Fat lot of good that did, I thought.
But I hadn’t even had the chance to give it to Jace, had I? We’d both slipped off into our own little protective corners—pride and defensiveness getting in the way of logic and reason—and we’d said and done things we hadn’t meant to.
Or, at least, I had.
I wanted to believe that Jace was feeling the same sort of regret that I was.
“Pride has no business in matters of the heart.”
I felt like I’d heard that somewhere before—perhaps read it in one of the many books that Candy was always teasing me for burying myself in on my Kindle—and, though I couldn’t place the source, I still felt like it was one of the world’s only great truths.
Eying the crow keychain again, I closed my hand around it and gave it a silent promise that I wouldn’t do anything stupid with it until I got back home.
Home.
Assuming I could call it that anymore.
NO! I mentally stopped the whole clockwork process from spiraling me out then and there. Setting the keychain back in my purse, I patted my pocket where Candy’s letter still lay, folded and brilliant, and reminded myself to have faith.
“‘retarded for each other,’” I repeated, giggling at my friend’s awful-yet-wonderful choice of wording.
Leave it to Candy to be so politically incorrect and, at the same time, so gloriously brilliant.
****
Alright. Retail therapy. Let’s get shopping.
That’s how it had started…
I’d spent nearly three hours walking through different shops, buying small things here-and-there. The previous day I’d been nervous about how little money I had, and now I was dropping dollars I’d felt certain I’d never be able to part with. What had started as a self-assured session of window-shopping and maybe—MAYBE!—a trinket here or a knick-knack there quickly became something else entirely. While I hadn’t thought I had made too many purchases, the new heft I was carrying begged to differ. I knew I shouldn’t be spending too much of the money I had saved up, but I couldn’t deny that I did feel better for it. And wasn’t that what mattered?
Retail therapy.
“Retail therapy.”
Somewhere out there was a marketing consultant rolling on millions of dollars, laughing like a madman and likely rolling in hookers that would have made Candy and me look like bargain outlet whores by comparison. And, through his caviar-and-champagne days and into his cocaine-and-pussy filled nights, he owed it all to two little words that now had me spending money I likely didn’t have to spend:
“Retail-fucking-therapy,” I muttered to myself.
“What’s that, Miss?” a cashier asked, their hand still outstretched to accept the bills that still occupied mine.
“Nothing,” I said, and then I paid them.
I hadn’t been able to shop this way in so long, not since I’d begun to work for T-Built. If I’d made purchases like these while working for the Carrion crew, they would’ve instantly thought I was stealing from them and I’d be severely punished. But now I was free, right?
But freedom wasn’t free. It was covered in dollar signs and, in this case, acted as bits of patchwork for a broken heart.
But if it worked then…
I paused in mid-step as I worked my way away from the store; began looking around before I even realized why. The feeling of being watched had returned. I frowned, knowing that I wouldn’t be free as long as the Carrion Crew was out there; as long as Mack was still out there. Then, considering this, I blanched—nearly had a wave of sickness barrel into me and knock me off my feet—and realized that I was out on the streets, alone, and uncertain if I even had ties with the Crows any longer. No. No, Jace might be mad at me, but he’d never go so far as to let me…
But was it fair of me to just expect Jace, no matter what, to be there to rescue me?
Wasn’t that, at least in part, what had been bothering him the night before?
I began to look around my shoulders, seeing if I could spot anyone watching me.
Come on, Mia. You’re just being paranoid.
That’s when I spotted him.
Mack.
Standing in the middle of the mall, just watching me. He smirked knowingly, almost as if he’d been waiting for me to spot him. I realized with no real surprise that this was likely exactly the case. A part of me screamed to run, to just get out of there and pretend that I hadn’t seen him. But we both knew that I had seen him, and if I ran now I’d be handing him an advantage—I’d be telling him I was afraid of him, and I’d be giving him a reason to follow. Besides, I’d spent enough time… how had he put it? “Playing victim.”
Squaring my shoulders, I forced myself to walk toward him. A brief flash of surprise moved across his face before returning to that smug grin. A part of me wondered if it had just been a trick of the light, but I knew better. He hadn’t expected me to just go to him. He had expected me to run; had wanted me to run.
“You seem surprised?” I taunted once I was close enough to call out to him without shouting.
“You spend your entire life watching a dog—a bitch—cower and piss on herself when another dog walks into the room,” he said with a dismissive shrug, “and you’ll realize your breath catches the day it finally doesn’t happen.”
“I’m to assume that I’m the bitch in that scenario?” I asked.
Another shrug. It occurred to me in that instant that men were very shrug-happy creatures, and I wondered what made them so noncommittal by nature. “Seems an appropriate comparison across the board, wouldn’t you say?” Mack rebutted.
“You seem real quick to throw my fears back in my face when it was you who locked me in the basement with a dead woman?” I shot, not even bothering to hide the scorn I still felt towards him from that night.
