by M. O'Keefe
“What?” he asked.
“No, I’m just remembering that night I went to the strip club. The men there. Not men watching the women, but a meeting in the back. There was a guy in a suit—it was weird.”
Dylan put his head down on the table. “You’re killing me, babe. You really are.”
“I think your brother was there, too. I mean, there were definitely motorcycle-type guys.”
“Motorcycle-type guys?”
“I don’t know what else to call them. But Joan thinks Max is in real trouble.”
“Max has always been in real trouble. None of that is news.”
“I think Joan is in real trouble,” Annie said.
Dylan reached across the table and picked up her hand, his rough callused fingers linked with hers. It felt good, that rough yet tender connection.
“You always run with such a dangerous crowd?” he asked, and Annie smiled.
“I never ran with any crowd. Ever.”
“Well, you have some kind of beginner’s luck, that’s for sure.” She gripped his hand hard, until her knuckles rose up white against her skin and she thought of Joan and the waitress, the way they clung to each other. In pleasure as much as pain.
It spoke to her, that mix, that dangerous and raw reality that sometimes no matter how hard they try, people cannot help but hurt the ones they love. But that didn’t mean they had to be apart. And one did not make the other not exist.
“Your father asked you to go to jail for your brother,” she said.
“You heard that?”
“That must have been awful.”
“It was what it was, you know. But that’s the way the club worked. The way my family worked. I remember I was in county and Pops came to visit me. He told me my mom had left for good and that I needed to do the time for my brother. And I wasn’t even mad about that, you know. I knew what I had to do. I just felt…fucking shitty for him, sitting there; the wife he loved to the detriment of everything else had left him and he was trying to save one son by sacrificing the other. It sucked.”
Of course you did, she thought, because your heart is so big. So damn big.
“What was your mom like?” she asked.
He turned his head aside and looked out the window. “You know those animals that eat their young? She was like that.”
“Dylan,” she sighed.
“You asked. That’s what she was like.”
“But your dad loved her?”
Dylan nodded. “He’d follow her over a cliff. He did follow her over cliffs. All the time. It would have been beautiful if she’d been sober. It would have been a fucking inspiration. But instead it was hell.”
He pulled her hands toward him and put them against his face, her fingers in his hair. His two-day-old beard was rough against her palms, and she curled her fingers against him, stroking him. He leaned into her touch, petting himself against her, and she smiled, her heart swelling.
She pushed herself up out of her seat. The table between them was small and she didn’t crawl so much as slide across it. He shifted back, his eyes alight, and made room for her on his lap. She straddled him, her hips and belly right up against his.
He sucked in a deep breath through his nose, like he was about to go underwater, and kissed her. Hard. With all his force and confusion.
And she met him with her own.
His hand clenched the back of her neck. She squeezed his face.
“You are seriously fucking with my life,” he said against her lips and she arched against him, feeling him getting hard.
“I seriously want to fuck you.” She bit his lips. Sucked on his tongue. And he growled, clamping a hand in her hair, twisting her head until he had her where he wanted her.
“Show me,” he said. “Show me how you want to fuck me.”
ANNIE
She leaned back, caught in his gaze, and slowly she began to grind against him. She was trapped between his body and the table behind her, which bit into her back so she could barely move. But it was working; the pressure that built up between her legs, behind her eyes, was intense and powerful and fast.
She clenched the shoulders of his shirt in her hand, feeling the seams give slightly in her grip.
He leaned back, so they weren’t kissing anymore, their foreheads pressed together.
“More,” she breathed, reaching between them for his pants, but he grabbed her hands, holding them behind her back.
“I don’t have any condoms,” he said. “You want to come?”
She nodded, her lip between her teeth.
“You’re going to have to do it yourself,” he said with an evil grin.
“Touch me,” she whispered. Begged, really, but that kind of pride had no place between them.
He shook his head, his eyes hard and hot.
She slipped one hand down into her pants, past the cotton edge of her underwear, over the bare skin of her pussy, until her finger slipped into the wet heat between her lips, and there—right there—found the hard knot of her clit.
She ground herself hard against him, and between his cock and her finger the tension couldn’t last and it exploded, fast and hot and hard. She jerked against him, wringing as much as she could from the friction. Burying her face against his neck, her mouth open so she could taste his sweat.
She wanted to eat him. Lick him. And when the orgasm faded, she sat back up. She pulled his shirt off, tossing it over her shoulder. Her hands reached for his belt again, and this time he let her.
“No condom,” he said, reminding her.
“You really broke your rules yesterday, didn’t you?”
“When?” His eyes locked on her hand as she cupped him through his underwear.
“At the swimming hole, when you were inside me without a condom.”
“Yeah.” He kissed the skin of her bare shoulder, her neck, any skin he could lean down and get his lips on.
She slipped her hand back between her legs, gathering up the moisture there, and she spread it around his dick, using it as lubricant for her hand. It didn’t take long; he, it seemed, was just as loaded and ready all the time as she was.
And that, too, turned her on. That he had no defenses against her right now.
It seemed as he shook in her arms, spurts of come splashing against her hand, that that was the way it should be. If she could, she would keep him like this. Open and defenseless. In her arms.
