by Deja Voss
I know if she doesn’t need me anymore, she’s gonna slip through my fingers once and for all. I can’t let her go that easy. These last few weeks have been the best weeks of my life.
But Bruiser is right. I’ve been slacking at the casino - I was supposed to start picking out and training our new security team last week. I’ve been slacking with the club, and Lord knows these men probably want some answers. They deserve some answers. I need to get out of my head and get back into action.
Then, there’s my dad situation. When he gets out of prison, if he really was in touch with Floyd that’s only going to escalate the hate he has for me. I don’t want Jewel anywhere near that. Hell, I don’t want to be anywhere near that.
“I’m not hiding from shit,” I say. “Just trying to do the right thing. I’m sorry if I fucking inconvenienced anybody.”
I walk out of the room without looking back over my shoulder. I go down the hallway, walk right past the bar and straight out the front door. If Jewel and I are going to have to vacate the hideout, we need to talk. If not that, then I want at least one last good night with her in my arms.
“Brass, stop,” Bruiser’s voice calls after me. He’s got his hands in his pockets and doesn’t look like he’s trying to fight. “I wasn’t trying to push you out of the room, boy. Come here.”
I walk across the gravel parking lot towards the porch. “I know this shit has you twisted up, Brass.”
“I was just doing right by the club, Bruiser. This shit needed to stop. I would’ve done it for anybody. Just so happens I kinda like being around Jewel.”
There’s a softness in his eyes when he smiles at me. “I’ve done stupider shit for love. If I was in your shoes I’d probably do the same thing. It’s just… you know I’m not gonna be around forever. You and Lean and Laz, you men are my legacy. I want you guys to take this chapter over, but it’s gonna be hard if you keep going rogue and keeping shit from the table. You gotta keep their trust, Brass. Sneaking around ain’t a good way to do that. Besides, you and Rowdy could’ve got your dumb asses killed. You can’t be walking into shit like that without backup.”
“We handled it,” I say.
“You care about that woman, you shouldn’t be putting yourself in situations like that. Trust me.”
“I needed to make sure she was safe.”
“You got a chip on your shoulder, Brass. You’re trying to compensate for something you had no control over. She’s not your mother.”
“Don’t fucking talk about my mother,” I growl.
“Somebody has to, Brass. You got some deep rooted issues and trying to be a fucking hero isn’t going to make them go away. Does she know?”
Other than whatever information Gin’s been feeding her, I never really opened up the discussion. What happened thirty years ago has stayed sealed up tight inside me, even though my dad getting out of prison is making shit start to bubble towards the surface.
“I’ll get her moved back into her house tomorrow,” I say.
“You need to talk to her. She’s a good woman. You want to keep her, you can’t keep her in the dark. You know I don’t take this shit lightly.”
“I know you’re just looking out, Bruiser. You’ve been a good replacement dad,” I say with a laugh.
“Hey, at least my ass managed to stay out of jail. For now.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” I confess. “He’s getting out soon. I’m worried he’s going to fuck with us.”
“You have a real family now, son. We got your back. Now go figure out how you’re gonna keep that woman happy.”
I walk off into the night, the bitterness of knowing tomorrow everything is going to change burning in my throat. I go back to a reality where Jewel doesn’t have to keep me around anymore if she doesn’t want to. I gotta loosen my grip.
I can’t end up like my father, trying to control a woman so hard it drives me to madness. I can’t end up like him, destroying someone they love more than anyone in the world just to try and keep them where they want them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jewel:
I smile as soon as I hear the sound of his exhaust coming down the driveway. Every time I think about him I smile.
Not that I have much else to do around here but think. I’ve done the meager bits of laundry, I’ve washed dishes, I’ve scrubbed windows. I’ve done more housekeeping in the last few days than I think I have in my whole life, but it’s getting kind of boring being cooped up and kept alone. All I have to look forward to is my time with Brass. Our conversations. Hour long fuck fests. Our walks in the woods.
The only thing I wish was that he’d let me in. Like, truly let me in. I’m falling madly in love with this man, but I feel like he’s a stranger. I love everything I know about him, but I don’t feel like I know anything about him.
I love his heart, and that’s enough, I remind myself. What happens when it’s time for me to move, though? Do we go back to that place in time where we both kind of just exist in the same world and bump into each other every once in awhile?
I hear the key clank in the doorknob, and it makes me feel all warm inside when he walks through the door. It kind of makes me feel special, him coming “home” to me, when I know he could’ve stayed all night at the clubhouse with his friends. I know it’s because he feels obligated to keep me safe, but I like to think maybe it’s more than that.
The way his eyes light up when he sees me on the couch, like somebody left a wrapped Christmas present there for him makes me blush.
“What are you doing awake?” he asks.
“I guess I’m feeling better,” I say. And I wanted to see you. “I think I slept enough in the last month to last me a lifetime.”
He goes to the fridge and grabs a beer and comes and sits right next to me on the couch. His hands are trembling as he takes a big swig.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better, and I know it’s probably time for you to go home.” The way he says it makes the words look painful. It kinda hurts me, too. I miss my house. I miss my freedom. I miss being able to order a pizza or sit on my front porch and listen to my neighbors fight. I miss walking around the South Side popping in and out of bars and eating gyros from a cart, but there’s this weird feeling in my stomach that makes me think I’d probably miss this even more. Just the two of us without any background noise.
