn’t scream, or put up her hands. She only looked at me as if she was waiting for what she knew was coming. Still, she was breathing hard, trying to shrink.
And I’m a pretty fucked-up human, with some fucked-up tendencies toward violence and fear and once I had her cornered against the wall, I lifted my hand to her chest, putting my palm right against the pounding of her heart.
Her fear shook something loose in me, some cornerstone that held up a whole bunch of shit—crumbled. How many times had I done this in my life? Had I stood over some scared person and done everything I could to tear them apart? To take what they had? To hurt what they loved?
“I’ve hurt so many people in my life,” I told her. Her eyes were so green. I’d never noticed before, blinded by her tits and the armor. But her eyes were the color of grass. Serious green like golf-course grass. “If you’d done this a year ago, I would have fucked you up. I might have killed you.”
Her eyes slid shut and she whimpered low in her throat. But I just stood there, feeling her heart beat.
How do I…not do this?
I remembered when I gave up on my mom. Gave up on the dream of her being clean. Of us—her and me and Dylan and Pops—being some kind of normal. Of being a family instead of a pack of dogs tearing at each other.
I remembered the exact moment I gave in to the dogs.
It was about a week after Mom had come home from the fancy place Dylan’s money racing cars had gotten her into. And it had been a good week. Mom was fragile, her smile weak. But she was there. And you could see her trying. She asked about school. She asked about girls and friends. The cars. Dylan’s racing.
Every day, Pop treated her like he expected her to disappear. Like without his hands on her, his arm over her shoulder, his lips pressed to her hair—she’d just…poof away.
And then—it was a Thursday. I remembered because I got Dylan to school—which was hard enough in those days but instead of sticking around for my own classes I headed home, and there was Mom and one of Pop’s brothers from the club. And the spoon and the lighter and the rubber tubing. And the sound of them fucking in the bedroom.
After that—I just didn’t care anymore.
The dogs could have us.
I had turned around and walked away. Walked in the opposite direction. Every time the instinct to care about her or about Pops came back—I shut it down. I rejected it. I did the opposite until all I had for Mom and Pops was rage. Because it was the only thing that would stop me from loving them.
I could do that now. Walk in the opposite direction of the old life.
The old me.
Another cornerstone crumbled. At this rate—there’d be no part of me I recognized left.
And maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Joan licked her lips and I followed her tongue with my eyes, thinking about how tenderly she had kissed Sarah. I thought about her driving all those hours with me in the backseat of her car. She must have been so scared. So tired. But she got me here.
Swallowed, if not her pride, then something to bring me to her aunt.
In my shitty life—outside of Dylan—no one had ever done so much for me.
God, her eyes were so fucking green.
“Thank you,” I told her. And I meant it.
Hard to say which one of us was more surprised.
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
I dropped my hand and stepped back. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Part 2
Chapter 16
Joan
My instinct was screaming to get the hell out of the condo.
My garbage-bag luggage was packed at my feet and my ice-cold hand was on the doorknob, but somehow I couldn’t quite get my wrist to turn.
Pick up your shit and get gone. Only an idiot would stay. Don’t be an idiot.
I had Max’s phone—the only real connection to Lagan I needed. I was never going to be able to convince Max to help me. Never. I’d used every weapon in my arsenal and he’d been unmoved.
The shower thunked off, the old pipes in the building sending up a chorus.
Go. Go now.
But I didn’t.
Here’s the truth when you live a life like mine. I was not allowed the comfort of lying to myself. The delusions other people got to use to keep themselves warm during the long, cold nights—they were not available to me. I could lie to everyone else. But not to myself.
I stayed because this place was paid for. Because it was safe. Because it was comfortable. Because I had no place else to go.
And I stayed because Max was going to fuck me.
And I really, really wanted that.
See, no lies.
“Joan?” he said, and I could tell he was right behind me. In the hallway. I felt the damp, warm air from the bathroom, curling around my ankles. Banishing the cold air. Pushing it aside.
I exhaled slowly. “Yeah?”
