Winner Takes All: Checkmate, #7

by Finn, Emilia

  “What are we gonna do?”

  He shrugs. “There were more coordinates. Places I haven’t been yet. I think he’s telling us to go there.”

  “Ambush.”

  He purses his lips and nods. “Maybe. Bread crumbs. Distraction. Or maybe a way to communicate with us without dying.”

  “So we’re going there?”

  “Yeah.” He digs his hands into his pockets when Abigail stops and looks at the ceiling.

  She blows out a noisy breath and closes her fists. Then, as though reaching a decision, she slides her phone into her pocket and turns to us. “Coconuts.”

  “Soon,” Jay murmurs. “Not yet, but soon. Soph is figuring out our next move. Ace is back, and I’ll have a new mission soon.”

  * * *

  After Jay leaves and agrees to meet up this afternoon to talk, I walk with Abigail back into my apartment and close the door for privacy. I have a guy coming in a couple hours who wants a private session, but other than that, my place almost runs itself. Only those I trust have security access, and if they’re trusted enough to have access, then they already know how to load and use a gun. They use my building for its security and convenience, but they don’t need me to babysit them.

  Anyone else comes along without access and without experience will show up on my security feed several minutes before they knock on the door to come in.

  We’re alone for now, and Abigail is nervously chewing her nails.

  “Your brothers call off the coast guard?”

  She sits on the end of the couch when I release her hand, and tucks her feet up beneath her ass. I know she wants to leave soon. She’s been angling her body toward the exit for an hour already, and she refuses a shower to freshen up. But for the next few minutes, I’ll give her the treatment she so desperately needs – to not be treated as disposable – and the treatment I didn’t realize I wanted to give.

  She’s not disposable.

  “They’re fine, just dramatic.” She sits back and acts like she’s not rolling her eyes. “They all think I need to go join a convent or something. Now Jay thinks the same thing, and he’ll tell Kane and Jess, so basically the whole town will think I did the thing I was so set on holding out against.”

  “So maybe you should have done the thing anyway?” I flash a quick grin when her fiery eyes come to mine, but when she reaches forward to grab the remote off the coffee table, I dash into the kitchen before she slings it at my head and I end up with a broken remote. “Coffee?”

  “No.” Just as I expected, she follows me in and leans against the doorjamb. “I need to go home. I’ve overstayed my welcome by about eleven hours.”

  “You’ve only overstayed if I say you’ve overstayed.” It’s so strange to me that I’ve never in my life shared coffee with a woman the morning after. They never sleep in my bed. They never become my little spoon, and I definitely never try to sleep on their tits like a damn child. But here we are, and I’m offering a woman a second cup of coffee. “If I was bored, I would have handed you your shoes already.”

  She grins and shakes her head a second time when I lift her empty mug. “I’m already wearing my shoes, so maybe you gave me the signal to beat it an hour ago. Regardless, I have to go.” She pushes off the wall and steps toward me.

  You know what else I’ve never done? Given a kiss goodbye, and a silent plea to see her again.

  “I had a nice night. Thank you.”

  I turn away from the coffee pot and hold her arms to keep her close. “Do you regret it? You gave me something last night. You kept some for yourself, but you gave me a lot.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t regret it. It was terrifying, it was adventurous. Getting in my car and coming here was like stepping up to the edge of a fifty-story building and jumping off.”

  “I’ll catch you.”

  Fuck me, it’s the truth. And that bothers me.

  She nibbles on her bottom lip and shows me exactly why I noticed it the first time we met. Plump and abused, and so delicious I’d be willing to kill a man for another taste. “I guess you will. I never expected that.”

  I chuckle. “Me neither. Want me to drive you home?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “Are your brothers gonna be there waiting for you? Will they give you a hard time?”

  She grins. “No, they’re all working today, so once I assured them I was alive, they went on with their lives and went to work before they got fired. But will they give me a hard time?” She snorts. “Yeah, they will. But I’ve been dealing with them for twenty-five years already. I’m used to them.”

