“Jesus,” he muttered, without any real feeling behind it. “I never fucked a chick who needed a signed permission slip from Mommy before.”
He was laughing before she found his nipple and gave it a hard tweak.
“Stop trying to make it creepy,” she said. “It’s not creepy; you know it’s not.”
He groaned and threw an arm across her, dragged her over so she was half-pinned beneath him and held her there with one heavy leg hooked between her knees. “Just go to sleep, Homecoming Queen, ‘fore I start getting creepy ideas again.”
She giggled, tired, but giddy off the taste of his skin where her face was tucked against his arm. “Tell me a story,” she said, not embarrassed that it was something she’d been saying to him since she was eight.
He took a deep breath – got caught a second on the old words, the memory of her as just a baby – then exhaled, ruffling her hair. “Did I ever tell you the one about Big Son?”
He had. “No,” she said, kissing the hard swell of his bicep. “How does it go?”
He put on his storyteller’s voice, that faraway stamp of memory coloring his tale. “There was this gator – big son of a bitch, half of one front leg missing. Daddy had this Ahab thing for him, wanted to be the one to bring him in; wanted his name on the tag…”
Diving into the swamp with him like this brought up the same old questions; she wanted to pick at the scab, pry up the boards and find out what dark thing had happened that made him hate Louisiana. She always asked, and he always dodged her and sent her off on another topic before she realized what he was doing.
Tell me this time, she asked silently. Tell me about the bad thing now, now that we’re all stripped down and you’ve been inside me.
But she was so tired, and the deep rumble of his voice was so soothing. Later, she assured herself. She’d ask later.
“Now, Daddy never caught him, no,” Mercy said, his voice a lullaby. His accent thickened when he told swamp stories, the Cajun flavor shoveled on in spades. “No one did. But the story went that Big Son was like a pet gator, and he mighta been too smart to take a bait, but he’d eat right out of your hand if you fed him. There was this spot, this shady place in one of the glades, and a deep pool, and you could find Son there, if you’d a mind to feed him. He’d come up if you called him. Three rocks in the water, one after the next. It had to be three. The first one – that coulda been a fish jumping, a frog diving in. The second – after the second, Son would start listening. He’d think about coming up. And after the third, there he was. ‘Come get it, you big son of a bitch,’ and he’d swim right up to you. I heard murderers fed bodies to him, so no one would ever know…”
Eighteen
Five Years Ago
“You boned him? Or he boned you. Whichever.” Leah’s eyes bugged over the rim of her cappuccino mug. “I am so…proud-slash-freaked-out. If that’s even a thing.”
Ava felt a blush flooding her cheeks and sipped her latte to cover it. “I didn’t say ‘bone.’ ”
Leah rolled her eyes. “You said ‘slept with,’ like my grandmother would say. The point is – you did him. Like, for real, full-on penetration did him, right?”
Ava nodded.
They were at Stella’s, on the patio, with fresh-baked cookies and coffees, enjoying the lull just after the lunch crush. Leah’s father had suggested they hang out at his coffee shop, just down the street, but Leah had said, “Sorry, Daddy, but Stella makes better biscotti.” And flashed him a grin and shoved Ava out the door ahead of her.
Stella did make better biscotti, but they were after the privacy. Ava had texted Leah, asked if she was up for a snack, and walked around the corner from Mercy’s in the daylight, feeling bold and adult and more than a little wicked. He’d already been gone, off to work at the Dartmoor bike shop. “Don’t eat all my Pop-Tarts,” he’d admonished, and kissed her and smacked her on the ass and left her still half-asleep and dreamy in his bed.
Leah had barely been able to contain her questions until they’d been seated and served.
“Thank God,” she said now, reaching for a chocolate-dipped biscotti. “You’ve been pining after him your whole life!”
Ava didn’t protest; that was true.
“You know I want the details.”
