Winner Takes All: Checkmate, #7

by Finn, Emilia

  I never should have told her that.

  “That’s true. I did, but the twins belong to my brothers. I don’t take from my brothers.”

  “Well, I guess you have a moral compass after all,” she drawls. She begins fussing with the flowers by my arm, then as though the idea only struck her just now, she steps away and snatches up a crystal vase from a shelf and begins arranging again.

  “You didn’t come to me last night.”

  “I told you I wouldn’t. I’m not your plaything, Spencer. And I’m not interested in being your next girl from the bar. What was her name?”

  “Whose?”

  She scoffs. “The girl from the bar.”

  “I…” Fuck. “I don’t know.”

  “Mmm.” She pulls a long-stemmed flower higher, then stabs it down into the bunch until it sits how she wants it. “That sounds so romantic.”

  “Abigail…”

  “Here.” She plops the last ten or so stems into the vase, and pushes it toward me. “For Jess. Add water when you get to the hospital.”

  “Abigail, wait–”

  “That’s two hundred and ninety-nine dollars, please.”

  “Two-nin–” I stare. “Three hundred dollars for a bunch of flowers? Are you serious right now? I only paid fifty for the lot yesterday. And they were roses.”

  “Uh-huh. We had a price adjustment overnight. What I’ve given you is actually the VIP pricing model. For an extra five dollars and ninety-nine cents, I can offer you the Illumination spray.” She reaches under the counter and comes back with a little spray bottle. “Spray it onto the petals, and your bouquet will last a few days longer. Jess will love it.”

  I narrow my eyes and lean closer. I’m tall enough, I can easily lean onto her if I wanted, even with the desk between us. “What’s got your panties in a twist, Priss? You wake up horny and unfulfilled?”

  “Nope, I woke up just fine. Then I ate a donut and gossiped about guys with my friend.”

  “What guys?” My teeth bare when her eyes dance. “What guys, Abigail?”

  She shrugs and brings the vase closer. “That’s between me and my friend. Do you want the flowers, or no? If you don’t, I’ll put them on display, and someone else can have them.”

  “You’re mad because I don’t know that woman’s name. The woman from the bar.”

  “Am I?” She leans a hip against the counter and grins. “I had no clue you could read minds, Spencer. Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”

  “Something not nice.” I brush a hand over my chin and groan. “Come to me tonight, Abigail. We have business to attend to.”

  “No, I don’t think we do.”

  When I make no move to buy the pretty arrangement she literally tossed together in twenty seconds, she gives a dainty little shrug and removes the vase from the counter. Walking away so I have to turn and watch her sway, she places them prominently in the front window and smiles.

  “If you’re done here, I have to add water, then I have other work.”

  “You want more of what I gave you the night of the wedding.” I walk across the store. She made a mistake by leaving the counter, because now she has nothing to stand behind while she gives me sass. “Why are you pretending you don’t want to feel that again?”

  “Because I’d rather have a man that remembers my name tomorrow.”

  “You think I don’t know your name, Abigail? You think I can forget you?”

  “I think you’ve found a challenge that you’re insistent on winning. Had I been a regular girl who threw herself at your feet that first day, we would have done…” Her tough act falters when she chokes on the next word. “Sex. Then you would have walked away and moved on with your life. But because I said no, your ego was bruised. You can’t move on until you conquer me. You can’t let my disrespect go without winning your dignity back. But here’s the thing; I’m not playing your game. I’m not playing any game. I’m not trying to be rebellious, or trick you into something neither of us want.”

  I slide my fingertips along her forearm. “I want you.”

  “And I want to be treated like a lady the next day.” She snatches her hand away. “It would seem we’re incompatible. And since I know that about us, I won’t waste my time trying to change you. I’ve already given you too much.”

  “Too much? You haven’t given me anyth–”

  “When I find my real prince, I’m going to have to explain to him what I let you do. I’ll be ashamed, I’ll be sorry. And then I’ll spend the rest of my life feeling guilty for not saving myself for him. The same way you should feel guilty about not remembering that girl from the bar.”

