by Cat Porter
“Huh?” Boner turned to me.
“Since when are you not hungry?” I put my empty bowl on the small table to my side of the log bench where we sat on the front porch of his house the following day. The red-orange sun sank on the horizon in the distance.
“I drank too much coffee today. Bothered me.” Boner rubbed a hand back and forth across his stomach, right over his scar.
We had managed to get another night to ourselves to spend at his house, and this time Becca had come with me. She was already asleep in her new crib upstairs. We’d managed to get her to sleep without a problem even though I’d thought that, since she was in a new environment, maybe she’d be anxious about it. She’d had an active enough day, exploring the house, enjoying the staircase a bit too much for my liking, and coloring nonstop.
“Becca loves that room.”
“That’s good ‘cause it’s hers.”
“I think she liked the stuffed baby elephant most of all,” I said. “Pony must be very jealous and lonely tonight on the floor by himself.”
He let out a sigh. “Yeah, poor Pony.”
Boner remained distracted this evening, even distant.
“Are you okay?” I asked, lightly touching his thigh.
He took my hand in his and squeezed. “Enjoying the quiet with you.”
His other hand smoothed down over the new T-shirt he wore, one of the tighter cut ones I had bought for him. A few dark springs of hair peeked over the V-necked opening on his chest. I wanted to slide onto his lap and kiss him there, but something in his mood was different, and a sudden sense of awkwardness stopped me from making such an impulsive move.
“How early do you have to leave for your run tomorrow?” I asked.
“Before six.” His thumb rubbed over my hand.
“How long will you be gone for this time?”
“Few days. Depends.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
His gaze settled on me like a heavy snowfall. “Plenty.”
Forthright, yet oblique! Gah.
“I don’t mean club business. I feel like something’s upset you. Was it me finding the rosary?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re keeping something from me.”
He took in a breath and released it. “I don’t keep shit from you.”
“Okay.” I swallowed the old insecurities down my throat like thick cough syrup. “Except for one thing.”
It’s now or never. “Who is she?” I asked.
“What? Who?”
“I’ll show you.”
I let go of his hand and headed inside to the bookcase, Boner following me. I grabbed the Neruda and held out the scraps of poetry to him.
His face visibly hardened.
“I found more,” I said. “All over the house. Tortured verses—beautiful tortured verses about a woman. A woman you’re still clinging to.” My voice barely above a whisper, I said, “She’s everywhere, Bone. You’ve surrounded yourself with her.”
“I haven’t written in a long time.” He brought his palms to his forehead and took in a breath. “Those are…fuck.”
“Tell me. Why can’t you tell me?”
His hands dropped from his face. “It’s Inès.”
“Your cousin?” I spluttered.
“Yeah, my cousin.” His voice was heavy, caustic.
I held his dark emerald gaze, my heart shrinking. “Oh.”
His tongue swiped at his lip.
“Tell me,” I breathed.
“After I killed her dad, Inès and I took off, but we had nowhere to turn but the drug dealers I’d been working for. I had no choice. We would’ve gone into foster care or a home, detention center, something. Us getting separated—there was no way that was going to happen. The dealers helped us lay low, even planted evidence to get the heat off of us in the murder investigation.
“We camped out in people’s basements, in warehouses, and trailers for weeks on end. We finally got our own place, this tiny shit-box. We were working, bringing money in.” He stared into the distance, his jaw set. “I thought we were so lucky.”
It slammed into me like a brutal January wind on the plains. “You were in love with her,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You—”
His eyes flared. “She was my first cousin and my best friend, but being together was the only thing that made sense to us and the only thing that kept us whole—at least for a while. There was no wrong or right. We never discussed it. It was the way it was. It was a given.” He let out a deep exhale. “It was fucked up, and we both knew it in the back of our minds, but there was no stopping it.”
“You loved her.”
“I loved her.” He pressed his lips together.
A simple statement of powerful fact, undeniable.
“But she was sick,” he said, his voice dropping.
“Sick?”
“Bipolar. She used to have these dramatic, unpredictable mood swings. Ridiculously happy and excited about life one day and then sad and anxious the next. She’d be making grand plans for us at all hours—not eating, not sleeping. Then, the next day or the day after, it would crush her. She suddenly couldn’t make a decision about anything, not even something simple like if she should close her closet door or leave it slightly open. One day, smiling, and later on, a crying jag, distant, irritated with the world, irritated with me. She wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t take her meds most days. I got her what I could, tried to keep her on some sort of schedule, but that never worked, and that wasn’t good. Then, she started using.”
His shoulders scrunched up, and in that fleeting movement, the strain of the burden he’d been carrying pressed in on me.
“What happened to her?”
“Men were always noticing her, thinking she was older than she actually was. She was pretty and real tall. She used to do some modeling.”
My stomach rolled at the controlled tone of his voice.
“Depending on her mood,” he continued, “she’d either hate their attention or want more of it. Same went for me. She’d either push me away or couldn’t get enough of me. It made me insane. My not being around too much because of work only made things worse.
