by R. J. Lewis
“Nothing wrong with that.”
He slammed the hood of the car shut and looked it over. It was almost down to a shell of what it was. “You think I can do this again?”
“I do, but we’re going to need a bigger space eventually.”
He nodded, reflecting on his old work shed. “We need some land.”
“You have land,” she responded, tilting her head to the side as she watched him. “That shed wasn’t messed with, you know.”
He considered that, feeling pleased. “We’d have to rebuild the house.”
“We can do that.”
He looked at her now, hesitating. “It means sticking around Blackwater.”
She continued looking peacefully at him. “Do I look like I’m running away?”
“No, but…” he paused, mulling it over. “I want you to be happy.”
“Like you said with Jem, it doesn’t matter where we are. You’re my home, Conor. We can be living out of a dumpster, as long as I have you, I’m okay.”
He nodded, looking wistfully down at the cloth in his hands. “I fantasized about this moment for years. Getting it now tastes better than I could have ever imagined.”
Now his eyes paused at the number on his wrist, and his heart tugged painfully. He looked up at Charlotte, eyeing her warm smile.
“I was going to ask you to marry me the day I killed Billy,” he declared just then, softly. “I didn’t have a ring picked out. I’d gone to three jewellery stores that day, and I felt in over my head staring at the rings, not knowing what to do. I…wound up putting a deposit down to have one crafted from scratch from a jeweller. A gold band because I know you’re the simple type, and then I picked out a stunning opal, something unique like you, but I started second guessing myself. I spent the whole day driving around, wondering if I ought to ask you to marry me without a ring in my pocket. I talked myself in and out of it. Never got to decide when I finally got your text about your water breaking.”
Charlotte looked emotional. Her smile was gone and her eyes were watery. Sniffing, she said, “I’d have said yes, ring or not.”
He smiled at her, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He felt the weight return, felt his eyes drag back to the number on his wrist.
“Would you still say yes if you knew what I had to do to get here?” he wondered just then, unable to look at her. “If you knew that to have this number on my wrist I needed to take a few lives? I had to suffer because that’s what the crew believe a man needs to do to know himself. He needs to know misery and loneliness and… pain. So much pain.”
He felt her just then. Her arms wrapped around him, her face pressed into his shoulder, breathing his sorrow in.
“I’d still say yes,” she whispered.
He threw the cloth down and brought her close. Her hands snaked up his chest and wrapped around his neck. He gazed down at her, watching her as she traced along her name on his neck, her eyes filled with emotion.
“I put it there at my lowest,” he confessed quietly. “I wanted the guards to find me hanging one morning, and the second I admitted that to Dominic, he tattooed your name on my neck so I’d never forget I had a family I needed to live for.”
He caught the fear in her eyes. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone, Conor. I don’t want you to ever feel that low again. I’m here for you. We’re all here, and we all love you, and I can’t make it in this life without you. I’ve got you now and I can’t go through that separation again.”
He shut his eyes, listening to her words like they were a salve to all his healing wounds. The injuries he’d sustained over his lifetime were soul deep. Charlotte’s remedy for them was love. Every touch she gave him hurt, but in a good way.
She was right, he realized.
She’d told him to face the pain instead of run away from it, even if it hurt. He needed to hurt before getting better. He couldn’t keep running. She needed to see him in all his brokenness, in all his vulnerability.
He didn’t want to hide anymore.
Feeling resolute, he opened his eyes. The second she stared back at him, he sensed she knew he was ready.
“I love you, Charlotte,” he told her solemnly.
In other words, he wanted to take her, to love her the way she deserved, and god, she understood that look straightaway. Of course she did, because he was staring at her like he used to do before. He was reverting back to his old ways, to the man that doted on her with gentleness.
Charlotte
He was asking me with one look to touch him and not stop. His walls were down. The vulnerability in his eyes disarmed me. He wasn’t skittish. I saw the determination in him and knew he was certain of this.
I slowly slid my hands down to his chest. My fingers shook as I slowly unbuttoned his overalls, staring straight in his eyes. I pulled them down and around him, removing his hands from his sleeves. When the overalls settled around his hips and his gleaming chest was bare in front of me, I took a moment to look him over. I took in his scarred skin, his hard muscles, the broadness of his shoulders; I was so puny in front of him, he could devour me if he wanted to, but he was giving me the power and it was heady to know I had him to do as I pleased.
So many erotic scenes played out in my mind, but what triumphed over them all was the sole need to show him that I loved him. He needed my gentle touch.
I stepped closer to him and pressed kisses down his throat. He stood still as I went, exploring his chest with my fingers, kissing along his skin and stopping to flick my tongue along his flat nipple. I was instantly wet and needy. He was all man and so hard and just kissing him like this was doing things to me.
“Conor,” I whispered, staring up at him wantonly.
He kissed me tenderly, one hand in my hair, the other on the car behind me. He leaned into me, tasting me with his tongue as I slipped my hand into his overalls. I felt for his briefs and gingerly slipped my fingers inside, lightly touching his cock. He was already hard and thick, and when I gripped him, he tensed above me.
