by Tara Lynn
It didn't even matter that we were playing at the edges of a three-year old scab. This was about now.
I carried us near the tub and opened the showerhead. A pillow of steam wrapped around our heads. Liza smiled at me and it was like a lighthouse after a hurricane. I'd never dreamed of seeing it again, and yet here it was, out of nowhere.
I ran my fingers through her damp, ropy hair, drew her close, and locked lips until the towel had fallen off her lush chest and the air felt as hot as our breath on each other.
I led her into the shower, flipped her against the wall and kissed between her shoulders. Water ran in hot streams down her body. I cupped her breasts and the flesh slipped pleasantly between my fingers.
“Oh, god,” she groaned softly. “What are you doing to me?”
“Claiming you,” I asked.
In a clear mind, that might have been the wrong thing to say to her. But right now, she propped herself against the wall and parted her legs. “Come.”
An invitation to play pro for the Cowboys would have paled compared to that. I found her entrance and began to ease myself in.
She stiffened against me. “What is that?” she asked.
“Nothing.” All I heard was the water drumming around us, the beat of my blood pushing us towards union.
I grabbed her hips, but she wriggled me off.
“That's not the water.” She opened the window curtain.
The shower nearly shook with the rumble coming from below. My skin went cold. Those were engines and pipes. My blood coursed with a new drumbeat.
“Fuck,” I spat. “Now? They're coming now?”
I glanced out and saw Clash sitting astride his chopper in the driveway. His mirrored shades were pointed up but towards a different part of the house. I pulled away Liza's face quickly before the direction changed.
“What do they want?” she said, eyes wide.
“I haven't got a clue,” I said. “You stay here. I'll go find out.”
Her gaze turned to me. “They're here for you.”
“That's probably a safe bet.”
Her eyes suddenly seemed cold and far. It’d been one thing to see me in a jacket, but another to see what that jacket entailed. So much for dream time.
Well, I'd have to deal with the situation first. I patted myself dry, wrapped the towel around my waist, then went out to the door. The sun bore down heavy as I stepped past the thin shade on the porch.
“Hey,” I said. “It's Sunday morning, man. People are sleeping.”
The engine dulled. Clash climbed off, long and bent like a withered plant.
“Apologies, Snapshot,” he said, clasping my hand.
Snapshot. The name sounded simpering in his mouth. Maybe cause I wouldn’t ever hear that on the field anymore, only the MC’s take on it. Or maybe it was just Eliza taking me back to what I’d been before that name found me.
“What’s this about?” I said.
“No time for pleasantries huh?” Clash hunched in. “Fine. It’s nothing special. We just needed a delivery done. Wanted to drop it off as I passed through.”
He shoved a paper bag into my arms. I started to look in, but thought better of it.
“And you had to come all the way out here?” I said. “Can’t get someone else to hand off this Chinese food to?”
“Why? We’ve got you.”
“This is the third run you’ve had me do this week.”
Clash ticked his head. “I thought you liked these milk runs. You asking for a juicier assignment or what? There’s business that needs taking care of out on the way by the mile markers if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“No.” I didn’t often hear again about people the MC took out in the desert. “Fine, you’re right. I’m just spinning my tires.”
“Good. Better off leaving the dirty business to your brothers from here on. You’re more use to the MC clean.”
“I’m not clean.” They used this line on me all the time. Marlo might be the enforcer on our tag team, but I still got stained standing there.
Plus, what I’d done to my step sister only counted as clean if the shower wiped away the evidence as we went.
“You think what you want,” he said. “People see you as a white knight though – long as that holds true, you can call yourself whatever damn thing you please.”
“Yeah.” I furled the bag tighter. “Yeah, ok. I’ll take care of it. We done here?”
“What’s the matter?” Clash asked, eyes drifting dangerous toward the windows. “You got some business back up top?”
“Nothing special,” I said.
He snorted and squeezed my shoulder. “Nothing special eh? With looks like yours, boy, I have no doubt you lose track of the names.”
All but one anyway. “Gotta tag all the girls in school while there’s still time.”
Clash went back to his bike. “Oh, there’s years ahead, don’t worry. School girls spread their legs to the sound of an engine, you believe me on that. They’ll come and go – your brothers, they’re family.”
He tossed a brief nod then roared away.
I wrapped the package tighter, then went back in. The heat vanished as the door shut. I sighed. I didn't mind delivering this, but it hardly felt innocent. Deliveries went wrong now and then. Every ride for business came with a risk.
