by Vivian Lux
Case smiled and pulled up a chair for himself. "I was doing what I do best," he intoned smugly, making both Crash and J. burst out laughing. "It's true!" He pointed at each of the Sons of Steel in turn. "J.'s good at wrenching, Mac's good at drinking, Teach is good at talking, Doctor D.'s good at doctoring." He leaned back and pointed at his own broad chest. "Me? I'm good at fucking."
There was a pause. "What am I good at?" Crash asked, feigning hurt.
"I have no idea," Case shot back.
That earned another burst of laughter. He sat back and listened to the wash of insults that were suddenly hurled back and forth and sighed in contentment.
What he had in that brief moment with a woman, when their bodies entwined and they looked at him like he was the only thing that mattered, well that wasn't real. As nice as it was, it never lasted. It was never enough to put back the pieces of the life he was still trying to rebuild. Brotherhood, that was the glue he needed.
Since joining the Sons, that was what he was building. A new life. With new brothers. A new family.
His family.
Chapter 6
Lexi
The brake lights in front of me were muted by snow. But I was grateful I could still even see them. The snow was coming so thick and fast that I could see nothing else around me. I took a deep breath and consciously loosened my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.
In the past ten minutes I had inched forward a half a mile. There was no way I would be home in time for lunch. But something was preventing me from calling my mother until the very last minute. I didn't want to hear the worry in her voice. I didn't want the martyred sighs and the overall tone of disapproval for me being out in this weather in the first place.
I let out a huge sigh and flicked the radio dial over to KYW. The weather report was deliberately noncommittal. Six inches could fall by the time this was over. Or maybe two feet. They weren't sure, but the loud blaring weather alerts sure made it seem like they were trying. I could practically hear their glee. The first big snowstorm of the season and before Christmas too. It was ratings gold.
When the report was finished without having told me anything useful, I turned the radio back off again and resumed my painfully slow progress down the highway. The slower the traffic moved, the faster my thoughts whirled around me and I suddenly found myself blinking through tears. I felt them roll down my cheeks, swiftly and silently. My mind kept dragging me forcibly back to Sean. And Kurt before him. And Mike before him. All of my attempts. Each guy I had met and thought, this is it. This is how I will move on. This will work and will prove that I am not a curse. Only to prove my instincts had been right all along.
Maybe it was just better off that I stay alone. No girlfriends. No boyfriends. Just me hidden away from everything so I couldn't taint it with my good intentions that inevitably go wrong and hurt the ones I love the most.
My stomach dropped when I saw him, there at the edge of the playground. I realized later that he was only two years older than me, but that first time I saw him he looked like a grown man. I thought I recognized him for a moment, but he must have been a public school kid. He was big and strong looking and I thought I could make out the shadow of hair on his chin, though that could have been a trick of the blinding sun. His blond hair was shaggy and unkempt, falling floppily into his eyes, a grown out version of what even I could tell was a pretty terrible haircut. It looked like he had cut it himself.
He turned slowly when he felt my eyes on him and squinted into the glare. His lip curled into a slight smirk, then he turned back to whatever he was looking at in the bushes.
I watched him closely for what felt like forever. When he didn't make any moves to snatch either my sisters, or me, I dared turn slightly, keeping him in the corner of my eye, and went back to watching Sarah and Mary. Now I knew that I wouldn't be able to play myself. The burden of responsibility weighed heavily on my shoulders.
Every time he moved, I whipped my head around to watch him, but he never moved from the perimeter of the park. He seemed to be deliberately wasting time, moving as slowly as possible.
"Weirdo," I muttered to myself, unconsciously mimicking my father's exasperated tone.
Mary finally got bored of listlessly swinging and gave in to Sarah's shrieks of encouragement, and headed to the slide. The big boy looked at me, a strange expression on his face and moved towards the recently vacated swing set. I moved back instinctively.
He must have seen me react, because that little smirk quirked the side of his cheek again. Then, as quick as a monkey, he scrambled up the side of the swing-set and balanced on the top.
I gasped and clapped my hands over my mouth. I heard Sarah shout in surprise to see him balancing up there like a circus high wire performer. He gave a small jump, bringing his feet under him and slowly let his hands go.
He was trying to stand up. Oh my god.
"Don't do that!" I shrieked. I could see it in my mind's eye. Him tumbling from on high, cracking his head on the hard ground below. The police coming to see his scattered brains on the ground. "Why didn't you stop him?" they would ask me and I wouldn't be able to answer. I would get hauled off to jail and my mom would know we had left the house.
"Please! Get down!" I begged.
"Why?" He turned his shaggy head towards me, squinting into the sunlight again. In spite of my fear I felt a funny little flutter in my tummy. I had heard girls my age talk about buys being cute before, but I had never seen a boy I would say that about myself. With his sandy hair, tanned skin and prematurely manly jaw, I could see him being called cute.
If he got a proper haircut, that is. Boys with long hair were icky.
"Because you're going to get hurt," I admonished him. Some of the fear was draining from me as I watched him balance himself skillfully. I was more fascinated than made any sense.
