by A. L. Woods
The whole truth.
“Let’s talk about it when we get to your place.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There were few things I hated more than feeling like something had been kept from me intentionally.
I had suspicions as soon as Raquel realized that her door had been kicked in that this wasn’t a random break-in. She had flown into panicked frenzy, borderline manic-like state in search of the photo. It was as if the very essence of her fragile existence had shattered at her feet. It hadn’t escaped my notice that her apartment was almost methodically destroyed—special attention given toward any item that meant something special to her given her reaction.
Only someone who knew her could have done this.
The way her spine stiffened when I read the word “remember” that was etched in a messy scrawl on the back of the photo all but confirmed my theory.
We had driven back to my place in heavy silence. When I pulled the Jeep into park and my fingers reached for the keys in the ignition, I kept my concentration fixed on the garage door before I asked the question that filled me with dread.
“Was it Cash?”
Her silence was deafening.
She followed me to the front door, and once we were both inside, I suggested she grab a shower in hopes it would make her feel better. I needed to think without her around so I could discern what part of my brain was working: the caveman or the logician part of me. Having her right under my nose with the stench of her building still clinging to the fibers of her clothes was likely to make me a liability to us both.
My body sunk to the couch when I heard the shower turn on, the heel of my palms driving into my eye sockets.
While she showered, I called Maria. It wasn’t often I asked my sister for advice, but I needed to stay on the right side of the law for this one. Raquel didn’t want to call the boys, I respected that—hell, Maria got it even from the confines of her old bedroom at my ma’s. The world Raquel was brought up in was different from ours. Ours played nice. Ours recognized how to coexist with the rest of society and how to interact with various socioeconomic classes.
But the Cashes and Doms and Terrys of the world did not. Her ma did not. Her dad had not.
I didn’t even know if Cash had acted alone. I’d been careful not to contaminate the evidence, even with Raquel so adamant about not reporting the break-in. I collected each sheet of paper of her manuscript into a disorganized pile that I made a mental note to go through later.
He was trying to send her a message, and I read it for exactly what it was.
A warning.
It had been a particularly sick touch for him to tear her place apart, never mind go for the one thing he must have known she valued more than any other material possession: the picture. I had underestimated the extent of his anger when we had our altercation in the parking lot of her workplace. But based on the damage, he hadn’t hesitated to deploy the psychological head fuck card against her.
Raquel’s soft footsteps ate up the silence of the dimmed living room, tiptoeing to the opposite end of the couch. She chose to sit cross legged directly between two cushions in the middle of the section, her bare feet tucked under her thighs. The ends of her hair were damp, the strands tucked back behind her ears, leaving little droplets of water on the neckline of her hoodie. She had scrubbed the remnants of what had been left of her makeup from the night before, her skin clean and bare, making her appear much younger than her twenty-eight years.
Hints of her shampoo floated to my side of the couch, that warm vanilla and citrus cocktail making my senses hum with awareness. Her sweatpants were as baggy as the oversized sweater she had pulled on over her head, entirely masking her upper body in the thick fabric. Her gaze dipped to the coffee table that now housed her copy of Valley of The Dolls along with Trina’s copy of the final book in the Twilight saga.
“Well?” she finally asked—I guess the silence had become too much for her. “Are you going to say something?”
Was I going to say something?
I let my head roll back against the back of the couch, my eyes fixed on the smooth ceiling above me. When I’d first bought the place, the whole house had been peppered with popcorn ceilings—tobacco tar trapped in the friable material. I’d scraped for hours until both me and the floors were blanketed in a thick sheet of white. It had been a labor of love. This entire house had been.
The woman on my couch who was tugging at the sleeve of her sweater would be no different. It would just take a lot more scraping at the layers and layers of shit she had been fed over the years and accepted as truth by the Cashes and Paulines of the world before she could see that.
“I mean,” I said, my fingers grazing against the fine texture of the black leather of the couch, needing something to do, “you don’t want to do anything about it.”
Her brows lifted an inch with surprise before they crashed back down again. She shifted with nervous discomfort, her eyes sweeping the room. “Rat culture is very real.”
“Yep,” I said, remaining guileless. “I get it.”
Her gaze flitted in my direction before she sent it toward the darkened TV. “It would make me feel extraordinarily guilty to call the boys on one of my own.”
My jaw ticked at that phrase: One of my own. I modulated my tone as I uttered two words I didn’t believe. “I understand.”
Her honey eyes rounded, fixing on me. “Do you?”
An exhale slithered out of me as I met her stare dead on. Lying to her seemed so much easier right now, but the way she looked at me made me reconsider. So, I went with the truth. “Not really.”
Her sigh was unmistakably one of relief, the sound of which cocked my brow north. That was a reaction I hadn’t been prepared for, given the circumstances and how adamant she had remained about not getting anyone involved. “Why do you seem relieved that I don’t understand?”
Her shoulders rose, then sagged. “Part of what I like about you is that you color in the lines.”
“I don’t color in the lines,” I assured her, a bark of a laugh escaping my throat.
