by M. O'Keefe
“I love Dylan,” she said, unwilling to play this game.
“That’s what he said. But I’m wondering why.”
“If you don’t know the answer to that then you don’t know him. You don’t know him at all.”
“Is it the money? You got some fucked-up scar fetish thing? Is it because he killed somebody and you’ve got some kind of guilt complex?”
“Fuck you, Max.”
“Is it the sex? An innocent like you—” He reached out as if he was going to touch her hair and she smacked his hand away.
“You don’t touch me!” she said through her teeth. If she had the gun Dylan gave her she would have aimed it right at his heart. It was a startling revelation. That she felt such violence toward this man. That she felt such violence at all was unwelcome. Unnerving.
His blue eyes were back on her, something moving in those depths. Something dark and mean and big.
“Go,” she said, suddenly scared. Suddenly more scared than she’d been when he first snuck up on her. This man was not like Dylan. Not at all. They might have the same mouth, but their hearts—their hearts were not the same.
“Scared?”
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“What I want is my brother to be safe. And if you love him, you need to get him out of here—”
“Annie?”
Max flinched at the sound of Dylan’s voice, who was running across the field toward them. Max turned away, pushing his glasses down over his eyes, and she thought he was going to leave.
Good. Yes. Please, leave.
Dylan was beside them, chest heaving as he sucked in breath. He pressed a hand to his side, over the knife wound.
“You okay?” Dylan asked Annie.
“I’m fine—” She barely got the words out before Dylan was turning on his brother, stepping between her body and his.
“What the fuck, man!” He shoved Max with both hands. An explosion of force. Max lurched back, his eyes focused on the trees, pretending, like a thug kid, that he wasn’t all that interested in what was happening.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Dylan stepped sideways into his sight line. As angry as Dylan was—and he was angry, it vibrated off him in waves—she also saw the little brother he must have been, following Max into places he shouldn’t have gone, blinded by hero worship and love.
“Just having a friendly chat with your girl.” His eyes flicked up to hers and Dylan got right back in the way, so Max couldn’t even see Annie. She shifted slightly sideways so she could see Max.
“You don’t look at her,” Dylan said. “You don’t talk to her.”
“So that’s how it is?” Max asked.
“That’s how it is. You’re dangerous, Max. You’ve got bad shit attached to you. And I don’t want you near her.”
Max glanced away at the trees mummified in kudzu. They looked like trees, had the shape and size of trees, but they were something else, underneath.
“Stay away from the strip club,” Max said, sounding old. Sounding tired and old. “You don’t need to go back there. The club will be out of town by Sunday and then you can go get all the lap dances you want.” Max put his glasses back on. The conversation was over. “Take your girl, Dylan, and leave. Get out of here. Stop spying on Pops, stop worrying about me. Cut ties like you should have years ago.”
He can’t, she wanted to cry. He’s not like you. He’s not cold and ruthless; he only pretends because you hurt him so bad.
“What’s happening this weekend?” Dylan asked.
“Nothing you need to know about.”
“This Lagan guy—”
Max grabbed Dylan’s shirt, wrapped it in his fist. “You don’t say that name out loud. Not to anyone. You forget you even heard that name. Understand?”
“Yes. I get it.”
Max dropped Dylan’s shirt, smoothed out the wrinkles and creases he put there.
Max’s hand was shaking and she wanted to look away; she wanted distance from this terrible moment. These awful emotions. But she couldn’t. She had to watch. Bear witness to the terribleness of all of it.
She owed that to the man she loved.
“What about Pops?” Dylan asked, clearly grasping at straws. Clearly trying to keep his brother here, to give him reasons to care. To stay alive.
Max laughed. “You want to divide up the old man’s estate when he’s gone? Fine, you get everything. The shitty trailer, the pictures of Mom he cries over every night—have at it.”
“You don’t care?” Dylan asked. “Not even a little?”
Max clapped a heavy hand on Dylan’s neck, a gesture so oddly intimate, so strangely tender, she bit her lip against sudden tears. “Not even a little.”
Without another word, Max turned and walked away. He marched across the field and along the tree line, and then he was gone.
Dylan could not hide his pain; it was there like a wound on his body. And she felt wholly responsible for this agony he was feeling. She was the one insisting that they stay, thinking that somehow she could change his past by forcing him into proximity with his father and brother.
How stupid, she thought. How mean and selfish.
“We can leave,” she said. Blurted, really.
He didn’t say anything, his eyes trained on that spot in the silvery green brush where his brother had disappeared. “We’ll pack up. Head back to your house. If the police have more questions for me, or want to arrest me or whatever, you said it yourself, Terrence can handle it. And I’ll come back down on Friday to help Ben home from the hospital.” Finally he turned toward her, looking older. Broken. “We’ll get a cab,” she amended, doing everything she could think of to erase that look in his eyes. She did not want to abandon Ben, but if it was between Dylan and Ben it would always be Dylan. Always. “A cab can pick Ben up from the hospital and take him home. It’s not a big deal. Really. Let’s go. Let’s just…go.”