“First off: I didn’t know there was a dead body down there. Nobody did,” he began. “And, secondly: you should be thanking me for that. You were the one that asked for my help in the first place, and let’s not forget that, after that night, you became the talk of the town. For how many weeks did Missus Ornaly bring you a plate of cookies? And wasn’t it the talk of the town that got Billy Roberge to finally notice you and ask you out? And what about all the teachers who basically let you slide through the rest of the school year? Tell me, Mia, did you actually have to do anything that year? Even I took over all your chores!”
“Because Mom made you,” I reminded him. “It’s called being grounded, and it’s what asshole teens get when they sneak out of the house with their little sister to break into an abandoned house in the middle of the night.”
“Uh-huh. Still playing the ‘big bro should’ve been the grown-up’-card, I see.”
I scoffed at that. “I think you proved in that statement that you should have been, big bro!”
He scowled at me. “My dear little sister, Mia Chobavich: the tortured hero. You’ve never been happier than whenever you could complain about your life and point the blame on somebody else. Still a fucking little kid. You’re welcome for always having a target to aim that pristine finger at, by the way.”
“Even after all these years,” I mocked, “and grounding still doesn’t work. Didn’t prison teach you anything?”
“Yeah: not to trust a man who squares his feet behind you. I see your time on the streets taught you the complete opposite, whore!”
“Fuck you, Jace,” I spat. “I don’t know why I ever sat around and waited for you to be a brother; you can’t even learn how to be a decent human being. You’re sick! You’re fucking sick in the head for thinking I was ever happy with the way things were, that I ever could be happy after what happened to me. And rather than spend one damned second trying to understand what it must have been like for me, you just went on being a whiny, arrogant little shit; always making it somebody else’s fault when your own bullshit came raining down on you. Even now, Mack, you’re trying to blame me for everything when I was willing to… to do all tha
t just to keep you alive!” I spat, literally this time, at his feet. “And now that you’re out you can’t leave me alone; can’t stop trying to convince others that their lives are as ugly and miserable as…” I stopped, eyes widening.
Mack was here, twisting my mind up with his words all over again.
He’d never left after that first day. He’d been here this whole time. Even after Jace had…
Jace…
“… trying to convince others that their lives are as ugly and miserable…”
“You son-of-a-bitch…” I muttered.
I knew I’d known.
I knew I’d known why Jace was acting so weird. I hadn’t wanted to fit the pieces together, but they’d been there all the same.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” I repeated.
Mack only grinned, seeming to know where my thoughts had gone. “Where’s lover-boy?” he asked with a heavy splash of acid in his tone and offering me that oily smile that creeped the hell out of me. “He getting cold feet or something? I can’t really blame him. Considering the sort of person he was married to before. No offense or anything, but you’re something of a downgrade.”
I was shaking with rage, reminding myself over and over again that there was no way he knew as much as he was letting on. All he’d have to know was that Jace had been married, that she’d died since then, and that’d be enough to say everything he was saying. He only had to know me—and, damn him, he did—to know how to use that against me. They were just words—only words!—but, fuck, Mack knew how to weaponize words.
All talk, I reminded myself over and over again. He’s just all talk. That’s all he’s ever been.
“I can’t really expect him to stick with you after the life he’d known before. Beautiful wife like that—family on the way and all—and you thought he’d settle for… well, a whore?”
“If he was here to hear you call me that,” I said through clenched teeth.
Mack chuckled. “If he was here to hear me call you that then he’d probably agree with me, sis. Hell, I called you a ‘whore’ plenty of times the other day when I caught up with him, and”—he held his arms out in a “look at me now”-gesture—“I’m still standing, aren’t I? None the worse for wear, because he didn’t lay a fucking finger on me, Mia. That tell you anything?”
“And what the fuck did you have to talk to him about?” I demanded.
Another shrug. “Same as you, I imagine,” he answered. “I wanted to know if he could help keep me safe from the Crew. Granted, I didn’t offer to suck his dick or let him ride me like a trick pony, but that’s the difference between you and me—I have class and you’re a cheap slut. What I’m offering him is information on the Crew, though, which is admittedly more valuable than anything you’ve got left to offer, which is, of course, why he doesn’t need you anymore.”
My breath caught at that. “Doesn’t…” I tried to say it snidely, but the word lurched and got stuck in my throat.
Mack laughed and nodded. “Of course. He was after T-Built, after all. The man did organize the attack on his home that got his pregnant wife killed. Jason had been on his heels for some time after that, gathering all sorts of information. Hell, Jason Presley was practically a stalker! Why the fuck else would he want to serenade a whore? Because she wasn’t just any whore; she was one of T-Built’s whores! A whore with all the makings to be a good little traitor to the cause, right? So he flashes a pretty grin, let’s you smear your jizz-soaked cunt all over his plush chopper’s seat, and buys you a few shiny-shinies, and…” he clapped his hands, “the door’s to his endgame pop open like a drugged-up Jack-in-the-Box! A bang-bang passes, a whore’s apartment burns to the ground, and all that’s left is to sweep up the ashes and move on with his life. So…” Mack grinned, let his eyes linger a moment on my now-heaving chest, and let himself fall into a casual lean against the wall behind him, “Did Jason Presley sweep you out his door then?”
