Shadows and Lies

by Eden Butler

  Neither came and when my eyes became itchy and my brain would not shut off, I stepped into the living room, a little scared when she was not there, a little worried that she would never come back.

  New Orleans is a city for the lost. Bastards and bitches and outcasts, down trodden losers. Kids who cannot navigate their adolescence with parents that have forgotten that they, too, had been that rebellious, that broken, back in the day. I’ve walked those streets a thousand times. I could do it in my sleep. I knew where to hide when the cops where getting too restless, what shops and vendors in the Market never really cared about waste or surplus. Which ones fed the homeless when their profit was good. Some would even share their meals just to have someone else around to keep them company.

  This city rooted itself into my bones at twelve. It was just like my cheekbones, the damn stiffness in my board straight hair—part of me, a cluster of thought and memory that someone else put inside me, but that I had accepted as my own.

  Like Timber.

  Ryan hadn’t seen my scars, not until tonight. Not until I let my body, my stupid pussy, loosen hold of good sense. He was never supposed to see that. No one had. Except Timber, of course, but then that was the point. It’s why he’d marked me in the first place.

  “This body is mine, Alex.”

  It wasn’t something he’d said to get me wet. It wasn’t some great confession of control and dominance that I’d secretly wanted to hear. It was a dictum he imparted to me to let me know he was owed and he planned on being paid fully, in a currency of his own choosing. What I wanted meant nothing. He wanted to dominate me, control me, fucking use me, and just one time, I let him. I fucking said yes.

  It had lasted six hours. He fucked me and teased me and made me come and when I thought it would end, he’d tied me up and hurt me with matches and hot wax and then the sharpest point of his knife. I’d expected his initials in my skin the next morning. I expected him to laugh at me, torment me again, do all the things some men do to women who give themselves up so completely.

  Timber had been worse. He fell for me. Harder than ever before.

  He’d sworn he would never stop wanting me and then, looking over the welts and burns and humiliating bruises he’d given like a gift, Timber Ironside told me I was beautiful. And to him, I was. The most beautiful thing he had ever had in his hands.

  But a deal was a deal and in our world, you paid it and it was done. No take backs, no short changes. It was the only reason he’d let me walk away.

  And then I had to live for weeks with the memories of my blood staining his fingers, smearing his mouth, his sweat against my raw skin, knowing that my body had been claimed and marked, branded. He would always be there and no one, not even beautiful, sometimes self-righteous Boy Scouts could ever dismiss where Timber had been or how much he’d always want to be there again.

  Me and this city, we both had been marked by hardship and loss. The city was stronger, rose above and endured. That wasn’t so easy for me. My body, right along with everything else about me, had been lost to New Orleans. Just like it was as I scrambled down S. Peter clutching the leather satchel that I had filched, running from Ryan, from the anger, the horror and, damn him, the pity on his face. He’d seen my hell, what I’d try to keep from everyone. I couldn’t stand that look in his eyes.

  It was cold, too cold to be hurrying down the sidewalk like a coward without a jacket, running to Misty for a place to be safe. I had been stupid, careless, only thinking of slipping outside of Ryan’s place where no one could touch me, where not even Timber or whoever was responsible for my recent fear could fracture the small security I’d felt on that not-big-enough leather sofa. But I couldn’t face Ryan, I had to remember that he was not for me. Neil Ryan was a good man. I would never be a good woman.

  Royal Street was empty. No stragglers browsing in the antique shops, bookstores or boutiques along the quiet sidewalk, nothing but the cold slap of rainwater flooding the pavement—and that feeling, of needing to get away, the one that always came when I was scared. Always when I was alone.

  Someone was watching.

  It could have been Ryan, in some fairytale story, but I wasn’t lucky enough to live in one of those. In this world, men like him don’t chase after women. Not women like me anyway.

  There was a rumble of thunder above me and despite the loud spatter of rain that fell all around, that rustle of steps behind me grew heavier, giving up all pretense of stealth, stomping louder. My brain was telling me to run, to scream; the streetlight up ahead meant safety away from the shadows of the alleyways and the shops closed up tight. But, thinking that, believing it, wasn’t enough; my heart told me it would never be enough.