He was silent, still staring off at the kudzu, at his brother’s footsteps through the grass clippings.
She launched herself off the running board of the motor and wrapped him in her arms, pulling his head down to her neck, her hands buried in his hair.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m sorry I made you stay.”
“Annie,” he sighed. Just that. Just her name, like that was all he was capable of.
“No, no, I should have listened to you. You’ve earned the right to walk away from your father and your brother. I kept thinking I was right, but I wasn’t. I was selfish and stupid and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s…let’s go. I want to see that beach house you keep promising me. I want to go skinny-dipping in the Caribbean.”
His arms came up around her, but instead of hugging her, he grabbed her shoulders, pushing her away. She clung to him. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Stop.”
“I can’t. I can’t. This is my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault,” he said. “It just…it’s my family, and it’s always been like this.”
“But you were out of it. You’d left—”
“Annie. Stop. I had you spying on my old man for me. I wasn’t out of it. I was just…living somewhere else.”
His smile worked hard at being convincing but didn’t quite succeed.
“We can’t leave,” he said.
“What? Of course we can.”
“I made Max come back,” Dylan said. “He’d gotten out, he’d left, and I made him come back to keep us safe. You and me and everyone in my life. He came back because I asked him to.”
“You don’t know that.”
The look Dylan gave her was all pain. All heavy and hard knowledge.
Oh, what she would give to take that away from him.
“He made his choices,” she whispered, stroking his face, the smooth edges of the scars. You have paid enough, she thought. Do not feel any more guilt. Any more care. You went to jail for him. Sacrificed enough for him.
“I know,” Dyla
n said. “But it doesn’t make my part in it any easier. We’re not leaving. Blake is coming to meet Tiffany. Dad has chemo and I promised you church, remember?”
Those things might all be true, but that was not why he was staying.
“You can’t stop him, Dylan. You can’t save your brother. Even I can see that.”
“No, you’re right. He’s going to get himself killed. Eventually. And I can’t stop it. But I can be here.”
Why? she wanted to ask. But she knew the answer.
To witness the terribleness of it all.
“You think he’s going to come back?” she asked.
He shook his head. No.
Dylan didn’t think Max would be back. But he would stay here, waiting. Just in case.
The feelings she had for him expanded in her chest so fast and so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. She leaned forward, kissing his cheek, the side of his mouth. “You’re the best man,” she whispered. He leaned away, but she would not let him go. “The best man.” She kissed him again. And again, seducing him to believe if not her words, then the fact that she felt that way.
Finally, with a low groan, he turned toward her. Accepting her kiss.
He was practically vibrating with tension. With emotion. With hurt and anger and love, and the forces were so powerful she felt like her arms were holding him together. The force of her love.
She kissed his mouth, opened her lips over his, and he yanked her hard against him. His mouth opened and the kiss was everything. It was brutal and tender, sweet and filthy.
He lifted her and turned, sitting himself on the metal seat of the mower, and she straddled his hips, her legs pushed and wedged against the metal body. He had her ass in one hand, the other up under her tank top, holding her neck, keeping her still for his devouring kiss.
He was hard beneath her and she arched into him.
His fingers fumbled between them, yanking at her zipper, the button of her shorts, until he could touch her. His fingers speared deep inside of her and she shook against him.
“Get the condom out of my pocket,” he said against her mouth.
She fumbled, distracted by his touch, by the fire in her veins, but finally she found it. He helped her stand and pull off the shorts while she slipped the condom on him. They fumbled and were rough. Clumsy. But it didn’t matter. No matter how fast they moved, it wasn’t fast enough.
“Come ’ere,” he whispered, his voice slurred, drunk on sex and emotion.
It was nuts. Frenzied. But she straddled him again and slid down over him, taking him inside.
“So good,” he groaned. “So fucking good.”
She put her face into his neck, smothering her cries, as she moved against him.
Her pleasure, the rising tide of her orgasm, hit a plateau. The position, the way her leg was wedged against cold metal—all of it stopped her from coming. She tried to shift, to grind her clit against something hard, his belly or belt, but the way they were sitting would not allow it.
Frustrated, she opened her mouth and bit his neck.
He roared. “God. Fuck, yes.” His hands spasmed against her ass and he jerked up high and hard against her. Yes, she thought, as her clit finally got some action. “Again. Do it again.”
And she did. She bit the strong muscle of his shoulder, sunk her teeth in his flesh, testing herself against him.
He grabbed her hips, lifting and pushing her harder. Faster.
There, oh God, there. Yes.
There were sparks on the back of her closed eyelids. Sparks in her body, lifting up, floating through her. Until finally, it all caught and she was swept up in a mighty blaze. Her body, ashes.
“Thank you,” she sighed, limp against him.
He kissed her shoulder and held her tight. She was not ashamed of anything in the bright daylight.
Not of her nudity. Not of her love. Nothing.
In that moment she felt like the power of her feelings, the completeness of them, the way there were no gaps, no weak spots—they would be protected by that.
