Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5)

by Lauren Gilley

  Saturday was perfect. Cloudless, cold but not bitter, the roads dry and fast. Tango helped Whitney pack a lunch and they set off on the bike into the mountains.

  Peace descended as the city melted away, leaving them alone on narrow roads that looped through serpentine curves, cutting through bare forest and undulating brown fields. It was far from the lush green that would descend in another few months, but Tango liked the quietness of the naked limbs and the sleepy color scheme. Even better, he liked the warm, slight shape of Whitney pressed to his back, her arms tight around his waist, her weight shifting with practiced grace on every turn.

  He finally pulled off when they came to a place with a wide gravel shoulder, a path leading up through the trees, a little plaque marking it as a hiking trail. He stowed their helmets on the handlebars, took the backpack with their food from Whitney, and took her hand. “Come on.”

  She sent him a curious smile and fell into step beside him, though the trail was so narrow they had to walk with their sides bumping together.

  “So I’ve been thinking about something,” Tango said, squeezing her hand.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Tell you when we get up there.”

  Though it was still winter, the forest was full of birds, cardinals, jays, and chickadees flitting between low branches. Tango heard the dull jackhammer thud of a woodpecker somewhere above them. Water trickled over rocks off to their right, light, musical notes. It was idyllic. And that was before they reached the top of the slow climb and stepped out into the dry, dormant grass of a clearing, and Tango turned Whitney by the shoulder and pointed back the way they’d come.

  “Oh!” she gasped.

  All around them the great humped backs of the Smokey Mountains stood blue, and gray, and cloud-dappled against the perfect cobalt of the sky. Leafless and cool, their smooth shapes overlapped and snuggled against one another. And just visible in the distance, like a jewel that had fallen into folds of dark velvet, lay Knoxville: the brick of buildings, the glittering ribbon of the Tennessee River. It was a scene straight off a postcard.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Whitney said, voice low and reverent. “Oh my God, why haven’t we come up here before?”

  It was an innocent question, but the answer wasn’t. They hadn’t come up here before – Tango hadn’t even been here himself since he was fifteen and Hound took he and Aidan camping – because four months ago, he couldn’t have made the climb. Wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. Would never even have thought of it. He’d been too thin, too exhausted, too rattled, too strung-out…too suicidal. He’d barely slept. Hiking up a mountain trail hadn’t crossed his mind.

  But now he had Whitney. And he had a tentative hold on his sobriety. He had his club, and a home, and he had the still-pink scars on his wrists to remind him of what he’d almost thrown away. And for the first time in his whole life he had hope. A thought that the future might be worth sticking around for.

  A long answer, fraught with mental landmines.

  So all he said was, “Because I was saving it for this.” And he took Whitney’s hand, and sank to one knee in front of her.

  She said yes.

  ~*~

  “My bloody sister, can you believe that?”

  “Uh-huh,” Aidan said, firing a confused look Tango’s way.

  “Oh forget it,” Ian said with a sigh that was, as always, dramatic to the last.

  “Ian’s family thought he was dead,” Tango explained. “He wasn’t expecting anyone to turn up on his doorstep when he’s not even living under his own name.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know you were involved with that.” Ian aimed a chastising finger at Tango across their breakfast dishes. “Like I’m supposed to think a London Dog just happened to put all the pieces together? You insult my intelligence.”

  Tango rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, sue me.” Voice softening: “I wanted you to have your family back. If that’s something you want.”

  Ian sighed and glanced down at his plate, the largely untouched bacon and hashbrowns. “It’s…” He cleared his throat. “Out of all of them, I did miss Janie the most.”

  “See,” Aidan said. “Happy endings all around.”

  Ian shot him a look that suggested he not push his luck.

  Their waitress swayed pass. “More coffee, y’all?”

  “Don’t you dare ask about lattes again,” Aidan hissed at Ian. “We’re at Waffle House, your highness.”

  “No, thanks,” Tango told the waitress with a smile, and she hurried off again shaking her head, probably still confused by the sight of two bikers in a booth across from the elegantly turned-out gentleman with the British accent.