  “I can talk to them or something. You didn’t actually give me everything last night, Abigail. I can tell them–”

  “That I sucked your penis instead?” Her cheeks flame, despite her easy words. “No, I’m not sure that conversation will go down well, no matter how you spin it. You stay here, and I’ll keep them there. The two worlds never need to intersect. But I have to go for real. I have places I want to be, and I have to check in at the shop. Nadia’s there today, but I know she scheduled tomorrow off.”

  Abigail searches my home for anything she might have left, and though she eyes my pocket and silently begs for her panties back, she doesn’t vocalize her thoughts. She refuses to lower herself and give away her dignity. So she leaves it unsaid, and her ass goes without underwear.

  I stand at my front door and watch her car back away, then I head inside and strip off on the way to the shower. I have my own shit to take care of, starting with Checkmate and talking to the Bishops about their new pest problem. Then tomorrow, I have to install that security system in Abigail’s assistant’s home, which is surely why she took the day off.

  Now that Abigail is out of my sight, I realize I need to harden the fuck back up and get to work.

  17

  Abigail

  “Hello, Doctor Rhett.” I walk along the oncology ward and smile at the handsome man I swear lives in these halls.

  He haunts them day and night – except for when he’s forced away on a cruise with his wife. He always wears something to cheer his little fangirls up, his young, female patients that adore his cute face; he’ll sport a patterned tie, light-up shoes, or a face mask with an animal snout on the fabric.

  At first glance, you’d think he works in a children’s ward, but he swears silly stuff isn’t only for the kids, and I know for sure that none of his patients mind. When you’re stuck in a place like this and know you’re staying awhile, a small laugh a day might be all you can look forward to. So they embrace the silly, and let him treat them and bring a smile to their faces.

  “Aww, hey there, Abby. You look…” He pauses in the middle of the hall in a ladybug-patterned tie, and looks me up and down. “Different. Get your hair done?”

  I reach up and pat it down. “Nope.”

  “New haircut?”

  I smile. “Nope.”

  “Hmm…” He rolls his lip between his thumb and finger and considers me. “Mascara, maybe?”

  “I’m wearing mascara, but I always swipe a little on. It’s not new.”

  His eyes narrow. “I’m gonna figure this out, Ab. You watch.”

  “Alright.” I laugh and start forward. “Can I see Marcie?”

  “You sure can. She’s feeling a little better today.”

  “Awesome. Can we go outside? We could sit in the sunlight and people-watch for a bit.”

  “If she’s feeling up to it, I have no problem. Take her in the chair, don’t be more than an hour, and don’t let her pig out on milkshakes again.”

  I laugh and continue to her door. “Party pooper.”

  “It’s milk, Abby! You know it gives her a stomachache.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I stop by her door and open it slowly. I’m not knocking, but I won’t barge in and scare her either, so I slip through the gap I make with the door, close it again, and peek past the curtain. I smile when I find her waiting for me.

  “
Hey there, beautiful.”

  “Don’t you have something better to do?” She sits on her bed in gray sweatpants and a baby pink top. It’s loose, but anything would be on her tiny frame. She’s still frighteningly pale, but her lips are cherry red and curve up into the nicest smile. “Don’t you have a job? A family? Anything better than visiting this place?”

  “You’re my family.” I move across the room and grab the folded wheelchair. “Wanna come for a ride?”

  “Oh!” She hurries to the side of her bed. “You’re breaking me out? Does Rhett know? Is he gonna call my mom again?”

  After unfolding the chair and setting the brakes, I move to the bed and help her with her cords. I detangle everything – I’m a pro at this stuff at this point in my life – then I take her hands and help her slide off the side and onto socked feet. I know she’s weak and rarely finds the chance to walk further than the bathroom lately, so I hold on tight and help her toward the chair.

  “Rhett knows,” I answer. We both work on lowering her into the chair, but once she’s seated and the footrests are up, she turns to me with an electric grin. “And he said we could go outside for a bit. The sun’s out, time to get your guns out.”

