Decided on the right course, I pick up my phone and dial a number I haven’t called in a while.
My father answers on the first ring. “Hey, son.”
He sounds good. Today is a good day, and I know he doesn’t get many. “Are you busy?”
“Never for you.”
My father may see shadows where there are none, but I never felt unloved. “I’ve got this idea. I’m wondering if you still have any contacts with the Army.”
“I have a few. What do you need?”
“I want to do a food drive for vets.”
This announcement is met with silence. We don’t talk about his time in the military though it’s a shadow in every part of our lives. We’ve gone to the parades, my father dressed in his uniform, wearing every medal he’s earned, but we don’t talk about it.
“When?” is all he says, and it’s hard to breathe for a second.
My father isn’t big on words. He’s an action man. I have no doubt I’ll have a food drive up and going in a matter of weeks. “Dad, thanks.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Someone put a mirror up to my actions and it wasn’t a pretty reflection.”
“A woman?” my father laughs. “Yeah, well, some will do that to you.”
“Where is Mom?”
“She left in a huff earlier. I’m cleaning the house.”
“I’ll call back later and put in a good word for you.”
“Appreciated.”
I end the call, tucking my hand behind my head. I feel…better. The best I’ve felt in a while. I’ve been walking around with a burden, one of my own making. But underneath the contentment is an ache—one with Hayley’s name on it.
CHAPTER 10
HAYLEY
I would like to say my life goes on, and I don’t think about Davis, but he’s in my thoughts all the damn time. But weeks go by and he’s not part of my ritual anymore. I miss him. I mean, I was working when he was in my life. Doing his bidding. I shouldn’t miss changing the sheets of a bed he’s just fucked another woman on. What the hell is wrong with me?
But the simple truth is while I changed those sheets, he’d smirk at me, ask me about my day, and I’d ask him about whatever book he was currently reading. He’d tell me. His voice would wash over me, and for a little while I didn’t feel like a grunt. He made me feel like I mattered.
What’s the saying? You can know a person by how they treat someone who can’t do anything for them? And Davis made me feel like my existence wasn’t just welcomed, but required to make his day better.
It’s a stupid sentiment, and maybe I am too, because every door I open, I hold my breath, wishing this time he’ll be in the room.
He never is.
So I start to dig into local politics more, trying to find other ways to help. In the simplest terms, I’ve been burned from wearing a gray hat. Duke, my attorney (it’s still so strange to say that), has told me to avoid any and all activities that could make the FBI swoop in and own me. Given his clientele, I can take his word at face value. He knows the criminal life or even dipping one’s toes into sketchy dealings. That guy has told me to go on the straight and narrow from here on out.
I listen.
And maybe Davis is just in my every thought because I find myself on a DAV site, they are doing a big food drive and need bodies to pack the boxes. I sign up. I think nothing of it. I’m doing my part in any way I can. I’m used to hard physical work, this won’t be any different.
But fate is a funny thing.
On the day of, I show up in jeans, shirt and my work shoes to the address they sent out. It’s a warehouse where they’ve stockpiled canned foods and boxed items with expiration dates far into the future. Other volunteers crowd outside the big metal sliding doors.
Yet my eyes latch onto the man at the very front. He has a thick neck, thicker biceps and stands in way that’s all too familiar—as though every twitch of muscle is reckless and screams look at me.
My heart jackhammers in my chest because I know that body. I know that careless pose. My suspicions are confirmed as I fight my way to the front. Davis is standing in front, the leader from the way everyone looks to him.
It’s been eons since I’ve seen him, yet there he is with his fingertips gripping the top of the metal door, his smirk on full display as he talks to someone who has the same shade of dirty blond hair. Davis is taller, bulkier and simply more handsome.
The fucker.
I’m torn between completely uncharitable thoughts—how fucking dare he be here? When did he start caring about someone other than himself? Screw him for messing up my first legitimate rebellion.
The other side of me, the side that’s worried and has paced because maybe Duke couldn’t untangle Davis from the FBI. Maybe Davis was in a deep, dark hole where no one could find him until he spilled every secret he knew… That side is relieved.
Either way, I try to be invisible in the crowd of volunteers. I should know better. Davis could always see me. He breaks away from the older man and strolls toward me. My shoes become the most interesting thing to look at.
“Hayley,” he says and my body softens, tightens—fuck every cell in my body remembers him.
“You’re here.” I keep my gaze on the ground. I know he can read my thoughts, the bastard.
“I didn’t expect you.”
I sigh and meet his gaze. “I can say the same.”
His gaze is eating me up in slow degrees. “Yeah, I knew someone who kind of inspired me.” There’s a pause. “That’s my dad, over there. I don’t think I’ve seen him smile this much ever.”
I glare at him. He’s not supposed to be this guy. He’s supposed to be the selfish former escort who thinks of no one but himself. He’s not supposed to be here.
“I’m happy to hear that.” I shove my hands into my pockets. “I was trolling for local shit and found this. I figured I could lend a hand.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
It doesn’t need to be spelled out. He’s asking me if I’m still wearing my gray hat. “Being here for something official and above board is all I can really do.”
