Shadows and Lies

by Eden Butler

  “I haven’t told a soul, you jackass. That,” I said nodding toward his phone, “is insurance. You think I’m stupid? You think I haven’t planned and prepped myself for an escape route for fucking years? You think I didn’t learn a damn thing from Wanda?” He moved to grab my wrist, but I wasn’t scared of him anymore. There was nothing he could do to me that would be worse than what he had already done with his lighter and his blade. “What the hell did you think, Timber? You think I’d let you hurt me? Use my body up because you had money?” I could see in his expression that was exactly what he’d thought. “God, that’s just pathetic.”

  “Alex, this is some bullshit. This,” he waved his phone, “I will fucking end you over this.”

  “No, Timber, you won’t. You won’t do a damn thing because I have a contingency plan.” I adjusted the box in my arms, not caring that my voice traveled, that anyone passing by could hear me raging at him. “Those files, the pictures, the bank statements, the fucking wire taps, are just evidence. You play nice, you keep out of my hair and away from Ryan and no one will ever see them.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  I shrugged, not committing to anything. “Let’s just say there is a very eager club owner who’s tired of being your errand girl and I’m pretty sure she’s sick of paying you a protection fee. If you think I’ve got shit on you, then it’s nothing to what Misty has. And don’t forget my… my” I couldn’t decide what to call Ryan. Just to twist the blade a little further, I decided on a label that I knew Timber would hate. “…my boyfriend has the NOPD on speed dial.”

  “Please. Half of them are in my pocket.”

  “True,” I said, shrugging, a little disappointed that Timber’s temper was cooling. “But that won’t be the case when I release the video of you throwing a bachelor party for one of their lead detectives and him getting a lap dance from a fifteen year old prostitute. I’m sure the police commissioner will be interested in that.” He stepped forward, looking like he was ready to hit me, but I shook my head and held my hand up, stopping him. “No! Timber, you think I went through all this shit and didn’t plan ahead? If I don’t show up online tonight in exactly thirty minutes, the scheduled message on my email will send out all those files automatically. And in case you have any ideas, I can’t remote access it and my laptop isn’t at my place or Ryan’s or Summerland. Might be a good idea to just let me walk away with this box and my boyfriend, bullet free.”

  For a moment, Timber seemed able to only clinch his jaw and circle the room with his hands on his head and that phone still squeezed between his fingers. Finally, he stopped, expression still incredulous as he stared at me. “You did all this to fuck me over?”

  “I did this to get away from you, Timber. You and this damn life.”

  I hated his laugh, that bitter, insulted tone that was Timber telling me that he didn’t believe I could do it, that he thought I was stupid; laughing and smiling at me like I was a kid who still believed in the Easter Bunny. “This,” he said, waving his arm at the tables, to the illegal items and crates that held them, “is who you are, Alex. This is who you will always be.”

  “No. This is what I had to be,” I told him. “It’s not who I am. And the Milanos? Really? That’s what you been hustling? They’re Ermenegildo Zegna. You’re J. C. Penney knockoff. This will fall apart, like shit generally does and they’ll laugh at you if they aren’t already.” Clutching the jewelry box to my chest, I moved towards the exit, uncaring that Timber fell into step next to me. He was no longer a threat, and I could tell that we both knew it. But before I left, I turned back to him. “This,” I wiggled my fingers back at the room in a parody of his own outburst “is what I was forced into. I’m broke and sketchy and a crook. But I’m not damn hopeless. I’m not unworthy and no matter what you think, I’m not dirty. The streets, Timber, this life, it made us fighters, soldiers in a battle we didn’t sign up for. The difference between you and me is that I don’t want to fight in it anymore.” I took a breath, holding onto to that box like a lifeline. “I don’t know who I am outside of the hustle, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

  He grabbed my arm, stopping me before I could turn away. “With that fucking pig?”

  “I like that pig,” I said, jerking out of his hold. “I like him a lot.”

  He made one last feeble attempt. “You don’t just leave the life, Alex. You don’t just leave me. I’m part of you, I’m in your skin.”