  “So because I gave the sex to a woman who wanted exactly what I wanted – a casual hookup – I’m to be condemned? That’s not how this works, princess. Adults have casual sex. It’s what we do when we stop coloring and playing video games. It’s what we do when we grow the fuck up.”

  “It would seem you haven’t grown up yet, because you still can’t find a way to express your thoughts and feelings without cussing. Perhaps if you’d spent more time listening in school, and less time hounding the female population for meaningless sex, you would know how to speak intelligently.”

  “Do you get off with your Miss Priss attitude?” I lean forward and narrow my eyes. “Does it make you feel superior to speak down to me that way? I said I like sass. And I do. I fucking love sass – outside the bedroom. But in it, you’ll submit, and you’ll fucking love it.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  She tries to take a step back, but I hook an arm around her tiny waist and yank her to a stop.

  “Let me go, then leave my store.”

  “I’m not leaving, because we’re not done. You’re the most sexually repressed woman I know. Twenty-five and still a virgin, because you think there’s a mythical Adonis out there waiting for you. He’s not real. This romanticized idea you carry around with you is nothing but a dream. It’s for little girls who lay on their pink bed on a Sunday afternoon and marry their Barbie and Ken dolls. But I’m here, I’m real, and I can make you forget your inhibitions for a little while. I could free you from the constraints you put on yourself. I could show you things you didn’t know existed.” I lean in and nip at her jaw. “I could make you come right now, and you wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

  I might be able to walk away from this impossible, high-maintenance diva if I knew she didn’t want me too. But she does. Her eyes are hooded, her heart races, and the longer I hold her, the more her body quivers.

  “You’re playing a game, alright, Priss. But it’s just you, and you’re the only one you’re trying to convince.”

  “I will not come to you, Spencer.” Her voice is quiet, but steely. “I will not submit. I will not waste my one and only first time. And I will not live the rest of my life trying to make it up to my husband when he asks why I made poor choices.”

  She slips out of my grasp and clears half the store in long strides.

  “Leave, and don’t come back.”

  13

  Abigail

  I hate saying the word hate, but I hate more that my heart pounds as I watch Spencer climb into his car and stare at me through his windshield. I hate that he pushes on a pair of sunglasses, but the whole time I stand in place, he stares and holds me captive. I hate that my body is all tingly – everywhere – because of the things he said to me.

  I hate that I can’t let go of my desperate desire for a prince, a promise a sick girl made to herself while she mentally married her Barbies and Kens in a stark hospital room as a way to pass the time.

  I was born twelve weeks premature and weighed barely more than a pound. They said I wouldn’t survive, and that my family to say their goodbyes, but my parents tried so hard for me, there was no way they were going to let go so easily. There are a billion photos in our family albums of me with my mom – skin to skin contact. Of me and my dad. Even of me and Troy – who was barely six at the time, but w
anted his turn with his chest and mine touching.

  I was nurtured minute by minute, hour by hour, for more than a hundred days in the NICU before we went home and my family tried to find their new normal.

  I was always a small child, and whether it was because of my prematurity or not, my immune system never truly developed. In and out of care, monthly IVIG treatments, skin conditions, mild allergies, my poor family walked on eggshells my whole life.

  I was the long-sought-after daughter, the final piece to the Rosa puzzle after five sons, but for all their trouble, my family was gifted with a sick kid.

  But it was as if the universe wasn’t satisfied with our struggle, because we got the final diagnosis when I was fifteen.

  Hospitals, chemotherapy, wigs, bone marrow transplants. My brothers voluntarily underwent painful procedures that meant their own hospital stays and forfeited football seasons, because their baby sister needed more; more blood, more bone marrow, more medicine, more attention, more, more, more.

  I know why they’re protective of me. And I know that, after all of their sacrifices, for that deadly diagnosis to hit when we thought life should be getting easier hurt them.

