by Wanda Amard
Questions bombard me as I release the oil from the car overhead.
How did Ricky find out we were married?
What sick twisted thing could possibly be his idea of a wedding gift?
How long will I be on the outside with Kimber before one of Ricky’s demands lands me back in prison?
Chapter Ten
Kimber
I still haven’t found a job. Not even seasonal employment. With Christmas fast approaching it’s safe to say all the jobs — even the crappy retail ones — have been filled. The whole thing makes me completely irrationally angry and even though I push the thoughts away, there’s always a niggling idea that it’s because everything my mother ever said about me is true. I am a waste of oxygen. Won’t amount to anything.
I am only good enough to warm a man’s bed when he needs sex. Could it be that the trait is so obvious to everyone else they see it immediately when I hand in an application? Do I smell like a whore?
It couldn’t be though because Dominoes hired my brother to deliver pizza, and he is way worse than me. Isn’t he? In high school they offered guidance counseling sessions with students they deemed to be underprivileged. Whenever I would receive the little pink paper in my locker, I always crumbled it up and threw it away, but right this second I regret those decisions. Guidance from someone other than Sonia Green would’ve helped me out in life. I should have taken beauty classes with Rubi.
In high school the real world was so far away. Why did I need to prepare for it at seventeen?
With Vinn working extra hours because of the holiday rush — who knew oil changes had a holiday rush — and the loss of his management team, he leaves me home alone more and more often. And quite frankly it’s boring. Daytime TV is only good in small doses and during the daytime. I don’t want to start a TV show without Vinn in the evenings because then he’d force me to watch it all over again when he had time to catch up later.
That’s why against my better judgment I often find myself wandering my way back to the familiar trailer of my youth. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment or the boredom gets to me, but it’s why I found myself trudging through the light layer of snow to my mother’s home when it turned out Judge Judy was a rerun.
Plus, there isn’t a lot of adventure in my life now, but back in my childhood home there was always something happening. Normally nothing I wanted to see, but intriguing nonetheless. Plus, I have me the opportunity to check in on my mother. While she’s been moody lately, I don’t suspect she’s returned to any drug use. Many of her telltale signs haven’t surfaced. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life waiting for the bottom of her barrel to drop out, checking drawers or looking for fresh marks.
It’s not that I don’t want her to succeed or I don’t think she can succeed. It’s just she’s failed so many times before and I used up all my hope on those other opportunities. Now there is a little crumble of optimism left and I was trying to stretch it out to fill an entire lifetime.
I would have stopped at the door rather than turning the handle and walking in, but I can hear Hunter screaming before I put one foot on the top step, so I know people are home.
“The least you could do is cook something!” Hunter yells while tossing a dirty cookie sheet into a half-full sink as I close the front door behind me. I guess no one has picked up doing the dishes since I stopped.
Emily lounges on the couch in her pajamas not even turning to look at my brother as he yells. Instead she flips through a few TV channels. “Why the hell is it up to me to do everything?”
“Because you live here for free,” he yells back.
Flashes of my youth impact my brain like tiny little bullets from a rifle. Except this gun holds haunting memories of years gone past. It can only kill me in the theoretical sense.
“Your mom lives here for free too. Make her do something.” Emily twists to face my brother.
Nobody noticed me come in the trailer, which is turning out to be a good thing. I step backward hoping I can squeeze back out the door and run home before anyone catches on, but Hunter turns his attention to my direction. “Look at Kimber. At least she keeps her place clean. Cooks food.”
Emily’s face reddens and her fist clutches the TV remote. “She knows her place, you mean?”
Hunter smirks holding up a dirty dish before tossing it in the sink. “If the shoe fits.”
At that Emily ricochets off the couch and whips the remote at my brother’s head. He ducks and it hits a cupboard putting a dent right next to a previous one, which was made in quite the same fashion from an argument between my parents when I was in fourth grade. “You bastard. You promised me the world and look at this place!”
I do what she suggested and as my eyes survey the living room, they come back disgusted. Without me here doing the dishes and picking up the place, it’s steadily gone downhill. It’s even worse than the last time I visited. Dirty cups and plates are stacked on the countertops, a few still housing food, probably mold. A beer can, started but not finished sits in the middle of the coffee table, meaning my father had returned. But I would definitely know it if he had, so this can means Hunter has taken up the same activities as our sperm donor.
“So do something about it!”
“You never take me anywhere!”
Hunter grabs a glass from the counter and leans against the fake laminate getting as close as possible without leaving the kitchen and screams, “Because I’m working too much to take care of this dump! If you want me to take you places, get dressed and do something about it.”
“Be more like your sister, you mean?”
With my hand on the front door, I freeze with her words, trying to look as small as possible so I can become invisible and then slink away pretending this never happened.
