by J A Wynters
I chuckled at his optimism.
“Now Rob, I think that I’m going to give you what you want.”
“Really?” His smile lightened across his broken face. “Thanks, man. I really thought…” He fell silent as Salvatore walked forward with a needle.
“Hold him down.”
Salvatore and Joe walked over to the chair and grabbed Rob. Salvatore pinned his shoulders to the back of the chair while Joe grabbed his wrists, immobilising him completely. Helpless. He tried to fight, but a sack of bones was no match against two heavy-set men who have known physical violence since birth.
I approached Rob. “Look at me.”
His rabbit eyes darted across the room still searching for a way out. “Alice was clean, you asshole. She’s been clean for two years, and tonight she almost died because you needed to stick your cock in something with a pulse.”
“No—no it’s not like that.” Salvatore clamped a hand over his mouth. Rob’s neck corded with tension.
“Real life things, as you call your conversations, should really involve the people’s lives that your choices fuck up. The choices you make and the consequences. Today, you made a choice to stick your dick in my mother, and the only way you could do that was to get her back in the fucking gutter with you. Cause, you’re a filthy rat.”
He tried to talk against Salvatore’s hand, but all that emanated were muffled sounds.
“I wanted your way out to be painful but, unfortunately, I have so little time. And, quite frankly, you’re a piece of shit and I don’t want to waste any of it on you.”
I tied a short piece of plastic tube around his arm and slapped the skin, waiting for his collapsing veins to pop up. Rob screamed; his tears glistened on Salvatore’s hand. His legs pushed and strained against the leg restraints.
The needle sank softly into his flesh and, in a matter of seconds, Rob’s body sagged and his eyes glazed over. Salvatore and Joe released their hold on him.
“How do you feel, Rob?” I cooed.
“Mmmm it’s so good, man.” His slack face beamed. I continued to pump more into his veins, tripling the dose any addict could handle.
His body became slack, and he sagged deeper into the chair, his face lolling, his eyes heavy. “How does it feel, Rob?”
“They made me…she didn’t say…”
“Rob? What are you talking about? Who made you?” I slapped him across the face.
He didn’t respond. I suspect he couldn’t. Not with the amount of heroin I had just pumped into his body. His eyes shut and his breathing became shallow.
He lost consciousness.
Fuck. If someone sent him to hurt Alice, it was too late to ask. I used my only shot of Naloxone on Alice. There was no saving Fat Rob.
“Fuck.” The anger ignited inside me once more, and my fist took it out on Rob’s lolling face.
Salvatore and Joe returned to their positions by the door. Silent sentinels of death, they awaited their next instruction.
We waited. Rob’s face paled; a peppering of clammy sweat covered his forehead, and his lips were tinged in blue. His body didn’t fight long. His breathing became more erratic, gurgling and choking on itself.
I looked at Salvatore. “Make sure they don’t find him too soon. And see if you can find out more about anyone trying to hurt Alice.”
Salvatore nodded and walked over to the chair where he undid Rob's restraints. Rob slid like jelly from the chair as if his bones had completely evaporated.
I walked out of the room and into the workshop. My anger had evaporated and all that was left was exhaustion.
The only gifts I got for my birthday were a broken heart, an overdosing mother, and a corpse.
Someone should put that on a T-shirt.
PART VII
She barely looked at me. For weeks. Nothing but cold stares and clipped conversations. Mia avoided me at all costs, and it broke me time and time again. Like a wave against my wall, she pounded and crashed, but I had to stay strong—for both of us. Letting her in would mean danger for both of us. That’s not something I could do to her.
Thoughts of her filtered through my every waking moment—the brief taste of her lips on mine, the smell of her skin, her pink nipples and rounded ass, my shirt swaying on her skin. She was perfect. Even angry, she was stunning. Glaring eyes and snarling teeth, like an animal.
So when she didn’t show up on a Tuesday morning, her absence was searing. Nothing felt right, as if somehow an integral cog in the system snapped off and the machine was breaking down. The phone didn’t stop ringing, and nothing seemed to flow, jobs weren’t getting done, even a simple oil change ran into problems. The machine needed its cog.
I strode to Mia’s office. It had ceased to be mine the day she walked into my workshop. I picked up the receiver and dialled her house number.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded hoarse and gruff.
“Where are you?”
The silence stretched for a minute till it was broken by a coughing fit.
“I’m sick.” her response clipped and agitated.
“When will you be back?”
“When I’m better.” She fell into another coughing fit and hung up the call, the receiver going dead in my ear.
I marched downstairs and barked at Joe. He was in charge until I got back. He tipped his head and went back to work. I snatched the keys to my ’67 Camaro.
I drove, my foot heavy on the accelerator and my jaw clenched. My knuckles turned white as I weaved around cars and tore through traffic. Who did she think she was? Hanging up on me? And why the hell didn’t she let me know she was sick? How sick was she? Was she coming back?
My heart flared with fear and worry. Damn, it was too late. She had somehow crawled under my skin, and now there was another person I felt responsible for, someone I wanted to look after, someone I cared for. I tried to so hard to keep up the walls, but she found a crack and she beat me.