“She started doing crazy shit. Once, I caught her fucking a guy from our neighborhood at our apartment. We got into a fight, and she left with him. Then, she came crawling back a couple of days later, begging for my forgiveness. I was furious but more relieved that she was okay. It got to the point where I just didn’t care about much else, other than if she was okay.
“A few months later, it happened again, but this time, she was fucking the dealers I worked for. They ran a gang, and I owed them for everything, for covering my killing my uncle, for making me the man I’d become. She packed up her stuff and took off with them. She was done with me. I got into a fight with them over her in the street.” He rubbed over his middle, my eyes following the sudden movement. “She knifed me, and they took off. I ended up getting arrested on a trumped up assault charge, and I got thrown into juvie.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” My stomach churned. “Did you ever see her again?”
“Yeah. Dig and I met in juvie. We broke out together and found her. But she didn’t want to be found by me.” He raked a hand through his hair, bunching it in his grip. “We had it out, but she wouldn’t leave with me. She wanted to stay.
“Me and Dig got out of Denver that night. That was when we got these tats.” His fingers grazed over his twisted fanged snake. “I didn’t care where we went, as long as we went somewhere. Eventually, we ended up here.
“Are you still in love with her?” I whispered. “That’s why you—”
“I hate her.” His voice jolted through me like an electrical current, his eyes stony. “I hate her for giving up, for giving in. I kept fighting for both of us in any way I could. I killed for us, stole, destroyed people, but none of it mattered in the
end. She gave it all away.”
“She was sick. Maybe she couldn’t—”
“Yeah, but she made lousy choices over and over again. She could’ve fought for herself, for us. Taken a stand, made a commitment. Why not? I did. Every fucking day, I did.” His voice was harsh, loud. “You did!”
I cradled his face with my hands. “Baby—”
“I killed my uncle—my mother’s only brother—and I became an animal. And then I was groomed to become a higher grade of animal. I only got us deeper into the filth, and there was no way out, but I’d never abandoned her. No matter how shitty things got, how rough, how ugly, I never did. But she made her play, and she abandoned me.”
“Have you talked to her or seen her since?”
He pulled away from me, his head jerking back, his hair covering a flaring green eye. “No.”
The savage wild child.
Yes, just like the young boy I’d once read about who had been discovered in a French forest in the eighteenth century. Deprived of human contact all his life, living alone, he’d become a wild animal. But after being taken in by a man who cared for him and patiently taught him language, gave him the affection and tenderness he’d never known before, the wild child had proven to be an ordinary boy—not deaf, not mute, not mentally handicapped, not a savage as everyone had initially assumed.
Simply a boy.
Santiago.
I threw my arms around him and pressed my face to his chest. “Don’t hate her anymore. Don’t. It’s been long enough. God, enough.”
His chest heaved under me, and he dug his hands in my hair, yanking my head back. “You fight. Over and over again. You fought for yourself to get over your hell. You’re still looking for a better way, a good day.” His wet sea-green eyes loomed over me, taking my breath away. “You don’t complain. You fall, you pick yourself up, you go on, and then you give to those around you—to your kid, to Rae, to Grace, the baby you’re carrying.”
“It’s not easy,” I said.
“That’s right. It’s not.” He let out a rough breath. “You’re bright, Jill, so fucking bright to me.”
“I have to live in that bright, or I’m going to break.” Tears spilled down my face, his grip on me tightening.
I had to stop him from slipping back into the emotional hell of his past that he’d been clinging to, to that futility.
“I want you there with me,” I whispered. “With me and Becca.”
He let go of me and pressed his fists into the sides of his head. “I keep trying to fix it in my head, but it won’t fix.”
“You are not these pieces, Bone. They are a part of you, yes, but you are not these fragments, these pieces of scrap paper crumpled, rolled into a ball, shoved in between books, and stuffed into drawers or forgotten pockets.”
I held up the one poem.
“You write because your heart is aching. It’s full. It needs to deal with all that rage, all that broken love. You’re in pieces, and you can’t bear it.”
“Stop it.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Tears spilled down his face. “It’s always been this way.”
His broken voice shattered me. Despair, shame, hopelessness.
My muscles tightened. “You are a good person. You take care of your friends, your brothers. Mr. Dependable. You being the eccentric one works for you, doesn’t it? You lay low. No one worries about Boner, do they? Boner—he’s a fun guy, a little strange, but you can count on him when you need the nastiest job done right. You don’t want to get on his bad side though. He might pull a knife on you, flip out at a moment’s notice. That’s just the kind of crazy he is.”
“I am crazy,” he rasped.
I leaned in closer to him. “Your heart is so full that you keep it close to your ribs and only share it with a chosen few. I’m proud to be one of those few. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again. I can feel that heart of yours, baby—in your hands, in your mouth, in those eyes, in your words. And I love what I feel.”
“Jill—”
“Inès was the last one to call you Santiago, wasn’t she? That’s why you had that reaction when I said your name that night on the sofa.”
His eyes flashed. “Yes.”
My heart ached.
“I love your name. It’s beautiful,” I said, my voice shaky.
I stroked the side of his face with my hand, and his eyes fluttered closed.