Ava made a face. It felt wrong somehow, a betrayal, to gossip about Mercy, reduce him to some boy who’d smiled at her across the crowded cafeteria. Whatever they had, it wasn’t as cheap as that. “I don’t know…”
“Ugh. At least tell me if it was any good or not.”
“ ‘Good’ probably isn’t the best word for it.”
“Just tell me,” Leah said, verging toward whiny. “You had sex with possibly the scariest person I’ve ever met – I want to know how it was!”
Two fifty-something women having a late lunch glanced sharply in their direction, their eyebrows slanted at disapproving angles.
“Shh,” Ava whispered. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“So it was bad.”
“It was amazing.” Because that was the only way she could think to describe it on short notice. “It’s just complicated.”
Leah sighed and slumped back in her chair, bummed not to have the gritty play-by-play. “It always is.” She broke off a chunk of cookie and rolled it across her plate with thumb and forefinger like a wheel. “People say women are complicated – no, it’s the men. They’re the ones that always make things difficult.”
An impromptu meeting broke out in the common room over a mix of afternoon coffee and beer. Mercy had showered, but wished he hadn’t pulled on last night’s shirt: he could smell Ava on it. He prayed no one else could.
“Okay, Ratchet,” James said as he lit what Mercy figured was his fourth smoke of the day. “Hit us with the recap.”
The secretary whipped open his zippered folder notepad and turned to the most recent sheet. He didn’t beat around the bush. “I talked to the agent – Doug Ambrose – listing the house for rent, and he said the last renter – Jonathan Smith–”
Several of them snorted.
“ – paid cash for three months’ rent and was cleared out by the time his lease was up. Very up-front with the money, he said, but he gave him a ‘bad feeling.’ Made him think something shady was going on.”
“Because it was,” Ghost said. “Did he run a credit check?”
“It was all above-board. Nothing off there.
“Three of our dealers,” he continued, “say they were offered the same deal as Fisher. They were selling outside the city, but the same thing happened. Another dead kid in Spring City.”
“Shit,” Ghost said. “Which dealers?”
“Huck, Junior, and Presley.”
“All of them ditched the stuff?”
“No. They’re bringing it to me. I figure we want as much of it rounded up as possible.”
“We do,” James said, a long drag on his smoke afterward.
“Assuming Jon Smith is an alias,” Walsh said, and was met by nods of agreement. “It’d have to be pretty decent to get past a credit check.”
“Means there was real money to put into fake accounts, to run up paid tabs on a fake credit card,” Hound added.
“Someone loaded,” Rottie said. “Or someone loaded funding someone else.”
“So we start knocking on rich dicks’ doors,” Aidan said with his usual bravado. “Sic Mercy on some of them and see who squeals.
Mercy grinned, but he was prepared for Ghost saying, “That’s assuming he’s even based in Knoxville. And if he isn’t, we’ve pried the fingernails off some very powerful people who’ll go running straight to the feds and we’re all doing nothing but yard-time pushups the next fifteen years.”
Aidan’s face colored; he glanced down at his hands, pretending they were fascinating.
“So we’ve got shit,” James said. He took out the last of his cigarette in one deep breath and relinquished it to the ash tray on the end table beside him. “Nothin’ for it, boys, so
metimes that’s how it goes. We’ll keep our ears to the ground the next few weeks, see how it shakes out.” He was content to wait for further developments.
Ghost, though, Mercy could see from the man’s quick, harsh frown, wanted immediate action. Ghost, unlike his president, was all about the club being proactive when it came to protecting their reputation. James didn’t mind cleaning up the spill; Ghost never wanted the spoiled milk poured in the first place.
The club would be a very different organization once James finally stepped down and Ghost took the throne. Mercy didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
“Go make me some more money.” James shooed them off with a wide grin.
Ghost muttered something to himself as he stood, giving Aidan’s shoulder a squeeze beside him that was fast, but supportive. One of those silent father-son moments that didn’t need words.
Like Mercy used to have with his father. Back before…
No, not going there, not as Aidan crossed the rug to get to him.
