Till The Sun Dies: Checkmate, #2

by Finn, Emilia

  His long hair is tied into a bun today, and long wispy bits escape to frame his rugged face. He’s not like Graham. He’s not like anyone else I know. His jaw is stubbled, where Graham’s was always smooth. His chest is broad, where Graham’s was just sort of… there. His hands are dark from working with engine’s all day, and his forearms are thick, because of the heavy tools he uses day in, day out.

  I used to work on his cars sometimes, too. A lifetime ago.

  He encouraged my love of cars, and taught me how to change the oil so I wouldn’t be a cliché. He taught me how to change the spark plugs, how to re-time the belts, even how to break an engine down to nothing, then build it back up again.

  I spent an entire summer rebuilding the engine in his Charger. There’s no way I could do it on my own, I don’t remember even half the things he taught me, but an entire summer spent in his garage and six billion nights of takeout, we got that engine roaring.

  It’s possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever achieved in my life.

  Not so long after that summer, Britt keyed a Mustang and met her now husband, then soon after that, I met Graham in a dark corner of the club my brother plays in with his band.

  Not the same club that Graham took me to.

  Different club.

  Different worlds.

  But that was the start of the spiral that led me here, and now I lie in a hospital bed with poisonous gunk running in my veins, a hatred for the ugly slash on my forearm, a wish that it wasn’t another failure in a long line of failures, and such a compulsion to wash my hands right now, I can barely hide the way they shake.

  He stands over me, close, but not so close I could ask him to back up and not sound like a fool. We grew up together. We became close friends a long, long time ago over silly games and weekend parties. Asking him to step back would be stupid.

  And rude.

  “We’re just going out for a bit, okay?”

  I probably should care, or at the very least, I should be curious why the guys who haven’t left us for a single minute all day are now choosing to step out at nearly ten at night.

  But I don’t.

  Maybe the hospital added drugs to my IV. Different drugs. Like numbing drugs, or a triple shot of anti-depressant or something, because I don’t care about anything except my dirty hands and the fact I want him to back the fuck up.

  His whispered words mean nothing more than relief that he said we, which means I might be left alone for once. Alone to wash. To cry. To beg the nurses to let me go home.

  But his words mean something to Jess. She cares enough for both of us. “Where are you going?” She turns on the bed and stops Kane with a glare. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Where?”

  “Smoke?”

  She swings her spare arm out and smacks his thigh. “You don’t smoke, dumbass. Now try again; where are you going?”

  “KFC? I’m high as fuck and got the munchies.”

  Her face reddens. “I’m gonna beat you with a Wiffle ball bat, Bishop. Answer me now.”

  “Just out.” Leaning forward, he drops a dry kiss on her lips and jumps back when she attempts to hit him again. “Call me if you need anything, but I won’t be gone long. I promise.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He winds his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her in for a gentler kiss. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Kane!”

  “I love you. Be safe. Shoot first, ask questions when I get back with the shovel.” Turning on his heel, he walks away and steps through the door before she can go find her bat.

  I’d forgotten Angelo’s presence, so when he clears his throat, I almost jump out of my skin. “Sorry.” His gray eyes study mine. “We’ll be back soon. You girls stay put.”

  “You can go home… if you want.”

  His eyes narrow. “You don’t want me here?”

  I can’t look into his angry eyes. I can’t pretend to be his equal, so I cowardly turn in Jess’ arms and bury my face between the pillow and her shoulder. “I’m just saying, you can sleep in your own bed tonight. You don’t have to sleep in a crappy chair.”

  He says nothing.

  He doesn’t touch me.

  He simply lets out a weary sigh, walks through the door, and closes it with a soft snick.

  “Laine…” Jess’ disappointment hurts my heart. “Don’t push him away so much. He’s looking out for you.”

  “I don’t want him to.” I sniffle and shamelessly wipe my nose on the pillow. “I want him to go away and never come back.”