  Fleetingly, I thought of Timber, not what he’d done to me, but of the job, his satchel, how walking around the Quarter at night, all alone with that much money was epically stupid. How if, when, I lost it, he would be mad and I would have to pay another debt.

  That one would hurt even more than the first.

  If my pursuer caught me, then what? The pain of an attack I could take, but there was no way I’d die to keep Timber’s money safe.

  There was no damn way.

  Fear is a funny thing. Something that always lives inside us no matter the situation or how weak we think we are. It waits, like a virus, to root deep, to be ignited and most of the time, it will spring forward, grow and thrive before we even consider tamping it down. Unless, of course, our very nature, that ancient instinct to survive, blossoms first. We all want to live. No one really wants to die. And it was then that I realized I was trying to tamp down my fear rather than setting it loose, to use it as a weapon. Why the hell would I do that?

  The low hum of “Love Is a Battlefield” echoed in my head because I was too damn scared to think of anything else, but then that voice, my sister’s voice, the one I’d kept silent too damn long screamed louder than the lyrics. I’d silenced Stevie the second I knew Timber would burn me. I’d always tried to ignore it when shit got shitter. And now, walking in my fear, trembling from it, my strong-willed sister screaming inside my head sounded pissed. Livid.

  Turn around and fight. Fight, dammit!

  For once, I listened.

  The freak following me hadn’t expected me to stop and confront him. I knew that when he suddenly stopped, too, kept a wary distance that was still too close, too close. The shadows were too thick, so I couldn’t make out his face under the low mask he wore. But he was tall, taller than me, slim but broad and I smelled the hot spice of aftershave, something tangy that made my nose wrinkle and birthed a coming sneeze in my sinuses.

  “What the hell do you want?” I screamed loud enough that the creep stepped back. Fucker probably had expected me to beg. I didn’t do that. Not my style.

  Living the life, you pick up vibes about people. Generally, you can tell when someone’s playing you. You can tell when they’re out of their damn minds. This guy gave off a psycho vibe that had me squaring my shoulders, slipping my hand into my back pocket to get my fingers around my knife. But my movement caught his attention, and suddenly he was like a lit fuse, tension focused and crackling towards my hand and the twist of my wrist as I tried pulling the knife free. The vibe he was giving off came clear to me: Norman Bates’ crazier, less adjusted cousin.

  “You, pretty Alex.”

  It didn’t register immediately that he knew my name. I didn’t think about how quickly he moved as I unhinged my knife, I simply reacted. The movement of light and dark, the sound of lunging breath, the flick of metal, the pounding of rain and buffeting of wind all clapped together, both suspending time and making it ignite until I felt the barrier of fabric and muscle as he moved into me, until the sting from his fist and the yank of his fingers in my hair tugged and burned and had me seeing stars.

  “You fucking asshole,” I screamed, charging back when he slapped me, swinging wildly with my knife, but then I crashed violently against the brick building behind me, my bag, my phone falling to the g
round, thinking that there should only be one of him. That my damn mouth should not be bleeding.

  “Be good, Alex,” he said, wet mouth and high, soft voice against my ear. The scent of his aftershave. “Be a good girl.”

  But I wasn’t a good girl. Hell, I was the antithesis of a good girl. Good girls got fucked over. Good girls couldn’t save themselves. Good girls, like my sister, got dead.

  “Fuck you.”

  The low hiss between his lips should have been a warning, it should have taken the piss and wind from my voice, but I was running on adrenaline and a precious ache to live through this. And then, he slapped me again, and again and I thought I would go down, but I didn’t. I fucking didn’t. “Come on you sick fuck, keep at it!” I screamed, stumbling when he lunged, slipping on the wet pavement.

  “Stupid little girl. Stupid, stupid.” But he wasn’t speaking to me. He was only moving his thoughts outward, making some sick mantra that fueled him and fed his movements. “I told you to stop moving.” He became winded then, shooting to me with his hand outreached, gripping toward my neck. “I told you not to tell!”

  I didn’t know who he thought I was, but whoever had fused in his brain, this bastard had not forgiven them for whatever it was that they had done.