"No'm not," he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the bar in front of him. He had succeeded in standing completely upright, balanced perfectly on the narrow pole. "Done it a million times before," he continued as he stepped a careful foot forward. I shrieked a little as he wobbled, and he dropped quickly back down to a crouch. A wide grin spread across his face and I found myself laughing in spite of my fear.
"You'll get in trouble." I was still laughing as I said this, which robbed me of some of the authority I was trying to project.
"No I won't." He slid his feet back down and swung his body around so that he was perched sitting up on top of the swing set as comfortably as a bird perched in a tree limb.
"Really?" I was a little shocked to hear this. I wondered about how cool his parents must be to allow him to take risks like this. I was never allowed to do anything or go anywhere cool.
The sudden resentment made me angry. "Sarah!" I whirled on my baby sister as she strayed far across the park. The entrance to the woods was too close. "Get over here!"
My voice must have carried so much threat that even Mary came bounding across the baseball field where she had been wandering, lost in thought.
Just as I feared, three figures emerged from the woods. Two boys and a girl, all older, all much tougher looking than I could ever hope to be. "Sarah!" I called warningly. She finally spotted them and froze in fear..
"What're you doin' here kid?" I heard one of them say to her.
"Leave her alone!" I shouted, urgent with the need to protect my sisters. I was the little mommy. Their safety was my responsibility. "Mary!" We needed to go, now.
"This your kid?" the girl asked me.
I scoffed. "My kid? She's my sister." 'I'm not a tramp,' I continued in my head.
"Get outta here," the taller boy snarled at me. "This is our playground."
I wanted nothing more than to do just that, but I couldn't back down like that in front of my sisters. They looked up to me. "Your playground?" I pretended to look around me. "Where's the sign with your name on it?"
"Right here," the girl said menacingly, holding up her fists."
"We were just p
laying," I protested, keeping an eye on her raised fists as a flutter of fear rippled through me. "We weren't hurting you." This wasn't fair. "You weren't even here until just now."
"Yeah," the taller boy repeated. "We're here now." And he shot his arm out to the side, knocking Sarah right into the dirt.
"Hey!" I shrieked and ran to where she had toppled, shielding her with my body. The bright tears were collecting in her eyes but mercifully she wasn't crying yet, only staring wide-eyed at them in hurt confusion. "Leave her alone."
"You gonna cry?" the other boy taunted Sarah. "Little baby gonna cry?"
"I said stop!" I shrieked. Her shoulders were starting to shake. She was going to start wailing any second now.
The taller boy stood over me and poked me, hard in the shoulder. I over balanced and landed heavily in the dirt, my arms still flung protectively over Sarah.
"Hey!"
All six of us turned when he shouted. He was still up there, up in his perch, watching everything. "Leave them alone." His voice was low, low like a man's, and dripping with some deep anger.
"Whaddya want Casey? You fucking weirdo," the girl taunted.
He didn't respond. Instead he leapt. From high above us, he leaped like a cat, soaring downward like an avenging angel.
Chapter 7
Lexi
An amorphous green blob materialized into an exit sign, waking me from my cherished memories. I squinted and saw it was mine, then looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes had gone by while I inched forward and dreamed.
Fuck. I really needed to call my mom. At least I could tell her I was almost off the highway. She hated it, believed it to be a deathtrap. She preferred to wend her way along the side streets. She preferred even more to have my father drive her everywhere.
With a heavy sigh I grabbed my phone and flipped to her in my contacts list.
She answered before the first ring even finished. "Alexandra?"
"Hi Mom."
She was holding the phone too closely to her mouth and each breath sounded like a small explosion in my ear. "Where are you? Are you okay? Do you need me to send Daddy to come get you?"
"Mom," I was holding up my hands placatingly, even though I was alone in the car. It was a reflex. "I'm fine. Traffic's just bad and I'm being careful."
"You're on your phone while you're driving?"
Oops.
"I'm pulled over on the shoulder," I lied.
"Where are you?" she repeated.
"I'm about to get off onto City Ave."
"You took the Expressway?" the word ended in a small shriek.
"I figured it would be safest because they'd keep it plowed."
She paused, mulling over the truth of my words. "But you're getting off now?"
"Yes." I actually was. The ramp had a sharp curve. I skidded slightly around the bend and pressed my lips together tightly so she wouldn't hear my fright. I heard a muffled voice in the background, a low rumble through the phone. Then scratching sounds as my mother muffled the receiver, but not enough to obscure her words as she answered my dad's demand to know where I was. "She took the expressway, Kevin."
"Rumble rumble."
"I asked her that, she says she she's pulled over."
"Rumble rumble rumble."
"Well I don't know that, now do I?" The scratching sounds sounded louder. "Lexi, your father wants to know why you didn't call us to come get you."
The car fishtailed slightly and the tires spun as I skidded up the hill into Roxborough. I still had the stretch of Henry Avenue to negotiate and I couldn't do that and talk her off a ledge at the same time. "Mom, I promise, I am almost home, can I let you go?"
"Did you hear my question? Your father wants to know...."
"Yes I did mom. Maybe I should have done that, but there's not much we can do about it now, is there?"
"Don't get snotty with me, young lady."
