Fight For You

by Evans, J. C.

  It feels like so much longer than a year since we landed in New Zealand, in that place where, for a few blissfully ignorant days, I thought Danny and I were going to have a chance at a future together. Where we’d been happy, despite the lies and arguments. Where we’d made love all night and then spent a perfect day on the river, feeling like all the best things in life were ours for the taking.

  It hurts to remember, but I can’t seem to help it, not with Danny sitting in front of me, with the sun in his hair and that familiar grin on his lips.

  “Juliet is the best,” he says, his love for his niece making his face light up. “Beautiful, bossy, and super smart. And she’s got this laugh like a velociraptor screech from those old Jurassic Park movies. It’s the wildest thing. I’ve got a video on my phone if you want to hear it.”

  I shake my head, forcing my gaze back to what’s left of my plate of fish tacos. “No, that’s okay.”

  I can’t watch a video of Danny’s niece and giggle with him over her silly laugh. I can’t even make eye contact with him right now.

  He’s the kind of man who turns heads when we walk down the street—with his long blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail, handsome face, and sculpted body that manages to be elegant and intimidating at the same time.

  But when he smiles like that, with all the love in his big heart on display, he’s stunning. Heartbreaking.

  Almost irresistible.

  It’s not a good idea for me to stay with him at his cabin—he messes with my focus, and at a time like this, focus could mean the difference between freedom and life behind bars—but I refuse to let him empty his savings for me. I refuse to take anything from him. I’ve already stolen too much.

  “I’ll cancel my reservation for next week and use that money to pay for the drugs,” I say, determined to get us back on track. “It sounds like Carlos can meet up tomorrow, but what do I do with the coke once I have it? I can’t keep it at my hotel with the maids coming in and out during the day.”

  Danny pops the last bite of his sixth taco into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. Clearly planning illegal activities doesn’t interfere with his appetite.

  “The commune is pretty chill,” he says. “Just a bunch of people determined to keep their lives simple and play for a living as much as possible. My cabin is at the edge of the woods and there’s no maid service. I don’t see why the stuff wouldn’t be safe there, but we could bury it in the jungle until we’re ready to move it if you want to. Just to be safe.”

  I nod, pulse speeding as I pick up the phone and start thumbing a text to Carlos. “Then I’ll tell him I’m good to meet tomorrow. We can head back to your place right after to hide it.”

  Back to Danny’s place.

  Soon, I’ll be sleeping in the same room with another person for the first time in a year. And not just any person, but Danny, the only man I’ve ever made love to.

  Last summer, he proved that Todd and the rest of them hadn’t killed the part of me that craved physical intimacy, but that was before the trial. I haven’t had so much as a hug from another human being since I left L.A., but I haven’t missed physical contact. I’ve been cut off from my own body except in those moments when a workout or a punching session brought every cell violently to life. But that life was hard and focused, cold for all the heat pumping through my veins.

  I had assumed that’s who I am now, and that the trial had succeeded in alienating me from my own sensuality in a way even the rape hadn’t.

  Sitting in that courtroom and telling my story to a roomful of strangers, while the four men who violated me looked on with horrified expressions and insisted they were innocent, had been like living through it all again. But this time, instead of the horror being my own private weight to bear, I’d been exposed to the entire world. I’d been forced to share the ugly truth and then been branded a liar, unworthy of compassion or justice.

  The experience proved to me that people, on the whole, are stupid, ridiculous, and cruel.

  But Danny is none of those things.

  Instead of being livid that I abandoned everything we had built without a word, he apologized for that last night in New Zealand. Instead of being too hurt to want anything to do with me, he flew to Costa Rica to punish the men who took our happiness away. After a year with no word, I am still alive in his heart, more alive than I am in my own flesh and blood.

  I’ve been cold as stone and just as numb, but maybe, if I were to touch him, to let him in, just a little, I could come back to life.

  Back to him…

  The phone buzzes next to my elbow and I flinch, so startled my arm jerks forward, spilling my glass of water all over the white tablecloth.

  Heart pounding, I right the glass and toss my napkin over the mess, fighting to bring my breath under control as I rescue the phone from the path of destruction.

  “You okay?” Danny asks, brow furrowing with concern.

  “I’m fine,” I say, teeth digging into my bottom lip as I glance down at the latest message from my drug and arms dealer. “Just thinking too hard.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Nothing, stupid things.” I turn off the phone and slide it into the front pocket of my backpack. “We’re going to meet at four thirty tomorrow afternoon. Same place.”

  “If you don’t want to do it, I could go in your place,” Danny says. “I’d rather if you’ll let me. I saw that guy. I don’t like the thought of you being alone with him again.”

  “I’ll be fine. If he was going to hurt me, he would have tried the first time,” I say, picking pieces of ice from the tablecloth and plunking them back into my glass. “I think he’ll want to keep me around, just to see how much more money he can get from me if nothing else. And worst case scenario, I’ve been training for months. I know how to defend myself.”

  “I can tell,” he says, his gaze drifting down to my shoulders and bare arms. “I wouldn’t want to mess with you.”

