by K. S. Adkins
Blinking at his departure, I didn’t even have time to kick it around because Rio was there to distract me. “Our boy has it bad for you Junior,” he says, winking at me before taking a seat. “Doesn’t surprise me, I mean, you’re the shit, but I’m shocked you’re into him too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You usually go for the safe ones,” he says, putting his size twelves on my desk.
“Yeah well,” I say shrugging, “I decided to go for emotionally unavailable to see what the fuss was about.”
“You went for the safe ones because it’s what Senior wanted,” he points out. “Glad to see you thinking for yourself again.”
“Excuse me?” I argue. “Care to explain that?”
“Later. I need to talk to you about something else first,” he says looking far too serious.
“It’s just us here. If you have something to say, spit it out, Rio.”
And for the next hour with a heavy heart, I listened to everything he had to say. Instead of asking questions, I offered silence. Listening to him serve me this pathetically rehearsed speech made me sick to my stomach. When he asked me for my decision, I asked him to leave. The betrayal I felt was both emotionally and physically painful. Rio didn’t want to have the talk with me, Loyal convinced him to do it. He didn’t say that, but he didn’t need to either.
I knew.
Senior didn’t raise me to walk away from a fight and Rio is always the first one to a fight. We always had each other’s backs, always. Betting wasn’t just a career it was a part of me and if anyone understood that it was him. For the first time ever, Rio didn’t have my back and I couldn’t believe it.
I also couldn’t believe the first guy I actually fell for would turn my own best friend against me. I couldn’t believe the guy I fell for would fuck me over like this at all. That’s when I knew that the guy I fell for, didn’t fall back.
I was the only one who fell, right on my fucking face.
‘The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you're trying to accomplish.’
~Michael Porter
I was leaving the shop when Rion sends me a text asking to meet her at the bar around the corner for drinks. Stopping at the gas station to top off her tank, I also grab the flowers someone stuffed in a bucket and were selling for $6.99 too. It wasn’t much but it was something and flowers seemed like a good idea. I hadn’t heard back from Rio but I figured no news was good news. Rion was a reasonable person, she’d understand. Pulling up to the bar, I park around back and head in. When I don’t see her right away I panic but then she stands up waving me over from a booth in the back and I could breathe again.
Leaning in and kissing her on the mouth, I don’t read too much into it when she doesn’t kiss me back like she usually does. I figured I had probably caught her off guard. My therapist says public displays of affection when done properly would make her happy. Handing her the flowers she looks at them then back at me and doesn’t look happy.
Setting them down on the table she slams her beer and signals the server for another one. “Want anything?” she asks me casually.
“Beer’s fine,” I tell her, wondering what has her upset.
“We need to talk, Loyal,” she says, taking her next beer and slamming that one too. “Actually I need to talk, and for once you need to listen.”
Not saying a word or making a play for my own beer, she puts her elbows on the table and it’s her eyes that stop me cold. “I’m happy you’re seeing a therapist. You’ve made some real progress and I’m proud of you for that. But when it comes to using your past as a shield against me, it isn’t brave, it’s the biggest act of cowardice there is. You have a shitty past, who doesn’t? You aren’t the only one in the world who’s been fucked. It isn’t god punishing you, or Jill, for that matter. It’s you punishing yourself.”
“Rion,” I start, but she slams her fist down on the table and growls at me.
“Let me finish. You won’t let me touch you while I lay there and allow you to use me. Because that’s what you’re doing, using me. You don’t see me because you can’t see past you. When you close your eyes, you see her, you see the enemy and when you open them and realize there isn’t one, you lash out at me. You need closure and I can’t be the one that gives it to you, Loyal because I’m not the source of your pain. Maybe someday you’ll take what I’ve said and see that I loved you unconditionally knowing I’d never be loved in return but, did it anyway because I believed in you that much.”
“Rion please---”
“I can’t continue to give you second chances and have them thrown in my face. I can’t continue to let you hurt me because it takes the pain from your open wounds and applies them to mine. I’ve had enough pain in this lifetime, fuck you very much. I choose to wait for someone who will not only love me for me, but who wouldn’t fuck me over without a second thought. I would have waited forever for you to love me back, but you did the unforgivable. You tried turning the only family I have left against me. That isn’t love, that’s fucking pathetic.”
“I---”
“Had you let me in even just a little, I would have healed you. I would have done anything for you! This is how you repay my love? Fuck you! That business is my god damn life! It’s who I am, it’s why I get up in the morning. It’s all I have left of him. What I do is not different than what a bartender does or what a pharmacist does or what you did when the government handed you an M14. I do what I love and I’m good at it, it’s my fucking passion. You’d take what I love away from me? You actually think I’d let you? A man who doesn’t love himself? A man who can’t love me back? I can forgive just about anything, except betrayal.”
Speechless, I watch as she stands up, throws an envelope at me and cash on the table. Leaning forward she whispers “You’re fired, Loyal.” Then walks out of the bar, out of my life, leaving the flowers I bought her dangling off the table. Several hours later, I pull into the garage to leave her car with her keys inside it and call Rio for a lift.
