Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5)

by Lauren Gilley

  And then she was in front of Kev, hands clasped together on her cane, expression softening. No, that wasn’t true – her mouth softened, it slid into that same smile she’d been giving him from the first. But it never touched her eyes. Those tracked up and down him, the possibly-moldy piece of bread.

  “Well, Kev.” Her voice made him think of cold water trickling down the back of his neck. “Are you ready to learn how to dance?”

  “No,” he said, bluntly. “No, I don’t want to dance.”

  Her arm moved, a fast flash, and the cane caught him in the side of the head.

  He saw stars.

  ~*~

  The teacup saucer overflowed with cigarette butts, his and Mercy’s. They kept leaning in closer and closer over the coffee table to tap their ash, grind the nubs out, and then light new ones.

  “I learned how to dance,” Tango said. “I didn’t want to be, but turns out I was really good at it. Took to it like that.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand. “But I was built for it. That’s why she wanted me – I had the look. Built like a dancer and pretty as a girl in the face.”

  He flashed his friend a smile he knew to be terrible and settled back in his chair, taking a deep drag, chasing it with coffee.

  Mercy studied him, a close scrutiny, but Tango wasn’t bothered by it; he could feel the way it was about love, and not some animal need to evaluate him for market. “Sometimes,” he said, quietly, “even if you hate what you’re doing, you find a little pride somewhere. It feels good to be good at something.”

  Tango snorted, and nodded. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  Thirteen

  Session 4

  At first, it had seemed like the hardest thing in the world to dig into his memory banks. They weren’t the sorts of mental file drawers one opened at will to flip through. No, they were more like little explosions that occurred when anything traumatic happened: bursts of remembrance. They’d become a sequence of relentless detonations, right before the bathtub incident… And so Tango hadn’t anticipated being able to carry any sort of narrative.

  Now, though, his fourth session with Mercy, the apartment smelling of coffee and cigarettes, a plate of Ava’s chocolate chip muffins on the table between them, it felt like the easiest thing in the world to open up the old scars, reach inside, and come out with fistfuls of blood.

  It terrified him.

  But no one had ever said therapy would be easy.

  ~*~

  Ballet was incredibly difficult. What had looked so delicate and dainty in photos was actually an intense amount of strain, athleticism, and intense pain. In his toes, in his muscles, in his bones. Miss Carla delivered exacting commands during their hours’ long classes, tapping at shoulders, shins, and ears with her cane if anyone wobbled, or slipped, or forgot a movement.

  At first, Kev hated it.

  Then he started to improve.

  And then he realized in this hellish world of cells, and bunks, and bland meals brought to them in horse feed buckets twice a day, dancing was the only aspect of his life over which he had an ounce of control. He couldn’t get out, couldn’t slip past Max, couldn’t get to a phone to call Mama, couldn’t dictate when he slept, ate, bathed, or submitted to the crack of the cane. But he could stretch dramatically at the barre, and reach fluidly above his head, and dance until his feet were sore and blistered, never wavering once.

  “You have to learn to dance as children,” Miss Carla told them as they practiced before her. “Children are elastic. Children can make their bodies do anything.”

  His cellmates became his friends. Simon showed him how to massage his knotted calves and his poor abused feet after a particularly rough day in the studio – that’s what it was, in all its insanity in this prison of theirs – a dance studio. They ended up sitting in a circle, legs extended, feet in one another’s laps, working the awful tension from arches and bloodied toes with their small fingers.

  “Do you like it?” Lee asked him, small face earnest, giant caramel eyes almost hopeful. Because that’s what hope had become in this new world where they all lived: dance, and friendship, and surviving another day, finding something in it to like.

  “I think so,” Kev said.

  ~*~

  He was a good dancer. After who knew how many weeks, and who knew how many whacks with the cane, it became apparent to Miss Carla, and everyone else, that Kev was a damn good dancer. He hated himself for taking pride in that, but he did so all the same. He couldn’t choose when to bathe, when to eat, when to sleep – was he even a human anymore? He felt like one of his little plastic army men, taken out of the bucket every afternoon so someone could play with him.

  So he resisted in the ways that he could. He chose things. He chose to lie awake in the dark, if only so he could feel defiant. And he chose to dance well. So well.

  “You’re better than me,” Simon complained. “And it’s not fair.”

  His reflection looked different in the big mirrors in the studio. He’d always been a thin and gawky child, but now he stood taller, and there was something elastic and graceful about his arms, the way they hung at his sides. He stepped differently. Dancing had changed his carriage so completely, his eyes met those of a stranger when he watched himself perform. Who was this blonde-haired boy who could leap, and twirl, and flex? He couldn’t be Kevin Estes.

  He was pretty sure his birthday must have come and gone – his clothes were too small, now, and his face had hollowed out – when Miss Carla sent Max for him. Only him.

  A private lesson? He wondered.

  But Lee and Simon sent him matching looks of dread.

  “What?”

  “No talking,” Max said, and shoved him hard between the shoulder blades.

