by M. O'Keefe
For him to be safe.
Happy.
And that couldn’t happen if he was with me.
I had to end this. I pushed away from the dresser and opened my mouth ready to tell him to get dressed and get out, but he shifted up on the bed, getting up on his good leg and he snagged my wrist.
“Don’t,” I said, suddenly scared. Suddenly terrified. Not because he would hurt me.
But because he wouldn’t.
He ignored my struggling and pulled me down onto the bed, half on him, half at his side.
The heat of his body was hotter than the shower, and where we touched, I felt scorched.
“Look at me,” he said, but I kept my head averted. He had my wrists in one of his large hands, my hands locked together in between us. But slowly he lifted my hands until they were over my head, pressed to the pillow. The cold iron of the headboard was against my fingers.
Excitement sizzled through me. Unwanted, but there so much the same.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he told me.
“No,” I said. But my struggle was not real. It was a flimsy pretense that he pushed right through. Unable to stop myself, I looked at him. His blue eyes so radiant and getting closer as he leaned toward me.
I closed my eyes in surrender.
And I wasn’t sure what I expected, but he was careful and soft.
He kissed me like we were new to it. New to each other.
Our first kiss. Our last kiss.
Tears burned behind my eyes and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.
Come on! I urged myself. Fight him. Pull your hands away. Push him back.
But I didn’t. I didn’t do any of that. I lay there, shaking. Taking in every moment of this kiss like a memory I would need for later. Like this kiss would sustain me through the hungry years ahead.
He sucked my lip into his mouth and I moaned, coming undone beneath him. My arms lost their tension and he let go of my wrists like he knew I wasn’t going to fight him. He put his hands to my chin, holding my face.
He moaned, too, arching into me just a little. And I arched back, opening my mouth to him so he could take what he wanted. His tongue touched my lip and then my tongue and then finally, we were kissing for real. Long, slow, soft, deep kisses. Open mouths. Grasping hands. It was him and it was me and it was nothing else. My arms came around his neck, pulling him down against me until our bodies were flush. Until the weight of him pushed away all my fears. His hands slid over my top, raking it up until he got to my skin.
He groaned when he touched it. Like it was too much, the sensation of my skin. Like it was more than he could handle. And I understood that completely, because I stroked my fingers over that beard that made me so hot. Over and over again like he was my wild thing, calmed by my touch.
He groaned in his throat, kissing me harder, letting me know how much he liked being my wild thing.
It seemed like we’d always been kissing. Like his taste was a memory. And his touch familiar and brand-new all at once. He was hard against my leg, and I was wet and hot against the thigh he had pressed up against me—but we did not make this moment into anything else. It just was.
Endless long, sweet kisses. One after another until I felt like I was drowning in him.
It had been years since I’d kissed someone like this. Like I had all the time in the world. Like there was nothing else I’d rather do than make out for an hour. I wondered if he felt the same way and then in the same moment, knew that he did.
Because I knew Max. Whatever else happened. Whatever else went wrong. I knew Max. Just like he knew me.
And that stopped me. Stopped me midmoan. Midstroke.
This was supposed to be goodbye. And this kiss felt like a beginning.
“That.” I made sure not to look in his eyes. “That was a bad idea.”
“Why?” He was lightly stroking my spine. A lover’s touch, so I jumped away. Now when I pushed away his hands, he didn’t fight me. He opened his arms and let me roll right off the bed.
I stood, wiping my swollen lips, straightening my skirt. Putting the frayed pieces of myself back together. Only when I felt myself get back under control did I look at him.
Max watched me with hard, knowing eyes. Because he’d seen this coming from miles away.
“You have to go.” I was proud of my voice. Hard. Uncompromising. “You can take the car. There’s some money leftover.”
“I don’t need your money.” His voice made me flinch because it was equally hard. Equally uncompromising.
“Fine, then take the car and go…buy a boat. Go back to being president of the Skulls. Turn the club around. Make yourself a family to replace the one you ruined.”
That was mean, and I knew it.
But he just sat there, watching me. Chest heaving like he was holding himself back with everything he had.
“What are you waiting for?” I yelled and still he was calm. His face hard. His eyes harder. “Is this about sex? Are you sticking around to fuck me? Fine. Let’s just get that done so you can be on your way.” I reached up under my skirt and pulled down my black panties.
“Stop,” he spat out the word like he’d been chewing on it for a long time.
“Come on, I don’t have a lot of time, but I figure fast and dirty is how people like us like it.”
“Joan.”
“We don’t even have to take off our clothes.” I was yanking the skirt up to my waist and finally he stood up, grabbing my arms in hard hands. Bruising hands.
“Stop. It.”
“No, you stop it,” I tried to fight free but he didn’t let me go. So all I had were my words and I used them like fists. “Stop pretending, Max. Stop pretending we’re people we’re not. Like you’re going to find me when this is all over and we’ve got some future with your goddamn boat. We don’t. I’m going to the cops, Max. And you’re a fucking criminal. Don’t you see how this plays out for you?”
“Of course I see how it plays out. I see how me being around you could fuck all this up for you.”