He was still against her and she let go of his softening cock. She could hear his heartbeat against her ear, and her mouth tasted like his breath, and his hands sweeping up and down over her back were impossibly gentle.
Amazing to think this was the same place where Hoyt had hurt her. Terrorized her.
It was as if part of his ghost, or part of the effect of his ghost, had been exorcised.
“I remember thinking,” she whispered, staring at the closed curtain of her little window. The sunlight filtered through, making a hash mark design against his shoulder. She traced it with her fingers. His skin was smooth and warm and the muscle beneath it did not give. “When Hoyt was here and dragging me out to his truck, that…you were so gentle with me. Even when you were rough.” He made a humming noise. “And I didn’t know that until I had that contrast of Hoyt’s hands on me.”
“What are you saying?”
“That, sometimes, maybe we don’t know exactly what we have until someone shows us.”
He pushed her hair off her face and kissed her lips, but he was silent.
Not that she expected him to say he loved her. She wasn’t entirely sure that she loved him. But there was something growing between them, fast and wild, and she didn’t know what the smart thing to do was. Rip it out by the roots? Or let it grow over everything, until it changed her entire landscape.
“I need to wash my hand,” she whispered. “And my legs are asleep.”
Laughing, he wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her like she was nothing.
Her feet had barely touch
ed the ground when there was a knock at the door.
She winced and quickly washed her hands while Dylan buckled up his pants.
“Does it smell in here?” she whispered.
“Like sex,” he said in a loud, clear voice, and she shushed him. Which only made him smile.
Impossible man. Beautiful, impossible man.
Smiling, her heart alight, she opened the door.
Tiffany stood there, a long-sleeved tee shirt pulled down over her hands. Her face pale and wan.
“Annie,” she said. Her smile looked like a wince. “Can we talk?”
No, Annie thought. No, we can’t. You’ve done enough talking.
“Please,” Tiffany whispered. She glanced back over her shoulder, and there was something so scared in that gesture that Annie forced herself to put aside her anger.
She could feel Dylan behind her, his warm, solid presence.
I have enough, she thought. More than enough. I can be forgiving.
“Sure,” she said, and stepped outside.
“Annie?” Tiffany said, backing up until there was a patch of yellowing grass between them. “You’re okay?”
“No thanks to you,” Annie shot back. Okay, so she was still angry.
“I didn’t know,” Tiffany said, her fingers worrying at the watch on her wrist. “I didn’t know he would hurt you.”
“That’s bullshit, Tiffany, and you know it. You saw my face when I moved here. My neck. Those bruises aren’t an accident.”
Tiffany glanced away, pulling the hem of her shirt down over her hips.
“I know. But Phil—”
“I don’t care about Phil,” she said. “Your husband wasn’t my friend.”
“We’re not friends, either,” Tiffany snapped.
It shouldn’t have hurt. Lord knew, people had said worse. And frankly, Annie knew what Tiffany was doing: trying to minimize her guilt. She’d done it herself with Smith.
But it still hurt.
“Fine.” Annie crossed her arms over her chest, weak protection and far too late, but it was all she had. “Then what are you doing here? If we’re not friends, you have nothing to apologize for.”
Annie, more than done with this conversation, turned back toward the camper, but Dylan was there, radiating tension. His eyes on Tiffany.
Tiffany stepped back and away from Dylan and his hard face. His probing eyes.
“Phil, your husband. What’s his last name?” he asked.
“Edwards.”
Dylan made a sound like a tire with a slow leak.
“And those kids I’ve seen you with—”
“What about them?” she asked, going very mama bear.
“They’re his?”
“What’s it to you?” she demanded.
“Dylan?” Annie asked, putting a hand on his arm, and something in her touch must have translated because he took a deep breath, pulled in some of the anger.
“I’m Dylan Daniels. He worked for me.”
Tiffany blinked, like she’d just been hit in the face with a pie.
“He quit working for you,” she said.
“I fired his ass,” Dylan said.
Tiffany flinched.
“What did Phil have to do with Hoyt finding you?” Dylan asked Annie, who didn’t have any idea what was happening.
“Phil told him where I was. They met…accidentally, somewhere.”
“Fucking Phil. Goddamn fucking Phil. Is he here?” he asked Tiffany, pointing toward the trailer on the other side of the rhododendron.
“Yes, he’s sleeping,” Tiffany said. “We just got back—”
Dylan charged three steps toward the bush and the trailer behind it, but Tiffany got in the way, her shaking hands up to stop him.
“I have kids,” she said, her voice sounding like it was being squeezed out of a small, tight hole. “Three babies. You’ll scare them. Please…”
“Go get him,” Dylan said through clenched teeth. She ran toward her trailer and he followed. Annie jogged to catch up, pulled by some unseen rope tied to all this heartache.
“Dylan,” she whispered. “What the hell is going on?”
“I have no idea,” he told her.
“Stop, Dylan.” She tugged on his arm, forcing him to stop his wild charge across the park. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you know.”
“Help me?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Yes, I can…I can help you, Dylan. Just tell me what we’re doing.”