There was no way they could get hurt when she loved him so much.
DYLAN
I had this lizard once. A leopard-tailed gecko. I have no clue how or where I got it. In my memory it was just there. Max might have stolen it for me; I couldn’t be sure. We used to catch crickets for it in the field behind the school.
But I remember when that thing was shedding its skin, it went from being really chill and riding around on the top of my hat to biting me and lurching away every time I tried to touch it.
Max kept telling me that lizards couldn’t feel it when their skin came off, but I never believed him.
After seeing Max, that’s how I felt. Like my skin didn’t fit and I wanted to snarl and bite at the world. At anything that had the audacity to touch me.
Fucking Max.
I hated everything about what happened in that field. I hated that he even saw Annie. That he was trying to scare her. That after all these years of silence he would try to sort out my life. And he knew it was bullshit—that was why he couldn’t look at me. But what I really hated was that I cared.
Max was involved in some kind of crazy dangerous shit and I cared.
And that crazy, frantic sex on a lawn mower of all damn things. Even that didn’t feel right.
Nothing felt fucking right.
Annie went and told Tiffany that Blake was coming. From the sounds inside her double-wide, she was not happy.
“He’s not meeting my kids!” she yelled. “We’re not fucking puppies in a pound he can look over to see if he wants them.”
Leaning against the picnic table, I winced. Because frankly, that was kind of the way Blake was going to be looking at them.
I heard the soft rumble of Annie’s voice and the two of them came out of the trailer a few minutes later.
“Okay,” Annie said with a tense smile. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Blake and Tiffany will use my trailer to talk.”
I nodded. Sounded good.
“Where are your kids?” I asked.
“They’re all napping. When’s he going to be here?” Tiffany asked.
I checked my watch. One thing about Blake—the guy was always on time. To a fault he was on time. “Any minute,” I said, which for some reason made her jump up.
“Thanks a lot,” she snapped and went back inside, leaving me to stare at Annie.
“She’s probably just changing her clothes and stuff.”
Right.
I rubbed my face with my hand.
“This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?” I asked Annie.
“She’s nervous,” Annie said and she settled against the picnic table beside me, her arm and leg and hip brushing against me.
This feeling, this…want…I had for her. It was like a badly trained puppy on a leash, lurching after every squirrel. And the touch of her skin against mine made me crazy. Made me want to throw her over my shoulder and lock us up in her trailer and forget about everyone else and their stupid drama.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“You seem…edgy.”
I didn’t want to talk about my goddamn feelings so I kept my mouth shut, and after a few seconds she sighed and I could practically feel her dropping the subject.
Because I don’t have any skin, I wanted to shout. I can feel everything. I feel too fucking much.
But instead of yelling, I reached over and grabbed her hand. It was the best I could do.
She grabbed mine.
And the best I could do seemed like it might be good enough.
“Is this guy going to be decent to Tiffany?” Annie asked.
“I don’t know, babe. He’s a decent guy, but he’s been cleaning up after his brother for years. And if he thinks Tiffany is trying to take advantage of Margaret, he’ll destroy her.”
“Destroy? That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?” she asked me.
“Family means everything to him.
”
“She’s family, in a way, isn’t she?”
“Not yet.”
ANNIE
Twenty minutes later, Tiffany and Annie were settled into Annie’s trailer, waiting for Blake. Tiffany didn’t want Dylan in there, and Annie didn’t blame her. The emotions were high enough.
“You want a drink or something?” Annie asked. “Tea? I have tea. Or I could go next door and see if Joan left some booze—”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure? Because I’m not sure how to host this kind of event.”
“I doubt there are rules. But I’m fine. I’m not thirsty. I’m not hungry.”
There was the quiet hum of a motor that slowly got louder, until a Porsche came into sight and parked right beside Annie’s car.
It looked foreign and expensive. And fast.
“What’s the deal with these guys and their cars?” Tiffany asked. “Are they all compensating for tiny dicks?”
“Dylan’s not,” Annie said, before she thought better of it. Tiffany glanced back at her and they both started laughing.
“Phil was. He definitely was,” Tiffany said, which because of all the tension in the air was extra hilarious and they doubled up, over the table.
A man got out of the car. He was tall and wore a suit. The kind of suit that matched the car. Foreign and expensive. It was black, and he wore a dark purple tie with it and a white shirt that highlighted the darker tones of his skin. He had dark blond hair with a curl to it.
It was very pretty hair on a very hard man.
At the sight of him, all laughter vanished.
“Shit,” Tiffany said. “Is that him?”
“I think so,” Annie said. That night she was at Dylan’s house she hadn’t met Blake, and at the moment she was glad.
“He doesn’t look much like Phil,” Tiffany said.
“Blake must take after his dad. Dylan told me he was Cuban. And big.”
“He’s big all right,” Tiffany murmured. “He’d squash Phil.”
Dylan said something and pointed to the trailer, and within seconds Annie’s door opened and they both turned in time to see Blake coming in.