  “Never?” She turns in the bed and faces me. Twining her fingers with mine, she pounds the pillow with her head until I’m forced to meet her eyes. “Never? He’s family, Baby. He’s one of us.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “What don’t you like?” With our hands still intertwined, she stretches forward and swipes a thumb beneath my eye. “What’s he doing wrong? He’s just one of the guys, and he’s hanging out. He just wants to make sure that you’re okay.”

  “He…” I swallow past a lump in my throat. “It was him that found me the other day. He knows what I did. He knows I’m crazy.”

  “Crazy; like funny crazy like the rest of us?”

  “No! Like white jacket and padded walls crazy.”

  “No, you’re not crazy. You’re no crazier than the rest of us.”

  “I tried to kill myself! That means I should go to a hospital for freaks. Who knows; maybe they’ll still send me there, then you can visit on our birthday.”

  “No, Baby.” She presses a kiss to my knuckles. “They’re not sending you anywhere, and you’re not crazy. Not the kind that you think. You’ve lived through a really traumatic time in your life. It was really, really bad. It got too heavy and you did something to make it easier. That doesn’t make you crazy.”

  “It makes me a coward.” My lips tremble. “It makes me weak.”

  “We don’t always have to be strong. Sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we’re just so unbelievably tired, we need to sleep. You act like I didn’t consider the same thing when Kane was gone. You think I wasn’t going insane without him? I could still feel him.” She presses our hands to her heart. “I could feel him, but he was gone, and he was never coming back. You think I didn’t want to go to sleep and never wake up again?”

  My lips quiver. “You did? You thought about it?”

  “Every day for months, Baby. Every single day, I thought about it, I planned it, I played it out in my mind so many times, sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference between imagination and memory anymore. I wasn’t sure what was real. I didn’t know if I was still alive or dead. The only thing that let me know I was still here was the pain in my heart. Heaven couldn’t possibly hurt that much. That wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Why didn’t you do it?” I clear my throat. “How’d you keep going?”

  She shrugs. “Alex told me that Kane wasn’t a bad person. He was one of us, and knowing that, gave me new purpose. I was still tired; I was so tired, and sad, and so very heavy. It felt like I wore cement shoes, and everything felt a thousand times harder than it used to, but I wanted to do something good. I wanted to become a lawyer and put someone away for hurting people. Because then I could be with Kane again in heaven and tell him I did that. I did that for him.”

  “How does it feel, Jessie?” My voice breaks. “How does that feel?”

  “How does what feel?”

  “How does it feel to be that in love? To be that loved?”

  Tears well in her eyes, and beneath our hands, her heart pounds faster. “It’s scary. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced, because what if something happens to him again? I already lost him once. I can’t do that again. I won’t survive him again.”

  “So what choice do you have?”

  Her teary eyes turn hard. Reaching over to the bedside cabinet, she snatches up her cell and brings it between us. “I can’t fall
out of love.” Her thumb slides across the screen. “I won’t leave him, because of that stupid love thing.” She taps the screen, then brings the cell to her ear. “So my only option is to beat him up regularly and make sure he doesn’t do stupid shit.”

  “Is he a bad man, Jessie?” Finally, I let a smile tug my lips. “Does he do illegal stuff?”

  Her eyes meet mine as the sound of dialing slides through the room. “As his lawyer, it’s my duty to say no comment.” Her eyes flash. “Kane Bishop! Where are you?”

  “We’re driving.” His voice is deep enough, loud enough that I can hear him in the otherwise silent room. “Are you in danger, Blondie?”

  “No. You are.”

  “Do you need Spence? Do you have your gun?”

  I shoot back and study my sister with new eyes. “You have a gun?”

  “Hush.” She gives a flirty little wink, then transforms back to angry. “I don’t need Spence. I need you to come back here right now, because I know when you wanna do illegal shit. I saw the twinkle in your eyes just before.”

  The roaring of Angelo’s engine and wind whipping through open windows makes Kane talk louder. “The twinkle in my eyes? That was for you, beautiful. I only twinkle for you.”