The corner of her mouth lifted an inch. “You do in our world.”
“What this ‘our world’ shit? You make Southie sound like it’s in some other part of the galaxy.”
“Sometimes it feels like it is.” She rubbed the space above her brow where her cut had scabbed over, her gaze downcast as she spoke. “My ma’s neighborhood sometimes feels like its own criminal underworld. I told you they’ve worked at trying to gentrify Southie and make it more attractive to young professionals and families, but…we’re like a stain that can’t be buffed out. They can renovate as many waterfront multi-family properties as they want, but we’re a hole in the floor. It doesn’t matter how pretty the rug; they can’t cover us up.”
“What happens if they try to do something to your ma’s hood?”
I watched the cogs of her mind work over the question, as if she had never really considered it before.
“There would be a lot of displaced families, but they’re, like…” she laughed softly, her mind drawing some kind of connection before her mouth let me in on what was so amusing. “Rats,” she concluded. “They stick together in packs. They’ll just find another place to go.”
Figures. They hated what they were. Rats.
“Within Southie?” I asked.
She shook her head, her hair moving with her. “Not necessarily. Southie was just the original hub for greenies to go to when they landed from Ireland. They recognize the people in their neighborhoods because they looked exactly like them. But I think this sub-world’s culture goes beyond the geographical confines of the neighborhood itself. It’s like a weird blood pact that you don’t realize you’re a part of until it’s too late.”
“Do you think they’re all married to these principles?”
“No, but even if it’s not a huge part of their value system, the people there still know better than to than sell out anyone they’re going to have to face at thei
r local Market Basket. They’d end up at the bottom of a dumpster in the back, and that’s not a risk anyone’s really willing to take.”
“Who enforces this kind of shit?”
“It depends on the offense. Usually someone knows someone…or they’ll do it themselves. It’s part of what made the wannabe Whitey Bulgers of the neighborhood so formidable.” She hesitated before adding, “It’s what gave people like my dad his reputation.”
“What do you mean?” What the hell was she telling me? My heartbeat took off like a snare drum, a pulse forming in the palm of my hand. I held her in my stare, but she kept her eyes trained on the wall.
“I don’t know for sure, but people used to say things about him.”
“What kind of things?”
I caught the bob in her throat, and she blinked twice. “That he wasn’t just good at cleaning up his own messes, but other people’s, too.”
My body stiffened, the implication not wasted on me. At the diner all those weeks ago she had told me her father had a penchant for assault. Could that be what she meant?
“That’s why sometimes I think he did it on purpose.” She picked at a cuticle on her thumb, pulling the strand of dry skin that stuck out until blood rushed to the surface. She didn’t even flinch, just held her thumb aloft in quiet observation and then brought it to her lips to nurse with her tongue.
“Did what on purpose?”
Her eyes snapped to mine unexpectedly, and I felt like all the air I had inside me had been vacuumed out. She lowered her thumb, her next words coming as a sucker punch to the gut. “Got himself shot. He had enough lead on him to take out that armored car and at least two dozen cars full of Staties. He got out of the car with the gun in his hand, but he never aimed.”
“Why do you think he…” I trailed on, the sentence dying on my tongue.
Raquel threw me a lifeline, filling in the blanks. “Maybe to quiet all the voices in his head,” she said with a thin smile that lacked any warmth. “Or maybe it was to cull the pain of a broken heart. With my dad, it was always next to impossible to understand his reasoning towards anything. He didn’t have to marry my ma, but he did. Those parts of his value system never made any sense to me. In the end, I think he just wanted out and needed someone to do it for him.”
My lungs compressed painfully as the breath I’d held slithered out of me, the question expelling with the release of oxygen. “And what do you value?”
Raquel’s eyes practically distended, awe popping her mouth open. I was trying to get the full gamut of the situation, to understand the direction her moral compass pointed in. She seemed to understand that, because her befuddled look evaporated.
She dropped her hands in her lap, her fingers knitting together. She used the injured thumb of her right hand to smooth across the knuckle of her left in a gesture of self-soothing.
“I don’t protect people like Cash because I want to; I protect them because I have to,” she said.
“I don’t understand.” My gaze snapped hold of hers, and she all but withered.
She let her head fall back against the couch. “Do you remember the night of our first kiss?”
My throat weaved. “How could I forget?”
That elicited a smile from her. “I didn’t get into the car with Cash and his band of goons because it was what I wanted. I did it to protect you.”
“What are you getting at, Raquel?”
Her silence was prolonged, but I gave her the opportunity to think for herself without my incessant goading for her to get the words out of her addled brain. Her lips pursed with contemplation.
“I valued your safety. You would have been a target for them. Terry and Dom already saw too much. They’re constantly trying to have collateral on one another, and that’s what you would have been to me.”
“Why?” I exhaled, rubbing my fingers back and forth across my mouth. “I don’t understand.”
“In that moment, getting into the car with them was the safest thing for all of us. My compliance made them believe you weren’t anything noteworthy, and by extension, not a threat to Cash.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I growled.