Hunter says something, but it’s lost in the sound when he tosses a glass haphazardly into the sink. It shatters, sending glass fragments onto the kitchen floor. Apparently awakened by the noise going on out here, my mother’s bedroom door slams open, banging into the wall with a thud as she storms out of the bedroom.
“What the fuck are you two going on about now? Stop breaking the fucking dishes, Hunter!”
“Who cares? I’ll be the one paying to replace them.”
My mother’s face falls into a scowl and she looks to Hunter with adoration. “We know how hard you work.”
It’s enough to roll my eyes and finish the maneuver needed to get the hell out of the trailer, closing the door behind me as softly as possible. It would be my mother to hear Hunter and Emily fighting and somehow take his side. Not that I didn’t necessarily agree from the looks of things around the place, but it’s always Hunter for my mother. He can do no wrong. It doesn’t matter what I do. She sees me as worthless as she found herself.
And possibly that’s the gist of it. My mother sees herself in me and I will never be good enough because she failed to meet her own imagined potential.
Chapter Eleven
Vinn
My foot taps nervously against the cloth bottom of the car’s driver seat. Exposed wires hang lower than necessary do to an extra burst of energy as I ripped them from the dash.
There was no way in hell I’d drive my own car as a getaway to a robbery, but Ricky refused to provide one. His master solution was “pick one up along the way” and I knew he didn’t mean stop at the local Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
My fingers wrap around the wheel tightly as I itch to turn on the music to something loud and angry like screaming heavy death metal, but I have the window rolled down as I do my best to listen for anything happening around the car.
Like police sirens or a screaming woman. Gun shots. An angry mob formed by the neighborhood watch.
The two men I dropped off at the bottom of the long winding driveway nestled far back in a patch of land surrounded by cornfields in one of the rich communities of our county have been gone for more than twenty minutes. They said it would be a quick in and out job during their excitement on the
drive here, but no one clarified for me what quick would be when it came to breaking and entering.
This is one crime where I don’t have experience. Boosting cars is quick — literally get in, start the car by any means necessary, and then get out. They make whole books and movie franchises about the speed in which you can steal a car. These fuckers have been gone 21 ½ minutes. From what I can tell from my angle on the street, the house is large, but it’s not like they’re robbing the Louvre.
A breaking and entering job has 150,000 or more ways to get a man busted. Not only am I driving the streets in a stolen vehicle, but the Ford fucking Focus I took can’t get any crazy speeds on the city streets, and I don’t know the two men Ricky hooked me up with tonight. He promised the home owner wouldn’t report the loss to the police, but it doesn’t mean one of these dumb asses won’t get a loud mouth and start telling stories to a friend.
At least I’ve gotten to know the car guys on a tighter level. I still don’t trust one of the assholes not to throw me under the bus if locked in a police interrogation, but I trust these two guys even less.
Headlights approach from behind and I lower myself in the seat, bending over and pretending to look for something in the passenger side of the vehicle. Hopefully, whoever it is assumes the car broke down or I’m just a rich kid home for the holidays. I switched plates with another vehicle in the Kroger parking lot, but I don’t know how long that’ll keep the cops from questioning either.
The headlights drive on by, barely slowing as they pass, and I silently cheer, grateful for the “look the other way” society we’ve become.
I googled news reports of jail time for convicted criminals sent away for driving getaway vehicles. They spend significantly less time in jail than people doing the actual robbing. That overpriced computer came in handy after all. But any time away from Kimber is too much time, so I don’t plan to get busted tonight. The knowledge helped calm the nerves when Ricky came calling with another deal he said I couldn’t refuse.
Twenty-five minutes pass and my finger hovers over the radio station. If I turn it on low it won’t interfere. As I’m about to give in to the draw, there’s a loud rustle of leaves and then two flashlight beams hastily scatter on the ground, flicking back and forth as they make their way closer to my direction at a running pace.
Dumbasses.
Motherfuckers weren’t even smart enough to turn off their flashlights. They could be leading someone right to us. Where the hell does Ricky find these losers?
The back door opens and two bodies slam into the car. I’ve put it into drive and pulled out from the gravel edge of the road before they close the door. Both of them are yelling, talking to each other loudly, excited over whatever they scored. Obviously, it was a job well done. The only thing I’m excited about is getting the hell out of here. I don’t know what they stole and I don’t have any plans to ask. Once I get them dropped off and ditch this car I’m done.
The less I know the better.
“You know where you’re going?” one of the young kids in the back asks, slapping the back of my car seat. He can’t be more than twenty-one.
I scowl in the rearview mirror. “Yes.” I’ve lived in the city my whole life except for the five years I did in Jackson. I’ve barely ever left.
Ricky said to drop these two off at his bar in the city and then gave me permission to make myself scarce. As if he expected I would do this for him and then party all night long. Is it possible the boss is starting to learn a little about me after all?