A more pleasant ride waited for me though. I hustled up the stairs like they led to an endzone. My father was peeking out through the cracked master bedroom door, but I ignored him and went straight to the bathroom. It was empty.
Shit.
I dumped the package in my room, flipped on a shirt and then went to Eliza's room. It was shut. Another bad sign.
I knocked softly. She didn't answer right away, but I kept knocking and finally the door cracked open. I slipped in as she dropped back to her bed in a huff.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't want to leave you, but I just didn't want him to come in or anything.”
I moved towards her, but she held out a palm and narrowed eyes. I pulled a seat and sat just out of reach.
“It was just a few minutes,” I said. “You didn't have to leave the bathroom.”
“You think I would still want anything after that?” she whispered, all metal and no heat.
“After what? Nothing happened. We talked, he left.”
“What did he give you?”
“Just a package to deliver.”
“Guns, drugs?”
“I try not to look.”
“What happened to the guy who said he couldn’t ever stand by when the wrong thing happened? Now you’re the one doing the wrong thing.”
“It’s just merch,” I said. “What people do with it isn’t up to me.”
“It’s that easy huh?” She rolled her eyes. “Well, I can’t ignore it.”
“It’s not easy.” My stomach twisted. Not at all.
Her eyes were past me now, and she shook her head. “I can't believe I forgot that.”
“You forgot what?”
“The last three years, Everett! Somehow you cast a spell on me. You made me see what was, not what is.”
“I didn't cast a goddamn spell,” I said. “You're the one who threw herself on me at the wedding.”
“Yeah, well, I'm not the one who pulled me onto your lap last night.”
“You're absolving yourself of that altogether?” I chuckled. “I gave you what you wanted. Even this morning you wanted it.”
We sat huffing at each other. I wanted to smother her with my mouth. God, we could be ferocious together.
She didn’t look to be feeling the same thing.
“That MC ruined my life,” she said. “They might as well have raped me!”
“Your stepfather ruined your life. You and I both know it was him.”
“All because of that messed up gang. And now you're one of them. And I slept with you.” She gasped. “Oh god, I slept with someone in the MC.”
She wrapped her arms tight around her
and stared off. I reached for her elbow but she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Just go. Please.”
I waited a moment longer, but she was locked up good. This was beyond salvage. I sighed and rose.
“Sorry, girl,” I said. “I wish it had all gone down different, too.”
I went out and shut her room door behind me. Back in my room, the delivery bag sat unfurling on my desk.
I plopped down on my chair and swiveled in front of it. I’d run a hundred like it before – some bigger, some smaller. This struck me as similar to my first delivery.
A cavern echoed in me, as deep and vacant as the one I’d felt when I first had to abandon her. The wound still lay fresh inside – all last night had been was opening up the bandages to the air.
I’d told myself this burden was mine. That I was fit to carry it. That I deserved to. Wasn’t all true though.
After all, the first thing I’d carried wasn't the package I'd brought back to the MC that night so many years ago.
It had been the burden I had brought to them. The one that made me go on that fateful first ride.
Eliza thought her stepfather vanished out of nowhere? That the MC just dispatched a good little mole cause he got a bit uppity.
No, girl.
They got rid of him because of me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eliza
What was happening to me?
Rett’s flaws lay so close to the surface. I could tick them off as easy as grammar mistakes on a newspaper report. He was a gang member. He was a jock. He ran when things got too tough to fight. He was wrong and wrong and wrong, especially for me. It just took one sight of his future to remind me just how distant its horizon lay from mine.
The second I stopped searching though, the flaws dissolved. I’d shut my eyes and see him above me, my legs clenched tight around his torso, feeling his muscles stiffen as he thrust deep in me. His eyes dulled over with lust as if lost - as if I were a dream. His fingers teased every spare nerve in my skin, his terse demands ran down my ear like spells that made my brain run white with pleasure, his lips pinned mine just as it all became too much to bear, as it all erupted.
“It’s alright, baby. Just come for me.”
He fed off my moan, endured the useless way I flailed, and held me firm as the pleasure he brought dulled to shivers against him.
Did all his other girls get that treatment?
The question should have chased away the visions. Instead it just made me heat up. Of course, they wouldn’t. Other girls might get the jackhammer jock or the rough ride from the MC. I got the boy underneath all that.
My eyes would open though, and the dream would vanish in the Texas sun. Rett’s walls went too high, first wrapped in muscle and padding and soon to be entombed in criminal leather.
Maybe the MC didn’t have him yet, but I knew how this story went. My last stepfather had never been a good man, but he’d been fine being respected as the sheriff. The MC had come tempting him, and by the end the badge on his chest became a symbol of his perversion.
