Rusty Nail

by Lani Lynn Vale

  His eyes darkened. “Don’t call yourself that.”

  “Well, if the shoe fits!” I screamed at him.

  He took a step forward, and kept coming until my back was pinned against the cold tiled wall.

  “I said don’t. Talk. Like. That,” he said through gritted teeth. “We do what we have to do to survive. You did what you needed to do to get you through your shit existence.” He stopped. “You obviously know nothing about me if you think that I’d think that about you. You forget that I know you. I know for a fact that you’re no slut. Because if you were a slut, I’d be a goddamn angel that didn’t have black marks times infinity on my soul.”

  I wasn’t really a slut.

  Everyone just called me that. Treated me like that.

  Sleep with one football player under the bleachers, and suddenly every football player thinks he can get him some.

  It wasn’t true.

  I’d only ever had four sexual partners in my life.

  One in high school. One in college, and Jensen.

  Then there was Wolf.

  Although none of the others held a candle to Wolf.

  He was in a league of his own, not only in the bedroom department, but in life in general.

  Wolf was everything I ever wanted, and the one thing I didn’t think I deserved.

  “That’s the problem, Wolf,” I said tiredly. “I don’t know anything about you. I know that you lost your wife and child in utero. I know that you have a sister. I know that you work as a Texas Ranger. But that’s it. I literally know nothing else about you.”

  His eyes darkened.

  “What?” I asked. “You’re annoying me.”

  His mouth tipped up into a grin.

  Then he lifted his hand to bring it up to his hair. Then he shifted his hand so my fingers slid through his hair.

  “Feel that?” he rasped.

  Trying to force myself from delighting in the feel of his hair, I started to sift my fingers around and froze when I felt the undeniable feel of a raised scar that had to be at least six inches in length.

  “Is that…” I started.

  He nodded his head and I swallowed thickly.

  Then he picked my other hand up, and shifted it to the back of his head, and my stomach started to roll.

  “Where did it enter?” I asked, knowing before he even said where it entered.

  “The back of my head,” he said. “Entered just under the little knot at the bottom of my skull and came out above my left ear.”

  His eyes went far away as he started to talk.

  “I remember turning around, doing what the guy asked, and then…nothing.” He looked down into my eyes once again. “Woke up in a hospital room two days later, unable to talk and could barely lift my hand up two inches off the bed.”

  I nodded my head, remembering that part.

  His wife had been shot after him, and they’d laid bleeding together, bleeding out.

  The cops had been called due to a noise disturbance when the shots were fired; the cops had arrived only to find something much worse than they could imagine.

  “The man that shot everyone…” I said, hesitating. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

  Wolf finally smiled, and the smile was anything but pretty.

  “You and me both, Sweetheart,” he replied, dropping his forehead to mine.

  “I am a bad person,” he started. “But you make me want to be a better person.”

  My fingers in his hair slipped free, and I wrapped them around his tight shoulders.

  “You look like something else is on your mind,” I guessed.

  Wolf sighed and moved away from me, letting my body go as he reached for the soap.

  The tiny sliver of soap that the hotel provided looked infinitesimal in his large, deeply tanned hand.

  He closed his hand around it and ran it under the water before bringing it to his body to rub roughly.

  My eyes watched him move, and although I’d just found release with him only moments before, my body started to throb with new feelings.

  That was what that man did to me, though; made me feel.

  Made me feel when I didn’t want to feel.

  “I don’t know how to tell you something, and I’m wondering if at this juncture in time if it would be a good thing or a bad thing,” he hesitated.

  I smiled at him.

  “Does it have to do with why I left?” I asked curiously.

  He shook his head.

  “I didn’t buy Marky Mark for you,” he said carefully.

  “Then who did?” I questioned.

  “Your brother.”

  Chapter 18

  It’s not parenting until you’ve ruined your child’s life simply by serving them dinner.

  -Fact of Life

  Wolf

  “Where’d you leave your baseball shoes?” Raven yelled loudly into the phone.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear, checked the connection, and placed it back against my ear.

  “The last time I saw his cleats they were in a box beside his bed,” I pursed my lips. “Try the toy box. I saw him move everything into it the other day when he cleaned.”

  A sigh of frustration filled the line, and I had to hide my smile.

  “Why is Casten here and not you?” she asked me as she rushed around the house.

  I could only guess what she was doing, but I did have experience trying to find Nathan’s shit. We had two shirts, two pairs of socks, and two pairs of pants for this very reason.

  What we did not have two of were his shoes, his bat, or his glove.

  Which happened to be the only things he lost.

  “I gotta go or this kid of yours isn’t going to make it to the game on time,” she murmured. “Are you on your way?”

  I looked at the empty booth in front of me.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll likely be late.”

  She sighed.

  “Casten’s taking me to the game, then?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “He’s not.”

  There was a momentary pause, then a hesitant question that made my heart stutter. “Who’s taking me, then?”