  I faced him, without anger, without fire, without bitterness. “No, Timber, you’re not. You are in my past.”

  I turned to go. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t call after me.

  For once, probably for the first time in my life, I felt free, happy.

  So of course as soon as I hit the back tombs that led out to the main auction, I heard the crack of gunfire erupting.

  The crowd scattered—men hustling their women out the back way, down the dark, creepy aisles of graves and mausoleums and down the grass and shell walkways, thugs covering their cowering bosses, waitresses screaming and running in their stilettos. I dodged them, trying to get back, all the time searching frantically for Ryan, and feeling panic rise in my gut when I didn’t see him.

  Ryan and Frank weren’t anywhere, not in the back nor among the crowd streaming out of the front gate entrance, and my heart felt like it was trying to escape through my throat. I could feel tears and frustration building up, threatening to fall, but that only made me feel even weaker and helpless, adding to the chaos. Finally leaving the front gate with that damn box under my arm, I searched the sidewalk, ignored the people who ran in front of me as I tried to see Ryan, frustrated when he wasn’t there. But then I heard someone calling my name and I turned to see him running towards me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a sense of relief in my entire life.

  There was real fear on his face, but it started to abate as soon as he had gathered me in his arms. “God, Alex… You were late. I thought…”

  “What was that gunshot?” I interrupted.

  Ryan shook his head like it was nothing and tucked me under his arm, hustling us away from the cemetery. “Some jackass didn’t like losing his lot, lost his temper and pulled his gun. It went off by accident. Fucking jackass.”

  Relief washed through me like a flood. So Timber hadn’t reneged on his word. “I was so worried that you… or Frank…”

  Ryan hugged me tighter under his arm, but kept us moving. “Nah, takes more than a cemetery full of lowlifes to stop us. We’re too damn stubborn to die,” he quipped, a smart aleck grin on his face, and I elbowed him in the side, but playfully.

  Finally, he looked down at the jewelry box that I still had cradled against my chest, but he ignored it and kept walking. “We, a… didn’t find Malcolm but Frank took down Cosmo. I thought all hell was gonna break loose, but then, just like that,” Ryan snapped his fingers, “all Timber’s boys got called off. They just stopped fighting and backed away.” He paused to look down at me. “You know anything about that?”

  I shrugged, helpless to stop my smile when I thought about the lie I had told Timber. He’d be sweating the next thirty minutes wondering if I’d stopped the scheduled message. Idiot. Gmail doesn’t have scheduled messaging. “Maybe.”

  We came to the end of the street, a block from the cemetery and Ryan stopped next to the Lincoln NOLA Elite Security used for stakeouts. Fishing out his keys, Ryan fidgeted for a moment, then asked huskily, as if putting on a brave face, “So, should I drop you back at Misty’s?”

  I’d just walked away from the only life I’d known. I cut ties with Timber and there would never be any hope of me fusing them back together. Like it or not, Neil Ryan had me in his life. There was no sense in waiting for that life to start.

  I stepped closer, with only Ryan’s mother’s jewelry box between us, hoping he could read me, know that I was tired of running. “No, Ryan, I don’t wanna go to Misty’s.”

  He nodded once, grunting as he narrowed his eyes at me. “Your p
lace still isn’t safe.”

  “I know.”

  He stopped stalling and moved the box to my side, taking it in his hand so he could pull me close. I liked his fingers on my skin, him holding my face up to look at him. “Seems like my apartment is really the only option.”

  I shrugged, loving his reaction to my teasing, thinking I didn’t do it enough to him. “Maybe Frank or Sammy…”

  “Not in this lifetime, lady,” he said, bending down to take my lips in a kiss that was pure bliss.

  “Let’s go home.”

  The jewelry box had been a gift to my great grandmother; her husband had said he’d spend their marriage filling it up with things she’d wear, and things she’d hide. It was an exquisite work of art, with bars and cranks connected in quadrants, Betjemann Patent mechanisms fixed together some hundred and forty-five years ago. There were secret compartments that could be opened by the small cranks and a lining of fine purple velvet nestled under the mahogany wood and brass clasps and locks.