For me? I sucked in a breath. No. No, he couldn’t be thinking of me now. Not when I was doing everything I could to save him.
He pulled me right up against him, so his breath was on my mouth. A kiss I couldn’t have.
“But I want you to tell me it hurts,” he said. “Stop playing this hard as ice game of yours and tell me that it hurts to push me away. Tell me that this thing between us matters to you.”
We stood there looking at each other and I couldn’t hide my shock. I was slack jawed and limp in his grip.
Of course it fucking hurt. It felt like ripping off my skin to watch him leave. I’d never had anyone like him in my life. Not ever. And maybe I never would again.
And the grief of that would put me on my knees if I said the words.
And how would I get up from that? How would I save my sister from my knees? With a hole in my heart?
It served no purpose.
“You were Plan B for getting my sister back,” I said, looking right into his eyes, sending a terrible ripple all across his calm. “And now you’re in the way. Take the car. Take what’s yours. And go.”
Max
I listened to her leave, expecting slamming doors but getting only silence.
Yes, Joan knew how to leave. It was surgical, her leaving. Clean cuts. Nothing that lingered. I wasn’t even bleeding.
Fuck, she was good. Cold as ice except when we’d been kissing.
I’d been the one wanting something more. Some bone tossed my way.
I fell back on the bed feeling like I’d been turned inside out.
Beneath me, my phone, forgotten in the sheets, rang, and I lifted my right shoulder and found it.
Dylan.
Dylan was calling me back.
Now.
I shouldn’t answer it, I knew that. I was restless and pissed and hurt and looking for a fight. Despite that—or maybe because of it—I answered the phone.
“Hey.”
“Hey!” The happiness in his voice made me close my eyes. “I got your message. How are you doing?”
Weeks ago, Dylan had come to me at the club when he’d been a mess about Annie. About the life he was living and how hard it could be to break out of the shit box he’d built himself. And I’d sat beside him on the roof of a car drinking warm beer and felt like I’d been knit back together for a few minutes. Like all the things I’d been living without had revisited me for an hour.
And then he’d left me, taken that stuff with him again—packing up my heart and my soul and all my good memories with him like clothes in a suitcase. But he’d gone on to make a better life with Annie. He’d gone on to be brave and bold. And in my meager life, I was proud to have been a part of that. In whatever way. Even if it was to show him what he didn’t want. What a mistake looked like.
Oh fuck.
I put my arm over my eyes.
“Max? You all right?”
No.
“Do you…do you ever wish I’d never made you move in with Miguel and his family when you got out of jail?”
That was what I asked, but the real question I was asking was: do you ever wish we could have been a family like we used to be? You and me against the world? Did you miss me like I missed you?
I heard Dylan’s long, slow exhale. Like, in a way, he’d been waiting for this question.
“No,” he said.
It was the right answer. Just like Joan telling me to leave was the right answer.
But it still hurt.
“What I wish though,” Dylan said, twisting the knife. “Was that you’d come with me. I wish…I wish you would have seen that you deserved that shot, too. That you didn’t have to ruin your life to save mine.”
“There’s a cost to everything, Dylan,” I said. “And the fact that you don’t know that just means I did the right thing.”
“Fuck you, you don’t think I know that? Look at me, asshole.” Dylan said with an angry laugh. I could see those scars on his face from the fire. I saw them on the backs of my eyelids every night before I went to bed. “What I’m saying is the cost didn’t have to be you.”
“I didn’t have anything else to give up,” I sighed. I still didn’t. Except this second chance of mine. I could give that up. And would in a heartbeat, if I could only figure out how.
“You know what I told myself when I was living with Miguel and I was so pissed at you? That you didn’t care about what happened to me.”
“You know I cared.”
“Now I do. Then I didn’t. How could I? You vanished, man. You chose the club over me.”
“The club was what I had instead of you. It was all I had.”
“Then you give up the fucking club, Max.”
It was like having the back of my head blown off. It was like having my whole world rearranged.
“You don’t push everyone you love away for a group of men who are going to shoot you in the dirt.”
Give up the club. For Joan. For a few extra days. For a shot at a few more.
“Max?” I was silent. I couldn’t even find the words to speak. “It can’t be that hard.”
It wasn’t. And at the same time, it was impossible.
“What do you know about it?” I finally managed to say.
“Nothing,” Dylan said. “I know nothing about it and I’m grateful every damn day for the sacrifice you made, but you can stop now, Max. You. Can. Stop.”
There was a gull outside making a huge fucking racket.
Give up the club. But…what if I could make it mean something? Something real. What if I could build the beginning of the next part of my life on the bones of the old?
Like my tattoo—but real.
Fuck. Was it possible?
“You used to wear a Spider-Man shirt, every day, remember that?” I said into the silence between us.
“No.”
“You did. It was the top part of a pajama set. You wore it for like six weeks straight. Finally, it stank so bad I had to bribe you to take it off. Ten bucks and an ice cream sandwich.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You cried when I put it in the wash, while sitting half-naked on top of the dryers at the laundromat. You cried so hard, clutching that money and eating that sandwich. Ice cream running down your hand.”
