Fearless

by Lauren Gilley

  It was a horrible thing, realizing she was still so in love with Mercy.

  “You’re awful quiet over there,” Maggie said from behind the wheel.

  “Just thinking.”

  Several of the churches had small, private cemeteries, but they were laying Andre to rest in the city graveyard, amid its rolling, oak-studded hills, behind its twelve-foot iron fence. The drive wound slowly up and back, around a manmade pond with a bubbling fountain in the center, up through the gnarled trunks of Civil War era trees, over a crest and to a plateau of land that had a view of the entire grounds. It was the place where other Dogs had been buried, and it was here that Andre would join them.

  They had to park on a hill and trek up it in their heels, steps cautious and slow. Ghost came back and took each of their arms, helping them forward. Rottie helped Mina steer their two sons along. It looked like Nell helped Hound, rather than the other way around. Jackie murmured something soothing to Collier as they walked, rubbing his arm. James leaned on a cane, Bonita holding his elbow firmly on the other side. Voices were low; the sun glazed the pavement in buttery tones.

  The graveside service took only fifteen minutes, Pastor Thomas keeping it short, but heartfelt. The two baby mamas threw hateful glances at once another until Nell wedged herself between them and elbowed them both hard in the ribs. Ava stood beside Maggie, hands folded in front of her, feeling dazed and robotic. The sun was too warm for her black clothes, and the humidity creeping into the atmosphere made her itchy and restless. Her skirt was too tight, her heels too high, and when she flicked her hair over her shoulder, she caught sight of Mercy from the corner of her eye and felt the nervous perspiration bead up between her shoulder blades.

  The stopwatch kept ticking away, deep inside. Anxiety, a restless tension, a threat in the building banks of low clouds out west of the city.

  When it was over, and the backhoe operator was left to his work, Ava stood rooted a moment, watching the western sky darken, feeling the sun beat even hotter at her back. A storm was blowing up, in this crushing press of heat, and the wind billowed her hair around her face, proving the point.

  “Ava,” Maggie called. “Let’s go, sweetie.”

  Halfway down the hill to the cars, she spotted the police cruiser, and the black Mercedes, and she stiffened.

  She recognized Sergeant Fielding and another uniformed officer. And she recognized the salt-and-pepper suited man beside them, because she’d seen his son just yesterday: Mayor Mason Stephens.

  It seemed like the entire Lean Dogs company came to a halt in unison. Ava grabbed at her mother’s arm and heard Maggie say, “It’s fine.”

  “Kenneth Teague,” Stephens said, in a booming, political voice that carried. “You’re in violation of a city ordinance that bans anarchist demonstrations on city-owned property.”

  “Do you see me burning flags?” Ghost returned. “This is a funeral, Mr. Mayor. If you’re looking for anarchists, I suggest you talk to those hacky-sack kids at the park.”

  Stephens’ smile was straight from a debate hall. “An outlaw and a comedian.”

  “What can I say – I’m multi-dimensional.” He gestured and the rest of the Dogs pressed forward, going to their bikes.

  Ava felt Maggie’s hand at her wrist and was towed down the hill toward the truck.

  “Cute,” Stephens said. “But Sergeant Fielding is here to break up your little protest.”

  “It’s already broken up. Go get yourself another spray tan and don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ve also,” Stephens continued, “asked him to question all of you about the murder of Andre Preston.”

  “That’s right, question us instead of the bastard who stabbed him,” Ghost shot back.

  There was a real possibility, Ava thought, that her dad might actually come to blows with the mayor.

  She and Maggie were slipping past the man when his head turned.

  “It’s Ava, right?”

  Ava froze, one foot poised above the asphalt. She swallowed hard and felt her mother’s reassuring squeeze as she turned to face Stephens.

  He was beaming at her, all false charm and friendly interest.

  “Yes.” She managed not to stammer.