  I could fetch ten grand easy for that box, but I didn’t need the money. Besides, that box reminded me of something I’d once believed could never die—family, tradition, a cultural that was fixed inside my bones.

  Alex put the box on my coffee table and sat next to me on the sofa, leaning on my shoulder as we both looked it over.

  “It’s old, yeah?”

  “’Bout a hundred and fifty years or so.” The top was smooth as glass and there was an inlay of brass that curled around each corner. “When I was a kid, I’d spend hours trying to figure out how the mechanisms work.” I popped open the top and rubbed my finger along the hidden wheel on the side which caused the two bottom compartments to stretch open, the sound of the wheels beneath whining as they moved. “My mom kept the expensive stuff in here. Once, she caught me with a screw driver trying to pry this thing apart. Her face went purple.” I smiled remembering how loud she’d yelled at me. God, I missed that woman.

  I ignored the tears on my face as I opened another compartment, my attention on that fine velvet and not the woman at my side until she reached over to wipe my face dry. When I saw the moisture on her fingers, I exhaled, clearing my throat. I hadn’t expected the emotion or that the memories to overwhelm me like this.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Alex, rubbing my damp face on my jacket sleeve. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.”

  She slipped in front of me, pulling up her dress to rest on her knees. “I used to cry every night like clockwork for two solid years.” I liked how Alex rested her arms on my thighs like they fit there, like she did now, and how she didn’t try to look away from me when she told me the truth. “When I first got to Wanda’s all I thought about was finding out what happened to Stevie and who the hell would want my sister dead. But I was a twelve year old kid. What the hell could I do?”

  That feeling wasn’t restricted to kids. I’d been eighteen when my mom was murdered, just as confused and clueless as to what to do with the rest of my life as Alex had been at twelve, stuck at her foster mother’s crap house. “It’s the most helpless feeling in the world,” I admitted, dipping my forehead against Alex’s when she nodded.

  This was not how I imagined the night going. I wanted to get her out of that dress. I wanted to feel Alex on top of me, against me. But that jewelry box and the question of how the hell she managed to get it away from Ironside had me pausing, contemplating, debating and then, finally, at the sight of it, opening it, remembering what that box meant to my mother, had me losing myself in the memories it evoked.

  “Thank you for getting it back,” I told her, holding onto her fingers. “I owe you, Alex. I owe you big time.” I meant it.

  She kissed my forehead, and smiled. “You don’t owe me a thing, Ryan.” Her breath was warm, soothing against my skin. “Well,” she said and I recognized the tease in her voice, “there’s one thing you can do.”

  Alex was not as smooth as she thought she was. I was learning her tells, had watched her long enough to recognize the lift in her tone, that small grin she made that she was probably not aware of when she started to flirt. Sitting up then, I gave her my cocky bastard sneer, forcing disdain, irritation on my face when all I wanted just then was to laugh. “Yeah? What now?”

  She really was a beautiful woman. That was no big secret, but when she smiled and it was real, with all the happy and humor and delight that moved across her face, well, I didn’t think I’d seen anything more beautiful, or ever would. She gave me one of those smiles then, one that made her eyes lighten, had her cheeks flushed and warm.

  “Help me out of this dress.”

  Nodding, I licked my lips, wanting to be calm, not wanting Alex to see what a desperate, stupid man she made me, but then she moved her lips together, the same little nibble she did when she’s hungry and all thought about being cool and not making an ass out of myself flew right out the window. “Whatever the hell you want, darlin’.”

  I didn’t let her prepare or tell me not to pick her up. I took Alex around the waist and didn’t stop kissing her, holding her tight against me until we were in my room. Then, I turned her and all that visible skin and those sporadic flowers called to me. My fingers were sloppy, too big to be slow or easy but I did the best I could, unhooking the clasp at her neck so the sheer fabric fell to her waist.