  She looks to her arms, lifts one, and tries to flex her nonexistent bicep. Where the muscle should be, is a barely healed scar from her old port. She can’t use that area for a while, until the veins have had time to heal, and the soreness has faded.

  I have the same scar on my arm, but I’ve regained a lot of the strength she’s still waiting on.

  “And no, he’s not going to call your mom. We have a free pass, but only for one hour.”

  I release the brakes and toss my handbag to the visitor chair. Nothing is so important for the next hour that I need to have my phone, so I leave it behind and risk another scolding from my brothers.

  They need to learn to trust me, so I’ll consider this another horizon-expanding experience for them, in the same way Spencer has worked me up from kissing, to fingers, to mouths. He expands my horizons, so to speak.

  My face flushes hot as I push Marcie through the door and into the hall.

  We slow when Doctor Rhett watches us with a lifted brow. He’s bent over the nurse’s desk, writing something into a file. Back bent, one foot resting over the back of the other, a pen firmly clasped in his left hand, he watches us as though we’re his biggest source of shenanigan stress.

  “Behave, ladies.”

  “Aw, man,” Marcie whines. “And I was totally planning to hit up a party and get pregnant.”

  She’s so much more outgoing than me, despite our age difference, so while she laughs and Rhett glowers, I squeak and practically push her at a run to escape the giggles of the nurses who constantly check out their superior.

  “Marcie!” I hit the elevator button and step back. “Why are you such a troublemaker? No wonder he calls your mom all the time.”

  “He’s a wet blanket,” she laughs. The elevator doors ding open, and once we step in, we turn again while she finger-waves to her watchful doctor. “He’s the sweetest man I ever met, I swear. Except maybe Mitchell. How is he, anyway? Did you tell him to call me?”

  “No!”

  When the elevator stops on the ground floor, I push her through the lobby and straight out the doors at the front of the hospital. This place isn’t large when compared to big city hospitals, but it’s large enough to warrant segregated wards; maternity and gynecology, oncology, radiology, cardiology, and all of the other -ologies that administration could think up.

  The sun is perfectly warm, though the wind carries a slight chill. It’s a pleasant sixty-five, and for as long as the sun stays out and the clouds stay away, it’s the best sun-tanning weather this side of summer. We walk in silence for a couple minutes and let the birds sitting high in the spruce trees sing for us.

  The grassy grounds on the north side of the hospital are mostly empty but for two or three other sets of people. Lovers, friends, siblings.

  I’ve walked these grounds with my brothers in the past. With my mother and father. With my doctor, even, in a rare minute he had when no one else was keeping him busy. This is where we go when we need to escape the monotony of inside. It’s where we need to go when we can’t seem to catch our breath, or stare at a bland, cream wall for a second more.

  I slow as we approach a wooden bench beside a tall spruce. The tree shades the bench in the afternoons, but right now, and for another hour or two, the sun beats down to keep us warm.

  I know Marcie will want to stand before she even kicks the footrests up. It’s nothing more than a small rebellion, an act of control when we want to escape the institution and feel free again, so when she kicks the rests up and grabs onto the armrests, I help her up and try to swallow my grunts when hers seem so much more pain-filled.

  I don’t know whether to be terrified for her, or to cheer her on. I thought she was getting better, but being in here again is a setback she was never supposed to know.

  Shuffling closer to the bench, I help her lower down, then I sit down so close beside her that we touch from shoulder to feet. I fold my arms to fight off the little chill in the breeze, but Marcie lays her head back and opens up her chest to absorb as much of the sunlight as she can.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  She grunts, but her smile twitches. “This place sucks. I’m ready to go home.”

  “I bet you are. What’s Rhett saying?”