  “Alright.” Aidan checked his watch and shoved the last bite of waffle into his mouth, talking around it. “We gotta clock in in ten minutes. So not that this hasn’t been a fucking blast…” He made a get to the point gesture.

  “Your father owns the place. You can clock in late.”

  “Aidan’s trying not to be ‘that guy’ anymore,” Tango said, and earned his friend’s elbow in his ribs. He chuckled into his coffee.

  “Fine.” Ian rolled his eyes. But then his expression softened. “I wanted to say…well, I wanted to offer. Ugh. Bugger. Okay.” He finally made eye contact. “I wanted to say that I wanted to be friends. With the club, I mean. Well, personally too or, yes, whatever…”

  Tango had never seen him like this, nervous and awkward. It was adorable.

  “I’m saying,” he pressed on, growing more composed, “that I have considerable resources, and they will always be available to you Godforsaken Lean Dogs should you need them, no strings attached. No more favors. No more ‘Dr. Evil’ as you so eloquently put it,” he said to Aidan, who smirked. “I want a real truce, gentlemen, with all of you. Friends.” And then, still surprising them, he looked young and almost vulnerable.

  “You want to be friends,” Aidan said in a careful voice.

  Ian twitched a tiny smile. “I haven’t had many of those, I’m afraid, so I probably won’t be very good at it.”

  Tango exchanged a look with Aidan, and didn’t see suspicion in his eyes, only amusement.

  Aidan shrugged. “It never hurts to have a millionaire on your side.”

  “No.” Tango bit back a smile. “It doesn’t.”

  “So?” Ian asked.

  “Alright.” Aidan stuck his hand across the table for Ian to shake. “Friends.”

  ~*~

  Even the waiting room at Dr. Jones’s practice was soothing, though Tango guessed that was the point. Chocolate walls with white trim, deep, cozy armchairs instead of the typical plastic kind you found at doctors’ offices. There was a fish tank out here, too, fresh water full of fat, slow-moving goldfish in orange, white, and black.

  Tango was a little bit excited about his session today. He wanted to talk about proposing to Whitney – her saying yes! – and about being friends with Ian, and it feeling like that: just friendship. He wanted to talk about the way he’d awakened from a nightmare in the wee hours, but curling up with his arm around Whitney had lulled him back to sleep. About the way he didn’t hate himself so much these days.

  The door to Dr. Jones’s partner’s office opened, and Dr. Metcalf walked a slender teenage boy out toward the waiting room. “You did great today, Jamie. Just think about the things we talked about, okay?”

  The boy, Jamie, had his gaze trained on the floor, chewing at his lip in a nervous tell, but nodded. “Okay,” he said, quietly, the sound almost drowned out by the gentle bubbling of the fish tank’s filter.

  Dr. Metcalf clapped Jamie on the shoulder, Jamie flinched, and the doctor retreated back into the office to get ready for the next patient. Jamie shuffled over to the window, flicked up the blinds to peek through them, sighed, and fell into a chair across from Tango. He must have been searching for his ride and not found it.

  And then the kid lifted his head, and Tango got a good look at his face.

  A narrow, proportionate,
almost dainty face. Almost feminine. Long lashes and high cheekbones and full pink lips. A face that belonged on a model. On a…dancing boy. A face that Tango had seen on the news a couple months back, a photograph staring out at him from the TV, while his mother begged for her neighbors’ help in finding him. The face that had been the catalyst for the night of the raid. For Tango’s coming out to his club.

  He sucked in a breath. “You’re Jamie Long,” he whispered, and the kid snapped his head around like he’d been slapped. There were only the two of them in the waiting room, so Tango pressed on. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I just recognized you is all. From…I’m sorry.”

  Jamie sank down into the collar of his shirt, the shame unmistakable on his face. An expression Tango had seen on his own reflection more times than he could count.

  “Hey.” He moved forward to the edge of his chair. “I’m sorry, I just…” He dropped his voice. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve been where you were.”

  Jamie’s eyes darted to his face.