I wish I had the nerve to go up there and explain, but I don’t. When it came to her, I had no nerve at all. Now when it came to her, I had nothing.
‘If something happens to me, don’t you ever let harm find her, son. You’ve seen the shit side of life; she still believes people are good. Make sure she never knows any different.”
~Senior Reynolds
Leaving Loyal an utter mess on my couch, I grab my keys to head over to Junior’s to try and at least explain his reasoning behind the perceived betrayal. Whether she likes it or not, what he says makes sense, but she’s too fucking stubborn to see it.
Just like Senior.
Using my key I let myself in, when I don’t see her, I grab my other key and walk down the hall to his place. She was hurting so this is where she’d be. When she was hurt or sad she was always at his side. She loved Senior with her whole heart. My own heart broke when I saw her Indian style on the floor with memories of her life with him spread all around her. Watching her for a moment, I try to see this from her side and anyone with eyes could see she was ass over elbows for Loyal. Yeah, we went about this all sorts of wrong, but that’s life, you fuck up. The second she found out Senior was sick she spent every second here, taking care of him, bossing him around and in the end, holding him when he passed on. Hell, the day of his funeral she spoke to everyone who attended, then grabbed her bag and went to work to keep the business going. I’d never met anyone with a passion for betting like Senior until I watched her work.
Rion is feisty, had to be raised like she was. She was a bad ass when provoked, but she’s also tender-hearted. That girl only went to college and kicked ass there to make the old man happy. She didn’t want a degree. She wanted to be here in the trenches with him. He wanted her to be more and she was, because he asked. Senior was the father I never had and both of them saved my sorry ass when the system wanted to lock it away. Over the years I’ve busted my ass staying straight. Along with
their help, I managed it. Junior sees the good in people just like her old man did. No doubt she saw the good in Loyal and only thinking of her best interest, I betrayed her, thinking he made sense. The two men in her life she trusted, fucked her over. I can’t blame her for seeing it that way, but even knowing I hurt her, I still think it’s best.
If she’s anything, she’s forgiving.
Hearing her sniffle hurts. Junior doesn’t cry. Yell or hit you maybe, but she’s not a crier. Never was. The little firecracker could also hold her liquor. At least she could before this shit happened.
“You drunk yet, Junior?”
“Getting there,” she says, thumbing through photos with a bottle between her legs. “Remember this?”
Sitting down next to her I’m reminded of how small she is. Yeah she can take care of herself, but someone wants to take her. As in away from us. This was a whole new ball game. This was also Loyal’s specialty, not mine. My specialty was of the snatch and grab variety, not personal protection.
I look down at the photo of her and I down at the riverfront watching the fireworks, I think she had to be sixteen to my twenty then. I had just avoided prison time and they took me out to watch the show and celebrate my second chance.
“Yeah, I remember this,” I tell her quietly. “This was my second chance.”
“Don’t,” she whispers closing her eyes. “I’m out of second chances with him, Rio.”
“Yeah? What about me? Am I out too?”
“You hurt me,” she says reaching for another picture. “But we have history, it’s different.”
“So you can forgive me because of history, but you can’t forgive the guy you love?”
“Low,” she mumbles. “Real low.”
“Real low is the dude on my couch kicking his own ass right now, Junior. He told me some of the shit you said, not all of it. He did what he did to protect you. You said what you said to gut him. That ain’t the girl Senior raised and she sure ain’t the Junior I know.”
When she stays silent, I reach for another memory then hand it to her. “You could have this with him you know. This is your second chance too. You lost the first man you loved, you sure you wanna lose the second? God took Senior. You threw Loyal away. You don’t fix that, he’s gone. Told you I wanted to get you fixed up. Maybe you should consider that you two could fix each other. All these years you lived for Senior. When are you gonna start living for you?”
When her head drops, I set the photo down, kiss her on the top of her head then head back to my place. This is why I don’t settle down. I’ve only loved one woman and knew from the get, she deserved better than me. From day one, I was warned she was off limits. Plus I’m not cut out for hearts and flowers.
But she is.
And so is Loyal, he just doesn’t know it yet.
I’ve watched men come and go. Not one ever held her heart, so I never had cause to worry. Yeah she was off limits, but I always held out hope that she’d wake up one day and choose me despite what Senior would say. Now he’s gone and she still doesn’t see it. Then the Marine showed up. Now here’s the one guy she should run from but doesn’t. Hell, had I known she was into men with serious issues I would have stepped up a long time ago.
Loyal though, he’s under her skin and for the first time ever, I knew the time was coming where I wouldn’t be that guy for her. The one she came to for everything.
That alone killed me.
I was going to have to let Rion go for good.
‘The day I met your mother was the day I lost my free will. There wasn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t do for her. The day she left this world, she gave me the best gift a wife could give her husband. She gave me you, Junior. Before she passed she put her hand over your tiny chest and said, ‘she has a good heart, you protect it until the right man comes along.’ You got a lot of me in you but that heart beat is all her.’