“Is it safe?” I know the answer to that question. Floyd’s been taken care of, and I’m pretty certain I won’t be able to take a shit without eyes on my house, at least for the time being. I guess I’m just looking for any excuse at all.
He takes my hand in his, wrapping his fingers around mine and squeezes. “You’ll be safe forever, Jewel. Even if it means always having a prospect following you around. The batch we have right now is pretty decent. You won’t even know they’re there.”
A prospect? My heart sinks into my stomach.
“Where will you go?” I ask. That’s a stupid question. He has a place to live. He has a life. He has a job.
He looks me in the eye and shrugs and I burst into tears. I can’t even blame it on the meds anymore. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “It’s just a lot of change to digest.”
“I don’t ever want to see you cry, Jewel. I definitely don’t wanna be the one who makes you cry. I ain’t going anywhere. I just figured you’d want to go back to normal.”
“You think after all this I even know what normal means?”
“I think, I feel pretty bad leveraging this situation to try and make you love me.”
He swigs down the rest of his beer and I just sit there wide eyed, my mouth hanging open.
“I don’t want you to want me because I did what anybody would’ve done. I don’t want you to want me because I’m the only person you see every day. I don’t want you to want me because you need me for food or help to the bathroom. That ain’t fair to you.” He stands up from the couch and walks into the other room.
“Brass!” I call after him, pus
hing myself up off the couch. I don’t need him for any of those things anymore. I don’t want him because he’s the easiest target. “That’s not how I feel! You shouldn’t put words in my mouth.”
He comes back in the living room with a big photo album and another beer. He slaps it down on the table, using his sleeve to wipe some of the dust off the top.
“I haven’t looked at this in twenty years,” he says. He motions for me to join him on the couch. I sit down next to him, watching his tattooed hands tremble as he flips open the book. The very first picture is of a little boy, probably not much older than ten, dressed in a pair of khakis and a short sleeve button down shirt. His arms look like toothpicks, his hair is lobbed into a bowl cut, and his teeth are all over the place. He’s adorable, but he’s so scrawny, he looks like a strong gust of wind could blow him over.
“Is that your brother?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “That’s me. I was always a runt,” he chuckles. “I was a straight up mama’s boy. Straight A student, Boy Scout, shit, I played the flute in junior marching band.”
My jaw nearly hits the table. He flips through the pages and we both laugh at all the pictures of him in his band uniform, his scout uniform, a picture of him at the science fair standing in front of a table with a big poster covered in pie charts.
When we get to the page with a picture of a woman in bright blue scrubs, her arms wrapped around Brass, her smile so radiant I can feel it through the page, a stone forms in my throat.
“She was beautiful,” I say, putting my hand on his thigh. He squirms like I’m burning him.
“She was a fucking saint. She worked on the oncology ward at the Children’s Hospital. Everyone loved her. She really poured everything she had into those kids and their parents, too. She was constantly winning awards and asked to go speak at events. She was one of a kind, and the whole world knew it.”
He pulls me onto his lap, and I grab the book off the table, flipping through the pages. His chin rests on my shoulder, and he wraps his arms around me. My heart shatters into a million pieces for his mom, and breaks right down the middle for the little boy who lost her too soon.
“My dad, I think he loved her, but he loved her too hard. He was a very successful brain surgeon, but nobody ever really noticed him. Everybody doted on my mom, and he snapped. I don’t think he was jealous, but I think he wanted her for himself. That’s why he never loved me. That’s why he was so hard on me. Because I took her away.”
He squirms beneath me, like he wants nothing more than to get away, but I’m not going to let him. He needs to face his problems, and I need to show him I’m here for him. Maybe I needed him more than anything in the world for the last few weeks, but now, he needs me.
“That’s not how love works, Brass.” It hits me all at once. I know with every fiber of my soul, Brass is a great man, but deep down inside, there’s a part of him who thinks he’s responsible for his mom’s death. “When you love somebody you want them to be the best they can be. You want the very best for them. When they succeed, that’s your success. When they’re happy, you’re happy. You uplift the people you love, you don’t drag them down to your level. You certainly don’t murder them.”
He sighs and wraps his arms around me in a tight hug.
“I want to know it all, Brass. This pain you feel, it’s my pain, too now.”
“I’m not showing you all this shit to make me feel bad for me, Jewel. I just feel like you need to know this. I’m not right in my head. I’m not over it. When I heard about what happened to you, something snapped inside me, like this is what I’ve been training my whole life for. I wasn’t going to let what happened to my mom happen to somebody I loved ever again.”
I take his hands in mine and stare into those clear blue eyes. “And did it make you feel better?”
“No,” he says. “Took me all this time to realize no matter what I did I was never going to be able to stop my old man from murdering her. Evil’s gonna find its way in no matter what. Nobody’s gonna let me wrap you in bubble wrap and keep you locked in my closet, either.”