By now I was leaning back against the hood of the car and Conor was over me. Both of his hands were splayed palm down on the car. His breaths were hot and heavy in my mouth. He let out a guttural groan when I stroked his length. I had to open my eyes to watch him. His eyelids were heavy as he stared back at me, as he let me pleasure him.
“Is that good?” I whispered, kissing along his jaw.
His breaths were ragged. “Don’t stop, dove.”
I didn’t. He grew impossibly thick, my fingers couldn’t touch. I swallowed his quiet groans, kissing him deeply every time his body jolted. It was so strange to be touching him, to be watching him fall apart. His hips moved with the strokes, and I was certain he was going to come.
But then he gripped my arm suddenly and shook his head. “No,” he groaned. “I need to be inside you, Char.”
I let go of his cock and let him slip my underwear off with his dirty hands. I smelled like raspberries and he smelled like rusted engine parts. He was greasy and sweaty, and I was clean and showered. I bit my lip, fighting a smile because I loved the difference so much. I loved accepting him in all his raw glory, and I loved the way he revered me, touching me like I was made of glass.
“Where am I going to fuck you?” he asked, eyes alive.
“Don’t make me wait,” I begged.
“So here, then?”
“Yes, here, on the ground, in this piece of crap car, I don’t care.”
He looked excited as his eyes flicked around the garage. A grin was beginning to form. “You think we’ll have an audience with this garage door open?”
It was late, and the people on this street were boring as fuck. Lights out usually happened around 10pm every single night. The street was dead and not a soul lurked. But sure, I could pretend we had an audience.
“I think once you take me, neither of us will care who’ll be watching,” I replied, smiling back at him.
He picked me up and carried me like I weighed n
othing, kissing me along the way. I felt the cool wall of the garage on my back. His hands cupped my ass, and without a word, I pulled his overalls and briefs down. His cock sprang free, and I stroked it a few times. He moaned in my mouth, cutting the kiss short. Pressing his forehead against mine, we both peered down at his length prodding at my entrance. My eyelids grew heavy as he slowly entered me. My hands flew around him, one hand buried in his hair as he buried himself to the hilt.
“Jesus, dove,” he breathed, staring at me in awe. “So good. Always so good with you.”
I couldn’t respond. I was filled impossibly. He was so swollen, and I knew it was because of how passionate this was for him. He was watching my face closely, his eyes taking in my parted lips and quick breaths.
He always felt good. So good. But this was something else entirely. It felt like every move was bringing me closer to the edge. And when he began to thrust into me, the strokes long and slow, I could feel everything. I tried to kiss him, but I was lost in the pleasure. I tried to look him in the eyes, but I was already beginning to pulse, the onset of a strong orgasm coming on so suddenly. I gripped him tightly, muttering things as I stared at him.
“I’m so close. I’m so close.”
“Dove,” he breathed in reverence. “Fuck, you feel good.”
“Don’t stop. God, don’t stop, Conor. Just like that…” I panted in his mouth and he kissed me in response, and then he was biting my lower lip and nibbling along my jaw. I came hard, crying out as he continued to fuck me. The feeling was so intense. It washed over me in waves, and all the while he watched me carefully, kissing me softly this time.
“You’re so sweet, Charlotte,” he whispered dotingly. “I love you all of you, dove, every inch.”
Just as I came down from my high, Conor was stilling, gripping me tight, letting out a pained groan. His forehead fell to mine, and I watched through hazy eyes as he came. The pleasure washed over him, pleasure and grief and something good, too.
And then he smiled warmly at me. A boyish smile that made him look a decade younger. He looked like my Conor from before. I sucked breaths in to keep myself steady, but my throat went thick. I ran my fingers down his face, admiring that look.
The old Conor and the new Conor were in one body, and they were reconciling with one another, trying to co-exist, trying to find that balance.
Everything was going to be okay.
I saw it in his eyes. That realization that I was never going to leave him. All the walls dropped, and he let me in.
Carrying me upstairs, we showered together, and it was in bed that he held me close, whispering his soul to me.
He let out everything from the last eight years.
Dominic.
Holden.
The things he had to do.
The numbers and what they represented.
He wanted it off his chest.
He had opened up to Jem that day. Had glazed over the crew and Holden, but he didn’t get into all the gory details. He spared me those too.
“Then every so often, when I sat by Dominic, he’d say the same thing,” he whispered, lost in thought as he stroked my shoulder, staring off.
Dominic would say:
“He pleaded to play a different game. Sometimes I ask myself why we didn’t listen to him. He never looked at me or Jem the same way again, but he was always okay with you, Thames. I never understood why. Any clue?”
Conor had no clue.
But he often thought about it.
And then he told me about the horrors of that day. The day he ran from a man in a green raincoat. A man with cold eyes and a smile that was loaded with secrets.
The Hole
There was such a thing as having too much pain, you couldn’t feel it.
After a point, the body refused to respond to emotion. It became…detached.