He’s also learning new ways to get me to do what he wants. Kimber is my greatest gift and biggest liability.
First it started with cars, and now it’s moved to getaway driving. What’s next? Will I be expected to break into homes myself soon? Take up a gun? Commit a murder? And where does my hard line lie? I would do anything for Kimber, but how much would Kimber want me to do?
The two numb nuts carry on in the back seat as I drive down Mt. Hope to give us a quick escape back into Lansing. Once we pass the city marker and two deer crossing signs, I breathe a little easier. No one is chasing us down yet. There’s a little shopping mall on Cedar with a bunch of rundown stores in it and the fake dollar store that advertises everything less than $10 but hasn’t had new merchandise since 1992 when Ricky set it up as a money laundering front after he moved the operation from an actual laundromat.
He said the competition was getting too tough, but maybe he’d had enough of the puns from his crew. The men get out, walking to the small-town bar at the end of the strip where Ricky waits in the shadows.
After the car is empty, I drive south a few miles to a park where I left my vehicle. On this side of town, there are no cameras like you find in the rich areas, but I still drive the stolen car another six blocks away before parking it on a street in front of a rickety old house with paint chipping off the siding. A Vote for VERG campaign sign sits faded and bent over in the front yard from an election long lost.
Thankfully, there’s nothing illegal about walking down the street to a city park at two o’clock in the morning, but if anyone sees me, I’ll be marked as suspicious. Hell, I am suspicious. I keep my head down and tilt my neck like I have a headphone in one ear while I walk back to my parked vehicle as quickly as possible. There are too many eyes in the city. Too many squad cars wait to flick on those top lights. When I reach the park, I jog down the open road and slip into the tree line and then out again as I reach my beat-up vehicle.
There’s a feeling of relief as I sit in the seat and take a deep breath releasing it slowly. From this point on, I’m a man out after a night of work trying to get home to his wife. There’s nothing in this car to give me away, no signs that say I drove a getaway car tonight to rob a rich bastard in Okemos.
Still, thankfully, I make it through the city unnoticed, passing at least fifteen other cars in the short drive back to my home. These men and women are also up to no good at three o’clock in the morning or maybe, just maybe, they too are returning home to their wives and husbands after a night of long work. Something honest, the GM factory, or an all-night gas station. Perfectly reasonable explanations I can give if asked.
Perfectly acceptable answers I’ll give to anyone who should happen to stop me now. Everyone, that is, except my wife.
The trailer is dark when I sneak inside and I pull off my boots next to the bed, slipping under the covers wearing only a pair of boxers, but I’m not quiet enough to keep from waking Kimber. Safe in my own bed, the adrenaline rush I’ve been waiting for finally picks up. She pushes away a piece of her dark hair with the lighter color strands, and a sliver of moonlight hits her, lighting up her face and reminding me I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.
How did I get so lucky to match with someone like Kimber? And how long will it take before I screw up so monumentally that I lose it all?
“Mm, Vinn?” she says rolling closer to my body and snuggling. Her toes, which have been covered all night, are ice cold as she rests them on my ankles.
It’s enough of a chill to refocus my energy. She’s sleeping and it makes me a bastard, but my hand slips under her pajama pants. When she doesn’t jerk away I rub against her clit, her legs falling open.
“Did you sleep well, Jailbait?”
Her pants and underwear are slipped to her knees, all without her complaint, giving me more clearance. “Hmmm,” she responds twisting her body to her back and lifting her own shirt for my perusal.
I slip into her slowly and her heat covers my shaft, drawing my balls up and making my eyes close tightly. “Fuck, Kimber.”
Finally, her eyes pop open and she rakes her nails down my chest harder than normal. “Lift me.”
I listen, scooping her ass in my hands and lifting her higher so our connection is better. She moans again and my speed increases. I’m searching for something. Anything. My place in the world. My place in this marriage. I’m angry and sad and excited for getting away. I take it out on Kimber, ramming into her ha
rder and harder with each of her accepting moans. Our bodies lie jagged on the bed and the loud knocks of the bed frame hitting the wall work as an angry beat of music I missed earlier tonight.
She arches up, biting me on the shoulder hard when she comes and screaming my name through my skin. Her pussy latches on and milks the orgasm from my dick before I wanted to release. I’m never ready to be done with Kimber. My anger, frustration, and disappointment are not all worked through my system yet.
I’ll give her my dick as long and as hard as she can take it. Let her take these fears and emotions I can no longer handle on my own.
As our bodies slow and I lower her to the bed, she latches on, wrapping her hands around my neck. “Vinn, what did you do?”
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Also by Wanda Amard
Encounter
Taken
Wishes
Escape
Romance
Birthday
Leaving
Fighting
Peace
Proposal