  His smile broadened, if that was possible, with a blinding flash of teeth. “It’s good to see you up and around.” What the hell did that mean? “I’m glad you’re doing well. You are, aren’t you? Doing well?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. I hear you’re starting grad school at UT next week; you must have finished at Georgia, then.”

  Ava felt the color drain from her face. How did he know that?

  “Come on, you don’t have to talk to him,” Maggie said, giving her a little tug.

  “I was happy,” Stephens said, “more than happy, really, to send that recommendation letter for you to UGA. I always love to help bright young people excel.”

  Maggie’s nails bit into her arm, but she didn’t feel them. She didn’t feel anything. All sensation and breath and fight had gone rushing right out of her, passing through her lips in an outward gasp that left her lightheaded.

  Stephens gave her a little wink. “Say ‘hello’ to Dr. Benson for me at the English department at UT.”

  Maggie dragged her away and she stumbled over her own shoes, nearly falling. Only Maggie’s iron grip at her wrist kept her on her feet.

  Recommendation letter.

  Recommendation letter…

  The blood roared in her ears, drowning out all other sounds. The drive tilted in front of her and she thought she might pass out.

  “Mom…”

  “Later,” Maggie said firmly, marching her around to the passenger side.

  “He wrote me a recommendation letter?”

  “Later.”

  Later was about thirty seconds later, as Maggie was piloting the truck down the cemetery drive and Ava had calmed enough to form coherent sentences. “What does he mean he wrote me a recommendation letter?”

  Maggie sighed and leaned her temple against her fist, pressed to the window as she drove. “Ava…”

  “No, patting me on the head and treating me like I’m five isn’t going to work here. If that man helped me get into college, I deserve to know about it.”

  Maggie gave her the side-eye.

  “Please. Ma’am.”

  Another sigh. “Yes, he wrote a letter.”

  “Why in the hell–”

  “You knew your chances of a scholarship were slim after your suspension. You might not have gotten into Georgia if it wasn’t for that letter.”

  “And you didn’t think I ought to know that the father of the kid who murdered my baby got me into college?!” Her voice was a contained shriek inside the truck. “Jesus, I would never have gone if I’d known–”

  “Don’t,” Maggie snapped. “Just stop. That’s exactly why we never told you; you would have been stubborn and never gone.”

  “Why should I have? Oh my God, Mom, how can you not…I’m going to throw up.”

  “Roll down your window.”

  She did, and the incoming air was hot and damp against her face. It wasn’t helping.

  “How could you do that?” she whispered, words snatched away out the window.

  Maggie said, “Your dad and I saw a chance to right the wrong against you, to give you a chance at a real education – the education you deserved – and we took it.”

  She swallowed down the bile. “What did you give Stephens in return?”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t write me a letter just to be nice, so what did you guys give him?”

  Maggie frowned at the road. “We threatened to sue him for your medical bills, and make it all public. All of Knoxville would have known what Mason did to you; it would have damaged his image.”

  “So the letter was hush money.” She swallowed again, her chest and eyes and throat stinging.

  Maggie was silent a beat. “It was what you deserved. The threat
was the thing that got it for you. What use is having power if you can’t use it to get the justice you deserve?”

  Ava didn’t answer because she couldn’t without sobbing or puking. She felt dirty and used. Betrayed. Those five years getting her degree, and it had been built on a bribe and a threat, on club power. She felt like all her sturdy ropes had been cut, and she was floating out to sea.

  Maybe it had never been about her being different. Maybe home was different.

  At the clubhouse, she threw herself into making coffee, setting out plates, fetching for Jackie, Bonita, Nell and Mina, avoiding her mother, prepping for the handful of Nomad and out of town members who would come to pay their respects at the wake. She made cold cut sandwiches and arranged them on platters, flicked mustard specks off her shirt and kept tossing her hair back to keep it out of the way.