  “Alex, your skin is…” But I remembered what she’d said before. She knew what she was and didn’t need to hear it from me. Instead of praising her, I knelt down behind her and kissed her back. “I want to touch you here, darlin’,” I said, pushing away that fabric she held in front of her so nothing kept me from those fine muscles and beautiful arches. “And here.” My mouth on her spine, my tongue over each ridge, each bump had Alex shaking, arms covering her breasts.

  “Ryan…” it was all she seemed able to say and I didn’t let her stop me, wouldn’t let her tell me she didn’t want my mouth on her. I knew that wasn’t true. But when I stood again, my lips on her shoulder, my hands working down the zipper on her ass and the rest of her dress gave way to more tempting skin, more of those finely honed muscles and I touched her, just on the swell of that plump, delicious ass, Alex didn’t shake or shudder anymore. She fell back against me, just like she had in that cemetery, only this time no one watched us, no one would interrupt.

  “Can I touch you here, lady?” I brought my hands around her waist, just under the curve of her full breasts, then brought my hands up to hold their weight, pausing until I got the moan I wanted from her before I rubbed my thumbs against her nipples. “Here is good?”

  “So good.” Alex’s breath quickened and she fell back against me further, completely relaxed, trusting, and the quick warmth of pleasure in my chest felt good, almost better than the pulse of need hardening my dick.

  Releasing one of her breasts, I was risking her trust, taking a chance that she’d rebrick that thick wall around her heart that seemed to have finally crumbled tonight. But if I wanted Alex—and by God I wanted ever last inch of her—then we needed to take this risk. We needed to kick the fat, ugly white elephant out of the room and never let it back in.

  Slowly, I inched my fingers across her ribs, still working one nipple in my hand, still getting that loud pant of delight from her the faster I worked my fingers, but my palm grazed across one scar, then another and Alex got quiet and I felt the tension in her shoulders start to tighten.

  “Ryan, no… I don’t…”

  “This is nothing,” I told her, holding her against me with my finger stroking over one scar. “This means nothing.”

  “It’s ugly.”

  “Darlin’, there isn’t an ugly part of you. Not anywhere.” When she didn’t seem convinced and that tension only doubled, I kissed her neck, just behind her ear, but kept my thumb on that scar. “Want me to show you?”

  “I don’t want you to look at them.”

  I could kill that motherfucker a thousand times for putting that shame in her voice, for trying to take away the strong prid
e I’d come to love in her. “I’m gonna look at every part of you, darlin’.” I released her nipple and slipped my hand to her warm, wet pussy. “I’m gonna taste you here…” I slipped one finger inside her and smiled when a small gasp whistled past her mouth. “I’m gonna touch you here.” Her skin was like silk, all smooth and unblemished as I gripped her ass and rubbed that sweet swell on her left cheek. Still, my thumb worked on that scar, touching, grazing so she’d know that it was nothing, meant nothing between the two of us.

  “Ryan, fuck I want you.”

  “I know you do, lady.” Alex came to me easy when I turned her around and picked her up, walking her to my bed. “And I want you, Alex. All of you.” I laid her down, stripping off my jacket, my shirt and smiled when she knelt in front of me, eager, greedy hands unfastening my belt, lowering my zipper.

  I liked her hands on me, her small fingers around my dick, the quiet little gasp she made when she pulled down my pants. “Ryan, oh God,” she said, helping me out of the rest of my clothes.

  Alex’s mouth went against my neck, her fingers still wrapped around and rubbing on my dick and I couldn’t take the feel of her, the warmth of her touch on me, not all at once, not so sudden.

  “Wait,” I told her, pushing her back, hand on her chin and a small wrinkle moved been her eyes when I grabbed her wrist. “Lay down.” Predictably, Alex covered her stomach but I was not going to settle for that. “I said I want all of you, lady. I meant all of you,” I told her, hoping my voice promised everything I wanted to do to her, and it must have, because and she listened, hesitantly inching backward until she was on my pillow, looking like a fucking goddess with her bronze skin and black hair on top of those blue sheets. But she still kept her hands over her stomach, her long fingernails just inches from that silk black thong she wore.