  She shrugs. “They did an X-ray yesterday, but the mass… isn’t getting smaller.” She sighs. “We do the chemo and radiation to make it smaller, right? That’s the point of all the pain. We’re told to hang in there, because the pain is for a good reason.” She pauses for a moment. “Kinda lost my shit at Rhett yesterday. Like it’s his fault it isn’t better.”

  “We’re sticking to the plan though, right? More radiation, more chemo?”

  “Mmm. Story of my life. The plan is to let them keep poking at me, burning me, poisoning me, and next time they scan, we’ll hope it’s stopped growing.”

  I want to hold her, to hug her, to tell her I’m sorry for this horrible injustice life has thrown at her, but before I can, a bright blue butterfly flutters toward us and slows down. It’s not huge, but not small either, and when it lands on Marcie’s leg, she opens her eyes and looks down.

  We’re struck mute for a moment as we study the beautiful creature. It expands its wings and feels its way around on the end of her knee. With slow movements, she inches her hand along her thigh and stops so her fingertips lay just a half an inch away.

  “I wonder if he’ll jump on?” she whispers.

  I don’t say a word. I’d regret it if I was the reason he got spooked and flew away, so I only watch her move her fingers closer and closer, until eventually, she touches his long legs, and he walks onto her hand.

  “Wow…”

  The look in her eyes is… well, amazed. Like a butterfly stopping by is magical, something only the gods could conjure.

  She brings him closer to her face and smiles like a giddy child. “Did you know butterflies are believed to be a loved one dropping in to say hello?” She moves her hand a half a foot away, then closer again as though to test his trust.

  The little antennae search her skin, his feet move as though she’s hot sand on a summer day and he needs to move or be burned.

  “Many cultures believe butterflies to be our souls,” she continues in an almost whisper. The sunlight reflects off of her recently shaved head. She looks sick, but right in this moment, she looks magical. “Some cultures associate them with resurrection. Do you think someone is visiting with us right now?” She brings him closer to her nose, grins, and does a bum wiggle when he reaches out with his feet.

  Her smile is so large, her eyes so alight, she burns brighter than the sun I was so eager to sit under.

  “He looks good on you,” I sigh. “Do you have anyone that has passed that you’ve been thinking about? Because he sure seems to know you.”
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  She almost crosses her eyes to keep the butterfly in focus. He doesn’t leave her finger, but he experiments and touches her pert nose.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been thinking about my grandma lately. She was a Marcie too. I was named for her.”

  “She’s gone?”

  “Mmm.” Her eyes dim. “Cancer. I feel like maybe my granddaughter should definitely not be named Marcie. We’ll break the curse with me.”

  We sit in the sun for our full hour. We absorb every single ray of light and every drop of vitamin D we’re gifted, but eventually, our butterfly leaves us, and our hour is up. If I turned around right now, I know with a hundred percent certainty that Doctor Rhett will be standing in Marcie’s window, watching us.

  He cares so deeply for his patients. He cares that they overcome. So since he gave me an hour, I don’t abuse it.

  She doesn’t want to go back in. It almost seems the same as offering an innocent and unfairly incarcerated inmate a day on the outside to enjoy everything good with the world, but dragging him back as the sun goes down and the day grinds to an end. It’s cruel, but I can’t take her home, and I can’t take her to an island somewhere to escape.

  It sucks in this place, but it’s where Marcie has to be to get better.

  I help her into her chair and bring the footrests up. We haven’t done anything too strenuous, but she already looks weaker, her skin impossibly paler. She’s almost translucent, and it scares me. She has her wits, her brains, her sass, but her body is failing her.

  “You look different today, Abby.” She huddles in close to her chair, as though she’s gotten cold since leaving the bench seat.

  I wish I’d thought to bring a blanket outside for her.

  “That’s what Rhett said, too.” I shrug. “I didn’t do anything different.”

  “You look happy,” she muses. “Brighter. I don’t know what it is, but you look freer.”

  I smile. “That’s deep of you.”

  I push her through the front doors and back into the lobby. Her shoulders droop with disappointment, but she doesn’t vocalize her thoughts.