by Lola StVil
“You had some weed, so what? You think that’s the reason why I’m mad?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, that’s not it!”
“Then what the hell is it?” I yell.
“I’m pissed because the only time you let me get close to you was when you were high. What the hell does that mean for us? Will you have to be drunk and high every night for us to get anywhere?”
“No.”
“Really? Because that’s not the vibe I’m getting.”
“So this is about sex—again! If you wanted it that badly, then why didn’t you just let it happen last night?” I shout before I can stop myself.
“I don’t know what kind of guys you’ve dated, but I don’t fuck women who are impaired. And for the record, you can make this about sex all you want, but you know it’s not about that.”
“Then what is it? What the hell is it about?”
“You! It’s about you running. You said you’d tell me what happened to you and why you are so afraid of getting close, but you haven’t. And the only time I get to see a window into your thoughts and your feelings is when you are high. That’s so…ARGH!”
“You said I could take my time and that I could talk to you when I was ready.”
“Yes, I did. And I meant that, but you’re not even trying.”
“I’m not trying? Every day a part of me wants to run from this. From us! You aren’t taking down my walls one brick at a time; you’re blasting through them with dynamite. And every time we kiss, every time you put your hand on the small of my back, every fucking time you enter a room, I want you. Not just your body, you. I want to fall asleep in your arms and wake up beside you,” I bark.
“Good, because that’s what I want too! Every moment of every fucking day! So, let me in!” he rages.
“I want to, okay? I want to!”
“THEN WHY ARE YOU RUNNING, SKY? WHY WON’T YOU LET ME IN?”
“BECAUSE THE LAST TIME I LET A GUY IN, SOMEONE DIED!”
***
She doesn’t elaborate. She just bursts into tears and runs back down the stairs. I follow her out the door of the townhouse and into the street. When I catch her, she begs me to let her go. I’m not sure if she means for now or forever. I don’t think she’s sure either. I let go of her and she turns the corner and disappears.
FUUUUCK!
I would give anything to know what happened to her. I’d love to hold her and make it better, but I know there’s a very real chance I won’t see her ever again. She really was that freaked out about us being together. This wasn’t a woman being dramatic; this was a woman who’d face trauma and feared going anywhere near a similar situation.
Who died? How did it happen? And how does it tie into her ex?
A million questions swim around my head. The more I think about it, the more I need answers. But the fact remains, there’s nothing I can do until I know what happened. And even then, I may be powerless. I’m tempted to ask Kenzy, but she’d never betray her best friend. And also as much as I want to know, I want to hear it from Sky.
A few days go by, and I hear nothing from Sky. I called her once, and texted once, but no reply. I don’t want to put any more pressure on her.
You weren’t supposed to put any pressure on her at all, you dick! And now she’s more distant than before.
***
It’s Friday night, and I’ve just spent ten hours sitting in the car watching dealers dick us around. We heard they would be meeting with some major players tonight and so we waited—and nothing happened. Meanwhile, my team is out of the country on a sting operation that I should be on. And to top it off, my girl—if I can still call her that—doesn’t want to talk to me. So, when I enter a bar to get a few drinks, I am on edge. I just want a beer and somewhere to lick my wounds.
I order and sit at the counter, not interested in anything or anyone in here. I watch the monitor overhead as they play clips of basketball games from earlier this season. I feel a woman’s eyes on me. I’m careful not to make eye contact because even if I wasn’t involved with Sky, I’m not in the mood for conversation. I drink two beers, although I’d like to have ten. I’m driving, and it’s best if I stop at two. I tip Missy, the bartender, and head out to my car.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yell as I spot my slashed tires. I look around, but I don’t see anyone. I bend down to get a better look. Someone slashed all four of my tires.
“Hello, Agent Hunter. Nice night, isn’t it?” someone says from the shadows.
“Tyler?”
“I was just walking by. Are you having car trouble? Should I call someone for you?”
The rage that’s swelling up in me is a dangerous one. That rage isn’t taking into account the fact that Tyler is only seventeen or that he’s Hank’s son. Right now, he is very close to sending me over the edge.
“Tyler, you can’t fucking do this!”
“Do what? I just happened by here. But since I am here, I want to tell you that we have filed another petition, and we will get the records and find out what you did to my dad. Well, I know you killed him, but I will find out why and you will go to prison. Good night, Agent Hunter.”
After I calm down enough to stop seeing red, I make some calls and get someone to tow my car to the garage a buddy of mine owns. I get in a cab thinking I’m going home, but instead, I give the driver her address because I need her. I get out of the cab knowing full well that this might blow up in my face, but I don’t give a fuck.
I knock on the door, thinking she’ll be pissed. Or worse, maybe she’s not alone. Fuck, what if she’s not alone? It’s too late. I hear footsteps; Sky opens the door.
“Sky, I know you probably don’t want to see me, but—”
She claims my mouth with a series of fevered, ravenous kisses. She hops up and wraps her legs around my waist. I devour her lips as I make my way inside the apartment. I hold her up and kick the door shut behind me. I look her over. I need to make sure she’s in her right mind. She smiles at me. The kind of smile that makes men give their fortunes away. Oh yeah, she’s ready.