  His words say one thing, but his eyes and the husky tone of his voice say another. They say he still wants me as much as he ever did. That he’d like to know what it feels like to have my stronger, more powerful legs wrapped around him and my muscled body pressed against his, skin to skin.

  I should warn him to cut it out and honor our deal to keep the personal stuff out of this.

  But instead I find myself leaning closer and saying—

  “No, you wouldn’t. Because I would kick your ass.”

  His eyes flash. “Oh yeah? You think you could take me, Collins?”

  “I know I could,” I say. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  His tongue slips out, curling over his bottom lip and drawing it back between his teeth. It’s his fighting-not-to-kiss me face, the one made familiar from hundreds of car rides back from the beach when we were kids, when we were sprawled in the back seat and my dad was sneaking peeks at us in the rearview mirror, making sure no teenagers were making out on his watch.

  The heat in Danny’s eyes makes me think about warm lips, eager tongues, and the taste of him sweet in my mouth, and for the first time in so long, I want to touch someone.

  To touch him.

  I can already imagine how perfect it would feel to have his arms around me, pulling me into his lap, kissing me senseless in front of the people bustling by on the sidewalk, talking and laughing and going about their lives as if there is nothing in the world to be afraid of. Not on a day like today, with the sun shining and a faint ocean breeze blowing in from the sea miles away and the music of street musicians filling the air with a light and happy beat.

  But there are so many things to be afraid of, and if I let my shields slip, I will start to remember them all, and not the way I do now, faintly from beneath my calluses. I will be raw and vulnerable again and I can’t go there. Not now. Maybe never, and Danny doesn’t deserve to have hope dangled in front of him and then wrenched away.

  For now, I have to stay free of any promises but the ones I’ve m
ade to the men I will destroy.

  So I push my chair back, moving away from Danny, no matter how much a part of me wants to do the opposite. “I’ll call you tomorrow for directions to the cabin and see you after the deal is done.”

  “Sam, wait—”

  “Thanks for lunch,” I say, forcing a smile as I retreat to my hotel room to rebuild my defenses.

  The next day I see Danny only for the half hour it takes to march the kilo of cocaine I’ve bought from Carlos back into the jungle and bury it, and for the next three days, I insist on doing as much of our communication as I can over the phone. When we have to meet in person, we meet at small cafés throughout the city, finalizing our plans in public. The only time we spend alone is during the eight miserable hours we spend in the hot sun digging a pit deep enough for a man to stand upright and not be able to peer over the edge.

  At no time do I allow our conversation to get overly personal or that flirtatious lilt to enter my tone again. I am determined to protect Danny from me, even though that’s clearly not what he wants.

  The morning I check out of my hotel, on my way to drop my things at the cabin before Danny and I head to the airport to put our first plan into motion, I’m too nervous about the cocaine in my bag to worry about what it will be like to sleep in the same room with him again.

  He promised to take the bed and give me the fold out couch. We should be safe on our separate islands, sharing the same ocean, but never getting close enough to touch. I will stay strong and learn to ignore his smell, his smile, and the way being close to him feels like treading water inches from a life raft.

  I will not let him haul me in to safety.

  I will stay in the water with sharks until the sea runs red with their blood, and only then will I let myself imagine what it might be like to no longer be alone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sam

  “Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”

  -Goethe

  Whispering at café tables with Danny, the thought of coming within arm’s reach of Scott Phillips and the brothers he flew in with was nerve-wracking, but not terrifying.

  Most people only see what they expect to see and none of the men will be expecting me at a Costa Rican airport. Besides, my hair is a different color and I’m wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, sunglasses to conceal my face, and a peach dress, unlike anything I’ve ever owned. I won’t be recognizable at first glance and before Scott has the chance to do more than glance, I’ll be gone.

  I thought I was ready.

  As ready as I would ever be to walk into an airport with a bag filled with cocaine.

  But now that Scott Phillips is standing across the airy, open baggage claim at the Liberia Airport, surrounded by Sigma Beta Epsilon brothers, I’m breaking out in a sweat beneath my filmy dress. My stomach is tied in knots and my hands would be shaking if they weren’t clenched tight around the coffee I’ve been nursing for thirty minutes.

  Danny’s nosing around the brothers’ social media pages revealed that Todd, J.D., and Jeremy are on the next flight from L.A., landing in two hours. I don’t have to worry about being noticed by my other targets, but there are fifteen brothers milling around the baggage claim and Scott is at the center of the swarm. His ever-present, pretentious, “I’m the next great American author” briefcase is right beside him, the way I expected it would be, but unless he separates from the crowd, I won’t be able to get close enough to swap out our bag without attracting attention.

  Seconds are ticking by and if I don’t get a break soon, I won’t be able to plant the drugs on Scott at the airport with its abundant supply of police ready to respond to a call from a red security phone.

  Or worse, I might still be perched on this stool at the espresso bar counter with a kilo of coke in my bag the next time the burly, sharp-eyed man with the drug dog makes his rounds through baggage claim.