  “Literally. For a long, long time.” He tried to offer the kid a smile. “And it sucks, so bad, for a really long time afterward. But I promise it gets better.”

  Jamie looked unconvinced, but there was a spark of curiosity in his gaze now: That happened to you? His gaze flicked down across Tango’s cut, all his patches, the tattoos on his hands.

  “Yeah,” he snorted. “Didn’t exactly turn me into a model citizen. But. I’ve got a job. Friends. I’ve got a fiancée.”

  “You do?” Jamie’s voice was rough, low, and much too old to belong to a pretty kid with a bright future. Carla had a way of aging people like that.

  Tango nodded. “I do. It wasn’t easy. But.” He pushed up a sleeve and showed Jamie the scars on his wrists. “This wasn’t the answer. It didn’t help.”

  Jamie took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Do me a favor,” Tango said, digging a gas station receipt out of his back pocket. He took a pen from the magazine display on the table next to him and wrote down his cell number. “If you ever start thinking like that, if it gets real bad, call me.” He handed the receipt over, and watched Jamie take it carefully, reading the digits several times before he folded it up and put it in his wallet.

  “The thing I’ve learned,” Tango said, “is that you have to let it out. You can’t live with it if you hold it in.”

  Jamie stared at him, a wealth of emotion laid bare on his face.

  “Okay?” Tango asked.

  “Okay.”

  ~*~

  “Thank you,” Tango said one night, a beer in his hand, Mercy’s solid presence taking up most of the couch beside him.

  In the kitchen, he could hear the girls talking happily about something, the bright spill of Whitney’s laughter like a gift. Aidan had taken a colicky Lainie for a walk out in the cool early spring air; the faint notes of his terrible singing voice could be heard when he passed close to the window.

  “For everything,” Tango continued, quietly. “I mean, for doing what I couldn’t, yeah, but for…for listening.” All those makeshift therapy sessions in the apartment, Ava’s baked goods, the complete and total acceptance of all the terrible stories he’d told, the lack of judgement.

  His eyes burned, suddenly. “I…”

  “Hey.” Mercy’s huge arm went around his shoulders and pulled him in close. “I’m always here, okay?”

  Tango nodded.

  “Love you, brother.”

  He couldn’t speak for the lump in his throat, but Tango nodded again, and hoped Mercy could read the love in it. He probably could; he was perceptive like that.

  ~*~

  It didn’t really hit him until March.

  “Ugh,” Whitney muttered against his shoulder. “Why is the alarm going off so early?” At least, that’s what he thought she said. It got muffled in his arm and the bedclothes.

  “Running,” he explained. “Wanna come with?”

  “Ugh.”

  He chuckled, pushed her hair back, and kissed her forehead before rolling out of bed. “Be back in a bit.”

  “Mmhm.”

  Running was a suggestion that had come up in therapy; Dr. Jones had suggested that positive physical routines could be important to his sobriety. The endorphin rush of a long run mimicked a drug high – that’s what she’d said. Really, it wasn’t the same. But the running had become addictive in and of itself, and the endorphin rush was pleasant. Each morning, he climbed out of bed at ten ‘til six, tugged on sweats, plugged in his earbuds, and jogged through the city. He’d started with a mile, and now was up to six.

  He’d discovered he loved this time of morning. By six, the bakery downstairs was open, as was every coffee shop and breakfast place along his route. He liked seeing the yellow lights through the windows, the tired but welcoming faces of the employees as they greeted early morning regulars. It was still dark, but not the desolate shade of black that accompanied three a.m. walks of shame; it was a friendly indigo, promising that daylight was only an hour off. It was a quietly busy time, a time just for the early risers, the go getters, the productive people who’d learned the secret gift of predawn.

  And Tango…he felt like he was a part of that now. He waved to Janet through the window of Starbucks as he passed. And on the way back, he went in and she fixed him a tall cappuccino to go.

  “How many miles this morning?” she asked. It was their thing.

  “Seven,” he said with a smile.

  “Dude, go you. You should totally sign up for that five-K they’re having.”