  Breast cancer in a teen; rare. Breast cancer without family history; rare.

  I had barely even developed them yet, considering my prematurity and stunted growth, but there I was with my teeny tiny boobs that were trying to kill me. Surgery. Scars. Medicine. Ulcers in my mouth, vomiting around the clock, chemotherapy, hair loss, wigs.

  More, more, more.

  It was a never-ending hell, and a lonely existence when my family had to go back to school and work; they had no choice. They had to go.

  So the only thing I could control during those days of bland walls and blood tests, of endless vomiting and endless boredom, was my romantic heart and optimistic imagination. I would dream about the man that would love me for me. He would love me even though we’d spend the rest of our lives worried about a relapse. He’d love me, even if I don’t have the kind of body most men would desire.

  He’d love me, even through my deepest, darkest shame.

  There are some things I can never offer my future prince, so I try to save what I can. To gift him with my innocence, and pray he won’t toss me aside when he finds out the rest.

  But then Spencer Serrano comes along and tries to steal that too.

  I was resolute in my decisions before him, but now he makes me doubt. He makes me wonder. And he tempts me to throw my hands up and accept what he’s offering.

  I’m already spoiled, so it’s not like things could get any worse for me.

  “Oh. My. God!” Nadia bursts from the back of the store with wide eyes and fiery red cheeks. “Are you serious right now? Is this real life? You and him?”

  “No! Not me and him.”

  I turn back to the front window and gulp when he purses his lips and gives the tiniest nod.

  It’s like he can read my mind. He knows I’m wavering, tempted, and so unbelievably conflicted. But then he starts the engine and backs out into the street. He idles for a moment, which isn’t a big deal, since this town is small enough, his idling won’t hold any traffic up. His side windows are tinted much too dark for me to see him, but his truck remains in place for a minute, and warmth burns against my skin.

  I know he’s watching. I know he’s doing things to my body with his eyes. But then he accelerates away with a loud roar, and sends my heart speeding that much faster.

  “He’s… he’s…” Holy crap. “I don’t know what he is.”

  “I know.” Nadia slowly makes her way through the shop and stops right beside me. She stares out into the street just like I do, but where I wear a scowl, she grins. “He’s into you. That’s what he is.”

  “He’s crude and more sexually active than a stray mutt. I mean, yeah, he kind of wants me, but it’s only because I said no. I’m a challenge he feels he must conquer.”

  “I’d let him conquer me.” Hip thrusting, she leers at me. “I’d let that man conquer the shit outta me.”

  “Nadia! Stop.” I turn away and snatch up the vase of pink carnations Spencer wanted to buy. I bring them back to the counter, because I wasn’t truly done arranging them yet. “And you absolutely cannot mention this to anyone else. Especially not the guys.”

  “The guys? Your brothers?” She laughs. “You couldn’t pay me to deliver that news. They’d explode, and they’re too sexy to mess up.”

  “Stop! Why is everyone crushing on my brothers lately?”

  “Because they’re sex on legs, and wear uniforms for work. I mean really. Tell me you don’t want to touch yourself after he came in here in camo and said dirty things in your ear.”

  “You better be talking about Spencer, and not my brothers, sicko. And no. Because he had guns. I hate guns.”

  “Are you referring to his biceps? Because yeah he did.” She says it with a smirk and bouncing brows, which makes me want to smack her. “And you don’t hate guns. You respect them. You understand their importance for some vocations.”

  “Right. Some vocations. Like military, and police, maybe farmers, and possibly, if the need truly called for it, spear fishermen.”

  She snickers.

  “But not all the handbag carriers, and not a guy walking through a flower shop. It’s unnecessary.”

  “You’re looking for reasons to hate him!” she laughs. “All I’m saying is, I couldn’t stop looking at his thighs while he was feeling you up just now.”