But shockingly enough, I’m not. Shit. She looks at me, concerned. “What’s wrong, Cash?” I put her back down on the floor.
“I want you; God knows I do, baby. But if we do this right now, it’ll push you away from me. It’s the same thing as you asking me to stop the kiss we had on the roof. I don’t want to be the guy who made you have sex even though I knew you had issues you needed to talk about. That guy gets sent away. That guy becomes your ex. And I don’t want to be your ex. I fucking love you. And I want to do that for as long as I can. So baby, please. Talk to me.”
I have no reason to think it will work. And my dick hates me right now. Still, I have to try one last time to get her to open up. She takes my hand, and we walk over to her love seat. And even before she begins to speak, I know she’s far away in her mind.
“I loved this guy once. His name was Josh, and he took something from me.”
“Baby, what did he take?”
“My daughter…”
Even before she starts her story, I feel like a complete asshole asking her to reveal it to me. The pain in her eyes and her faraway look is enough for me to wish I never asked. But it’s too late now. She’s going to reveal her secrets, and I hope to God it helps more than it harms. When she begins her voice is soft and small, almost like she doesn’t want to wake up her memories. But that’s exactly what she’s about to do.
“I met Josh at a New Year’s Eve party. He was a fun-loving, carefree guy who had the world at his feet. We instantly clicked, and for the first time in my life, I was in love. But there were things about him I didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand. He’d disappear for hours with no real explanation of where he was or what he had been doing.
“I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I knew something was off. I brought it up to him, and he’d just say that I was being paranoid. I would feel guilty for accusing him.
I loved him; I didn’t want to think about him cheating on me because then everything we shared would have been a lie. He was the first guy I ever loved, and the thought of us breaking up…I couldn’t bear it. So, I turned a blind eye and pretended everything was okay.
“I went out of town to see my sister, Stacy, and I wasn’t feeling well, so I came home early. I found him in bed with a co-worker. They were coiled in the sheets—my sheets, my bed. It wasn’t just that he was cheating on me that hurt, it was all the denial. He played with my mind, twisted my thoughts, and tried to make me think I was crazy. After that night, I moved out and stayed with Stacy. That’s when I found out I wasn’t sick; I was pregnant.
“I freaked out. I had wanted kids, but that was not the time. And I knew I couldn’t handle being a single parent. So, when Josh called and begged to get back with me, I agreed. I thought maybe things would change. I moved back, and we started planning a life with the baby.
“I think the thought of being a dad scared him more than he was willing to say. I reminded him that we’d do this together. And that we could handle whatever came our way. I went to work two weeks later, and when I came back, Josh had moved out. No call. No text. Nothing.
“I was devastated. Kenzy moved in with me to keep me from panicking. I was three months pregnant, and I would be doing it on my own. But Kenz refused to hear me talk like that. She said this kid would have two moms.
“Kenzy tried to get me to see the good part of impending motherhood, but I was consumed with what could go wrong. Then I found this app. It tells you how big the baby is in relation to other things. When I input my information, the app told me the baby was the size of a lime. And it was the stupidest thing, but somehow it helped me connect. It wasn’t just this thing out in the cosmos. It was a lime. My lime.
“And once a week, Kenzy would ask what size fruit I was carrying. Every week it became more and more real. And by the time the baby was the size of an apple, I was in love. And when twenty weeks came, and we found out it was going to be a girl, everything fell into place. I was going to call her Grace, after my grandmother. But her nickname was ‘Apple’ ’cause that’s the size she was when I first truly loved her.
“For me, morning sickness lasted way longer than they said it would. And after a while, it was hard to get to work. So, I made a deal with Apple. I’d touch my little bump and say, ‘Okay, kid, let Mommy have a vomit-free morning, and she’ll push back your curfew a whole hour when you go on your first date.’ And I know it’s strange, but I felt like she heard me, and she understood. And sure enough, I didn’t get sick that whole morning.
“We’d make deals like that with each other all the time. If she stopped leaning on my bladder, causing me to have to pee every five minutes, I’d promised to play a song that always made her kick with excitement —in other words, anything by Beyoncé.
“I’d promise she could wear makeup and blow off curfew someday if she promised to go easy on me during labor. But out of all the deals we struck, the most important one was this: No matter what, it would always be just the two of us. And we’d be okay because we were a team.
“I was seven months pregnant by the time I heard from Josh again. He called in the middle of the night saying he needed to see me. I was obsessed with us being a family, and I still loved him. So, I thought maybe we could work something out. But when I went to see him, he didn’t ask about Apple or even how I was. He was drunk and raving about some watch he left in the apartment; it was worth a lot of money and he wanted it back.
“So, I got up and left. I had finally had enough. I hailed a cab and got in. He got in his car and followed us. He rammed into the cab, causing us to hit a tree. The driver had minor injuries, but I blacked out. And when I woke up in the hospital, Apple was in NICU. They wheeled me in to see her; she was so small. Her little chest was barely moving. There were tubes everywhere, and they wouldn’t let me hold her.