“Some douchebag brought a BMW bike in to be worked on. I can’t do anything with the goddamn imports; can you?”
Mercy met Ava’s brother square in the eye as he stood, smiling. Only a little bit guilty inside. A tiny bit smug. “I’ll take a look.”
They let Sunday go; Mercy tacked the image of her naked and soft in his bed that morning to the forefront of his mind and let the Sabbath bypass them. It was a home day, a family day. He didn’t know how to make time with her and not get everyone suspicious. So he waited, and the waiting made it better, the anticipation. And then it was Monday.
Ava made her appearance in the full glory of afternoon, a tattoo against the golden horizon, a flicker of heat and energy that tripped sirens in his head before his eyes could find her, before he could digest her long legs and her black boots and her old Zeppelin t-shirt. There a moment and then gone, hair flouncing down her back, keys in her hand, truck starting and sliding into gear, an errand to see her mother at the main office, and then back home again, without a wink or a grin, her presence alone an invitation. A white rabbit: Follow me back. Come after me.
Mercy fed Aidan and Tango an excuse about needing to pick up a part, and then the wind was in his face and the Dyna was eating up road and he was at her door before he even thought about refusing himself this opportunity.
Her bed was unmade this time, and she was in icy blue lingerie that looked like she’d just cut the tags off it. Down into her sheets they went and the mattress creaked and groaned and squeaked.
After, replete in the slanted bars of sunlight, Ava whispered that she loved him.
He didn’t reply, but he folded her love up tight like a note and pressed it deep inside himself, where no one would ever find it.
**
It was educational, her first full week of suspension. After that Saturday night in his apartment, Mercy dropped the guilty-adult act; it was too fresh and too on-fire to pretend they could go without. So they worked out a routine, making use of his lunch breaks, Ava taking time off from Green Hills and using the mornings and late afternoons to complete her school work.
When she could concentrate.
She practiced with her makeup and she over-glossed her lips. One morning, she spent an hour trying to curl her hair just-so with her mom’s hot rollers. It made her feel childish and stupid, all of it…right up until the moment Mercy knocked on the back door each day.
He was patient with her.
One day he pulled her astride him, and guided her with his hands on her hips, showed her how to ride him. Another, he rolled her onto her side and fitted against her back, entered her from behind and took her with aching slowness, until she asked for more. And another, he showered with her afterward, until the shower became pointless and she was convinced she was sweating under the onslaught of pounding water.
Friday afternoon, Ava propped up on her elbows, on her stomach, and tossed her hair over her back, glancing over at Mercy beside her. He was on his back, staring up at the ceiling, smoking, the cigarette bringing a new depth to the familiarity of her room. Dad and Aidan smoked in the house, when Maggie let them, but never in her room. Mercy smoking in her bed, tapping ash into an empty Coke can on the nightstand, felt intimate in ways that sex wasn’t, a new layer of closeness, people cohabitating.
He felt her watching him. Without glancing over, he said, “I thought I wore you out.”
Ava grinned. “Oh, definitely.” She was floating in the languid fields of pre-sleep, exhausted in a melted, happy way. “But I’m wondering something.”
His brows twitched as his eyes slid over. “Has anything good ever happened after someone said that?”
She rolled her eyes and ignored him. “How–” The question was harder to say than she wanted it to be. She felt that note of fear, the worry that giving voice to her thoughts would shatter this illusion they’d built over the past week. But that’s what it was: an illusion. And she and Mercy, that was real. That deserved better than stolen moments. She took a deep breath. “How are we going to keep doing this?”
His face stayed blank. “This?”
She reached down and laid her hand against his chest, the smooth bare swell of one pectoral, rubbing soft circles with her thumb. “Merc,” she said, a plea for some understanding.
His face changed, lines pressing between his eyes and around his mouth as he dropped the clueless routine. “I don’t know,” he said. “Thirteen years is a big gap when I’m me and you’re you.”
She sighed. “I know. Everyone’s going to think…”
“Yeah.”