  The guys trooped in, all loud boots and throat-clearings. The mood was sober, respectful. Ava had no doubt that by the end of the night, that would have changed, once they broke out the hard liquor and started swapping stories.

  She was setting a platter down on the bar when Mercy materialized in front of her, not there one minute and then standing in front of her the next. He opened his mouth to say something –

  And she fled. She hated herself for the weakness, but she couldn’t take another emotional roller coaster ride right now, she just couldn’t. Nothing Mercy could say would help; he could only hurt her worse. And when nothing about her life felt controllable, she could at least control where she stood – or ran. Because she was running by the time she went through the clubhouse door.

  The wind had kicked up, a hard shove against her chest as she ran into it. The clouds pressed low, gray and fat with rain, swirling in turbulent arcs against one another. She felt the fine mist against her face; felt the growl of the thunder in her bones. The storm was going to be wicked when it finally broke.

  She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to get away. She made it halfway to the bike shop, was right in front of the central office, when she heard Mercy say her name.

  “Ava.” He was at her heels, of course, because his long legs took such massive strides.

  She whirled and her hair streamed across her face; she shoved it roughly back and felt a bobby pin come loose. There was Mercy, huge and illuminated by the eerie under-glow of the clouds. Lightning forked through the sky behind him, prophetic, atmospheric. His eyes were black.

  “What?” she snapped, voice near to breaking.

  He was wearing a plain black t-shirt that clung to the heavy muscles of his chest and arms, dark jeans with grease stains on the knees. Silken wisps of hair came loose from the queue at his nape and fell across his forehead.

  “I wanted to say hi,” he said, and Ava couldn’t stop the disbelieving laugh that burst out of her.

  “You chased me across two parking lots to say hi? Are you serious?”

  His expression tightened, jaw clenching. “I said I didn’t want things to be weird with us, didn’t I? I’m just trying to be friendly.”

  “Friendly,” Ava fumed, “is waving across the room. Friendly is smiling. Running me to ground like some kind of prey animal, with that look on your face, is stalkery, Merc. Do you not see the difference?”

  Thunder crashed over them, and in its wake, Ava heard the slow whine of the city’s tornado sirens cranking up. The first fat drops of rain splattered on them.

  “Oh, fabulous,” she said. “I’m about to be sucked up like Dorothy, and the last conversation of my life will have been with you!”

  Mercy had the gall to smirk at her. “You’re welcome, sweetheart.”

  And then the rain turned loose, like someone had tipped a bucket over, thick white sheets of it coming down too fast for comprehension. Ava felt something like a bee sting on her bare arm, and then another. It was hailing. One of the ice pellets beaned off her head and she yelped in pain and surprise.

  “Come on,” Mercy shouted above the deluge. His big arm came around her and he hustled her to the door of the central office and through it, slamming it behind them.

  Through the raised blinds, Ava saw the hail pinging off the pavement outside, the torrential rain, the fervent slashes of lightning. She could still just make out the sirens, above the constant slap of raindrops on the flat roof.

  “We’re lucky the door wasn’t locked,” Mercy said, running his hands along his pulled-back hair, smoothing the rainwater against his scalp.

  “Mom had to…” What had Maggie needed in here again? Whatever. She didn’t remember or care. “Something. She unlocked it when we got back from the funeral home.”

  “Hm.”

  Mercy rested his forearm against the window and peered through it at the leaden sky. The rain fell in earnest now, dancing sheets of water too thick to see through. The clubhouse was an indistinct blur, just the line of the roof visible above its hulking shadow. “It’s really setting in,” he murmured, his breath fogging the window. His profile, limned in silver by the storm light, looked sharp enough to cut the glass from where she stood.

  Ava turned away, arms banded tight across her middle, teeth beginning to chatter as the AC stole over her damp skin. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, grinding her jaw, as she glanced down and saw the way her soaked shirt had glued itself to her torso. The little blue flowers on her bra were starkly visible through the sheer, waterlogged fabric.

