Combative Trilogy

by McLean, Jay

  I give him just enough time to get comfortable, to look around. Then, light on my feet, I make my way back down. He’s standing at the end of the hallway where the storerooms are, phone in his hand, taking pictures of the space.

  Ah, such predictability.

  I cross my arms, watch him a moment before snapping, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  His shoulders jerk, just slightly, but besides that, there’s no other tell in his features. No fear. It’s impressive, really.

  “So?” I push.

  He matches my stance. “Just checking things out.”

  It’s strange—this calmness that washes through me while we stare each other down, waiting for the other person to break first. Fortunately for him, I’d made plans. And going by the ruckus outside the basement stairs, those plans have just arrived.

  * * *

  The exchange between Franco’s guys goes down smoothly even though we have to wait for Parker to clear the fuck out.

  Meeting first with the agents, then with Parker, set us back a few hours, and now we have to rush to get the supply out to all the runners. But I have time for Bailey. I always will. Sitting in the car opposite her complex, I get my fill. She’s standing in the foyer, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she stares outside. If she looked hard enough, she’d see me. She’s not looking for me, though, which means she’s probably looking for him.

  Jealousy tears at my insides.

  But then she walks to the mailbox, unlocks it and peers inside, and as lame as it is, my chest fills with warmth.

  It isn’t time yet, Bailey.

  “Can we go now?” Tiny whines, gripping the steering wheel.

  I almost say yes, but then Parker appears, on his phone, walking into the apartment building. He must say something to her because her head throws back, and when she turns to him, she’s laughing. Laughing. And it’s not fake like it should be. It’s real, and it’s genuine, and it takes everything inside me to breathe.

  Parker’s off his phone now, and she’s pursing her lips, eying the ceiling. Playful. They’re talking to each other, flirting, and Tiny says, “You’re going to kill yourself with this shit, Nate.” He pulls away from the curb just in time for me to see her push open the door, a beat of hesitation in her step as she faces the outside world alone.

  Abandoned.

  “I’m good,” I tell him.

  And I hold on to that lie until I’m standing behind the counter at my gym, handing a drink bottle filled with drugs to one of my runners when a text comes through:

  Madison: So he asked me out.

  “Take over,” I tell Tiny, who’s standing beside me.

  Mind reeling, I don’t take my eyes off the burner phone as I make my way to the office. I shut the door, shut out the world, and type out a reply as I flop onto the chair behind the desk.

  Sara: Yeah? Are you going?

  She replies immediately.

  Madison: Yes… we’re going to dinner and a movie.

  I groan, drop my head on the desk. Smack it a few times. Dinner and a movie. What I wouldn’t fucking give to be able to grant her such basic life experiences. And now she’s getting them with someone else. I fight the rage and lift my head off the desk, pick my pride up off the floor.

  Sara: Good.

  Chapter 32

  I must’ve looked at a bag of cocaine a little too longingly while I was divvying them out because Tiny’s crawled up my ass about it and made himself a nice little home there. Metaphorically, of course. But he won’t back off. Won’t give me room to think. Or breathe. And I should be grateful that he cares so much, but… all I want to do is get into bed, throw the covers over me, and lie in the darkness.

  “I dated a girl in high school who thought that you play the game as Zelda,” he says, scoffing as he smashes buttons on the game controller. “Zelda!” He shakes his head. “How can you confuse Link for Zelda?”

  My living room has never felt so small. “Uh-huh.” On the television, two animated figures walk through picturesque scenery as we try to complete our next quest.

  “I broke up with her.”

  I eye him sideways. “Because of Zelda?” I ask incredulously.

  “Zelda’s no fucking joke.”

  Sighing, I fling my controller to the side and slump down deeper on the couch. “You don’t have to be here, man.”

  He shakes his head, his focus on the screen. “No, I need your help with this.”

  I manage to contain my eye-roll. “I’m not eight, Tiny. You don’t need to lie to me under the pretense of needing my help. You’ve completed this entire game over thirty times on your own.”

  His shoulders drop, defeated. “I’m allowed to be worried about you, Nate. And if you say otherwise—”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.” I shake my head. “And I appreciate you, man, but I’m fine.”

  “Pretty sure you said that last time, and next thing I knew, you’d burnt an entire house to the ground.”

  I dig the heels of my palms against my eyes, trying to ease the frustration blooming inside me. “It’s different now.”

  “Different how? Because Bailey’s back?”

  I glance toward the front door, making sure Ashton isn’t coming in any time soon. Even though she knows about Bailey and our past, she doesn’t know the full extent of it. And I’m not naive to the fact that Ashton harbors some feelings for me, so talking about Bailey while she’s around would be similar—to some extent—to Bailey waving Parker in my face, which is happening right now. And it fucking sucks. “They’re on a date,” I mumble.

  Tiny’s sigh fills the room, expanding my frustration. “So… what you’re saying is that she’s doing her job…”

  I rub at the back of my neck, try to release the tension building there. “They went to dinner, and now they’re at the movies.”

  Dropping the controller on the glass coffee table, he turns to me, gives me his full attention. “How do you know all this?”

  “She’s texting me.”