“But they don’t get it.”
He twitched a smile, his eyes soft and warm, his face full of that sweetness he only gave to her. “No, fillette, they don’t.”
A lump formed in her throat. “Okay, so…we’ll just have to keep things quiet, until I’m old enough. When will that be? Eighteen? Twenty?”
But Mercy was shaking his head.
Ava felt her stomach sink; he was right: they couldn’t put a number on it. For the club, her father, it wasn’t about the age as much as it was the circumstances. There were too many memories of Ava perched on Mercy’s knee. The coloring book pages and barrettes and all that growing up she’d done under his guidance. Relationships didn’t take on new dimensions like this, not according to the rest of the world. Ava would never be able to convince everyone that this thing with her and Mercy – it was destiny. It was unavoidable. It was right.
“But what do we do?” she whispered, feeling a retreat into the childhood part of her, wanting to cry.
Mercy slid an arm beneath her belly and around her waist, pulled her over onto his chest like she was a little doll and tucked her head in under his chin. “We don’t worry about it, okay?” He stroked her hair. “I’ll do whatever you want me to, sweetheart, to make it better, but just don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Her hand was against his throat; she brushed her fingertips across the strong, stubbly underside of his jaw, found a little scar that she traced with a nail. “Will you just lay here with me for a minute?” she whispered.
“Always, petite amie. Always.”
Sunday came, and with it, one of Bonita’s big biker family dinners.
The old ladies had a tradition of hosting meals in turns, first one, then the next, and so on, everyone taking a hand at hostess duty. Everyone was invited, wives and girlfriends only, no Lean Bitches, thank you very much. A family dinner, as was always stressed, babies-in-diapers included.
It was being held at Bonita’s this time, at the James’ spacious ranch done up in bright Mexican colors, and the fare was authentic, as was always the case with Bonita. She’d made mole sauce for the chicken, and its rich scent filled the orange-painted room.
Ava stood at the island, chopping veggies for the salad, smack dab in the middle of the action, feeling like everyone could see the hand-shaped bruises on her hips through her clothes, half-terrified someone would ask her what she’d been up to. She
wasn’t naïve enough to think anyone would be supportive of her afternoons with Mercy. She wasn’t just some mistake one of the boys had made; she was family, had grown up in this club, and still very much a child in all their eyes. They’d all hit the roof if they found out what she’d been doing. She felt no shame herself, but she wasn’t ready for the shame they’d rain down on her.
“I told Charity,” Nell was saying as Ava forced herself to sync up with the conversation, “that she could move back in with us. Just till she gets back on her feet. But would she have any of that? ‘Course not. God forbid the lawyers find out she’s living with her father again; Dustin would have the kids taken away like that.” Snap of her fingers.
Hound and Nell had three daughters, all named after virtues: Hope the oldest, Charity in the middle, and Patience the youngest. At home, when it was just them, Maggie rolled her eyes and told Ava those were the worst names she could think of for bikers’ children. And, true to their names, none of the girls wanted to claim relation to their aging outlaw father. Charity was going through a bitter divorce, though, and had no place else to stay.
“Oh, but he wasn’t too proud to take Hound’s money last year, was he?” Jackie asked. She snorted and tossed her bobbed red hair. “Bastard.”
“We have extra space,” Bonita said as she cranked up the heat on her Dutch oven full of bubbling vegetable oil on the stovetop. “That spare bedroom. Big closet, room for her kids. She can stay with us if she wants.”
Nell smiled the best she could given her haggard, deflated expression. “That’s sweet, hon, but you’re still Lean Dogs people. That’s the issue with The Bastard.”
Bonita said, “Ah.”
“Not to pry,” Maggie said, “but doesn’t Hope have a place for her?”
“Well her bastard’s going through his emotional crisis.” Nell threw up her hands. “These girls, I swear. None of them wanted to marry a man like their daddy, and look at the fucking pond scum they ended up with instead.”
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