“The doctors didn’t think she’d live more than a few hours, but she waited for me. She waited for me so she could look into my eyes. Her little face was asking me why, why did I break our pact?
“I let that asshole back into my life, and that’s why she died. She died because I let my feelings for some guy get in the way of being a mom. I was supposed to protect her; that was my job. Why didn’t I stay away from Josh? Why didn’t I just stay home that night? Why?” She sobs into my chest, and I hold as tight as I can without hurting her.
Christ, I can’t imagine the pain she’s in.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” I whisper in her ear as I stroke her hair. After a while she pulls away, I hand her the box of tissues on the coffee table, and she dries her eyes, only to have a fresh wave of tears appear.
“Josh’s family was able to get him a good lawyer—all he got was forced rehab and years of probation. He got to get married and moved on with his life,” she says bitterly. “And you know what I got? Texts. I got a text every week telling me the size of the baby. I hated them, but they were my only connection to what life was like before. So I couldn’t unsubscribe from the app. And when I got the final text saying, ‘Welcome, baby,’ I got into bed and didn’t get out of it for three months.
“I know you think that I’m a good person, but you’re wrong. I’m not good at all. I failed the one person I was supposed to save. It was just supposed to be the two of us. But I let my feelings for Josh cloud my judgment. I couldn’t walk away from him, and he took her from me. He was an asshole from the start. He never loved me. And I was too blind and too stupid to see that. I should have been home with my baby, but instead, I put Josh before her, before everything. After she died, I felt this hole swallowing me up. But that’s what I deserved. I don’t deserve to be happy or loved. Not after what I let Josh take from me,” she cries.
I can’t help but wince when I hear her say she’s not deserving of love or happiness. I don’t know anyone else who deserves it more. I think she needs to get it all out, so I try not to interrupt her.
“The worst part about it is that after Apple died, it was like she never lived at all. She was forgotten. People said I needed to move on with my life, but that’s not what it felt like; it felt like I was forgetting my baby girl. For a short time, she was my whole world, and then, just like that, she was gone…”
***
She spends the rest of the night crying in my arms. It’s almost dawn before she falls asleep. When she wakes up, I hand her a cup of coffee and kiss her forehead.
“I thought about waking you up to go into the bedroom, but I didn’t know if you’d be able to go back to sleep,” I explain. She looks at the floor and avoids my eyes. “What is it, babe?” I ask.
“How are you still here? I mean, you know what I’ve done, how badly I’ve messed up. I’m the broken cup on the floor that you throw out. You don’t repair it,” she says, only partly joking.
“Hey, I happen to want that cup. And you’re not broken, babe. You loved the wrong person. You’re not the first one to do that. And I don’t think you’re a bad person at all. Look, I’m not a therapist or anything, but I’m guessing you know how hard it is to grow up without a dad, and you wanted to give that to your little girl. No one can fault you for that.”
“I did; I did want that,” she mutters sadly to herself.
“I don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, but I know what it’s like to lose someone I love. And I know that it takes you to a place so fucking dark, there’s no light at all. And maybe I can’t bring in the light, but I can be there in the dark with you—if you let me.”
“You don’t feel like running out of here and looking for a woman less…complicated?”
“Complicated is sexy on you.”
She laughs sardonically. “It seems so easy for you to jump right into this. How is that?”
“I have never told a woman that I love her. Ever. The only reason I can do it now is because you make it easy. You make being in love easy and natural. I knew I was falling for you back i
n the skydiving center. But the moment that actually confirmed it was when I saw the look on your face when the fort was done. You stood there, and you were happy for me. You made it your mission to see me out of the hole I was in. And baby, I will do anything to give you back some of the kindness you’ve shown me. I just need to know that you are willing to try.”
“I could fail at this,” she warns me.
“Good, we have something in common. I’m pretty damn sure I will fail at this relationship stuff. But I hope to God you let me try with you,” I reply.
I move closer and brush a stray strand of hair away from her face. “So, what do you say? You wanna give this a shot—officially?”
She smiles despite herself and leans into me and says, “Yes, Cash, I’d like to try…”
***
In the days that follow, Sky and I spend what little free time we have together. She has things going on at work, and I’m brought into a new case. In addition to my normal workload, I need to address my Tyler problem. So, I set up a meeting with the best surveillance guy in New York City—Banshee. He has worked with my older brother, Logan, for years. Logan works SWAT. But a few years ago, he worked overseas, and that’s where the two of them met.
There are two things you can count on when it comes to Banshee: He will always be on his game when it comes to surveillance. And he will almost always be in the process of breaking up with some woman for reasons that only make sense in his head. We arrange to meet in a warehouse in the Bronx, where he houses most of his equipment. He’s a lanky guy with stringy dark hair and glasses.
“Hey, you’re late. I told you I had something to do tonight,” he says impatiently as I get out of the car. He’s tinkering with some of his gear and doesn’t make eye contact.
“You working on something with Logan?” I ask.