I pulled up outside her apartment and pounded on the door.
When no one came to open the door, my pounding grew more insistent, louder and angrier.
I heard the chain on the door, and my fist fell to my side. Mia opened the door just a crack, her puffy eyes grew wider when she saw me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Spots was worried about you.”
“Spots?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
I pushed the door open and let myself in.
She sneered at me and walked away, falling onto her couch covered by a mountain of blankets. Mia climbed beneath them and clawed the blankets over her shoulders. Used tissues lay in piles around her like a flurry of snow.
Her usually bright eyes were sunken and blotched. They seemed heavy as her head compressed into the pillow.
“Why are you here?” She whispered, her eyelids growing heavy.
“Just sleep, Mia. Everything will be okay.”
I wasn’t even sure if she heard me. Her tiny body rose and fell beneath the blankets.
As she slept, I looked around at the small apartment. A single bedroom that she had transformed into her own private castle. Despite the walls being grey with age and peeling at the corners, she filled rooms with greenery and bright colours. Next to her neatly made bed was a side table covered in books and two framed pictures of horses. The first horse had a glossy chestnut coat, with big round eyes that followed me around the room. The other, was a bay coloured mare, alert, with stocky limbs. I guessed that would be Jigsaw.
I returned to the tiny lounge. The two-seater sofa, that was now occupied by Mia, took most of the space. A small TV was tucked in the corner of the room, and a small table leaned against the couch, holding the box of tissues and an empty glass of water.
She looked so fragile laying in a curled ball under all those blankets. Her limp hair covering her clammy face. What she needed was rest, and I was going to make sure she got it.
On my left was a kitchen that contained a standa
rd white fridge and stove with a few cupboards hanging above a workbench. An empty bowl was set in the drying rack. It reminded me of so many nights alone, my heart panged.
I approached the couch and kneeled beside it, tucking my hands under Mia’s body and lifting her easily from the couch. With eyes still closed, she murmured and nuzzled her face into my collarbone while wrapping her hands around my neck. It was the place I wanted her to stay forever. I laid her on the bed, watching as her body unfolded and stretched out while I piled her blankets on her.
I returned to the lounge, cleaned up the avalanche of tissues and went to check what she had in her kitchen.
Nothing.
Not exactly nothing—if you count a half-eaten loaf of bread, some jam, three packs of two-minute soup, and a banana that was more black than yellow.
I sighed and raked a hand through my hair.
I searched the apartment till I found her key. It was hooked inside a cupboard, tied with a green ribbon. I let myself out, returning an hour later with some food and medicine. I emptied the food into the fridge and stole back into her bedroom. Mia had barely moved since I placed her on the bed. I smoothed her hair away and placed a hand on her forehead, it sizzled. She was burning up.
I slipped off my shoes and jacket and sank onto the bed beside her, leaning against the backboard.
She moaned and turned, her heavy eyelids fluttering open. I could see confusion cloud her eyes as recognition set it. She didn’t quite sit up but jerked beneath the blankets.
“How did I get here? What are you doing here?”
“You seemed uncomfortable on the couch.” She just stared at me as if she couldn’t comprehend my words. “How are you feeling?”
“Cold. Really, really cold.” She pulled at her blankets, and I reached over placing my hand over her forehead again. “You’re burning up. Here, I got you something to help with that.” I grabbed the paper bag with the paracetamol, popped out one of the pills from its plastic sheet and handed her a glass of water.
She gulped the entire glass.
“Good, you need to keep your fluid intake up.”
“What are you, a doctor?”
“Just a concerned employer.”
“So, you do this with all your employees? Break into their houses and lie on their beds uninvited?”
“No. But maybe I should start.”
Her mouth curved in a half smile and it occurred to me how beautiful she was, even with grey-skinned and cracked lips. Like a wilted flower, but a flower nonetheless.
“What are you doing here, Gabriel?”
I shrugged.
How could I possibly explain that I couldn’t keep away from her, despite all my attempts? How could I tell her that all I wanted was to have her in my arms and make her mine? How could I tell her that if I did all those things, I would break her?
Her raspy voice pierced through the heavy veil of my thoughts. “Gabriel?”
“Get some rest.” There was no fight left in her, her tired body already drifting off. I watched her eyes flutter and her forehead break into a sweat. I watched her hair grasp at the moisture and clump against her skull. I watched her dry lips twitch with dreams. I tried to memorise every moment and every inch of her, trying to preserve them in a perfect memory that I could keep with me forever.
At about three am, she jolted awake. Light leaked from the kitchen. Her damp hair was pasted around her face. I rolled my hand over her forehead, and she gasped, then froze.
“Shh, it’s me,” The back of my hand brushed her clammy skin. “Your fever has broken.”
“You’re here? I thought I was dreaming”
“A good dream then?” My eyebrow arched.
“Why are you here?” She moved away from my touch.
“I couldn’t leave.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
She reeked of day-old sweat. Her black singlet clung to every curve and crevice, and droplets of sweat hung between the swells of her breasts.
“You need a change of clothes; you’re soaking and you smell.”
“You need to stop all this.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Come on.” I rolled off the bed and walked around to her side, extending an arm out to her. She turned to face the window.