“I’m sorry.” He’s silent for a moment. “No. I’m not. I’m happy to see shit like this matters to you. It means I wasn’t wrong.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t wrong to think any way I could help was better than nothing.”
I take in the people around me. It’s about fifty of them. Some are wearing jackets that show support for vets, some actually are vets. My gaze goes to the man that had been talking to Davis. It’s more than a similar build. They have the same blue-green eyes, the same pattern of laugh lines around their mouths.
“I shouldn’t take all the credit,” he says. “I’m not trying to. My dad helped.”
That’s when it hits me. Davis put this whole thing together. He’s not just a volunteer who brought along his father. We’re the reason why there is a need for volunteers. It’s safe to say I’m stunned. Not that he’s capable of this level of planning, but that he would put something like this together.
This is better than any apology he could have uttered. So much better than flowers, or gifts. He couldn’t have known I would trip up on this food drive and he did it anyway. He did this because it mattered to him. I wasn’t invisible to him. He saw me and what I was doing. He wanted to make a difference because of it.
I swallow and think about all the things I want to say to him, everything I want to ask him. My future is still some malformed thing. If my luck holds I’ll be teaching impressionable teens what it means to be a citizen.
But what I know for sure is that I want Davis to be a part of it. It doesn’t take courage to ask, “Can I kiss you right now?”
He grins at me. “Yes.”
I laugh, my heart light for the first time in weeks. “I’ve given you the cold shoulder for weeks and you don’t even hesitate at my question.”
He steps forward, cur
ling his hand on my nape. “For weeks I’ve missed you. There’s been no one to ask me about the books I’ve read. There’s been…no one I can be myself with.”
“Your dad,” I say, taking a shot in the dark.
He smirks and my heart melts. “He’s not you, Hayley. There’s only one you.”
I lift my chin. He kisses me. It’s faint, but potent. I swoon a little, but he’s there to catch me when I do. I don’t know everything that will happen with us in the future. I only know two things: secrets won’t be the end of us. We’ll rebel together.
BIO
DAKOTA GRAY IS the author of the Filth series. She’s a longtime romance reader and she’s not ashamed to fangirl over heroes with dirty mouths, dirtier minds and a soft heart.
Gray writes the heroes you shouldn’t take home to mom, sassy heroines and sigh-worthy happily ever afters.
You find her website HERE. You can LIKE her Facebook page or follower her on TWITTER.
For updates or sneak peeks on new releases you can subscribe to her newsletter.
Last but not least, if you liked DEEP THROAT, you might also enjoy PERV.
ALSO BY DAKOTA GRAY
PERV
HARDCORE
RESISTANCE
AMY JO COUSINS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
All Kaz Shamsi wanted to do was get his college students to and from the DC protest without losing any of them. Getting caught up in the fringes of anarchist violence was not on the agenda. Neither was a motorcycle escape, messing around with a bandanna-masked antifa protestor, or figuring out that guy was one of the students he was supposed to be chaperoning.
Now he's got a ten-hour bus ride back to campus ahead of him, with a stupidly cute student who makes terrible decisions trying to talk Kaz into making one more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One of the things it’s easy to forget sometimes is that no group of people is homogenous, with everyone agreeing one hundred percent of the time on the right way to do things. Even as we protest together, I might have very different ideas of the right way to do that from the person standing next to me. And in my case, my own ideas often evolve over time, requiring a lot of reading and thinking and learning from wiser, more experienced folks before they solidify. Resistance is the result of a lot of unfinished mental debate on my part, mixed with my eternal fondness for awkward, earnest people groping (no pun intended . . . okay, maybe a little pun intended) their way toward a connection.
For H., who taught me everything I know about expat communities abroad, growing up far from home, and being a shining light of commitment to the ideals, no matter how tarnished by history, of an adopted country. You’re my hero.
CHAPTER 1
T hirty seconds before the fascists tried to run him down, Kaz was congratulating himself on having successfully made it through the entire protest without having had to steel himself to face one of the hundreds of Port-A-Potties that lined the National Mall.
He was willing to go to the mat for immigrant rights, especially since he was an immigrant and those rights being curtailed by the current administration directly threatened his ability to stay in the US or to visit his family freely. Or to walk down the street with brown skin and not worry about getting picked up and tossed in a holding cell by ICE for a month before someone would believe his claim to documented immigration status. But every activist had his or her limits, and Port-A-Potties were Kaz’s.
The Eastern Seaboard would have to be literally on fire before he’d set foot in a rent-a-toilet.
Hell, give it another couple of months and it probably will be, the way this mess is going.