  Max steered him to a new part of the house, one of so many undiscovered rooms in the ugly labyrinth of add-ons. It was a bedroom, crowded with heavy dark furniture. A towering dresser. A four-poster canopied bed flanked by nightstands. The canopy and the window drapes were a faded rose, and fuzzy with layer upon layer of dust. Dust everywhere: inches deep on the hard surfaces, puffing up in little clouds as they crossed the carpet.

  Miss Carla sat on a dusty padded bench at the foot of the bed and she patted the space beside her, motes spilling upward into a shaft of sunlight. “Come sit down here by me,” she said, and gave him The Smile.

  He did as told. Resistance was something for the dark and quiet now, never something to be flashed right before her.

  She smelled like sweat and too much perfume. Her dress was black, and fit poorly, and she had a bright red belt cinched too tight around her slim waist.

  A scene flashed through his head, an imagining: turning and hitting her right in the nose with his little fist, cracking something in her face, hearing the bones break, seeing the blood spurt. A fantasy that excited him.

  It frightened him, the urge, and he closed his eyes.

  Miss Carla put her hand on the back of his neck like she always did. “You’re my best little dancer, did you know that?”

  He nodded, which pressed her fingernails deep into his skin.

  “Oh-ho,” she laughed. “Proud of yourself, are you?”

  He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

  “You should be,” she said. “You’re my best. I’ve never seen anyone take to it like you. There’s no substitute for natural, God-given talent.”

  She squeezed his neck and leaned in to put her lips right beside his ear. “Let’s see if you have other talents.”

  He felt invisible fingers tickle down the bumps of his spine.

  “Max, come here, dear,” Miss Carla said.

  The big man shut the door and then came to stand in front of them. The sunlight struck him full force, and brought his more benign details into sharp focus: the way his shirt dipped down into his bellybutton. The way the zipper of his fly hadn’t been pulled up all the way. The way crescent moons of dirt lingered beneath his fingernails. His arms were covered in hair, and it lo
oked like white fleece as the sun passed through it.

  “Listen carefully and follow instructions,” Miss Carla said, pressing hard at the back of Kev’s neck.

  Max opened his pants, and at first Kev had no idea what he was…

  And then he realized.

  And then he started to cry.

  ~*~

  “She slapped me about five times across the face,” Tango said, finishing his cigarette. “I stopped crying. But I threw up afterward.”

  ~*~

  Safely alone, Mercy paused in the alley outside the apartment, steadied himself with a hand on his bike’s headlamp, and tilted his head back so he could drink in the sharp cold air. Feel the weak December sun on his face. He closed his eyes and let the afternoon cleanse him a moment.

  The air smelled like car exhaust and snow. The bakery was playing Christmas carols and he could just hear the tinny sound of “White Christmas” floating through the wall.

  He wanted his Ava. No, scratch that, needed her. Needed to put his head in her lap and feel her skinny fingers comb through his hair. Needed to absorb her warmth, and goodness, and innocence through osmosis, smell her skin and listen to her quietly turn the pages of a book.

  Ava and their babies were the only things in the world that kept him human. He wasn’t a delusional man; he knew that without them, he’d be a wrecking ball on legs, some kind of berserker his club sent on idiot suicide missions.

  Tango wasn’t like that. No, instead of killing the world to stop the screaming in his head, Tango had tried to kill himself. Though the idea grieved Mercy, he understood it. It made sense to him. What that kid had been through…the things that had been done to him…

  He wouldn’t survive. No amount of “therapy” or brotherly support would do the trick. If he was going to trudge through the rest of his years on this earth, Tango would need antivenin. Something had to cancel out the poison. He needed his very own Ava.

  And Mercy was pretty damn sure they’d already found her.

  Fourteen

  What sort of mood would he be in today? Whitney wondered, as she fitted her key into the apartment’s lock and let herself in. Today had been Kev’s fourth therapy session, and he’d seemed a little looser and more relaxed after the first three.

  She hustled in and shut the door against the cold. “Hey,” she called as she hung up her coat. “How was your…” She trailed off when she turned and saw him sitting on the edge of the couch, perched like a nervous kid at the principal’s office.

  But he looked wonderful.

  Yes, he was still too thin, and too pale, and hollow-eyed, but he’d made an obvious effort. His hair had been washed, and then dried; it was brushed back off his face and carefully styled behind his ears, sleek and shiny down the back of his neck. He wore a black button-up shirt with the sleeves folded back, new and clean jeans. His sneakers where black with white soles, crisp and neat, not the battered Nikes or boots she usually saw him in. He looked like someone who cared about his appearance, like he cared about himself, and it warmed her faster than a shot of whiskey.

  “Look at you,” she said, smiling, and he blushed.

  “I, um…I hope it’s okay, but Mercy and Ava invited us to dinner at their house, and I told them we’d come.”

  Everything about that sentence sounded perfect. “We? As in you and me?”

  “You and me,” he verified, still blushing.

  “Well, of course. But I don’t have anything to take. I ought to bring a hostess gift or something.”

  He shook his head. “No. Mercy said just to come and not to worry about that.”

  She glanced down at her rumpled shirt and skinny slacks. “I should change.”

  “You look great.”