“Margaret is Phil’s mom.”
“Wait…what?” She nearly pitched forward. “Does she know about Tiffany or the kids?”
“What do you think?”
“There’s no way she would let her grandkids grow up like this.”
“Not if she knew,” he agreed. “Her and Blake both.”
“Oh my God.”
“Right.”
They started walking toward the camper again. Slower this time, but Annie could tell that Dylan was still furious.
“Don’t…”
“Kill him?” he asked. They stopped near the picnic table set up in the rough, weedy lawn. “I’ll give it my best shot.”
Inside the trailer there was a rattle and thump. A low, loud voice.
“He hits her, doesn’t he?” Dylan asked Annie, both of them staring at that door as though the hounds of hell were about to be released.
“Yeah,” she murmured.
“Does he hit the kids?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“What the hell!” Phil cried, coming to the door, blinking into the daylight. He looked old, despite his clothes, despite his attitude. Phil looked worn out. Used up.
He stiffened when he saw Dylan. Annie ran a hand over Dylan’s fist, hoping it would help him control the anger.
“Dylan? What are you doing here?” Phil asked, all that contempt for the world dialed back in the face of Dylan’s implacable, calm rage. He looked like a scared bully who’d been called out.
“I’m kicking you off the property,” Dylan said calmly.
“What? You can’t do that.”
“I own this place, Phil. I can do whatever I want.”
“Blake ain’t gonna like this,” Phil snapped.
“I gotta hand it to you, Phil. It’s amazing all the secrets you’ve managed to keep from your family. Where you live, that you have kids. A wife that you smack around.”
“That bitch lies, all the damn time!” Phil said, looking over his shoulder inside the trailer. “Yeah, I’m talking about you.”
Dylan took a lunging step toward Phil, who immediately cowered against the trailer. Annie grabbed Dylan’s elbow. “There’s a family here,” she whispered. “Little kids.”
Dylan’s deep breath made his nostrils flare, and his control, she could tell, was hard to hold on to. “I want you to get off this property now,” he said in the calmest, most terrifying voice she’d ever heard. “And never come back. And if you doubt my ability to enforce that, you can take it up with my lawyer.”
“This is bullshit, man.”
“This is what happens when you hurt women.”
Phil’s weasel eyes screwed up. “I didn’t touch anyone. I didn’t know that cowboy dude was going to beat her up. I didn’t know—”
Annie didn’t see what happened. But one minute Phil was standing in the doorway and the next Dylan had him yanked down, with one knee on the ground. It looked like they were shaking hands, but Annie could see that Dylan had Phil’s pinky finger bent back to the very edge of its ability to bend.
“Do I need to break your finger, Phil? Because I would love to break your finger.”
“No,” Phil gasped. “No, I’m going.”
Dylan let go of Phil and he scrambled to his feet, cradling his hand. His face white and sweating.
“Tiff!” he yelled, without taking his eyes off Dylan. “Get the kids. We’re leaving.”
Tiffany was back in the doorway, her cheeks slick with stress tears.
>
“You hear me?” Phil cried, when she didn’t move.
Annie approached Tiffany, watching the hem of her tee shirt shake because she was trembling so hard. Her hands, with nails ragged and bitten to the quick, clutched at each other.
“The kids,” she whispered, glancing back at the trailer. “They’re sleeping—”
“Wake them up,” Phil demanded.
“You don’t have to go with him,” Annie whispered to Tiffany, and Tiffany’s wide eyes flew to hers.
“What’d you say?” Phil demanded, but Dylan stepped in front of her, between her and Phil.
“You don’t even look at her,” Dylan whispered and she could sense the thin control he’d had moments ago was fraying. Quickly.
“You are not alone,” Annie told Tiffany again. “I know it can feel like it, but you’re not. You have choices.”
“Choices?” Tiffany gasped.
“So many more than you can see, because that asshole is in the way of all of them.”
Tiffany’s breath came fast and shuddery, like that of a person gathering up the courage to jump off a cliff.
“I don’t have to go,” Tiffany said.
Annie shook her head. “You don’t have to go.”
“Don’t listen to that bitch—” Phil lurched toward Annie, but Dylan was there.
“Christ, you are such an idiot,” Dylan muttered, and this time he added that ounce of pressure, and the pop of ligaments and bone was audible.
Annie’s stomach turned. Tiffany jumped.
“You broke my finger!” Phil staggered back to the trailer.
“I did.” Dylan let go of the dangling pinky finger and grabbed onto his thumb instead. “And I’ll break all of them if you don’t get in your car and go.”
“Tiffany, if you don’t get in this car with me,” Phil screamed, his voice high and reedy, sounding like he was going into shock, “you won’t get another penny from me. You and those fucking kids will never see me again.”
Annie smiled at Tiffany. “Sounds good, doesn’t it,” she whispered. “Never seeing him again.”
“It does,” Tiffany breathed. “It really does.”
“Tiffany!” Phil bellowed. Dylan let go of his hand and gave him a shove backward.
“Look at what we did, Phil,” Tiffany said. “That Hoyt man is dead, Annie was nearly killed, and Dylan was stabbed! We were a part of that!”