  “Stop it, asshole,” I said, clawing at his hand as it came nearer, wincing when he rushed forward and knocked my head against the building. “I said stop!” My throat burned, pierced with the helpless wheeze of air and my strangled words and the increasing pinch of his fingers clamping down and when he squeezed, grip tight, tighter, I heard Stevie screaming inside my head again. She shouted over all the madness, the fear, the loss of air, screaming at me to fight back.

  “No, motherfucker, not today,” I wheezed, clawing, scratching, gripping until the glint of metal caught against the dull moonlight and I wrapped my fingers around the handle of my knife and plunged it deep into his shoulder.

  I had never heard a sound like the one that left his mouth as my blade pierced his flesh. It was fury and rage and the high wail of madness all rushing through his hot breath, and he staggered back, wobbling, letting go of my throat. I shuffled to my feet, bracing myself against the brick, ready to hit him again if he got his bearings.

  “Alex!”

  I heard the fear in Ryan’s voice, but I didn’t dare look at him. My focus was on the freak who was staggering backwards away from me, not at the man running towards me. My attacker could not control his hands. The tremor in them made his fingers look electrocuted, and his eyelids in the holes of his mask fluttered and burned. I held that twisted, feral gaze, until the man behind it turned and ran, and still it burned in my brain, barely registering that Ryan’s shouts had quieted or that his drumming feet had silenced.

  “Alex, shit.” Finally his voice got through to me, and his gentle fingers on my face pulled my gaze from the retreating form of that crazy bastard, allowed my muscles to unclench from their rigid stance. “Hey,” he said, voice easy, but an undertone of worry hung onto each inflection. “God, are you okay? Why the hell did you…”

  When I closed my eyes, Ryan quieted, rubbing his thumb underneath my bottom lip until the pain began to register and my mind finally released that numbing, protective hum that had blocked everything but the need to fight. Then all strength fled me, and I fell against Ryan’s chest.

  Ever see one grown man yell at another one? For some women, it’s hot. For me, it just made my head ache worse. The tension in the office was thick, like the stifling heat that covers the hot pavement on Louisiana streets just after a summer rainstorm. I could taste the anger, the frustration in the room as Ryan paced in front of me, his body so rigid the tight cotton of his t-shirt pulled against his collar. But it was the other men in the room, specifically the tallest of four, Frank, that seemed ready to burst.

  I only knew his name because Ryan kept saying it with a stream of curses. “Shit, Frank…” or “Fuck I don’t know, Frankie¸” and my favorite so far, “Frankie, I’m not a fucking kid.”

  Frank was broad, shoulders large and waist defined and trim, that much I could make out from the workout pants he wore that hung just below his hips. But he walked with a limp and the second Ryan had thundered into the office with me complaining that I was fine, this Frank guy had stopped mid-pull up, easing to the floor from the bar above the door. “Problem, Ryan?” he’d said, throwing a nod at the other two men using this small office as their own personal gym.

  The guy was cool, seemed at least a good five years older than Ryan, and even with the clear presence of anger shining in his dark eyes, kept his temper in check. I’d instantly understood that this was someone in charge. Ryan had mentioned the security business he owned with his friends—walking under the NOLA Elite Security sign above the door told me that’s where he’d taken me—but I’d expected more of the wide-neck variety I’d glimpsed at the Marriott when Ryan pinched me. Sammy, his best friend, might fill that role, but this Frank guy and the other one, Dean, did not.

  It was like watching a tennis match with Ryan agitated, pacing as he explained why he’d helped me out, and why he’d kept knowledge of that help from Frank. Frank’s calm was more like a simmering anger as he worked his jaw and shook his head like Ryan’s explanations were pointless.

  I felt out of my comfort zone. These guys weren’t cops, but they damn sure acted like them. Frank berated Ryan like he was a suspect while Dean and Sammy sat on the desk across the room, sometimes glancing at me, analyzing when Ryan would drop a detail about my stalker or when Timber’s name got mentioned, but otherwise they ignored me.

  Sammy and Dean’s expressions had me shifting on the sofa, trying to act as though those narrowed eyes didn’t mean judgment, like I was some sort of street savvy siren determined to lead their friend from the path of righteousness. Please. If Ryan had stepped off that path, it was well before I showed up.