  It was a throwaway compliment, the sort of thing men said because they didn’t want to have to wait around on a woman to try on alternate outfits. But his inflection caught her attention, and she glanced up to see him studying her, his gaze intense in a way she didn’t quite understand.

  “You’re sure?” she asked, quietly.

  He met her gaze and smiled. Her stomach somersaulted. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  ~*~

  They took her car, and she drove. “I’m supposed to be out of town,” he said, apologetically.

  She said, “Don’t worry. I like being in on your undercover mission.”

  He grinned. It was dark by the time they reached Mercy and Ava’s house, but even so, Whitney could tell that it was small, clean, white and cute as something off a postcard out front. It struck her as funny to think of someone as monstrous as Mercy living in a postcard-worthy house.

  Kev led her around behind the house to the back door, and Aidan let them in to a mudroom that fed into the kitchen. It was an eat-in kitchen, and she was immediately struck by old memories of Jason and Madelyn’s house, when Jason was still alive, and they’d all prepared dinner together, laughing, the kids underfoot.

  Samantha and Ava were working on meal prep. The fridge was cluttered with crayon drawings held up by cartoonish magnets.

  Sam brought her a glass of wine.

  Aidan said, “Merc and me have got the kids in front of the TV.”

  Kev sent her a look that asked if she was okay, and she smiled encouragingly, giving him a shooing gesture. He followed his friend, beer in hand, and then it was just the three girls.

  Would it be strange? she wondered. Awkward at all? She wasn’t part of the family. Was only the pathetic girl sleeping on Kev’s couch whose unreciprocated feelings were probably going to break her in half one day.

  But Ava sent her a warm look and said, “Tango says you’re an awesome cook.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know about awesome, but I get by.” Was she blushing? Shit, she was blushing. She wanted, for dumb girly reasons, to make a good impression on these people. They were Kev’s family, after all.

  “I could use some help with these carrots if you feel like it,” Ava said.

  “Absolutely. Point me to a knife.”

  Her worry had been unfounded. It wasn’t going to be strange.

  “How’s it been going?” Ava asked in a conspiratorial tone as Whitney set to peeling the carrots.

  “Ava’s subtle,” Sam explained, rolling her eyes and chuckling.

  “I am my brother’s sister, after all,” Ava said. She looked over at Whitney as she measured rice. “But seriously.”

  The carrot peel unfurled in a long straight strip, landing with a thump in the bowl she was using. “He seems better,” Whitney said, thoughtfully. “In the last week, though, I mean. At first, when he came home from the hospital, he was – I dunno. Disconnected. But he’s more plugged in now. He actually smiles a little. Therapy’s helping, I think.”

  “Hmm,” Ava said. “That’s good.”

  “He looks nice tonight,” Sam said. “Less like…” A heroin addict who’d tried to kill himself. “…he did.”

  “Is he still waking you up with nightmares?” Ava asked.

  “If he’s having them, he doesn’t come out of his room and tell me about them anymore.” She’d been painting all by herself the last few nights, and if she was honest, that had been a little lonely. In the last year, she’d grown used to the sound of his voice, his frightened admissions and worries infecting her paintings with heavy shadows and bold strokes of color.

  She lifted her head and both women were staring at her. Oh no. Had she sliced up the hem of her shirt by accident?

  “What?”

  The sisters-in-law shared a quick look. Ava, delicately, said, “You aren’t sleeping in the same room?”

  “No.” Her face heated and she glanced back down at her work. “It’s not like that between us.”

  When she dared another glance, Ava was still studying her. “There’s nothing wrong with taking things slow. I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have assumed.”

  “No, no. I mean, when a guy and a girl live together, it’s only natural to think…” The blushing was terrible; she swore her eyes
must be pink by now. “But Kev doesn’t think of me like that.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not true at all,” Sam said, a smile in her voice.

  Whitney felt foolish that such a simple sentence could make her heart flutter, but it happened all the same.

  ~*~

  It was never going to stop looking ridiculous, Mercy holding a baby. It was a spectacle made all the stranger now, since the baby was a girl, bundled up in white fleece footie pajamas with little bunnies on them. Camille, though, was quite content to sleep in the crook of her daddy’s elbow while her brothers played on the floor.

  Lainie was similarly passed out in her swing, and Aidan’s eyes darted to her every few minutes, just checking. Tango loved seeing that, his friend worried about something besides a good time. This version of Aidan wasn’t new; he’d always been there, but he’d never been nurtured properly, not before Sam.

  It was peaceful, sitting on the couch, listening to Remy and Cal talk excitedly to one another about their toy cars, football game on the tube. But he knew his brothers wouldn’t leave him totally alone. And they didn’t disappoint.

  “How’s Whitney?” Aidan asked, less casual than he probably thought.

  “She’s good.”

  “How’s her apartment search going?”

  “Uh…”

  “She’s looking for a place?” Mercy asked, all pretend-innocent and shit.

  “As far as I know.”

  “She’s not gonna stay with you? Indefinitely?”

  “Merc, what are you getting at?”

  The guy gave him a face that managed to be maternal, somehow. Too much time spent around Mags and Ava, most like. “I don’t think you ought to live alone. And I think Whitney’s good for you.”