~Senior
I was utterly ashamed of myself. Rio was right, Senior wouldn’t be proud of this, of me. Maybe I was validated in my anger but I could have come up with six different ways to deliver it that didn’t result in crushing us both in the process. I used his intimacy issues against him and that was wrong on so many levels I could hardly breathe with the knowledge that I actually said it. I never thought I was capable of that kind of cruelty and to know that I was cut me down deep. Yes, the lack of intimacy bothered me, but it was the betrayal that gutted me. I saw an opportunity to hurt him back in kind and I took it.
Senior said love wasn’t reasonable. That just when you thought you had a grasp on it, it knocked you flat on your ass. He also said it made you say things, do things and be things you never thought possible. I’m guessing he meant both good and bad.
Grabbing my phone, I send a text hoping that he was willing to give me a second chance too but knowing that maybe I didn’t deserve one, that maybe I pushed him too far. Not knowing what else to say I type in “Come home” and hit send. Leaving everything out for tomorrow, I lock up at his place heading toward my own. Senior’s place was exactly twelve steps from mine. Reaching for my key, I see a note taped to my door and start shaking wondering if this was Loyal’s goodbye and praying that it wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
A gift for a gift, that’s what you are. In the beginning I was conflicted. How is one gifted with another? When she’s lived her life thinking she’s free, but never was, never would be. Forces beyond your control sealed our fates and I for one have embraced my good fortune. In time, you will too.
You won’t have a choice.
After all, a gift has no say to whom she’s given to and you Rion, are my gift.
A bet is a bet.
On the back of the note was a photocopied picture of me at the bar waiting for Loyal. How long I stood there in total shock, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t even begin to process what the fuck I just read. A gift? What fucking gift? I’m the gift? How did anyone even get in here? What the fuck was happening? When I hear footsteps my paranoia goes into overdrive and I reach for my 9mm on my right side aiming it at whoever turns that corner. When I see it’s Loyal, I drop my arm and burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” he says, wrapping his body around mine. “So fucking sorry.” At that moment I realized not only was I crying out of fear, I was crying because he came back.
Squeezing him tight and trying to speak through my hysteria, I’m reminded of why I don’t cry. I’m a hot ass mess when I cry. “No, I’m sorry,” I manage. “You were trying and I fucked it up. I’m a horrible person.”
Sinking his hands into my hair he tips my head back. “Should’ve come to you,” he says, kissing me softly. “I won’t ever take away what you love. We’ll figure it out.”
Bringing my hand holding the note up, I place it against his chest. “You won’t have to,” I whisper. “Somebody else already did.”
“Fuck, he was here?”
“You were right, Loyal,” I cry into his chest. “You were so fucking right.”
Ushering me inside, he locks the door, double checks the windows, the fire escape and each room. Waiting by the door I am too numb to move. Searching the shadows for a threat, I start to shake when I realize I didn’t feel safe in my own home anymore. When he comes for me, he leads me to the couch and sits down beside me. “I’ll handle this, Rion,” he says in a voice he no doubt used in combat. “I promise you.”
“I need you,” I beg him, pulling him toward me. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Closing his own eyes, he lets me pull him down and use his warmth as a shield. My tears come in earnest when I think about what would have happened had he left me. A life without him seemed complicated which was silly considering he was the most complicated person I’d ever met. I hardly knew him but I needed the chance to know everything. There was so much more of him that I haven’t seen yet. I didn’t just need him, I needed all of him.
‘To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.’
~George MacDonald<
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She needed me. Easing her took priority to everything else. Putting the text, the gun and the note out of my mind, I focused all of my attention where it belonged. Thinking I’d lost her, that was hard enough. Seeing the need on her face was my undoing. I don’t know if what I was feeling was love, but I’d have to guess if it wasn’t, it was damn close to it. Rio told me she was a wreck over things, but part of me didn’t believe him. I couldn’t imagine anyone, let alone her, being a wreck over my ass.
But now I’m seeing it and I was ready to give her what she needed without any limits. Although I’ve never given all of myself to anyone, I was trusting her to walk me through it. The fact that she trusted me was why I took that next step.
“Need you too,” I tell her, leaning in to take her mouth. “So fucking much.” When our mouths fuse, it’s different. It is electric; it is her giving to me what I’m giving to her. I decide that her mouth was the closest I’d ever get to heaven and if I died right now, it’d be happily.
Her tiny hands fist my shirt, then her legs wrap around the backs of my own. She arches up and taking my own arms, I secure them under her lower back and watch as she lets her weight fall back there by exposing her tits to me. “Put your hands on me,” I urge her. Habit had me wanting to pin her down, but Rio let me know unless a female asked for that, most like to participate and that Rion was no exception. He told me she was affectionate and giving, but when I did all the taking it probably made her feel used.
I didn’t tell him everything she said so, when he threw that out I knew I really fucked up. “Are you---”
“All over me,” I tell her sucking on her neck. “Now, Rion.”
For the next few minutes she uses her tiny fingers to explore me. She traces my ink, each finger and even under the waistband of my jeans. In my life nothing ever felt so good. She does this with wide eyes and perfect concentration. When her hands run up my sides and I shiver she whispers, “I think you like this.”