Raquel studied me for a beat of a minute before she replied. “It means that I wouldn’t pick someone else over them if push came to shove.”
Her words from that night hit me like a derailing locomotive. “That’s what you meant by saying you weren’t the princess in the situation.”
Her nod was stiff. “I don’t agree with the way Cash or anyone else behaves, but if it means I get to keep those I care about safe, then I’ll do what it takes.”
“That’s why you couldn’t let him stay on the ground that night, isn’t it?”
She nodded her head. “It’s a bit of a game of chess, and if I’m not paying attention, my own pawns are going to take my queen.”
“What would happen if you didn’t go back?” I breathed. I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, but suddenly I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “What if you found a place in Eaton…or even if you stayed here with me?”
“Stayed here?” She frowned, alarm an edge in her tone. “I’m not moving out of my apartment, Sean.”
“But you could.” I threaded my fingers through my hair, curling my fist against the strands. “There’s nothing left for you there. Penelope’s moving to Eaton, and I’m here. Why would you want to stay?”
“Because it’s my home.”
“It’s not your home. It sounds more like hell.” There was a stern tone in my voice than I hadn’t intended. Before she could argue, my mouth ran off faster than my brain could process. “It would be faster for you to get to and from work from here. You could be at Penelope’s in twenty minutes. No more Southie bullshit.”
“I’m not moving—”
“I could keep you safe here.”
“I don’t need to be kept safe,” she hissed. “Do you understand what you’re asking me?”
Was that a hypothetical question? What the hell had I just implied? For her to move in? My features crashed down hard on my face as I processed what I had said to the woman who had been my girlfriend for a mere twenty-four hours.
Raquel undid her legs from the couch, her feet finding the floor as she moved to stand. “I can’t move in with you.”
“You could,” I muttered.
“We barely know each other.”
“I know enough.” Why was I still arguing this? Why couldn’t my jaw stop flapping? My brain sounded an alarm of warning, but my mouth was failing to receive the distress call from mission control.
“Then what’s my middle name?”
“That is completely arbitrary, and you know it,” I scoffed.
She pitched her hands on her waistline that was hidden under her sweater. “Is it? I like you, Sean.” She sucked on the corner of her bottom lip. “I like you a lot.”
I lifted my eyes to hers. I knew my features were all kinds of fucking sullen right now, like that of a child who wasn’t getting his way, but she paid it no mind. “But it’s too soon to talk about moving in together, especially under circumstances like these. I need to remain autonomous.”
That had my jaw rocking and the muscles in my face flexing. I couldn’t understand why she was perceiving this as if I was trying to put a choke collar on her while holding the leash taut in my hand. “You are autonomous. I’m not trying to control you.”
“You’re trying to control the situation,” she amended with the proficiency of a lawyer, her arms slackening to her sides. “If it weren’t for Cash being a problem, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“It would have been a future conversation.”
“I don’t want to be tied down by anyone, Sean.” Her chin raised defiantly. “I am not going to be anyone’s housewife. I’ve spent my entire life at other people’s disposal, and it’s time for that to stop.”
I was grateful to be seated. Her words struck me in the gut, the couch absorbing my re
coil. I looked for something in her face that told me she hadn’t meant it that way, but what I found there was nothing but the truth.
She had meant every damn word she said.
If her intention had been to hurt me, then it worked. I rose, towering over her. In typical Raquel glory, she didn’t budge an inch. Wouldn’t give my ego the satisfaction of bending just a little. She was a tree in her own right, just as strong, just as unrelenting, ready to face the eye of the storm. She stared at me dead on—her honey gaze vs. my earthy brown one—and I considered why it felt like we were always taking one step forward and two steps back, how she could be close enough where I could lose my fingers in her hair, yet too far for me to ever reach that soft place in her heart that I knew existed somewhere beyond the layers of thorny vines that had grown there for self-protection.
Was it really that hard to love me back? I felt my spine stiffen, and my shoulder blades painfully compressed. I couldn’t keep the venom out of my voice, or the darkness in my stare when I asked my question. “Then what the fuck are you doing here?”
She blew out a breath through her nose, her hold on my gaze unwavering, nothing but that raw honesty. “I don’t know.”
With the utterance of those three simple words, the last words I wanted to hear, we were back at square one.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Everything in me told me to get my shit and leave. I sat in the dark of the living room, a pillow clutched to my chest, my spine curled forward, elbows resting on the edges of my knees. That conversation had not gone over the way I had envisioned, but I also hadn’t anticipated him springing something like moving in together like that on me, either.
He had disappeared out the front door four hours ago and hadn’t returned, and I just sat here and thought about everything up until this moment. There was no denying that I was falling in love with him, but it didn’t take the acumen of a psychologist at the low price of a hundred-and-fifty dollars an hour to know that agreeing to move in with him would have been like a cancer to our relationship right now. We were still figuring each other out, we were still in the early stages. We didn’t even know any of each other’s weird quirks yet, and he wanted to move in with me? There was something overly confident in the way he had said it that made me feel like we would have been tempting fate by doing something so brazen.