  “I think I might.” And he did.

  He walked the rest of the way back home to cool down, sipping his cappuccino, enjoying the blush of sunrise over the building tops, smiling to himself for no damn reason.

  Back at the apartment, he downed two glasses of water, because hydration was important, and headed to the shower, stripping beside the tub as he waited for the water to heat inside the ancient pipes.

  That was when he caught sight of his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror.

  He looked…good.

  Sweat-damp hair slicked back along his head, eyes bright with exertion, spots of color high on his cheeks – cheeks that were fuller than they had been at the end of last year. His whole body was fuller; beneath his tattooed skin, he spotted muscle where there used to just be bone. Firm, smooth padding at his shoulders, his chest, down his arms. His hips still stood out as sharp points, but he had abs now, trim and distinct.

  He looked healthy. Like he gave a damn about himself.

  His eyes tracked across his reflection, going to the old scars at his wrists, the newer ones faded now. Someday, they would be silver like the old ones.

  That was when it hit him. That was when he realized that the earth had shifted back in December. That it had started with Ava laying baby Camille in his arms, and that it was still happening now, slowly, day by day. That it would keep happening. The sea change. The healing. The rest of his life. He’d lived through actual hell…and that was over now. He was past it.

  He turned around and looked at the white claw-foot tub, the water pounding behind the shower curtain. It was the place where he’d sliced open his veins and surrendered himself to death. He’d thought he’d always see it for what he’d intended it to be: his own personal crime scene.

  But it was just a bathtub. The place where he washed away his clean sweat after every morning. Where Whitney read amidst a froth of bubbles, listening to George Michael and humming along off-key. The place where they showered together sometimes, soapy hands wandering.

  He turned back around and faced his reflection again. Stared himself down. And smiled.

  He was alive.

  And he wanted to stay that way.

  Epilogue

  They didn’t so much find Maya as she found them. Their own Isabelle was three, a tiny, golden, fresh spring day of a child. The living embodiment of Tango’s second chance. She had Whitney’s gorgeous eyes, and his own tendenc
y toward anxiety, and for all that he hadn’t wanted to procreate, he loved his girl more fiercely than anything. Whitney was an illustrator fulltime now, and could stay home with Izzie, making her lunch and singing her songs and being her mama in a way that made Tango ache with longing for his own mother. “We made it, Mama,” he said to the stars one night. “We got to the other side.”

  That was when he heard a rustling in the grass, and the rattle of the trash can lid. And there had been Maya, six-years-old, dirty-faced, too thin and terrified, on the run from her most recent foster home. “Bad people,” she called them, but wouldn’t give a name, too terrified Tango and Whitney would send her back there.

  Whitney coaxed her into taking a bath, gave her an oversized t-shirt to wear, and tucked her into the big girl bed in Izzie’s room that Izzie wasn’t quite ready for yet.

  “Tango,” Whitney said, soft sadness in her eyes, and he knew where this was going.

  “You don’t even have to say it,” he said. “I’m already on board.”

  It had taken almost a year, countless home visits, and calling in every favor to every connection their friends and family had in the system. Erin Walton, Sam’s little sister, had grown up to become a social worker, and she’d paved the way more than anyone. And in the end, Maya was theirs, and Tango slept a little easier at night thinking they’d saved one of the world’s lost children.

  Also, he loved the little monster.

  He’d cried the first time she called him “Dad.”

  “Dad! Dad! Watch us!” she shouted now, delighted and breathless.

  “Watch us, Daddy!” Izzie echoed.

  “Daddy, are you watching?” Lainie Teague called, hands on her hips.

  “We’re watching!” Tango and Aidan shouted back across the white sand of the playground. Lainie’s little brother, Jake, studiously ignored the girls and continued digging for whatever buried treasure he thought lay beneath the jungle gym. Probably discarded condoms, Tango thought with a snort.

  With a tangle of happy shouts, the girls lined up one behind the next and shot down the slide together, shrieking with laughter when they all spilled out into the sand at the bottom.