  It’d been a week and a half since I’d picked her up at the Texas/Oklahoma border.

  Eight days since I’d told her about her brother, and not a single one of those had she said a word about him.

  In fact, she studiously ignored anything and everything that had to do with Raphael.

  Which, at this juncture in time, wasn’t such a bad thing since Raphael had so much shit on his plate.

  That shouldn’t have stopped him from at least making contact.

  He didn’t, though, and Raven had refused to say a single word about the man.

  I knew for a fact that the two of them knew each other well enough to have an inkling at who the other was.

  But, in all my time with Raven, I hadn’t once heard about Raphael, and Raphael refused to share just why exactly she refused to talk about anything that had to do with her brother.

  A brother that was, in fact, her brother.

  I had the DNA test done to prove it.

  For not only my peace of mind, but Raven’s as well, should she choose to question anything.

  Yet she hadn’t.

  And that was why Raphael was coming over tonight.

  He didn’t know that Raven was going to be there. All he knew was that Raven was going out with a few friends with a couple of men to watch her.

  And I guess, technically, she was.

  She was going to a wedding shower with Ridley’s soon to be wife, Freya.

  All of the men’s wives would be there. Lenore, Annie, Tasha, Kitt and Alison.

  And all of the kids would be watched by the men—all the men but two, who would be watching the ladies like a hawk.

  Although, Raphael was supposed to be late coming in. He had some news he was going to share with us (us being the Unce
rtain Saints, not Raven) and wouldn’t be there until after his normal work day ended.

  Apparently, Agent Fry kept them all busy doing bogus work to make his paperwork nice and pretty when, in reality, all they were doing was just enough work on the computer to make things nice and air tight—while after hours they were busy doing their illegal side business.

  “Core’s taking you,” I said. “And he’s bringing you back, so make sure you stick tight to him tonight. Don’t leave with anyone else, okay?”

  Raven let out a relieved breath, and then started moving through the room again.

  “I found it!” Nathan shrieked, causing a smile to burst out over my face.

  “Fuck me!” Goody, my informant who was currently making me late, gasped as he yanked the door to my office open and started around the corner of the filing cabinets. “I’m about to die!”

  “I gotta go, baby,” I said, well used to the tactics that Goody used to gain attention. “I’ll be a little late for his game, but hopefully not much.”

  “Okay,” she hesitated. “I love you.”

  Joy surged through me, and I started to say something more when Goody started to reach for me.

  “I love you too, baby girl.”

  I hung up and shoved my phone into my pocket, glaring at the man that’d practically crawled over the top of my desk to get to my hand.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I asked. “Get off me and stop touching me with those disgusting fingers.”

  Goody bared his teeth, and I had to stifle the urge to grimace.

  Goody had disgusting teeth.

  I doubted he’d seen the inside of a dentist’s office in ten years, if not more.

  “You have to help me,” he said. “Why weren’t you at our usual meeting spot?”

  I growled in frustration.

  “Because you decided to fuck me over and be late yourself,” I said. “And it’s not that much of a difference. You walked through my backdoor instead of meeting me at the backdoor. There’s little difference in those two distances.”

  Goody’s face started to twitch, and I wondered when his last hit was.

  I’d met him when he was trying to get clean off of meth, and had tried to get him on the straight and narrow by offering him some money to become an informant.

  Turns out, he liked the money, and still informed, but he had no qualms about spending the money he got informing on his next fix.

  “What’s that look on your face for?” he asked. “And did you see that man with the creepy eyes?”

  I looked at him, then looked out the front window which wasn’t nearly as visible now with the filing cabinets moved from that space.

  “What guy with the creepy eyes?” I asked him.

  “He followed me,” he said.

  “Followed you from where?” I persisted.

  “From the river.” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Why are you being so dense?”

  I refrained from beating him upside the head, but only because I knew if I touched his hair I wasn’t sure what would come out of it.

  I suspected he had lice, and that would be one of the better things I might find in that mat of stuff he called hair.

  “Goody,” I started. “How about you stay on topic here.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I was at the diner parking lot where I was meeting a deal…umm, friend. And we were around the back of the diner next to where the dumpsters used to be when I heard a boat pull into the dock in front of us.”

  The diner he was talking about was completely surrounded by water. The people that owned it hadn’t been able to get to it except by boat for over two weeks now, and it wasn’t looking good any time in the future, either, seeing as we were supposed to be hit with another six inches this weekend.

  The diner used to be a pretty popular spot to meet and greet friends when it was open, but now that it was closed, it wasn’t useful.

  The road leading to the diner wasn’t open either, for about a mile in fact.

  “And?” I asked, eager to hurry this along.

  “And I was curious, so I got a little bit closer and listened to what they were saying,” he continued.

  I wanted to pull my hair out.

  “And what were they saying, Goody?” I asked patiently.