  “With a fuckin’ play-by-play of her date?”

  I shrug.

  “Tell her to knock that shit off. It’s not good for you, Nate.”

  “She’s scared, man.”

  His spine straightens as his jaw tenses. “Of Parker? If he so much as—”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Not like that.” But I am glad he wants to protect her as much as I do. “She’s like… like some sweet, innocent high school freshman, and he’s probably some senior jock with a ton of experience when it comes to dating, and she’s… scared.”

  Tiny relaxes a little. “Right.”

  “And she says he wants to kiss her, and she wants me to tell her what to do.”

  Tiny’s eyes go wide. “What did you say?”

  Groaning, I murmur, “I told her she should let him kiss her, but not let him touch her.”

  His inhale is sharp, exhale the opposite. “Jesus, man…”

  “I know.” I get to my feet, start for the kitchen. I need a drink. Or eighty. “It’s just—I don’t want her to blow her cover, you know? I don’t want to put her in danger, but at the same time—”

  “I get it,” Tiny cuts in, meeting me at the counter.

  I pour us both a drink. “I think I could handle this a lot better if I knew there was an end date to all of it.”

  He sips the drink, wincing when it burns his throat. He likes to drink beer. I only stock whiskey. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I feel like I’m constantly racing against a clock since she’s been back. Like I don’t know when I’ll not be able to see her anymore, so I have to take every opportunity I can.”

  “So…” Tiny spins the shot glass on the counter, stares at it as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “If you knew that it would end tomorrow, what would you do?”

  “Huh?”

  He looks up now, his eyes boring into mine, and I expect to see judgment, or at the very least annoyance that Bailey seems t
o be all I’ve been talking about lately. But it isn’t there. “What would you do, Nate? Would you divorce Ashton, marry Bailey, run off into the sunset and leave everything behind?”

  His words float through my mind, spinning, spinning, spinning. I shrug. “In an ideal world, yeah… probably.”

  A door clicks shut somewhere behind me, and Tiny’s eyes widen. I look back, but there’s no sign of anyone here.

  Tiny reaches for his gun. “What the fuck was that?”

  I stop him, my palm over his hand, and lower my voice when I say, “Is Ashton home?”

  He shrugs. “The lights were on in the salon when we came up.”

  Pulse racing, I pull the 9mm from my waistband before going to Ashton’s bedroom door and knocking twice. “Ash?”

  “Yeah?” she calls out.

  When I open the door, my heart sinks. Ashton’s sitting on the edge of her bed, her legs swinging out in front of her, while she spins the rings around her finger—the rings I’d bought and she’d picked out. I clear my throat, find my voice. “I didn’t know you were home,” I say, as if it’s an excuse to the truth she just heard.

  “Mm-hmm.” She won’t look at me.

  “Who’s in the salon?”

  “I got one of the girls to close. I wasn’t feeling well.”

  I step into her room now, my hand raised to feel for her temperature.

  “Don’t,” she bites out, her glassy eyes meeting mine.

  All air leaves my lungs, while my hand freezes halfway between us. “Ash… I—”

  “I know what this is, Nate,” she says, looking up at me with those sad, sad eyes. “And I know I shouldn’t let it hurt me…”

  “Ash…” I can’t lie to her. I can’t tell her that I feel the same way she does or that I someday maybe will because I won’t. I can’t. “I don’t know what to say, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “And yet here you are…” she says, walking to her door, “…hurting me anyway.” As if on cue, the burner in my pocket rings. Her eyes drift shut. “Answer it.”

  “I don’t have to,” I say, trying to reach for her. I may not be in love with her, but there are only three people in my life I genuinely give a shit about, and two of them are in this apartment.

  She pulls back an inch, opens her door wider. “Yeah, you do, Nate.” She guides me out of her room. “You always do when it comes to her.” Then she slams the door in my face.

  My phone’s stopped ringing now, but there’s a ringing in my head, high-pitched and constant, and I grasp at my hair, try to rid the sound from inside me.

  “Hey, man, are you okay?” Tiny steps up beside me just as my phone goes off again. I retrieve it from my pocket, my face scrunching in pain with the agony tightening in my chest. “Bailey?”

  “Nate…”

  She’s crying.

  Sobbing.

  And my pulse beats wild in my eardrums. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “Can you—” She can barely speak through her cries.

  “What the fuck did he do to you?”

  “Nothing,” she’s quick to respond, her voice filled with torment. “I just… I need to see you. Can you please…”

  I glance up at Tiny and speak through the knot in my throat. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  I hang up without a need for a response while Tiny reaches into his pocket and throws me the keys. “Can you stay with Ash?” I ask him. “She says she’s not feeling well, so just make sure—”

  “I got you. Go!”

  Standing by the front door now, I slip on my shoes, then glance at him one more time. “You not going to fight me on this?”

  “On what?”

  “Running to her like this?”

  Crossing his arms, he shakes his head. “If you were going anywhere else, then maybe I’d be worried you’d try to sneak in a bump.” I lower my gaze because the truth fucking hurts. “But no,” he adds. “I’m not worried about it if you’re with Bailey.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Bailey’s your drug, Nate. She’s your addiction.”