“You want me to give you ten bucks and an ice cream sandwich? Done. Come here and get them. Please, Max. Come here. Let me help you.”
I smiled at the thought. Staring up at the ceiling, I smiled at a lot of things I never thought I’d smile about. Things that seemed impossible. “I don’t want an ice cream sandwich, but I need something else.”
“Anything. Name it.”
My breath shuddered in my chest. Brotherhood. I’d forgotten what that was like.
Joan told me to take what’s mine.
And she was mine.
I was going to try and save both of us. Me and Joan. Maybe Dylan was right and it didn’t have to be either-or. Maybe it could be both of us. Together.
“I’m going to need a lawyer.”
Chapter 23
Joan
I walked to Eric’s apartment with my stomach in knots and my hands a sweaty mess. And I would have given just about anything to have Max beside me. Not that I would take back the words I said—no, I wouldn’t do that.
But the need to say them. This situation we were in. I’d give anything to change that.
Stop. Stop wanting that. Stop wanting him. If he’s smart—which you know he is—he’s halfway to Tampa by now.
I knocked on the door and Eric answered right away. Looking sharp as hell in a suit jacket and a pair of dark jeans.
“Hi Joan,” he said.
“Eric.”
“Come on in.”
Fern was already there, sitting on the couch in a long black skirt and a tight black T-shirt with a red belt around her waist. She wore a pair of red espadrilles that tied half way up her calf. It was a killer look for her.
“Hey Fern,” I said.
“I hope it’s all right I’m here,” she said.
“It’s fine.” I wasn’t completely surprised. They had something going and it had nothing to do with me. And, I won’t lie, I was glad she was there.
After kicking Max off my team after that kiss, I felt surprisingly alone. Like I’d lost a weight I was used to and now I was all off balance and raw on one side. Which did absolutely nothing to change the fact that it was the right thing to do.
The only thing to do.
But that kiss…that fucking kiss…was screwing with my head.
Tell me it hurts. Tell me this mattered.
“Your aunt hasn’t told me anything,” Eric said, glancing between us with his wide, solemn eyes, while Max’s words echoed in my head. I couldn’t shake them. “So why don’t you have a seat and start at the beginning.” He gestured to the edge of his couch and then took a seat in the chair in front of his computer setup.
The beginning. Where exactly did the sad story of Jennifer and Olivia Matthews begin? I looked at Fern, and the way she looked back at me with her careful face told me Eric already knew about her family. The junkyard. The poverty and crime. The younger brother she left behind. The two girls she knew nothing about. The life she got away from as fast as she could.
She’d told him all that and for a minute, real and awkward, I was real glad. That she’d moved that rock off her chest. It gave me a foolish slice of hope that she and Eric might have a chance at whatever this thing was between them.
So the alternate beginning to the story.
“I had just gotten fired from a job at a diner off the highway outside of Raleigh…”
He took a lot of notes. Asked a lot of questions about locations and the names of people. When I got to the drugs part he didn’t look surprised.
“Was anyone armed?” he asked.
“Not that I ever saw.”
I explained the pills and how after anyone left, the whole camp
moved. No one ever moved while I’d been there. But that’s what I was told. And when I went back to where the camp had been, it was gone. Only a few people were allowed to know the new locations. And only a few people were allowed to leave the compound.
When I was done, I sat back against the couch, letting go of a breath that sounded like relief.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“And Max—”
“Not a part of this.”
“Lying isn’t going to help you, Joan.”
“Neither is telling you about Max.”
“I know he had something to do with the explosions at the strip club—”
“That was me. Not the Skulls.”
“You?” Eric asked and sat back with his eyes wide, his military calm rattled. “You’re going to need a lawyer.”
Right. With the three hundred bucks I had left from the five hundred Fern had given me.
“You want to ask Hugo?” Eric asked Fern.
“Or Dan.”
“Dan’s a better choice,” Eric said, and I put my hand up.
“Look, I’m not…jail’s not a problem.”
“Jail is a problem,” said Fern.
“Not if Jennifer is safe.”
The room was dark, lit only by a little light coming in through the shades and the glow of Eric’s computer system, but I could not miss the expression on Fern’s face.
I looked away, but it wasn’t fast enough.
The pity. It burned.
“I have a friend in the FBI office out of Charlotte. I’ll call him. Set something up. I imagine from what you’re telling me that it will be sooner rather than later. How quick can you move?”
“Now,” I said, all but getting to my feet. “Tonight.”
“Tomorrow will probably do just fine,” Eric said with a kind smile in my direction. “I’m real glad you trusted me with this,” he said. “I know it wasn’t easy.”
“I’ve done so many stupid things wrong.”
“You’re fixing it now.”
That seemed like a very real benediction. A strange closing on this shitty part of my life. Yes, I prayed. I actually prayed. Yes, God, please let this be the end of it.
“So…tomorrow?” I asked, feeling quite suddenly like this might actually happen. This whole nightmare might come to an end.