“I’m fine.”
I bit my top lip and inhaled deeply. “Either you get up and shower or I will pick you up and shower you. One way or another, this is going to happen.”
“Gabriel.” She brushed me aside, looking away.
“Three.”
Her head whirled around, and she met my gaze for the first time. “What the fu—”
“Two.”
“Okay. Okay.” I offered my hand as she lifted herself from the bed. She sidestepped me and walked to her bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Moments later the pipes churned and coughed to life. I lifted the blankets from the bed to reveal an almost human-shaped puddle.
I pulled the sheet off her bed and searched through the main cupboard till I found a clean sheet. I wrapped her bed up and unfurled the blankets. The pipes had died down, and suddenly I was left alone in the shadowed room with my heart pounding in my chest.
The door opened and a burst of cloudy steam poured out, followed by Mia. She looked half human, draped in a towel.
Her eyes flicked to her bed and to the pile of sheets on the floor. “Did you change my sheets?”
“How do you feel?”
“Better, but I feel the cold coming back.” Her teeth clashed together.
“You better get dressed.” I walked over and took her hand, leading her to the bed. That time she didn’t resist. “Where do you keep your pyjamas?”
“You didn’t look through all my stuff?”
“No.” Her face almost fell. Did I disappoint her? Did she want me to riffle and dig up all her skeletons? Was I a fool not to?
“Now, where do you keep them?”
“Gabriel I can dress myself.”
“Where?”
“Top right drawer.” She didn’t fight, she was still weak. If she was better, she would have fought me tooth and nail. In fact, despite my brushing off her questions, I would likely have been kicked out hours ago.
“Underwear?”
“On the left.”
I stuck my hand into the left-hand drawer and blindly fished out the first pair I grabbed. I did the same with the T-shirt and walked over to the bed kneeling at Mia’s feet. A position I had dreamt of taking since the first time I saw that gap between her boots and her thighs.
I guided her legs into the holes and pulled up the fabric, my finger brushing her smooth skin as it journeyed up and disappeared beyond the towel. Fighting every primitive urge that clawed at me, I turned my head away allowing her privacy to adjust.
Mia sat back down, and I pulled the shirt over her head. Once her hands were inside the sleeves, she released the towel.
“Here, have this.” I popped out two more pills and handed them to her with a glass of water. She sucked at the liquid greedily. Her lips latching around the glass. Everything about her screamed at me. I shook my head trying to dislodge the thoughts.
She lay down, and I layered the blankets back on top of her. I rounded the bed and sat opposite her, studying her face. Her gaze latched onto mine.
“What?’
“Why are you here, Gabriel? What are you doing here?”
“I’m just making sure you’re alright.”
“But why? You obviously don’t want me. So, what do you want?” Her brow creased and her mouth pouted.
I plunged my fingers into my hair, her anguish leaching the strength from my body. I won. I made her believe it. I needed to her to believe it. I was free. I should have been elated, relieved; I should have told her she was right and walked out of that room and out of her life. Yet somehow, my hand found its way to her jaw and traced the soft skin. “I do. Since the moment I saw you.”
“Don’t say that…”
“Mia—”
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“And when I am better, you’ll go back to scowling and frowning and avoiding me.” Her mouth turned down at the corners and tugged at my heart like small anchors.
“Tell me about Cookie and Jigsaw; tell me about your farm, your family, anything. Why are you here? Why did you need the job so much?” What I really wanted to ask was why she had to walk into my calculated, perfectly-planned life and ruin everything just by being her, by showing up and smelling so damn good, by dressing like a school girl who cut her skirts too high and wore her shirts too tight—and those fucking boots. I needed something before I suffocated under the weight of desire and the need to have her, to destroy her.
“Why do you care?”
“I need to know who I have working for me.”
She huffed. “Need to know?” She turned her back to me.
“Yes.” I clenched my jaw. I was losing her, maybe I had lost her already.
“They’ve both been turned to glue, if you really want to know.” Moisture pooled in her eyes. I clenched my fist, resisting the urge to kiss away her tears.
“Who?”
“The horses.” There was a quiver in her voice. “There, now you know. Are you happy?” She craned her neck and her face was full of challenge. Twisted and tortured, marred by raw pain. Pain that I caused.
“No Mia, seeing you like this doesn’t make me happy at all.” My chest ached with the weight of her pain, and I wanted to take it all away. I raked my hands through my hair again and sucked in a deep breath.
I lay down stretching my body along hers and winged an arm around her. She stiffened for a second. I waited. When she said nothing, I pulled her close against me. Her heat searing me.
“No, Mia, mia luce,” I repeated planting a single soft kiss at the base of her neck. “I never want to make you sad.”
“What does that mean?”
“My light. You are the light in all the darkness Mia.”
“I didn’t know you spoke Italian.”
“I don’t,” I graze my teeth up her long neck. “When I was a kid, Alice put this old black and white film on the TV. She sat with me and hugged me through the whole thing. At one point the main character said those words to the woman. Alice told me what it meant. It stuck with me. Maybe because it’s the only thing she really taught me.” I shrugged at my words.