  Chapter 33

  “Say something,” Bailey pleads.

  I sit on her couch with my head in my hands, and I know my reaction is the last thing she needs because it’s not her fault. She’d had too much to drink because of course she did. She doesn’t know her limits. How could she? And then they came back to her apartment and—

  Puke catches in my throat, and I’m quick to stand because what they did was done on the couch I was just sitting on.

  “I’m sorry,” she mutters, and I lift my gaze, lock my eyes on hers.

  Shaking my head, I breathe out, “No.”

  “No?” Her eyes are wide, filled with tears. “You won’t accept my apology?” she accuses.

  “No, that’s not—” I blink hard, try to fight against the warring emotions swimming through every cell: rage, sorrow, regret. The attempt at a calming breath I inhale does nothing but increase the pain in my chest. I’m pacing now, trying to rid the pins and needles that seem to take over my entire body. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Bai.”

  “You told me not to let him touch me and I—”

  “Stop,” I cut in, closing my eyes, but it just makes the images of her and Parker more vivid. More real. More wild. She’s naked beneath him, coated in sweat, her eyes closed in pleasure, and he’s… he’s touching her, inside her—and, no, it didn’t go that far, but…

  I force my eyes open again, glare at the wall. Fight the fucking urge to put a fist through it. “I just need a minute.” I can no longer stand on my own, so I lean against the wall, slide down until my ass hits the floor. I raise my knees, try to settle my breathing.

  Bailey follows suit, sitting down next to me, her legs crossed. “It was my first date,” she says, her voice weak. “I’d see it in movies, you know? Or the free books I’d get at those street libraries.”

  I face her now, notice the way her lips pull down at the corners, the way her gaze seems distant, her mind so lost, so innocent.

  “In my head, it was so romantic. Dinner and a movie… and I…” She sucks in a breath, releases it slowly. “Is it so selfish of me to want to experience that, just once?”

  A tear slides down her cheek.

  The hole grows in my heart.

  I take her hand in mine. “You’re not the selfish one here, Bai. I am. I want you to myself because… because…”

  She turns to me, her honest eyes meeting mine. “Because you love me?”

  I nod once. “I do.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Ashton?”

  She nods.

  A beat of hesitation passes, but it’s enough for her to know the answer. The truth. And she looks away, breaks our connection, our touch. I sigh, knowing what I’m about to say will ruin her more. Maybe that’s all this is for me: a way to be even more destructive than I already am. “I care about her, Bailey. It’s hard not to. And I have a lot of love for her, but I’m not in love with her.”

  Pursing her lips, she looks down at her lap. “I’m never going to be normal, am I?” she cries, wiping the tears from her eyes. “My life will never be mine.”

  I scoot closer, wrap my arm around her shoulders, and bring her into me. “You are normal, Bai.”

  “No, I’m not. Every emotion I’ve ever had has been fed to me by other people. Whenever I gain the strength to be something more or want something more, it’s always stripped from me. And I don’t want for a lot, Nate. I just want…”

  “You want first dates, dinners, and movies…”

  “And I want to be able to walk around on my own without constantly looking over my shoulder, fearing for my life all because…” Her words are a slow rambling, tumbling from her lips without thought, without consequence, and I don’t know whether it’s the alcohol talking or simply her need to say what’s on her mind. “All because I killed a guy who tried to rape me.”

  “Bailey,” I whisper, guilt
filling my chest.

  “And I want to be able to love someone,” she continues, sniffing once. “Because I feel like I could really do that, you know? Like, even though I wasn’t shown much of it in my life, I know it’s there—in my heart—and I have so much of it to share and no one to share it with.”

  Heat burns behind my eyes. “Do you want to share it with him?”

  She murmurs, her voice barely a whisper, “You share it with Ashton.”

  Because Ashton and I have a deal, an agreement, but that’s not the point in any of this. Bailey’s right. Whether it’s Parker or some other guy, the most selfish thing I could possibly do is deprive the world of her love. And that love doesn’t belong to me, not anymore, not the way she wants it. With me, she’ll always be looking over her shoulder no matter where we are or what we do, and she’s here—doing all of this—so she can have her freedom: the only thing she really, truly wants. “You want to love freely,” I think out loud. “And you deserve that, Bailey. You deserve it all.”

  Seconds pass with no response, and when I look down, she hasn’t moved. Tucked against my chest—her cheek to my heartbeat—her breaths are even, calm. She’s fallen asleep. And so as carefully as possible, I pick her up off the floor and bring her to her bedroom, where I promise myself it’ll be the last selfish thing I’ll ever do when it comes to her: I watch her sleep in my arms and hope that one day, she’ll stand tall, find peace, and love freely amid the destruction around her.

  Chapter 34

  Yesterday, I’d woken up in bliss, my mind clear and my chest free from pain. Bailey was in my arms, sleeping peacefully. It lasted only a second, maybe two, and then my reality came crashing down on me. It was the highest of highs and then a comedown more agonizing than detox. I left her there, alone and abandoned, and now… now my heart is full of hate, and there’s only one place I know to direct it.