  “They were talking about some deal and shipment that was supposed to come through in the next couple of days. The only one there was the crazy eyed man and a Hispanic man I couldn’t see,” he explained.

  “Then how do you know he’s Hispanic?”

  “Because I could hear his accent, dude. He was clearly talking in Spanish,” Goody rolled his eyes.

  I snorted.

  “And they were talking about meeting there in two nights, trading something for something, and then parting ways,” Goody grinned, and my stomach did that churning shit again. “I got his license plate number.”

  “His license plate number.”

  I waited for him to change his story, but he stuck with it.

  “Yes!”

  “On a boat?” I asked with incredulity. “Goody, boats don’t have fuckin’ license plates!”

  “Yes,” he said. “He had it in his wallet.”

  I wanted to strangle him.

  I’d seriously be doing the world a favor by doing it, too.

  “License,” I explained to him, even if it was futile. “You saw his license.”

  “Yes!” he cried. “And he followed me here.”

  “How do you know he followed you here?” I questioned, standing up and stuffing my phone into my pocket.

  “Because he pulled his boat out at the same time I did, and then drove in this direction,” he responded, his voice laced with impatience that I wasn’t understanding his words.

  “Gotcha,” I nodded. “What did his license say?”

  “It said that he was an FBI.”

  ***

  I pulled my bike up next to Core’s truck and threw the kickstand down.

  A loud roar from the field that Nathan was playing on raised through the night, and I swung my leg up and off my bike.

  My feet squished in the wet mud, and I dropped the helmet onto the seat before taking off across the parking lot.

  “Yo!” I yelled the moment I was close enough. “Core, what’s the score?”

  Core, aka Apple, looked up and smiled.

  “Winning three to nothing,” he called, returning his eyes to the game.

  I noticed that he didn’t face the game completely, though, and he’d parked his charge along with his wife at the bleachers directly beside him.

  Raven looked up when she heard me call out, and a smile brightened her face.

  “You made it!” she cried. “Come sit down, Nathan’s on deck.”

  I finished my jog to her side, and then bent over to drop a kiss on her lips.

  “Awwww,” I heard a familiar voice say. “That’s too cute!”

  I looked up and grinned at Hannah.

  “Shut your face,” I said. “We playing Reggie?”

  Hannah nodded and pointed. “She’s the catcher right now.”

  I followed her pointing and a smile broke out over my face.

  “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I admitted. “Love the curls in the back, too.”

  Hannah grinned. “She wanted to play baseball, and you were the one to tell me that girls were allowed in this league.”

  I nodded. I sure had said that, and I liked that Hannah listened to what I had to say.

  Taking my seat on the right of Raven so I could still speak to Hannah, I turned forward and watched as the little boy at bat swung at the coach’s pitch and connected with the ball.

  It went about six inches past his feet, and stopped.

  “Run!” I yelled at the kid.

  The kid, startled by my outburst, looked at me, and I pointed at first base.

  “Run, boy!”

  The boy jumped
and then started running, his fat little legs carrying him as fast as he could possibly move his bulk to first base.

  The coach at first base was smiling huge and holding his hand out for a high five.

  However, the little kid kept running, and the coach was left hanging.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “Run!”

  Reggie had the ball, and she was barreling after the kid like the hounds of hell were at her feet, snapping and snarling along to keep pushing her forward.

  “Get ‘em, baby!” Hannah yelled. “Tag him!”

  The entire team was now on their feet, screaming and yelling, jumping and pointing.

  “Run, Bagger!” the kids were yelling. “Get home!”

  The coach on second base held his hands up as the kid arrived on second, but instead of stopping, he continued to run.

  “Mother of God,” I breathed. “Jesus Christ, she’s gonna get him.”

  The kid was slow, and it was terrible of me to say, but he was overweight and didn’t run all that fast.

  The kid had heart, though, I’d give him that.

  Reggie tossed the ball expertly to the kid on third, but the kid was too busy bending down to pick dandelions to catch the ball.

  Bagger, which must’ve been the kid’s name since I could now hear his mother yelling it at my side, rounded third.

  The dandelion kid finally realized that the ball was at his feet, and blew the dandelion as he picked the ball up and chucked it in the direction of Reggie, who was now once again on home.

  “Jesus,” Hannah said. “Move out of the way, baby. He’s not going to stop.”

  Reggie moved over just in time for the kid to tumble into home, rolling on his side all the way across the plate.

  “Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” the mother of the kid sat down next to my feet. “That kid is going to be the death of me.”

  I laughed and patted her back.

  “He did good, Ma’am,” I said to her, my eyes going back to the game as I watched Reggie put her hands on her hips and glare at the little kid that was barely up to his feet.

  “Thank you,” the mom said, a wide smile on her face.

  “Good job, Buddy,” the coach said, drawing my attention.

  I nodded my head at the guy and looked down to see Raven rest her head against my knee.