He couldn’t even cry.
He lay there, dragging the car along the hard ground, his fingers tracing the outline of the toy because he couldn’t see it.
It was blackness most of the time, and when it wasn’t, he prayed for the blackness. He prayed for it because the light brought the hurt.
It left him raw and cold and sick.
It left him like this, lying on the ground, too hurt to move. His soul had been ground down to nothing. He didn’t feel it parting from him, but he woke up one day and it was gone.
And now he was this, a broken little bird, lying on the ground of a hole that people weren’t even looking for.
Or were they?
“Conor,” Max moaned, lips quivering. “Come for me. Please.”
How many times had he prayed for that?
How many times had he wanted the doors to open and for Conor to be there?
But it was never Conor.
It was them.
The monsters.
The monsters in the light.
There was no sense of time in that hole.
Max may have been in there for a day, or a week, or even a year. He wouldn’t know it. It all felt the same.
Time.
A dreaded prison, it was.
He sat with his back against the wall, wincing slightly when his shoulder blades pressed against the stone walls. He was all bones now: sore bones, broken bones, weak bones. Just bones. They’d given him a blanket and a pillow he could have used for support, but it was covered in blood and dirt and other things. He never touched them unless he had to. Like when the temperature dropped and the cold was in his lungs.
Around him was a scattering of toys they had brought down for him. He took them wherever he went in the room. He didn’t have to see them in the dark anymore. He memorized where he placed them, his sense of touch more palpable than all the others.
His favourite toy was the car because, in a fit of rage the first while he’d been down here, he’d thrown it against the wall and shattered the trunk of it. Replacing it was a pointed bit of plastic that he was able to dig into his finger for blood. He would drag his bloodied finger all along the walls of the hole, sometimes writing, sometimes drawing, sometimes just wanting to see how much blood he could let out of him before getting dizzy.
Most of the time, though, he’d sit like this, bones against the wall, staring into nothing. He no longer felt motivated to move. In the start he’d have walked along the hole, hand grazing the walls, praying for the door to open. He’d memorized the steps it took to get from one end to the other.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, turn.
One, two, three, four…
That was a mindless exercise that usually ended back at the staircase, up the stairs and pounding on the locked doors. The despair when they never opened was soul crushing. He could no longer afford to do it again. He didn’t have it in him to feel the regurgitated agony that hopelessness brought him.
Nowadays he looked up where the door was and tried to remember a certain face.
But it wasn’t coming to him, that face.
Everything was all a blur now. He wondered if he was beginning to forget or if maybe…maybe that life was never real. Maybe it never happened.
But then he’d say their names and remember it did happen. He did have friends.
He had Conor and Dominic and sorta Jem.
And Conor…maybe Conor was still out there playing the game. Maybe he was still looking for him. If only they knew…
“I’m right here,” Max whispered, “right under your nose.”
Right then, the doors opened, and the light flooded in, blurring his vision. But he didn’t need to see to know who was there.
The monsters had returned.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlotte
Over the following couple weeks, Conor slowly began to step out of the house. He joined me for home-time pickups, and like I predicted, aside from a chirpy hello, nobody had the balls to ask him straight up how he was. The awkwardness was worth it when Penny found him waiting for her every time, her squeal loud as she launc
hed herself into his arms.
Because his licence expired in prison and he couldn’t have it renewed, he had to retake his driver’s exam before being granted his licence again. I had him included under my car insurance and he was free to leave when he wanted.
At first, he was weary to leave the house alone, so I went with him. After dropping Penny off at school, our routine consisted of driving aimlessly around town, listening to music. I got him hooked on coffee again and he was finally smashing his morning breakfasts. He joined a nearby gym and planned to go in the mornings before Penny got up for school.
He got to spend one-on-one with her in the evenings while I was getting work done in my office. I’d gone to Locke’s firm once to gather some paperwork and to speak to Locke about what Reid had said, but he wasn’t around.
In fact, Locke had gone quiet.
Which was fine by me. I needed distance from Locke. Now that Conor was here, Locke was a complication. I even entertained the thought of quitting, but I could never do that to him after all he had done for me.
Plus, Locke needed me in a fucked up way.
After contacting Ember and Jem, we scheduled a get-together the following Saturday with the plan to leave for Jem’s bar that evening.
I wore a long sleeve grey dress and would be accompanying it with brown high boots when we went out. Conor kept it simple, as usual, but he pulled on these sexy as hell jeans that hugged his ass so nicely. His plain white shirt he’d owned from before prison stretched across his chest, proof he’d gotten so much bigger. His biceps bulged deliciously, straining the sleeves in a mouth-watering way. He’d smirked when he caught me checking him out countless times.
He’d even shaved his beard.
His face left me breathless.
His cheekbones were visible, his eyes seeming even more vivid against his skin. I noticed a small scar on his cheek, one that had never been there before. I never mentioned it. Had pretended I hadn’t even noticed, but my heart felt tight in my chest. I knew he’d tell me if I asked.