  “Dude.” Angelo’s single word makes Jess laugh, but when tears rush forward in my eyes, she locks it up.

  “Come back here, Kane. I’m begging you.”

  “Don’t beg, Jessica Anne. Don’t do that. I can’t come back right now, but soon. I’ll be back soon.”

  “I want you now.”

  “And I’ve got shit to take care of. But I love you; everything I do is because I love you.”

  8

  Angelo

  Graham

  Kane pushes his phone back into his pocket and shakes his head. “I’m in trouble now.”

  “You wanna go back? I can drop you off; you don’t have to get involved.”

  “Nah, I’m in.” He closes the window in my classic Charger by cranking the handle. “You know where this motherfucker lives?”

  “I know where he sleeps. I know that he snores, and I know he wears socks to bed. I’ve done my homework.” I glance at Kane’s dark features, lit only by passing street lights. “You don’t know?”

  “Nah, I know what color socks he wears, too. No way in hell am I going out on some bullshit vigilante mission with a dude I only just met without doing my own recon. I got a girl to take care of, and I’ve been shot at too much in my life not to learn from those lessons.”

  Laughing, I move through the dark residential streets of town and head toward Graham’s place. “What was the scariest time? What was the closest?”

  “The scariest time I was shot at?”

  I nod.

  “Jess.”

  “Jessie?” My head snaps around. “My Jessie? She shot at you?”

  “No, fuckface. My Jessie, not yours, and if you forget that again, I’ll show you what happens when an angry motherfucker starts shooting.”

  “Jess shot at you? Jess Lenaghan?” I laugh. “Get the fuck outta here.”

  “She really did.” He brushes invisible lint off his pants. “I was in my bed, dying from… stuff. And she shot at me because I pissed her off.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He laughs. “I’m not here to convince you, I’m just answering your question. You asked. She was the scariest. She was the closest. Blew a hole into my mattress and near gave me a heart attack.”

  I don’t see it. “Jess is such a…” He watches me. If I say something bad, he’ll snap my neck. “She was the good girl, Kane. She was busy reading and skating and hanging out with us.”

  “Yeah, she was reading Babysitter’s Little Sisters books. I know.”

  “She shot at you?”

  “Mm.” He runs a hand over his jaw. “She was fuckin’ pissed. She warned me, she said she’d shoot. I didn’t believe her, so she proved me wrong. Nearly blew my cover that day. My handler was blowing up my cell before the gun stopped smoking. He was in my apartment not ten minutes after that, freaking the fuck out. He said the only reason he didn’t break the door in already was because he heard me scream like a bitch and ask her what the fuck.”

  I laugh. “She got you good.”

  “She fucking called my bluff. The more you know…” He shakes his head. “I don’t challenge her anymore. She wins. Everything. Always. Forever. She’s unhinged, and she’s unapologetic about it.”

  “But not this…” I pull into Graham’s street and roll past the dark houses. “She asked you to come back. You said no.”

  “This is important. I’ll have a bullet in my leg tomorrow, no doubt, but I can’t let this go.” His eyes meet mine. “They’re identical, Ang. It’s like he touched mine. I can’t stop seeing it. I can’t get over it. So I’m here to do something about it.”

  I take a deep breath through my nose. Letting it out again, I study the eagle tattoo covering his throat. “I think you and I need to talk. Once we do this, we need a come-to-Jesus talk, because you’re struggling to separate them. One of them is yours, but the other isn’t, so you better fuckin’ figure it out before I flip the script and show you what happens when an angry motherfucker starts shooting.”

  “How do you separate them? They’re exactly the fuckin’ same, but you act like they’re so different.”

  I pull up in the street and cut the engine. The Charger is a loud car, and this is a quiet street, but I’ve done this enough now, I know how far away I need to park.

