by R. J. Lewis
He couldn’t smile or laugh anymore because all he thought about was prison and the cold cell and Dominic and Holden and the pleas in the dark corners of that confined abyss.
The table fell into sudden silence, and he didn’t know how long it’d been that quiet because he’d found himself submerged in haunting thoughts. When he came to, he heard a rattling sound and they were all staring at him and – holy hell – the rattling was coming from him. His hands shook against the table like a hundred little earthquakes. He closed his hands into fists and suppressed the shakes immediately.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” Penny whispered concernedly.
When Thames didn’t answer straightaway, Charlotte stood up. “He’s okay, Penny. Come wash up. We’ll go over your homework and then bath time.”
Instead of arguing like she would have done any other time, Penny sensed Charlotte’s urgency and went without protest. Charlotte squeezed his shoulder in passing, and he felt so thankful right then to have her.
Jem smiled warmly at Thames once they left. “You okay?”
Thames nodded once. “Sometimes I forget where I am.”
“Of course. All of this is fresh.”
“I don’t know if it’s that.” Thames took a moment, searching for words. “I think…this is how I’ll be from here on out, Jem. I think…I’ll always feel outside myself.”
Jem furrowed his brow. “How so?”
“I don’t know how to act.”
“It takes time.”
Thames didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. Jem didn’t understand what this felt like. He didn’t know what imprisonment did to someone. The depths of helplessness he’d felt had a scarring effect.
“You’ll be yourself in no time,” Jem went on to say, sounding certain. “Not saying this hasn’t changed you or anything, but…I think the old you is in there.”
“The old me? Nah, I was a persona. I picked a character and played my part. It was easier that way, to bury the old shit, to forget I had a list as long as my arm of shit I suppressed. I played the part because it fed the ego in me and made me pretend I was stronger than I really was. I…” Thames paused, reflecting solemnly before admitting, “I don’t think I’ve felt the old me since I was ten, Jem.”
That stopped Jem cold in his tracks. He stared hollowly at Thames now, his eyes dimming with understanding. A heavy silence filled the air around them, one that Jem ultimately broke.
“Isn’t it interesting what trauma can do to the mind?” he spoke softly. “For me, it was the moment I lost Addison. For Charlotte, it was the moment you beat Billy’s head to the ground. For Dom, it was the moment he got arrested for something he didn’t do. For you…it was feeling responsible for what happened to Locke.”
“And for Locke,” Thames continued, “it was what was done to him, feet from us, unbeknownst to us.”
Jem blinked hard, irritated. “You know, Locke is doing plenty fine for himself, Thames.”
“I understand –”
“What happened fucking happened, alright?”
“It fucked me up,” Thames explained hastily. “I didn’t understand it until I spent nights thinking it over. After that day I put up walls around me, Jem. I had to be the toughest fucker around. I had to inflict pain just so I didn’t think of the pain that little boy went through when he was in that hole –”
“It wasn’t your fault what happened to him,” Jem cut in sharply, eyes suddenly rimmed red. “You don’t get to carry that fucking guilt, man. It ain’t your guilt to carry.”
“And Dominic –”
“We will make it up to Dominic –”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because there’s nothing we can do about it from here, Conor.” Jem looked sternly at Thames now. “If we dwell, we might as well be stuck in there with him. We gotta live out here. You’ve got your daughter and your girlfriend and a second chance and you’re not going to move forward if you keep putting yourself back there in that cell with him, or even in that hole with Locke.”
Thames stared steadily at Jem now, hardly blinking as he studied his best friend. “Can I ask you something?” he said just then.
Jem nodded cautiously.
“You keep telling me we’ll make it up to Dom, but you never say the same thing about Locke.”
“He shut me out when you left for prison.”
“Funny, Dom said the same thing, but about him. He said he couldn’t understand why Locke never treated me differently.”
Jem considered that, thinking for several moments. “Yeah, well, that’s true, isn’t it?”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” Jem shrugged, looking lost. “But…you were like glue to our friendship, Thames. When you left, that glue came undone and Locke and I haven’t meshed since.”
“Surely you can bridge that gap.”
Jem wouldn’t meet his eye. “It isn’t that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t, Conor.” With a hard swallow, he repeated softly, “I just can’t.”
But why?
Why couldn’t he?
Jem saw the question in his face and simply shook his head. “You need to understand something, man. Locke isn’t that little boy anymore. He grew up, like the rest of us, only more wayward and fucking weird, and he’s far from innocent. It’s so easy to overlook that because of what was done to him, but at the end of the day, Locke is a bad guy. You keep losing sight of that.”
“It was tense with the two of you in the front yard after he’d driven the men out.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You seemed cold to him, Jem, having a go at him the way you did.”
“It wasn’t without reason. Locke’s fucked with this town over the years. You just haven’t seen it yet.”
Thames frowned. “I’m not sure it’ll change the way I think of him.”
Jem was silent for several moments. Then he said, “Let’s go for a short drive, Conor. I want to show you something.”
The drive was quiet. Jem drove in a purposeful direction, heading into downtown Blackwater. It was night-time on a weekday. The streets were quiet in residential areas. But as they began to approach downtown, there was life on every corner.