  “What was that?” Mercy asked.

  This felt orchestrated, somehow, like he’d called down a tornado, all those vivid tongues of lightning, just for another chance alone together, to insult and torture her. “I said ‘Why am I always wet when we’re together,’ ” she snapped, too aware of that first night in the dorm room, vodka all down her front.

  He chuckled, darkly.

  “Wet with water. Not that kind of wet.”

  “Hmph. Do you hear me complaining about that?”

  She whirled around, the anger firing in her like rockets, boiling in her bloodstream. “I’m complaining about it, Mercy. I am. Because for some crazy reason, I don’t want you to be able to see my tits.”

  Still propped against the window, his gaze dropped to her chest on impulse.

  She lifted her arms higher, shielding her breasts. “Stop it!” She sounded like a child pitching a fit, but she didn’t care. Panic was clawing at her insides and she couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. These moments couldn’t keep happening, or she’d have a nervous breakdown. If a tantrum was what it took to get rid of him, then she’d throw one. “Stop looking at me, you fucking pervert!”

  His jaw clenched, a muscle in his cheek twitched, a ripple went up through his face, flash of darkness in his eyes that turned them black. Not the reaction she’d wanted.

  He pushed away from the window, and for some reason, her eyes caught at the warm imprint of his hand, the little demarcation of steam, against the cold glass. What great big hands he had. Then she was forced to look at him, because her backside was up against the desk and he was closing in on her in just two strides.

  “Pervert?” he asked, his voice a dangerous low rumble. “After everything that happened” – those times she’d professed her love, that first time, the second, the third, the moonglow on the grass in the James’ yard, the baby, the night at Hamilton House, and before: the poetry, the Louisiana stories, the late nights in front of the TV, the afternoons under the portico, all that blood on her bedroom carpet – “and I’m a pervert?”

  Everything that had happened…and he’d thrown it away.

  She began to tremble, awful shudders running through her that had nothing to do with the cold. “You did your very best to destroy me,” she said in a cracking whisper, “and now you want to flirt and feel me up and act like I’m some bitch you met in a bar somewhere. What do you call that besides ‘pervert’?”

  He leaned down low, in her face, the aggression lifting off him like steam. “I didn’t–”

  She couldn’t listen to one more denial from him
. “I miscarried our child.” Her voice was a strangled, awful sound. “Mason Stephens kicked me in the stomach, and I lost our baby, and you left. You left the goddamn state. Nothing you say can even begin to justify that.”

  “You were seventeen,” he growled. “What the fuck were you going to do with a baby?”

  “What do you care? You obviously wouldn’t have wanted it.”

  He moved before she had time to startle, and then his hand had hold of her face, his fingers framing both sides of her jaw. He caught her, but it wasn’t hard. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t hurt her. His touch was feather-soft.

  He came in so close she could see the gold striations in his eyes. And then she saw the pain, etched deep in the hard planes of his face.

  “Don’t say that to me.” His voice was nearly lost in the sounds of the rain and the far-off wail of the sirens. “I wanted it more than anything in this entire damn world, and you know it.”

  Tears filled her eyes, the pulse in her ears pounding. “No, I don’t. The Mercy I knew growing up is long gone.”

  His thumb lifted, swept across her lower lip, pressing lightly at the center, his expression one of deep loss. His voice was a little hoarse when he spoke. “No, he’s not.” And he kissed her.

  It was gentle at first, just the touch of his lips against hers as he held her chin. Even that much contact reminded her, as Friday night had, that her body would always crave him, always respond to him. No amount of common sense or threat of heartbreak could touch that heat that lingered in her bones, waiting for his touch and his touch alone to draw it out to the surface, until it shimmered on her skin. It wouldn’t matter if there turned out to be a hundred Ronnies in her life; it was Mercy she’d always want.

  Then he angled her head and went in deeper, urging her lips apart, asking her, sweetly, to soften for him. And she was lost.