"I'm not getting snotty mom. Please, I'll be home soon."
She sighed her loudest, most long suffering sigh. "All right," she singsonged, letting me know exactly how little she thought of this whole scenario.
"Bye Mom," I held the phone away from my ear and then brought it back quickly. "Love you," I added hastily before stabbing the off button.
The snow was falling too thickly for the plows to keep up with it. Getting up the hill on Ridge Avenue was a nerve-wracking crawl. I tried to stay in the grooves left by the other cars, but the packed down snow was slick and slippery under my tires. I revved my engine over and over again, finally getting to the top through nothing more than sweat and tension. I breathed a sigh of relief at the light at the top of the hill, grateful to be on level ground again.
But my relief was short lived. As I made the left onto Henry Avenue, my car hit a patch of ice. I shrieked as I spun into the oncoming lane, turning halfway around before my tires found purchase again and I shot back into my own lane, narrowly avoiding an overconfident SUV that was traveling way too fast for the conditions.
I would not be telling my mother about that.
My near-miss made me go even slower. As I crawled past the agricultural high school that incongruously sat on the border of Fairmount Park, I instinctively looked for the horses that always grazed in the attached field. It was a special little treat to pass through the dense neighborhood and have it suddenly open up to a field of grazing animals. I had always loved that part of living up here, just at the edge of the city limits.
But today I could barely see past the fence line. It was instinct and nothing more that had me turning down the correct street, the street sign being wholly obscured by the snow. A part of living up here that I did not love was that the city always forgot to plow our neighborhood. The snow was almost up to the grille of my Oldsmobile. As I powered through the undisturbed drifts, I was grateful for how heavy my car was, even if it was an old beater gifted to me by my Grandma as a 'going to college' present before she went into the home.
Driving slowly down my street, I peered through the swirling snows towards number 451. It was still empty. I hoped it always would be. No family could ever be happy within those walls. The poison had permeated them. The place was rotten to the core.
I ripped my eyes away from the shadow that haunted our block and fixed my gaze ahead. Five houses down was my house, ablaze with light. I grinned gratefully to see that my father had already been out with his snowblower. He had serviced it last week and I knew that he would expect me to praise his foresight. As I slid easily into my spot, I threw the car into park and sat back with a sigh. The tension of driving through a storm drained away, only to be replaced with a new type of tension. My heart thumped loudly in my chest, and I had the crawling claustrophobic apprehension that always took hold when I caught sight of my pressure-cooker of a home. I needed to take a few deep breaths before I could go in and face them all.
All four of them.
Sarah, once so bubbly and eager to please, now sunk deep into the grip of teenaged drama. She stalked through the house, silent and sullen, her brown eyes ringed in rebellious raccoon shadow and her flame red hair dyed a murky black.
Mary with her pointed sarcasm. She stood in judgment of us all, convinced she was smarter than everyone. Talking near her was exhausting with her constant nitpicking. She loved to point out what she called "logical fallacies," and pounced on each use of poor grammar like a lion sighting a wounded gazelle.
But they were just my sisters. I could ignore them. It was my parents that twisted the choking tendrils of their love into my heart. For them, love was an obligation. It was not given freely; it had to be earned through good behavior and proclamations of devotion.
My mother hovered over us all, sighing martyred sighs, waiting for her daughters to measure up to the image in her head of how a daughter should treat her mother.
We all fell vastly short.
Her intensity was only matched by my father's scrutiny. Once he got his twenty years in with the Philadelphia Police force, he had retired. It
was the worst thing he could have ever done. Police work gave him something to focus his laser like intensity on. Without the treasured stress of his job, he was now untethered and unhappy, with all that intensity now directed at his daughters.
I loved them.
But they were exhausting.
Duty is duty, I reminded myself. It was something my father had said to us a million times growing up. He had his stock phrases, said so many times they now echoed in my head like they were my own voice. Family first. Rules are there for a reason. This family is not a democracy. Duty is duty.
I stepped out of the car and into the silent, snow swirling world. It was an eerie, muffled place, almost magical. The snow lay over everything like a blanket and the air was surprisingly warm on my face. I listened as hard as I could, but I was unable to make out the usual noises of the neighborhood around me. We were all packed in on each other, able to yell, "bless you," when our neighbor sneezed and have them thank us in return. But tonight there was nothing but snow and silence.
I wished I could stay out here. It gave me a peace I hadn't felt in years. Not since snuggling up into Casey's arms, listening to the sound of his heart thumping strong and steady under my ear. He had found a way to quiet me that no one else had ever achieved. His silence was like that of the snow around me, peaceful and promising.
I swallowed and pushed those thoughts violently from my mind. For a moment I thought the regret would overwhelm me. Five years had done nothing to stem the flood of remorse that threatened to drown me every time my traitorous heart strayed back in time to remember those golden moments before I ruined everything.
The snow lost its magic. I grabbed my bags and trudged heavily across the silent, snow covered lawn. I tramped carefully and deliberately up the porch stairs and took a deep breath before pushing open the door into my too warm, too cluttered, too crowded, too crazy house.
Chapter 8
Lexi
