by Nicole Fox
I couldn't do it. I couldn't give him up, too. It was bad enough that I'd practically lost Benji already, and that we'd have to leave Fed behind when we ran.
But, to run separate, that was just the icing on this shit-cake life was feeding me.
“Come on,” Koen said, touching my face and squeezing my hand, “we've got to. I need you safe, and they think we'll be better off split up.”
“Fuck 'em,” I replied, smiling as I shrugged a little, trying to keep up a brave front.
Beneath that facade, though, my insides were crumbling like one of the old mausoleums outside New Orleans. All the death, all the mistakes we'd made. Death, at this point, would be an escape from the constant disappointments of life. I mean, what else did I have if Koen was taken from me, too?
“I can't lose you, too,” he whispered. “Not you and Grandpa, both.”
God, he really did love me. It took me a moment to let that sink in. He loved me, an ex-whore from bumfuck nowhere. And, now, he was getting taken away by Aleksey and the FBI, all because I showed up at the meet when I shouldn't have.
Something inside me almost broke at that moment, I think. Some little piece of me that had been strong enough to hold out against the world all by itself. Because I'll be damned if I didn't love him right back, even if I couldn't get my mouth to shape the words.
Despite not being able to speak them, I felt them in my chest. A warm, soft glow that seemed to fill me up from the inside. There was a soft, whispering voice in my heart that told me his living was what mattered. That I'd be able to live my life as long as I knew he was out there still stomping the earth.
I smiled a little, wiped away a tear that threatened to run down my cheek. “Okay,” I choked out, my voice tight. I nodded again. “Okay, yeah. Let's do it.”
He turned back to Agent McKesson. “Alright,” he said, “we'll split up.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Koen
After what had happened with Grandpa, they wouldn't let me go home. Claire explained it was too dangerous, even to go for a moment. There were simply too many ways we could pick up a tail, or even have someone try to make a hit on us with an escort from an agent.
Instead, the FBI put us up in a motel that night, one way out in the boonies with a vibrating bed in every room. With its shitty paint job, dim lights, and ugly furniture, the place didn't exactly do much to improve my sense of well-being.
In the morning, Jace and I would be split up and sent our separate ways. Her to one side of the country, me to another, with no way of contacting the other. This was the way it had to be, McKesson explained. Otherwise, Aleksey and his people could find us.
Now, Jace and I lay naked beneath the covers in the dim light of the lamp, the cheap motel sheets scratching at our skin, but our bodies as warm and smooth as ever against each other. We didn't even bother turning the TV on to see if there was any news about Xavier. Even if there was, it wouldn't be the whole story. Who would run with that, anyways? The A/C blew cold, giving us some white noise for background. Other than that, we just kept to the silence of our own thoughts.
“I'm going to miss you,” I whispered to her in the dimness after a little while had passed.
“I'm going to miss you, too, babe,” she whispered back.
Neither of us, it seemed, wanted to disturb the quiet. Instead of speaking with our mouths, we let our bodies do the talking.
I leaned down, kissed her fully and warmly, her lips bittersweet and forlorn against mine.
We held one another as we kissed, our breathing heavy and resigned. Her small hands moved across my chest, her nails scratched down my arms and raked deep across my back like she was marking me.
I bit her neck, kissed her shoulders, sucked a pert nipple into my mouth.
She was so soft below my hands, so small, so frightened against the loneliness of the future.
Her fingers tangled in my hair, desperate it seemed as she pulled me back up to her lips.
This was it, we both knew without even saying a word. This was our last night together, even though we both knew we were meant to be each other's forever.
“Please, Koen,” she whispered, her hand encircling my manhood, “I just want you to love me tonight.”
# # #
Jace
My life hadn't been easy. First I had a single mother, then an abusive stepfather, then a life working the streets and making my money in bed. The last few weeks were the first time I'd ever been close to happy, or free to do with my time as I'd wanted. I hadn't had to worry about some John freaking out on me, or asking me to do something gross I wouldn't ever think of doing.
And now, as Koen's burning lips left trails of lust over my body, I realized how much I was losing with him leaving me.
“Just love me,” I whispered again, his warm hardness filling my hand like they nothing I'd ever experienced.
With our bodies still entwined like some modern piece of bizarre sculpture, he slid into me, his cock filling me like it was the only one in the world for me.
I cried out softly as I felt completed for the first time in forever. Every movement he made sent waves crashing through me, and I moved back against his body as we continued to kiss like these were the last kisses we'd ever exchange.
Because they were, and we knew it.
As wonderful as I felt right then, with my body shaking and shivering as we moved against one another between the sheets, I knew this was it. As his teeth flashed against my neck, lightly biting me again, as my nails scratched at his side, as his hard chest crushed my tits against me. I knew it was over.