  I spent half the day yesterday observing the man’s patterns and he doesn’t pass through this area more than once an hour. But it’s been nearly forty minutes since I watched him lead the dog up the escalator toward the security screening line. I’m running out of time and this plan, which seemed so simple and elegant a few days ago, is beginning to look poorly thought out and far too dependent on dumb luck.

  Danny and I should give up and get out of here before it’s too late, but I’m possessed by the horrible certainty that if I fail now, I will continue to fail. And I can’t fail. I can’t, or all the hard work and sacrifice of the past year will have been for nothing.

  “I should have stuck with the gun,” I whisper behind my coffee cup.

  “We still have time,” Danny whispers back. “He’ll get his suitcase and move to the back of the group. That’s when you go.”

  I swallow, forcing the acid rising in my throat back down the way it came. “You should head back to the car. If I’m caught, I don’t want you around.”

  “You’re not going to get caught,” Danny says firmly, his confidence clearly not as shaken as mine. “Look, he’s got his bag. Get ready. I’ll bet you dinner tonight he’ll start checking his phone in two seconds. You’ll be able to swing by and make the exchange without him looking up from Instagram.”

  I nod, heart racing as I set my coffee down and get ready to slide off my stool.

  As Scott drags his black roller suitcase off the carousel, he turns to one of his friends and laughs his donkey laugh, the one that showcases his wide, blunt teeth. I thought I had control of my anger, but seeing one of the men who attacked me and lied about it going about his life like he has every right to health and happiness makes me want to kill him with my bare hands.

  Heat creeps up my throat to burn my cheeks and the backs of my eyes begin to pulse and throb.

  The open air baggage claim is shaded and a cool breeze stirs the air, but I feel like I’m in the middle of one of those broiling Miami days, when I would emerge from my boxing class into one hundred degree weather with one hundred percent humidity feeling like a tomato in a frying pan, so overheated I was about to split my skin.

  I literally see red, my vision blurring as Scott reaches the edge of his group and keeps walking, headed toward the far side of the room.

  I’m so lost in my anger it takes a beat for panic to penetrate my rage.

  “Where’s he going?” I ask, voice shaking. “Where’s he going?”

  “The bathroom. I’m going after him.” Danny pulls his ball cap lower over his face and grabs the briefcase by my feet.

  I snatch a handful of his tee shirt and hold tight. “No. You can’t. I told you, I won’t let you put yourself in danger.”

  “I’m not going to be in danger,” Danny says, speaking low and fast. “I’m going to get this done and we’re going to get out of here. Go stand by the security phone. If I touch my hat on the way out of the bathroom, make the call. I’ll head out the right side of the baggage claim, giving the rest of them a wide berth and meet you at the car.”

  I shake my head. “Danny, no, I—”

  “There’s no time for a fight, Sam,” he says, pressing a kiss to my cheek before he whispers, “If we’re going to pull this off, we have to be prepared to improvise. See you in a few minutes.”

  Before I can find words to stop him, he’s pried my fingers from his shirt and is headed toward the back of the baggage claim with the briefcase. He’s nearly half a foot taller than Scott, with much longer legs. By the time Scott reaches the curved hallway leading into the men’s bathroom, Danny is just a few steps behind.

  Which is a good thing, because no sooner has he disappeared than the police officer with the German shepherd appears at the top of the elevator.

  Instantly, my throat closes up with panic.

  I spin to face the bar, wondering if the smell of the coke is strong enough to draw the dog into the bathroom. Just in case, I fumble my phone from the burlap purse slung across my body and stab out a quick text to Danny—

  Dog back. In bagga
ge claim. Don’t come out with bag.

  —and hit send, only to be rewarded with a hum from the stool beside me. I glance down to see Danny’s phone resting on the metal seat.

  It must have fallen out of his board shorts again.

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Doing my best to appear calm and in control, I slide Danny’s phone into my purse along with mine, leave a few hundred colones by my coffee cup for the harried woman manning the counter alone, and start across the room to the emergency phone.

  I keep my pace slow and even, ignoring the sweat beading on my upper lip and the hair rising on the back of my neck. The return of the policeman and his dog are bad news for calling in a report, too. I planned to make an anonymous tip and don’t want to be seen, but getting caught with the phone in my hand is far better than Danny getting caught with the drugs.

  Stomach cramping and my pulse fluttering unhealthily in my ears, I lean against the concrete wall a few yards from the phone, gaze fixed on the exit to the bathroom, willing everything to be all right.

  The policeman and his dog are taking their sweet time circling each of the carousels and almost all the SBE brothers have their bags. It feels like it takes hours for Scott to emerge, dragging his suitcase behind him. I push away from the wall, heart slamming against my ribs as I try to get a better look at the other bag he’s carrying.

  He’s only a hundred feet away, maybe less, but the briefcase is in his right hand and I can’t see enough of it to be sure which one it is—his old, battered case, or the new one we bought and roughed up to match it. My hands clench and unclench at my sides as Scott hurries to rejoin his friends and the policeman and his dog complete their circuit of carousel three and start toward the final carousel, their path leading them directly past the bathrooms.

  If Danny comes out with the drugs right now, he’s going to be caught. There’s no way the dog is going to miss a kilo of cocaine gliding by right beneath its nose.