“Look around, alright?” Jem suddenly said. “Look real close for me and point out every place you see that’s bursting with people.”
Curious, Thames did just that. He pointed to a packed restaurant, a club with a line out the door, even a tattoo parlour that was standing room only.
“What can you tell me about these places?” Jem then asked.
“They’re packed.”
“How do they look, though?”
Brow furrowed, Thames responded, “Upmarket. Taken care of.”
“Kind of all the same, right? Shiny, glass windows, well lit, and if you look even closer, check out all the cars parked out front of these places. Ferrari right there, a Corvette behind it. When has Blackwater ever looked so fucking dainty?”
Thames didn’t understand his point. “Population boom?”
“Wrong.” Jem suddenly parked his mammoth truck in an illegal spot right across the street of another restaurant. He stared at it for a moment before levelling Thames with a hard look. “Since Max fucking Locke decided to take over.”
Thames mulled that over. “He owns them all?”
“Every single one of them. Tell me how the fuck that’s possible.”
Thames tapped the glass with his finger and shrugged. “He always had money.”
“No, he dressed well. Big difference.”
“He has a law firm.”
“Lawyers don’t make the kind of money he’s been throwing around.”
Confused now, Thames shrugged. “What’s he doing, then? Chop shopping like we’d planned to do?”
Jem shook his head. “No, your Uncle Fuckhead and Fuckhead Jr. cornered that market.”
“What then?”
“No fucking clue.”
“Have you asked him?”
Jem shot him a dry look. “Oh, because he’s always been such a forthcoming darling to me?”
When Thames didn’t answer, Jem clenched his jaw and shot the restaurant a dark look. “All I know is a few years ago our Blackwater boy started throwing money around all over the place. No one asks him a thing. Everyone paved the way for the guy, kissed his ass kind of thing like he owns Moses’ shoe. People are petrified of him.”
“Why are they petrified?”
Jem shrugged. “I don’t know. No one talks, Thames. Not a soul. But I noticed a trend. He kept driving businesses out, played dirty with the owners, forced a sale for him kind of thing. A lot of people left, Conor. A lot. Either he’s driven them out with money, or with the threat of violence. Now, I’m not gonna lie, these people weren’t without fault, but still pretty almighty of him to decide who gets to stay and who gets to go. And along the way to his rise to the top, he has literally kept nobody close to him. Nobody. Not his mama, not a girl, no one. Save for, perhaps…” His voice trailed now as he turned to look at him.
Thames felt his chest sink slowly. “Charlotte.”
“I doubt she knows anything, either, but…he looked after her, and we know him. He’s never been the kindred type.”
Thames suddenly felt a hot, prickly feeling run down his spine. “What are his intentions, do you think?”
“I don’t think he’s overstepped his boundaries with her. He doesn’t look at her in that way, but I think he’s got a soft spot for her. I think…if you think about it real hard, you might understand why. She’s been hurt, and he’s always gravitated to the broken birds, hasn’t he?”
“Because of what happened.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d have traded places, you know,” Thames said, feeling his chest tighten. “I would have, Jem. I’d have taken that hole in a heartbeat if it meant he got out unscathed.”
Jem frowned. “Well, not sure he’s the empathetic type anymore. You know he promised her you’d be okay?”
Now Thames felt cold as he shot a look of disbelief at him. “What?”
“Yeah, he promised her you’d be okay in prison. That no harm would come to you, and…I’m not trying to dredge shit up so soon, but I can tell that didn’t happen, did it?”
Thames didn’t answer.
His heart thumped wildly in his chest at the sudden fury that came over him. How could Locke have lied to Charlotte so deliberately?
He promised her he’d be okay?
How in the fuck could he have guaranteed that?
As far as Thames was concerned, Locke had never even reached out.
Now he felt sick. His heart beat harder, and his head hurt as he tried to digest Jem’s words.
Noticing his demeanour, Jem didn’t help matters when he hardened his tone and said with finality, “Who does that, right? I’ve never understood Locke’s motives. I just know he’s got a lot of secrets. I also know a guy that has this much power” – he pointed to the restaurant – “does not need our pity. When it comes down to it, Max Locke is not that boy we remember anymore. And that’s not all.”
Jem drove again, this time to the unsavoury part of Blackwater. Still silent, Thames scanned the desperate street, catching sight of drug deals and homeless people huddled under dirty blankets.
Jem slowed to a stop just outside a grimy looking motel. Out front was a group of grubby looking guys, some bizarrely armed with axes and machetes. They stood around, smoking, beers in hand, looking pleasant.
“The crime’s been pushed to this spot right here,” Jem explained. “To this fucking street. All the businesses here have been abandoned and boarded up. Don’t you remember this place, Conor? This is where we used to ride our bikes to go for ice cream.”
A spark of familiarity ran through Thames. “This is Hawthorne street. Henry Tiller owned the businesses all along this road.”
Henry Tiller had been a cheery looking fella, and very rich. He’d always dressed well, was part of the church scene and donated a shit ton of money to the underprivileged kids of Blackwater.
“Some years ago, Locke drove him out of business.”