“That sounds a little kinky, even for you,” I say. I press my forehead to his, staring in his eyes until he starts to laugh. “I don’t want to let you go, Brass. You’re a part of me now. I don’t think you leveraged this situation to make me love you. I think I was meant to love you no matter what. This shit was just a catalyst.”
It feels crazy coming out of my mouth, but it feels right. Deep down, I don’t know any other way to describe my feeling for him but pure, innocent, deep love. He makes me
“What are you trying to say?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
“You know exactly what.” I squeal as he presses his mouth to my neck, covering me in kisses in that spot that drives me wild.
“Are you going to let me be your old man, Jewel?” he asks, nuzzling me harder.
It’s the sweetest question anybody has ever asked me. For a second I picture the pure little innocent Brass from the photo album, flute in hand, and I know deep down, under all the tarnish and leather and enforcer swagger, that’s still the person he is.
And I love all of him.
“Yes!” I grab him by the face and give him a giant kiss. There’s nobody I’d rather have by my side back in the ‘real world.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Brass:
I stand out on her front porch with a bouquet of flowers in my hand, debating whether to knock or ring the doorbell. Even though I’ve known this woman so long, even though I’ve seen her in every possible way, had her plenty of times, there’s something more intimate about everything now. She wants me here. She invited me over for dinner. It’s like our first real date, and I’ve completely forgot how I’m supposed to act.
“What are you doing out there?” she shouts from the window. “Get in here!”
I open the door and take off my boots. She’s standing in the kitchen, stirring a pot, and the smell of roast beef hits me right in the face, instantly making my stomach growl.
She looks sexy as fuck in her little black shorts and her hot pink shirt that hangs off her shoulder, straight up taunting me to put my mouth all over every inch of her flesh. Her long dark hair hangs down her back in a messy braid.
Some 90s pop song plays through the speaker on the counter top, and she flashes me the biggest smile as soon as I come in the room.
“You cook?” I ask, handing her the bouquet. She smacks me with it teasingly and kisses me on the lips.
“I had to do something with myself until I can go back to work so I started watching cooking tutorials. Don’t look in the garbage can, though. I burned the first three batches of apple dumplings?”
“Apple dumplings? Dear Lord, woman, if that’s the kind of stuff you plan on feeding me I might not ever leave.”
She winks and shrugs, and walks over the fridge and opens it up. “I have beer, wine, Muscle Milk…”
“Muscle Milk?” I ask.
“I don’t know, I was trying to find stuff I thought you’d like at the grocery store.” She shoves her hands in her pockets and looks up at me with a goofy smile.
“You’re fucking adorable,” I say. I can’t help but laugh, because I can tell she’s as nervous as I am. We’re both acting like a couple of aliens trying to pretend like we’re human beings right now, and it’s a huge relief that I’m not the biggest weirdo in the room.
I grab one of the little bottles of protein shake just as a courtesy and give her a thumbs up as I chug it down.
“Brass, I feel like you’re antagonizing me,” she says, throwing her head back and laughing.
“It’s great, babe. I swear.”
She shakes her head and goes back over to the pot of potatoes, stirring them. “Get yourself a beer. Get me one, too while you’re at it.”
I crack open the top of two bottles of Iron City and walk over to the stove, wrapping my arms around her waist and taking in the smell of her citrusy hair. I missed this. I missed
her. Even though we’ve been apart less than a day, it feels like a lifetime. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of everything about this woman.
I help her mash potatoes while she pulls the roast of the oven. She stabs it with a fork and it falls apart and she jumps up and down and cheers. “Not gonna lie, I was pretty worried about this,” she says. “I thought we were going to have to order pizza.”
She could probably set anything in front of me and I’d eat it with a smile on my face just so I wouldn’t hurt her feelings.
“You know you don’t have to do anything special for me,” I say, setting the potatoes on the table. “I’m really not here for the food.” I lift her up on the counter top and take her mouth in mine. Our tongues swirl and she tightens her legs around me. “Although, I’ll eat your pussy all night long.”
She shakes her head and jumps down off the counter, grabbing a couple plates from the cupboard. “You better eat some dinner first. You’re gonna need all the energy you can get, big boy.”
She swats me on the ass and sprints over to the table.
Her roast beef is out of this world, and I eat way too many apple dumplings while she asks me a million questions about my day. I don’t much like talking about myself, but she manages to pull it all out of me. Her little reactions, her laughs, the way she purses her lips and scrunches her eyebrows when she’s really into a story are fucking fascinating to me. It makes me feel more important than I really am. It’s like when she looks at me, she sees a totally different man than who I think I am.
She reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers.
“Are you happy to be home?” I ask.
“I think I’m just happy.” I could stare into her dark eyes all night, but I’m ready for dessert part two.
I lean over the table and kiss her lips. “You’re a good woman, Jewel.” I don’t know how to tell her how much it means to me to have somebody care enough to make sure I have a good meal or to buy me things she thinks I’ll like. I know I’m grown and I can take care of myself, but there’s nothing that can take away from the feeling of being loved. She touches a place inside of me I’ve been burying my whole adult life. It makes me feel vulnerable, but it makes me feel strong, too, like I did something right to finally earn the right to feel like this.