“He’s done nothing of the sort,” I said, using every brick at my disposal to build up a wall of defense and hold back the tears. No matter what—even if every word he said was true—I could not let him see that he’d gotten to me. “H-he’s just busy today.”
Mack’s grin widened. “Oh, is ‘h-he’ now?” he asked, taunting me.
“Fuck off, Mack,” I growled. “If I catch you watching me again, you will regret it.”
“No,” he said, his eyes growing serious and cold with dark intent. “You’re going to be the one who regrets this, Mia. Now it’s just a question of how much you’re going to regret it. And, being the caring sibling that I am, I’m gonna give you a choice, and I suggest you think it over before you answer. If you come with me now, I can maybe—just maybe—talk Papa Raven into going easy on you. I’ll even vouch that none of this was your idea, that Jace orchestrated the whole thing—practically kidnapped you—so that he could get to T-Built. Given everything, I’d even say that’s not exactly a lie. You come with me, go along with that story—tell the big man how sorry you are for all the inconvenience you’ve caused him—and maybe we can both get through this without being dead by tomorrow!”
“And if I don’t?” I challenged.
“Then we’ll both almost certainly be dead by tomorrow. Or, if not then, then at least eventually. We’re really only gambling with our lives with every wasted moment,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Then good luck to you,” I said, turning away from him and calling back, “If I gotta die to know that you finally had to pay your own debts then at least I can die with a sense of justice to the universe.”
It honestly took every shred of willpower I had within me not to buckle in that instant, but—god-fucking-damn!—I actually pulled it off!
Please, I pleaded to that same universe I’d just referenced to my brother, Please don’t let any of what he said be true…
Please!
TEN
~JACE~
As I headed towards the shop, I tried desperately not to think of Mia. This was to say that I tried desperately not to think of how badly I’d fucked up with Mia; that I tried desperately not to think about how unlikely it was that things could be made right. In short: I was trying desperately not to think about how I’d basically thrown away my only chance at a second chance.
I leaned into a turn, probably taking it a bit more on the suicidal side than was totally necessary and cringed as a sharp pain stabbed into and worked its way up from my lower back. By the time I finally leveled out, my entire back felt like everything was twisted and yanked to the left. They might have been made for “eternal rest,” but cemetery floors were just about the last thing one should be spending their nights sleeping on.
Rather than just ignoring the pain, I outright reveled in it, throwing myself into another turn—an extra one this time around—that would force me to take several others just to get back on route. I figured I was beyond the point of penance, but I wanted that hurt to follow me—wished I could dredge up more, in fact.
Maybe if I really put a suicidal lean into things…
None of that.
I ignored the voice of Logic, cranked the throttle, slammed the foot break, and leaned so far into a turn that I was certain I’d rip my ear off across the concrete.
Is this what you want none of? I thought bitterly in at myself, ‘Cuz I think this is exactly what I need!
My grip slipped on the clutch, lurched me about the road—earning curses and honks from rightfully irritated motorists—and I (barely) regained control before throwing myself into the next of the unnecessary (and unnecessarily suicidal) turns.
I hooked the turn wide, nearly bringing myself right into the grill of a semi, fishtailed into another near head-on, yanked the bike upright beneath me, and finally got the bitch under control in time to run a red light and slip between a Toyota and a douchebag in a Miata who was too busy tailgating to see me coming. Miata-man came to a screeching halt, likely conjuring all manner of angry words for my rapidly vanishing rear-end, and Toyo
ta-boy was likely thanking Jesus-or-whoever for the leather-clad guardian angel who’d gotten the d-bag off his butt.
At the end of the day it was all about perspective, wasn’t it?
A villain to one and a hero to the other. So what was I? What was Jason Presley in the eye of all that was and would be?
“Well, Jace,” I muttered to myself, “since the only eyes you give a damn about are the blue ones you left in tears last night, maybe that’s all the answer you need.”
Deciding I was right, I threw myself into another suicidal lean, this time actually crying out at the deliciously wicked spasm of pain that racked my entire body.
Yup, I had thoroughly fucked up my back.
Hope you crippled yourself, you vile shit-fuck, I condemned myself, replaying the last words I’d said to Mia. Now finish the job! Finish it! FINISH IT!
“FINISH IT!” I roared aloud, throwing myself into the last turn and…
Pulling out of it clean and pretty.
“Motherfuck…” I whimpered, feeling like a hundred fishhooks were tearing at the meat of my back.
****
During the last stretch before arriving to Danny’s shop, I went from going a respectable eighty miles-per-hour to over one-hundred-and-twenty.
“This how you gonna do it, Jace?” I asked myself, hunkering down and watching the familiar building grow at a dizzying rate. “Just steer yourself towards the shop, close your eyes, and never, ever open them again? Nothing like making an appearance directly into a steel gate doing over a hundred to really make a last impression. This how you gonna do it, Jace?” I repeated, already beginning to slow down; actually going so far as to signal the turn. “This how you gonna do it?”
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