“Why?” Thames demanded, confused.
Jem shrugged, offering no response.
A knock sounded on Thames’ window. He turned in time to see a woman’s face peering back at him. Jem let out a soft chuckle and rolled the window down.
“Hey, honey, you looking for a good time?” the woman asked, staring straight at Thames with wanton eyes.
Thames glimpsed her quickly, taking in her tiny little dress – she must have been frozen – and overdone make up. Her hair was greasy, her eyes hung low. She was a hooker, and Thames felt oddly distressed just looking at her. She was young. Too young for this shit.
“No,” he said quietly.
She looked over at Jem. “How about you?”
Before Jem could respond, a man yelled from the motel, “You got no business here, Tiana! Get the fuck off this turf, bitch.”
The girl’s face morphed to savage anger. She stepped around the car and screamed, “Fuck you, Kyle! I don’t see your fucking name on this spot.”
“You fucking whore!”
Thames watched as one of the men armed with an axe came barrelling to them. He had his axe pointing at the girl. “Don’t make me fuck you up, bitch!”
She flipped him off, not one fuck given, and meandered down the street and away from them. The grubby looking man with the axe turned to them. “Bitch knows she doesn’t belong here. We don’t condone that sort of business here.”
Jem looked amused. “We weren’t looking for that sort of fun, either, pal.”
Now appearing curious, the man glanced from Jem to Thames and said, “You here for a hit? Anything you want, I can get it for you.”
“Maybe some other time.”
Jem drove off down the street, passing the girl along the way, chuckling at Thames. “Only in Blackwater are the drug dealers so righteous, huh? Not condoning prostitution and giving poor Tiana a hard time. Kinda sad for Tiana.”
“Why is that?”
With a grin that didn’t reach his eyes, Jem said, “Tiana is Henry Tiller’s daughter. Tiller, who was prosperous and giving to his community, wound up in prison for crimes people swear he did not commit. He ended up getting knifed to death a month later by some radical gang that’s spawning all over the place. You want to know who the prosecutor was on that case?”
“Locke,” Thames whispered, aghast.
“Yeah, he sent an entire family into ruin. Again, not the boy we remember.”
No. Thames bitterly agreed right then. He wasn’t.
Chapter Sixteen
Thames
When he returned to the house, he took his pent-up adrenaline out on Charlotte’s body. He cornered her in the laundry room. She hadn’t heard him stopping at the doorway. He hovered there for a few moments, taking her in. Her hair was wet from a shower and her body wash filled the tiny room, making his chest go tight because, shit, that feminine shit went straight to his cock. On top of that, she was wearing these ridiculous looking shorts. They were fucking underwear, hands down.
“I hope you don’t wear those out, dove,” he murmured quietly, eyeing her legs.
Startled, she whipped around, brown eyes wide. “Jesus, you scared me.”
She threw the handful of clothes into the basket and then gripped the washer, like she was coming down from a fright.
Thames smiled at her. “Since when are you so jumpy?”
“Since living alone for eight years,” she answered, giving him an admonishing look. “I was the woman of this house, you know.”
“Piss poor at it, Char,” he teased. “I wasn’t being quiet.”
She pretended to glower at him, but her face broke when she saw the teasing smile on his lips. “Now what were you saying about my shorts, mister?”
He looked them over again, going slow this time as his brows rose. “Underwear, you mean. I was saying I hope you d
on’t wear those out.”
“Yeah? How come?”
He gave her a look. “You know how come.”
She returned that look with a challenging stare. “I’m sorry, Conor Thames, but you don’t get to judge my shorts or tell me I better not be going out in them. I’ll do what I want.”
Oh, he felt his skin prickle with heat. He swallowed a growl. She was always so fucking hot challenging him. It set him off.
“Charlotte,” he said in warning, “watch your mouth, hey?”
“Or what?” she asked, feigning innocence. “What will you do to me if I don’t?”
She was filled with anticipation. Her cheeks were already red, her mouth already parting. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her. But he stood casually, not showing his interest. It was part of the fun.
With a light shrug, he casually scratched his jaw and said, “I guess nothing, dove.”
Then he left the doorway and hid in the next room, feeling his heart go fast because he knew she’d come chasing after him.
He wasn’t wrong. He heard her fast steps. She rounded the corner and into the living room, not having seen him as she headed straight for the staircase. He grabbed her arm suddenly and pulled her to him. Her front slammed into his chest, and he was quick to drop his arms, holding her around the hips, keeping her in place. Her warmth was all over him, so little and fiery, and god, he was already growing hard just from the contact.
“Scared again, pup,” he muttered at her surprised face.
“Twice now you’ve made me jump,” she heaved out.
“But you’re the woman of the house.”
Her eyes glowed with mischief. “I am.”
“So what does that make me?”
She tried to be hard, but her eyes were on his lips and her make-belief temper was waning. She went on her tip toes and tried to brush her lips against his, but he pulled away. “Nuh-uh,” he whispered. “Answer me first.”
“You’re the man of the house,” she said, in a no bull-shit tone. “Now shut up and kiss me, Conor. You were gone a while, and I need you to touch me.”