  “They are different. There are a million differences, and when you start looking, it’s hard not to notice them anymore. I’ve known those girls since…” I shake my head. “Since forever. To me, they’re nothing alike.” When his eyes narrow, I tap my steering wheel in thought. “I dunno how to explain. I guess maybe you see their looks. You see the blonde hair, blue eyes, tight jeans, and pretty smiles. I see all that, but I see something else, too. Like their soul has a physical appearance. I see their personality. Their aura.” I shrug. “I dunno. Sounds weird, but it’s the only way I can explain.”

  He stares out the windshield and stares four houses up to Graham’s double story in suburbia. “You’re not in love with Jess, are you? I’d hate to have to kill you.”

  I laugh. “Are you in love with Laine?”

  “No.”

  “How can you tell? How do you know the difference?”

  His forehead wrinkles. “I dunno, I just can. I know which one I’m walking to. It’s something in her eyes.”

  “They’re exactly the same eyes.”

  “I know…” His narrow. “It’s just… something in them is different.”

  “Exactly.” I tap his chest, then turn away and push my car door open. “You see the personality, too. You see her heart. You see her soul. So no, I’m not in love with Jessie. I love her, I’ll lay my life down for her, but I don’t love her like I love Laine.” And the worst part is, Laine doesn’t love me back. She doesn’t even know I exist. “Let’s go.”

  I push my car door closed as quietly as I can. Just the softest snick echoes in the street, then I walk to the trunk and pull it open.

  “Fuck me, Ang.” He stops beside me. “You coulda told me we were driving around with a murder kit before I got in your car. Turner pulls us over, we’re both going to prison.”

  “It’s just a bag.” I frown and shuffle things around.

  “It’s a sack. Then there’s a shovel. And a tire wrench.”

  “The tire wrench is for my tires, dumbass. The shovel is in case he accidentally dies.”

  When Kane’s eyes meet mine, we both have that moment of realization. That moment that I step away from being a regular guy with a regular job and regular hobbies, and I become a guy willing to kill a man for Laine.

  I’m not scared of the power that swirls in my blood. I’m not nervous. I’m ready to take back some of Laine’s freedom. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to give her back some of the power Graham took away.
r />   Picking up the sack, I push the trunk closed with a soft snick and move through the street.

  “Knock him out. Do it quietly. Take him back to my garage.”

  Kane moves into step beside me. His hands flex, and suddenly, somehow, there’s a gun in his grasp that I swear wasn’t hidden anywhere in my car. “You’re a hundred percent set on your garage? Shit can get messy. Dude will squeal like a pig. You got neighbors that’ll call the cops.”

  “My family are the cops.”

  “And Alex Turner will arrest you faster than Graham’s gonna shit his pants. Family doesn’t mean shit when you’re peeling someone’s fingernails back and enjoying his screams.”

  “Family means everything. Alex didn’t do this yet, but only because he can’t. He’s the chief; he can’t get his hands dirty, but I guarantee he’ll find it in his heart to turn a blind eye. He knows what’s up. He knows what Graham did. And he knows someone else will take care of what he can’t.”

  “You’re set on the garage? That’s Main Street, man.”

  “You got another suggestion? I’m not taking him to my house. That’s my home, my sanctuary. It’s a safe space for Laine to visit.”

  “Yeah. I got something.” Pulling out his cell, he dials and brings it up to his ear. It’s nearing eleven at night, and most people I know are likely asleep, but whoever Kane calls answers on the second ring.

  “Yeah?”

  “Spence. We need your place.”

  “What’s up, Bish?”

  We stop in the yard next door to Graham’s house, and the silence of the night means I can hear every word Spence says. My spine tingles, because I don’t know that guy. I hardly even know Kane, but now he’s bringing someone else in.

  “We need a room that washes out easy, and we need all your security cams turned off for an hour.”

  “Who are you hittin’, Bish? I thought you were out?”

  “This ain’t work. This is personal.”

  “Oh, fuck.” He laughs. “Who touched that pretty girl? Some prick stare too long in the store? Because I’m just saying; you have a reputation for overreacting. She’s allowed to flirt, but she ain’t allowed to touch.”