This was the last we'd see each other.
I ground my hips against him, the razor-sharp pain blunting with the pleasure he was giving me.
With my arms tightly around him, holding him closer than I'd held anyone in my life, he began to speed up, his hips moving my whole body with each stroke. “Koen,” I half-whispered, half-groaned into his ear. “God, I love you,” I admitted finally after all our times in bed together.
He kissed me again and slid deeper inside. I cried out into his mouth, groaning as he continued those glorious rolls with his hips.
“I love you, too, Jace,” he whispered back.
“I'm cumming,” I whispered as my body tensed and shook beneath his. My eyes rolled back in my head, my mouth opened, and I groaned it out again. “Oh, God, Koen. I love you so much.”
We were still laying under the covers some time later. We were still pressed together, entwined like only two lovers can entwine.
The sadness had come back over me, again. It seemed sex could only push it so far when the loss was this huge and all-encompassing.
This was my last night with this man. This was my last night of relative happiness, and joy, and love. I didn't even have revenge to keep my fires alive, anymore.
There wasn't anything left for either of us. Certainly not me.
Finally, I drifted off to sleep. Dreams and fantasies filled my mind. Dreams of Koen and Xavier and Tomlin all getting to meet each other, of the five of us cooking out on the back deck at Xavier's house. I knew it would never happen, never in a billion years. But the moving images in my brain felt so real, so true, so possible. Which, in the end, only made them the more painful to experience.
I woke up the next morning with the tears still wet on my face.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Koen
I woke up at seven in the morning every day so I could come here, to this used car lot in middle-of-goddamn-nowhere Indiana, and try to move used cars. I'd been doing it for the last three months, ever since Jace and I had left New Orleans.
Wherever she was now, I just hoped she was having a better time of it than me.
Now, Billy Lyons was sitting here, asking me about whether or not he should ask out the new receptionist, see if she wanted to go grab a drink with him after work on Friday. And all I wanted to do was eat my burger, finish the next chapter of the book I was reading, and get back to wor
k to finish out this day.
“Come on, Peter,” Billy said, slapping my shoulder with the back of his hand, “gimme some hints here, brother. Gimme some tips, or let me like, rub your head or something and get some of that lover-boy charm of yours.”
That was me. Peter O'Dwyer. Born in Washington, moved out here after high school. I'd been told by Claire McKesson to not make any friends, form any long-term attachments, or let anyone get too close, or too suspicious.
“Talk less about yourself, less about politics, or anything else,” she advised. “Your job is to stay insignificant. Eat most of your meals at home. Don't go to bars, don't get drunk.”
“So, don't have fun,” I suggested.
“Exactly. You're hiding in fear of your life, not going on vacation.”
I blinked slowly as I looked into Billy's eyes. “I got no idea what you're talking about, man. I haven't been laid in months.”
Billy rolled his eyes and guffawed an awful, braying laugh. “Ha, right, dude,” he said, braying again. “I've seen the way those MILFs look at you, dog, at the way they get their husband to even go for the clear coat.”
“That's because the clear coat protects your paint job, Billy.”
He brayed out another laugh. “Right, man, right,” he said, slapping my upper arm again.
It's a funny thing when you're playing roles. If you act a certain way long enough, like really put your mind to becoming that thing, sometimes it sticks and you start to think it's not just a role. Maybe because it wasn't anymore.
I'd followed Claire's advice, had kept my own personality down. I listened more than I'd used to, kept my mouth shut twice as often as I ever had, and tried to just be all around more humble and not accept a single bit of credit.
I wanted to be a fly on the wall, a shadow in the back of the room. And that's what I became.
I thought that, maybe, just maybe, if I could keep my ego in check going forward, I'd be a better man. It had been my ego, after all, that had gotten me into this mess. Somehow, I'd thought I could almost single-handedly rip off a Russian mob boss, then outwit him into proving his own guilt.
I was wrong, of course.
And everyone paid the price for my ego.
All those months ago, Fed had warned me where we were headed. He'd told me I'd bring this all upon myself.
Boy, was he right.
Too late to tell him now, though. He was long gone, just like Jace and the rest of my life.
“Alright,” I told Billy, then wiped a napkin across my lips, “see you out there. Got some cars to move, I guess.”
“Yeah, Pete,” he said. “See you out there, buddy.”
I ain't your buddy, Billy. That was what I wanted to say at least.
But, instead, I kept my mouth shut. No one wanted to hear that trash from me.
# # #
Jace
Wanna be bored out of your mind? Go work in an indie bookstore that specializes in old history books. Then live above it.