He’d lost half of his students in the crowd, which was fine. They were grownups and he was more of a general coordinator than a Carlisle College chaperone for this DC trip. Although he’d helped run college-sponsored events before, this trip had come about after a classroom discussion session about Persepolis, gender, and democracy veered wildly off course into current immigration politics under the newly elected government. The student Kaz most loved to loathe—the guy was sullen and angry and intelligent and hot, a fact Kaz had firmly ignored since the first day of class—had suggested pooling their funds to rent a bus to take them to DC for the immigrants’ rights rally, only approaching Kaz a week later when the students learned they were all too young to contract with the motor coach company. Despite being, as always, swamped with his own work, including grading the never-ending river of essays from the courses he TA’d, Kaz had agreed, committing solely to hiring the bus and passing out handouts full of contact info and bus departure times as the extent of his responsibilities. If they couldn’t get their asses back to the rendezvous point on time, there was always the MegaBus.
Their hired coach was parked back in Silver Spring, Maryland, where half of DC workers lived, it seemed. The driver had recommended they not even try to deal with the traffic and crowds closer to DC when everyone could get a day pass for the metro instead and then walk to the Mall from Metro Center. Kaz had waved the horde of students off to the train at dawn when they’d arrived, and then had texted a friend who’d offered to let him borrow the little Honda Rebel 500 they used as a city motorcycle. Fifteen minutes later, Jesse rolled up in their pajamas and flip flops, their girlfriend following in her car to give them a ride home.
“I promise I haven’t forgotten how to treat your baby,” he said, trading a hexagonal white cardboard box for Jesse’s key fob while Jesse yawned and scrubbed a hand through short, shocking teal hair.
“Yay! And no worries. I trust you,” they said with a smile, tugging at the hem of their Steven Universe T-shirt. “Plus, I’ve got your mom’s email.”
Kaz let his eyes widen comically. “No need to break out the big guns.”
“You know she loves me,” Jesse said and hugged him.
“More than me some days!” An inside joke dating back to their years together at the international high school they’d attended in The Hague, when Jesse’s tutoring had saved Kaz from a GPA-destroying grade in Mathematics. All the diplomats’ kids ended up in same few schools.
Jesse had saved his GPA and Kaz had gone with Jesse for emotional support when Jesse had come out to their parents as nonbinary shortly before graduation. There’d been years since when they’d lived thousands of miles apart, but they both always made sure to stay in touch. He’d gotten a ration of shit when he’d emailed to ask about borrowing the Honda, since he hadn’t been down to visit in months, but a promise to return for a non-protest-based weekend soon had kept Jesse’s guilt-tripping to a minimum. The loan of the motorcycle had never really been in question. That’s what one of his precious boxes of stroopwafels, the caramel-stuffed waffle pastries shipped direct from the Netherlands by his mom, had guaranteed.
“Have fun at the protest!” Jesse called before turning to jog to the car idling behind the coach. They didn’t do large crowds, but put in countless hours on the phones and writing letters and postcards.
Hours later, Kaz was oozing satisfaction with his transportation choices, watching crowds back up at every subway entrance he passed on his walk from the Mall to where he’d found parking for the motorcycle. Spotting the guy offering space in his alley near A Street and Seventh Street SE for fifty bucks had been a stroke of luck. He’d been more than happy to cough up the cash to be able to stash the bike on Capitol Hill.
As he headed up East Capitol Street NE, Kaz passed a mini-riot breaking out in front of the Supreme Court Historical Society, which pissed him off because the Supreme Court was practically his holy ground. But the Capitol Police were already on the scene and, with any luck, they’d have everything under control before a news crew showed up and blasted footage that would suck up all the airtime belonging to their whole day of peaceful protests.
“Frigging anarchists,” he muttered under his breath and picked up the pace, ducking down 3rd Street SE behind the Folger Shakespeare Library so he could get off the main drag. He was cutting over to A Street and avoiding
the chaos on Capitol. Especially if the black-clad rioters, most of whom he was sure would turn out to be paid by Breitbart to make the legitimate protestors look bad, were throwing bricks through windows and busting shit up.
In the alley again, he unlocked Jesse’s black, retro helmet from the license plate mount, slipped it on, and inserted the key into the ignition. He’d killed the hours since the protest ended at his favorite bookstore in Dupont Circle, doing his best to resist overloading his backpack. But Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death really had to be scooped up when he found it priced as if no one had noticed the hardcover volume was a first edition. He already owned a copy, both because he was a fan and because he’d taught it previously as a TA for a course on Science Fiction of the African Diaspora, but a second copy couldn’t hurt. Talking himself out adding a half dozen books to the pile had taken ages. The worst of the traffic leaving the metro area should definitely have cleared. He’d make it back to the bus with an hour or two to spare before their scheduled departure time. Long enough to grab a sandwich with Jesse and their girl maybe, even.
The sound of heavy footsteps slamming into the pavement broke into his mental planning. Kaz turned his head to see who was running and why right as a skinny figure burst around the corner, high-knee sprinting like a lion was on its ass.
Whaaa?
Waving one hand at him frantically—Go! Go! Fucking go!—the runner bore down on him startlingly fast, black boots slapping on the herringboned brick. A hot pink bandanna covered their face from the eyes down, the black hood pulled low over their forehead matching all-black clothes.
Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series) Page 12