“You leaving?” I heard his nearly silent footsteps on the carpet. I felt like all my frequencies were tuned to him. Everything was Max.
Slowly, I turned, trying to keep all my nerves from showing. All my fear. He had a towel around his waist, gripped at his hip in one hand.
Water dripped from the ends of his black hair onto the smooth skin of his shoulders, running across his tattoos and sleek muscles. He was lean and cut and deadly.
Still as a snake.
And all I could think about, looking at him, was his eyes on me as Sarah made me come. I felt all the words he’d said sown in my womb. In my gut. They were branded into my skin and I would never not be turned on by the memory. I had the sinking feeling that nothing would turn me on like that ever again.
He’d ruined me without ever touching me.
“I was thinking about it,” I said honestly.
“Coward?”
“Something like that.”
“How long have we got this condo?”
“Four more days.”
“Four days.” He looked around. The long blinds on the sliding glass door were open and he walked over in his towel to stand at the window. His back rippled with muscles. Every movement he made, I could see the mechanics under his skin. Muscle to muscle, ligament to tendon. Sleek, beautiful skin over all of it. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to trace his spine with my fingers. My tongue.
I wanted to pull that towel off his body and hold his ass in my hands while he pounded into me until nothing else mattered. Ever again.
“You ever go on vacation?” he asked.
I blinked, stunned out of my thoughts. “What?”
“Like as a kid. Everyone in the station wagon? That kind of shit?”
“No.” I laughed. Shitty truck with the door tied shut only made it to Madison.
“Yeah, me neither. We tried once. It was a disaster.” He turned, his thumb pointing over his shoulder toward the world outside the window. “There are grills down there, on the lawn by the pool.”
I literally had no idea what he was saying. I stared at him like an idiot.
“Can we use them?” he asked.
“What…what are you talking about?” Grills? The hell?
“The grills by the pool. That’s part of this condo right?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled, and goddamn, he was beautiful. The beard and the eyes and the white flash of his teeth.
It was so surprising that smile, so real and pure and not malicious or hiding some dark intent. H
e was just a really good-looking guy smiling because, for the moment, he was happy.
I nearly smiled back.
“I’m going to go get a steak,” he said. “And I’m going to cook it on that grill. And I’m going to get some beers. And I’m going to drink a bunch of them by the pool. You hungry?”
“Yeah. I…I could eat.” I was starving. Ravenous.
“And tomorrow I’m going to wake up and go down and sit by that pool in the goddamn sun. You should come with me.”
I blinked at him like he was speaking French.
“It’s our honeymoon after all.”
“You want to…”
“Sit in the sun for a few days. Drink beers. Look at you wearing that white bikini.”
He was telling me I could forget, for just a little bit. Or I could try. I could put down the load I carried and pretend for a little while that life was simple. Easy. I could take a breath. Make a new plan without the panic of not knowing where I was going to spend the night or how I was going to pay for gas.
Vacation.
Something easy. For once.
I was shaking my head no, I was pushing the idea away before the words were even out of his mouth.
Because I didn’t deserve easy. I didn’t deserve a vacation. Not while Jennifer was out there with Lagan.
“All right then, Joan,” he said, his face somber. “It was good knowing you.”
I turned around to face the door and all I had to do was pick up my garbage bags and turn the doorknob. But I couldn’t, somehow. I couldn’t.
“I don’t know how,” I breathed.
“To do what?” His voice came from just over my shoulder. I could feel him there. His living breathing sleekness. His danger and his charm. He was going to unlock me if I Iet him. He was going to pull me apart.
“Not…worry. Vacation. Sit in the sun in a bikini.”
I felt the gust of his laughter against my shoulder. “I’ve spent the last four years waiting for a bullet to the back of my head. So yeah, I’m not sure I know, either. But I’m gonna give it a try.”
Impossible, I wanted to say.
But instead, I opened my mouth and said, “Get dressed, I’ll drive us to the grocery store.”
—
And that was how I found myself sitting outside by the pool at midnight, eating a very rare steak and drinking a very cold beer.