The only people you'll ever talk to that are your own age are delivery guys from the deli down the street. They'll leer at you, their eyes traveling up and down your body like they want to own it or possess you.
And the whole time you'll know that, in your previous life, they never could have afforded you. And you'll also know, too, that they wouldn't have known what to do with you, even if they could.
God, I wanted to tell them to fuck off and die, just so I could watch their little, sad faced wither. Not because I was mean, but because it would have made my life a little less boring.
I woke up. I opened the shop. I waited on the handful of customers that came in each day. I closed the shop. I went home.
Sometimes, though, I went to the movies on a Friday night. That wasn't too often, unfortunately.
And the worst part about it was that this whole thrilling, exciting life was led under the constant gray of the Seattle sky. It was like God had specialized in, and truly gone out of his way when it came to making me lonely.
New Miserable Existence! Only $9.99! Now with extra drizzle!
As I sat there at the cash register, staring out the front window at the streaks of damp running down the glass, I sighed. This was my life now. And, if I wanted to keep it, I had to stay boring. No impulsive actions, no one night stands, even if I'd wanted them. No drinking. No friends. Because that kind of life had nearly gotten me killed, once upon a time.
The phone rang, the old handset's ringer loud enough to disturb the dust on the even older books, and nearly sending me jumping. Even after three months of this place, I still hadn't gotten used to that ring.
“Walter's World of War, this is Andrea speaking.”
“Hi Jace,” Agent McKesson said on the other line.
“Oh, it's you,” I said. “Hey.”
I know I should have been more excited to hear from an old piece of my previous life. I should have been nearly ecstatic to hear about anything that wasn't old books about old wars my dead papaw wasn't old enough to have even fought in.
But, I wasn't.
Instead, every time Claire called it was just another sad reminder of the life I'd left behind back in New Orleans. It called up all those memories, too, of those mistakes I'd made, and the things I'd left undone.
“Any word on Koen?” I asked, not even bothering to whisper. If there had even been a customer in here, their hearing wouldn't have been sharp enough to hear me if they were in the stacks. “Can you at least tell me how he's doing?”
“He's alive,” she said, as tight-lipped as ever, “and that's as much as you're going to get out of me.”
I grunted. “Still won't let me call him, will you?” I asked. I'd spent the first month begging her every chance I could. Just to give me his number at least so I could talk to him. I even promised to just call and hang up right away. Anything to simply hear the sound of his voice asking who was calling, or who was there.
Even sound of his breath would have been enough to set my world ablaze.
“Nope,” she said. “Besides, I'm here to see how you're doing.”
“Today is a Wednesday,” I said. “So, it rained. Guess what it did yesterday, and what it's going to do tomorrow. Come on, McKesson. Guess.”
Claire laughed a little. “Your pessimistic attitude isn't doing you any good,” she said. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But, surprisingly, it makes me feel warm and cozy like my boyfriend used to.”
“Come on, Jace,” Claire said, a little bit of chastisement in her voice. “You both agreed to this. You knew what the deal was. You took your shot, it didn't work. That's life, and it sucks. But that's how it is sometimes. But, at least you tried, right?”
I didn't respond. I just let my silence do the talking for me.
“Right,” Agent McKesson said. “Alright, I was just checking up to make sure you're fine. You know the drill, right? You spot anyone crazy or weird hanging around, you call me alright?”
“Yes, ma'am,” I said, rolling my eyes even though she couldn't see me. “If I see something, I say something.”
“You got it, Jace. Talk to you soon.” Then she hung up, and I was back to my normal, humdrum, boring life.
I blew out a sigh. “Great,” I said before laying my head down on the counter. “Just fucking great.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jace
I closed up the shop a few hours after talking to Agent McKesson on the phone. Wally, who was in back cataloging some new arrivals, agreed it was time to shut the place down, since there weren't likely to be any more customers.
Wally was a good man, not cranky or mean, or anything, and he never looked at me the way my Johns or the deli delivery guys did. He just treated me like any normal young lady off the street who happened to work for him.
“You doing okay, Andrea?” he asked, his voice warbling a little in that old man kind of way.
“Yeah,” I said, giving him a strange look. “Of course.”
I'd been thinking about Koen non-stop since Agent McKesson's call earlier in the day. The way his arms had felt around me, how his soft, full lips crushed mine into submission when he kissed me, how he'd smelled, how he'd felt inside me.
I shrugged. “Nah,” I said, trying to play it off as best I could. “I'm fine Mr. Wally. You have a good night, okay?”
I headed out for the night. I went out the front door, locking it behind me, and headed around to the entrance that led up to the small fully-furnished efficiency that I rented from Wally. I tramped up the damp smelling stairs, unlocked the deadbolts on my apartment, and popped inside.