“See this, sweetheart? Take a long look before it comes off. Know what it means? It means I can do with you as I please.”
The gravelly words alone conjured the stench of tobacco and curdled whiskey. I’d have to rattle the whole thing out of my head. Gratefully, my memory buried what followed those talks in a deep hole. I didn’t dare go digging in those pits, but skimming the edges gave me everything I needed to reel my thoughts back every time.
No more Rett. The boy that lingered in my fantasy was an illusion. I could want the real one. I could let him make me burn for him. Ache for how far he’d fallen. Long for what I saw inside.
But I wouldn’t surrender my future to him.
One day, I came back from school and had the future literally in my hands. I waited at the dinner table, holding a huge white envelope from UT-Austin. My mom stood behind us holding her phone, already recording. This moment happened without any help from her, almost despite what she had done, but I didn’t mind her watching. Let her keep living in her dreamworld. Sometimes it was all we had.
“Hurry up, Maria!” I said.
“I'm coming. I'm coming.” She hustled out of the kitchen and plopped down with a knife.
I rolled my eyes. “Really, teeth won't do?”
“I don't want to damage anything inside.”
“Go on girls,” Mom said. “I've got my fingers crossed for both of you.”
No school wasted envelopes like this on rejections, but still her giddy mood infected me. Why not? I’d earned this, poured everything into class for years to make sure that admissions boards couldn’t see anything but what I’d achieved.
“Thanks, Mrs. Clark,” Maria said, reaching for her envelope.
“Oh, it's Tull now, dear.”
And…there went my sympathy. I crushed my eyes. Yes, of course she had rushed to attach herself to someone else. It had been the luckiest thing on earth that she hadn’t changed it for my last stepfather, or his brand would hang around my neck until it snapped it.
“Let’s just do this,” I said.
I tore my envelope. A bright orange and white folder sat inside. I yanked it out as Maria slowly let hers slip into her hand. My mother clumped in on my shoulders, and I had to turn away to open it and read.
Dear Eliza, it is with great pleasure…
“It is with great pleasure that I would like to invite you to join the University of Texas – Austin Class of 2017,” Maria said, her voice rising as she read more and more of the letter.
I knew this would happen for us both, but a big wobbly smile erupted on my face anyway hearing her. How couldn't it? Her calm, sunset face rounded with wrinkles and her eyes moistened with tears as she read the trembling sheets. She was the first in her family to go to college and now she was headed to the best school in Texas – one of the best in the world. This was just the start. She might wind up at Harvard.
She might wind up at Harvard. My smile evaporated.
Austin was everything I wanted, not too high or to low, not too close or far, but this folder in my hand felt like a call to war as much as a golden ticket. I might be valedictorian, but Maria had been the one at my side helping me when it took too much. She might not be there for the next stage.
It’d be fine. Whatever happened, I’d be happy for her. Austin was supposed to be a fresh start anyway – I wouldn’t need the support I did here.
I gripped Maria's damp hands and beamed up at her until she finished the whole letter. We shrieked and tumbled into each other with a hug.
My mom gave me a soft squeeze on the back, and even that was ok. I had gotten here, with or without her. Not everyone could have the parents they needed. Maria knew it. I knew it. Strangely, Rett was the only other person who might understand.
“There's more in here.” My mom plucked another sheet out of the folder.
I took it from her and read: “The Regents of UT-Austin have examined your achievements and found them to be extraordinarily impressive. To reward all you have accomplished and simplify the decision to matriculate at this institution, the board has seen fit to provide you with a full-tuition scholarship...”
My fingers trembled too hard to read the rest.
“Oh…” I said. “Oh wow.”
I hadn’t just been given my ticket out. The school thought I already would land at the top of the heap. I didn’t have to worry about a thing but getting there and doing what I wanted.
“Oh my god, Liza.” Maria wrapped herself around me, but I was off in my own world.
What had I done to get that? Get good grades? Classes were just classes. They'd been a way to not go home at first. And then they'd become a way to distract myself from the thoughts that came when I had too much free time. I might have gotten in to Austin being who I was, but this…this was almost a gift from my stepfather.
“You have another sheet too, dear,” my mom said.
I snapped out of it a
nd saw Mom hand Maria a sheet. Her eyes were as wide as an owl’s as she pored over it.
“Full ride?” I asked.
She looked up incredulous and just handed me the sheet. It wasn't just full tuition. They were giving her housing and a stipend, too.
“We’re going to Austin.” I clasped her shoulders. “Maria, we’re going to Austin, right?”