“I wish I could make it better for you. I wish I could call you by the name your mother gave you and make you happy to hear it again. But if it’s nothing but pain for you, I won’t. Ever. I promise.”
His eyes opened and held mine. Green fire. “Say it.”
A chill raced down my spine as his fingers dug into my upper arms.
“Say it.”
I stood on my toes and gently brushed his lips with mine, my eyes never leaving his. “Santiago,” I whispered. I kissed him again on the corner of his mouth. “Santiago.” Another kiss. “Santiago.” I swept my tongue over the seam of his full lips, and they parted, a ragged sigh escaping his mouth.
“Santiago.”
Absolution in the utterance, the declaration, the kiss of his name.
“I won’t let you go, Santiago. I won’t. Hold onto me and don’t let me go.”
He buried his face in my neck and held me tight. My fingers brushed over the light trail of hair down his abs under his shirt, and I moved to the floor between his legs. I pulled down his sweatpants and took them off his legs.
His form went rigid. “Jill—”
I wrapped my fingers around his stiff cock and stroked his hard length. “I want to make you feel good.”
“Firefly.”
“I want to make my old man feel good.”
His chest rose on an intake of breath. His head falling back, he let out a small groan. My lips nuzzled his lean middle and his tight wall of muscles, which shuddered under my touch.
“Baby—”
I took his cock into my mouth and sucked long and deep and slow. My one hand stroked his base, the other curling around his rigid thigh.
Wash the sorrow from him.
His hips rocked toward me as he let out a long hiss of air. “Fuck, Jill.”
I let out a moan as I took him in quicker. I wanted him to explode in my mouth. I wanted to swallow him whole, shake him to his core, claim every last drop of him.
His hands dug into my hair and twisted as his pelvis moved. “Fuck! Yes. Ah, shit. Shit, Jill! Your fucking mouth.” He gasped, as if he were in pain, an unrelenting delicious pain—of which, he only wanted more. “Suck it harder. Don’t fucking stop. Oh…oh, fuck. Jill, Jill. Oh, yeah…”
He chanted my name over and over again as he watched me, his breaths ragged. My mouth ached, my neck stiffened, my knees hurt, but I didn’t give a shit. I wanted him to come, to come big, and I wanted to swallow it all. All my admiration and thrill for him went into my lips and tongue and throat, taking him in, taking him higher.
I worshipped, I revered, I venerated.
His glorious thick cock throbbed and pulsed against the back of my throat. My one hand stroked and rubbed his balls with my spit as both his hands fisted tightly in my hair. He grunted loudly, his eyes glinting at me.
“Fuck, look at you. You’re taking me all the way in, aren’t you, Firefly? Ah, shit, all the way. So good. So fucking good.”
My heart soared, and my fingers dug into his hard rear as I took him all in.
“I’m coming, Firefly. I’m coming for you.”
His body suddenly stiffened against me, and thick warm spurts filled my throat as he groaned. I sucked and swallowed until he went limp in my mouth. He lifted me up his sweaty body and held me, his choppy breathing filling my ear.
He took me upstairs to his bed where he peeled my clothes off. His mouth explored every curve of my enflamed body until I trembled. This was need. This was aching for something greater, higher, fuller. I ached for him—not just a high or a releas
e, but for this man. His every touch had significance. His every kiss was a promise.
A tremor surged through me. “Take me, take me.”
Boner entered me with one long, slow thrust. He made love to me, our breaths mingling, as we clung to each other. He laid a trail of kisses across my throat as he moved inside me.
Surging over me, he pressed his mouth against my ear, his choked groans filling my soul.
“You have me. That feeling in there?” His hand pressed into my chest. “That’s me wrapped around your heart, squeezing. I love you, Firefly.”
He thrust deep inside me, and I came, my hands digging into his hair, relishing the thick ropes of silk between my fingers as my heart exploded.
He let out a low moan. “If that bright life could come true, I’d want it with you.”
BONER WOKE ME UP the next morning with his fingers between my legs, his mouth at my neck. Groaning softly in my ear, he slid into me from behind, and I gripped his hand at my breast, pushing back against him. His hair cascaded over my shoulder, like a silk shawl. He took us to a sweet, sweet place, sweeping us over a rich, tender crest of sensation.
After, I watched him dress in the darkness, hiding half of my face in the pillows. “What time is it?”
“Five,” he replied.
He soundlessly moved about the bedroom in the dark, like a creature of the night. Fingers skidded across my shoulders. My hair was pushed off to the side, and his lips brushed my skin.
“Can I make you coffee before you go? Breakfast?”
“I’ll grab something at the clubhouse. Go back to sleep.” He stroked the side of my face, his hair creating a light drape around us.
“Be careful. Please.”
“Always am.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on my belly.
“Be extra careful now.” I reached for him and pulled him to me, kissing him. His mouth tasted minty. “Extra, extra careful, okay? For me.”
His eyes pulled together, and he drew his index finger down over my lips.
“All for you, Jillee.”
And then he was gone.
Soon after I’d gotten out of bed, Becca had woken up, and I changed her and then got her and myself dressed. I made her a cream cheese and strawberry jam sandwich, and she nibbled at it while she colored at the kitchen table.