  “He wasn’t feeling me up! He was demanding things that he’s not entitled to. He was saying those things with tasteless cussing. And he was trying to take something from me that I’m not willing to give.”

  “Yeah?” She lifts a sculpted brow – a skill I’ve never mastered – and drops a hand to her hip. “And what’s that?”

  I press a hand to my stomach as it jumps with nerves. With trepidation. With longing. “My body.”

  “And you’re not giving in… why?”

  “Because I’m saving myself.”

  “For who?” she practically shouts.

  “For my future husband!”

  “But what if… and hear me out…” She leans in a little closer, as though to tell a secret. “What if he was your future husband?”

  I turn and laugh. It’s loud and ridiculous, but it’s cathartic in the way someone who might be mentally unstable would feel after a loud belly laugh.

  “Bite your tongue, Nadia. He wouldn’t understand the concept. Now go back to work. I have things to do.”

  “I’m just saying, he might be onto something. You’re the only person you’re trying to convince. You’re allowed to want a slice of the forbidden pie, Abby. You’re allowed to be naughty every once in a while. You don’t even have to admit it to me, because I can see the truth in your eyes. But maybe you should admit it to yourself. You want the guy, and he seems pretty keen to oblige your wildest fantasies.”

  “No, I absolutely do not.”

  I walk away and carry my vase to the storage fridge out back, because behind my words are my thoughts. And they’re screaming I absolutely do.

  14

  Spence

  I switch off the lights to my firing range, and the spotlights that light up the yard out back. Electricity that crackles in the air from the moment I wake until the moment I shut everything down silences, so my shoes echoing on the concrete floor are the only thing I hear as I close up for the day.

  Jay and Sophia leave through the front and send my watch bleeping with security alarms. I know it’s them, so I ignore the beeps and move about, packing everything away. Glasses, earmuffs, empty water bottles that I intend to stuff down Jay’s throat tomorrow to teach him how to pick up after himself.

  Soph has been communicating with her Romeo a lot lately, but she does it in front of Jay, so I’m comfortable knowing it’s not a big secret she keeps from him.

  She’s just choosing not to share the details with the rest of us.

  Shit
is getting noisy again, because word is getting out that Colum Bishop – who just happens to be Kane and Jay’s dear ol’ daddy – is now dead and buried. Colum was a bad motherfucker who built an empire funded primarily by the sale of drugs and underage girls. Sophia herself shut that fucker down – which sometimes makes for colorful dinnertime chatter about her would-be father-in-law – but now that word has spread, and the world knows who shut him down, Checkmate is getting a little more attention than they’d like.

  It’s not like the good old days of assholes knocking on doors and asking questions– mostly. Today is an age of malware and cyber security. Sophia has to be on her game, shutting people out and reversing their trojans so they bite back and destroy the sender’s systems rather than our own.

  She makes it seem easy, like child’s play, with how she snickers, sips coffee from a mug in one hand and works with the other. She makes it look no more serious than if she were playing cards.

  Go fish.

  But she’s getting busier. Where she used to swear at her emails once a week, she now does it daily. Several times daily. So while the rest of us work the business and do our thing, she protects us all, because the most dangerous threat we face is online.

  There’s always a threat. There’s always someone looking to tap us on the shoulder. Which is why we keep our security tight.

  And why I almost jump out of my skin when I turn back to the entrance to my apartment, and find Abigail with her handbag clutched between her hands, and her knuckles ghost-white from holding on so tight.

  “Fuck!”

  Training means my hand instantly drops to my gun, but then my protective side overrides that, and makes me yank my hand back. Adrenaline slams through my blood and makes it so everything is brighter, louder, clearer. She’s turned my instincts up so it feels like I’m running toward a battle. Or away.

  “You scared the shit outta me, Priss!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She wears the same outfit she wore earlier in her shop. Her hair isn’t as perfect. Her skin’s a little paler – as if that’s possible. She watches me from thirty feet away, but doesn’t back up as I move toward her with steely determination.