  Sammy muttered something to his brother Dean, his bright brown eyes avoiding my face and his long legs stretched out in front of him. It sounded distinctly like “Train wreck,” but those full lips of his and the quick grin coming out of those angular features made it hard not to roll my eyes at him. He might be a looker, a flirt, and an ass, but Sammy didn’t strike me as the type to be cruel. Like his brothers, Dean was a pretty boy, but there was an edge to his expressions, a fierce glare constantly hardening his dark eyes and of all of these men, it was Dean that struck me as the most dangerous. That glare shifted between me and Ryan and I shook my head, tired of the scrutiny.

  Actually, I didn’t care what these assholes thought of me. The only thing taking any real weight in my head was how damn bad my lip throbbed and when Frank would stop lecturing Ryan. And who the hell had attacked me in that alleyway.

  “This,” Frank told Ryan, voice even, but firm, “is exactly what I’ve been bitching about, man.”

  “Frank…” The Boy Scout stopped pacing long enough to shoot a look my way before he exhaled, tilting his head at Frank.

  “No, don’t start giving me excuses.” Frank nodded to himself, like he was trying to work options, tactics in his head. Again I was hit with the idea that this guy was running the show. He hadn’t smiled at me once. Maybe a lowlife like me didn’t register to him as anything but a distraction. “I thought you were more professional than this,” Frank was saying to Ryan, sounding like a disappointed father, not a business partner. To his credit, Ryan didn’t appreciate it.

  “I am professional.” Ryan took a step, coming eye to eye with Frank. It wasn’t some sort of macho standoff, but the air crackled a little bit between them, like these two were setting boundaries. Frank didn’t strike me as the sort of guy that would back down easily, and I knew Ryan wouldn’t.

  “You assholes,” Frank changed tactics, nodding at Dean and Sammy who were watching from the safety of the desk, “have kept me out of the loop for a solid week. I expect that from my brothers, but you, man…” He turned back to Ryan.

  “I had it under control.”
<
br />   “Yeah?” Frank said, his tone taunting. “So tell me how she ends up with a busted lip?” Frank finally managed to nod toward me, but he didn’t otherwise acknowledge me and when Ryan only glared at his partner like I’d suddenly become invisible, I decided I’d had enough of being spoken about like a helpless kitten.

  “She,” I said, coming to my feet a little wobbly and more than pissed that I was, “is sitting right here and can speak for herself. Her name is Alex.” Of course the first thing the Boy Scout did was grab my arm like I was a little old lady needing help crossing the street. I tried to jerk free of his grip, but that man was stubborn. And strong.

  “You need to rest.”

  “I need you to back off,” I told him, hoping he understood that I could speak for myself. To his credit, he did let go of me then, and I was at least glad for that. Maybe he did respect my need to handle this; at least when Frank limped forward, towering over me like some sort of gentle giant, Ryan folded his arms and let me look his partner square in the eyes. “Ryan did me a favor. More than one, and I plan on paying him back, but what happened tonight, that’s on me. Not him. I took off when I shouldn’t have.”

  I’ve never been intimidated by men. Not unless there’s some threat of violence I know I’m not physically strong enough to handle. It should have been at least weird, though, with those four staring at me, checking me out, thinking God knows what about me and my attitude coming out of a busted mouth. But Frank only nodded and I caught what I thought was, if not respect, at least understanding from him when he turned away.

  Ryan hovered and I could smell the thick scent of his body wash and the rain dampness that clung to his shirt. He looked disheveled, rougher than normal, and it was oddly endearing. When he ran his thumb under my swollen lip, I didn’t even feel the bite of the split skin. I tried to remind myself that there was a major threat still hanging over me, that we were standing in the middle of Ryan’s office with his quasi-hostile partners staring at us like we were an irritation, but when Ryan stepped closer, hand still on my face, I would have kissed him. Right there, right then. Just something quick, something simple, that I knew would have completely eradicated the pain from my mouth, but then Sammy cleared his throat and Ryan jerked his fingers from my skin, completely crushing the moment.