Stone's Cage

by Rebecca Ryan

  "Okay, talk," says Shreves.

  "What's there to say?" I say.

  I don't even register that he's slapped me. There's just my left cheek, stinging.

  "Don't talk to me like that ever. You tell me what I want. Let's start over."

  "Why'd you do that?"

  "Oh, you're feisty."

  "Yeah, I don't like being slapped in the face."

  Shrugging he says, "But now we understand each other."

  "Okay," I say.

  "Good. So, what do you want?"

  "I want in."

  Juice blows a long sorry note of a whistle and shakes his head at the ground.

  "Oh, I don't run no gang. I have a team. I have a basketball league."

  "What kind of story is that?" I say.

  "What do you suggest? Golf? Tennis?" Shaking his massive head, Shreves explains, as if it needs explaining: "I run teams for underprivileged youth." He laughs hard, wheezing slightly. "I work in the schools, sister. I run one of the most successful youth groups in the city. The mayor loves me. I clean up real nice." He licks his lips.

  I feel bile come up in the back of my throat.

  Shreves looks me up and down. "You fourteen?"

  I nod.

  "And you want to be a fledgling?"

  I nod again.

  "You're gonna have to be evaluated."

  "Fine," I toss off, shrugging myself clear of his grip on my arm, trying to appear annoyed. I know he will be able to ferret out fear if I give him half a chance.

  "First, we'll see how you can handle the dice, and then we'll have you run a few errands."

  Checking his phone, he texts someone for a moment and then his head snaps up again, the fat bunching in two long rolls at the base of his skull.

  "Okay," I say, trying to act as though I know exactly what he's talking about. This is what I wanted, it was what I had been searching for. Then he smiles. "I take real good care of all my girls," he says, but those eyes do not match the smile at all. Suddenly, my confidence just drains.

  "You know where Jimmi's is? The bar?"

  I nod.

  "Be outside at seven tomorrow and Juice, here, will escort you to the basement."

  I jut my chin forward to send them off, but I am not feeling at all the tough girl I am pretending to be. When they turn to go, relief floods over me and I stand there, beginning to shake, trying so hard not to cry, holding my breath so hard, it's like I don't know how to breathe anymore.

  Closing my eyes for a moment, trying to calm myself, I see Stone, his kind face, his lips, firm and tender, and I can almost smell him.

  That's when the tears start. Looking around, I don’t know where to go. I don’t really have a place to stay right now. I've been sleeping at the library during the day and showering at the Y. I look around, trying to remember the cross street that connects with the alley Stone's gym is on. Wiping my face with an arm, I shiver, desperate to return to Hobie's and realize tonight I am going to follow Stone home.

  Chapter Six

  Stone

  This time, it's two in the morning when I leave. Been working out for hours and Coach is long gone. I'm not supposed to do this every day, pound my body without rest. But it's what I do to keep my mind off my life. I can't believe Shreves showed up here with that asshole, Juice. The visit meant two more hours here working it off.

  I know it's because of the fight in two nights with Fly—the one I'm feeling pressure to lose, to throw. I've learned to maintain by maintaining. I open the door and step from my place of refuge into the back alley and turn the key to lock up. Everyone's left. Coach gave me a key when I was fifteen and I've used it nearly every day. That key has saved my life. Coach saved my life.

  Right now, though, it’s stuck and I'm wrestling with it, so I give the door a pull with my other hand and the bolt slides into place.

  "Hi."

  Spinning around, I'm immediately on alert.

  But it's that girl. This time, she's not damp. It's dry tonight. The breeze is blowing again and somewhere above the light pollution, stars shine.

  "Hey," I say, shoving the key into my pocket.

  "Where's Tig?"

  "He's fine. Loves chicken skin." I try not to look at her. Every time I see her face, my heart flips in my chest. She's so fucking beautiful. She looks so young, but she's got so much grace.

  "Your offer still open?"

  Something in my groin shifts and the flutter in my stomach drops to a pulsing thrum in my dick. Jesus. No one has had this effect on me.

  Ever.

  "Yeah," I say. "Everything still holds. Let's go." My hands are suddenly sweating.

  "One thing I want you to do," she says, and then adds an, "I'm sorry."

  I'm sorry?

  "I want you to yell or cough or something every time you turn around the corner, so I know how close you are."

  I stare at her.

  She shrugs. "Blind corners can be dangerous."

  What the fuck. I am not going to hurt her. I am not going to lay a hand on her, even if it kills me.

  "All right," I say, just glad she's agreed to come home with me.

  I start out into the night trying hard not to look over my shoulder. I'm kind of afraid I'll spook her if I turn around. I make my left and keep walking. And then I realize that my heart is thudding hard because I so want her to be behind me. But I don't think she is. She's taken off—again.

  Then I hear a little footstep, a little bit of grit, and my chest opens. There's relief I can feel, and it warms me up. She's decided to follow me back. I turned, walk a beat and call "Here!" once to assure her I'm a few yards from the blind corner. I walk about a quarter of a block, glance behind me and she turns that corner, still tracking me. I go a block, and make one more left, and now we're two doors from the corner. I'm standing on the stoop.

  She comes flying around the corner, almost at a jog, and she's searching the sidewalk for me.

  "Hey," I say softly, and she follows my voice to where I'm standing on the stoop, three steps up.

  "Yeah," she says, sighing, relieved. "What?"

  "Now what do you want to do?"

  It's clear she hasn't thought quite ahead to the next step. Tig jumps up in the window and arches his back. He's already filled out a little in the two days he's been with me.

  "That's right," I say. "What do you want to do now?"

  "How about some food," she says and grips the broken wrought iron poles sticking up from the cement steps. They've lost their handle. Her skin is luminous in the moonlight. A tremor runs up her arm. She must be starving.

  "Okay," I say. "I'm gonna go get your food. I'll leave it out here."

  With this, she relaxes her grip on the metal pipe. I use this small sign to continue as matter-of-fact as I can. I don't want her to bolt.

  "My name is Stone. Carson Stone. You're welcome to sleep out here. But I got a sofa inside. And I'm not going to hurt you. Whatever's happened to you, I'm sorry." I am amazed at how easy this all flies from my mouth. How it didn't take any thinking just to say these things. This is not like me. They call me "Stone" for reasons beyond my last name.

  But she shakes her head and sits down in front of the threshold. I let Tig out and he curls in her lap and as she pets him, I step inside and pick off a little bit of chicken from the one I roasted two nights ago and layer it on a cracked purple salad plate. When I hand her the plate, she sets it down on the step and places the tabby right next to it. Without even sniffing, he plunges right in. Hating to close the door on her, I return to the kitchen counter, dump some mac and cheese in a big bowl and open a can a tuna and mix this in, adding a little tab of extra margarine and some milk, using some creamers in the fridge leftover from coffee at the gym. Dishing half into a chipped orange Fiesta bowl from Cassie, I hold the microwave door shut while it heats up.

  I open the front door and hand her a stainless-steel spoon. She's just sitting on the front stoop, her knees akimbo, her feet splayed out wider than shoulder
length. The little kitten is asleep in her lap, tummy distended.

  "Thanks," she says reaching for the spoon, her eyes on the bowl in my other hand.

  "Listen, I want the bowl back. You can keep the spoon, but the bowl belonged to my sister. Sentimental value."

  "Okay," she says, and her face softens as she settles the mac'n'cheese next to the sleeping kitten on her lap.

  Something scurries by the trash cans near the curb and her eyes widened slightly before she digs in.

  "This is delicious," she says, around a mouthful, while I step past her to scare those motherfuckers off and bang a few trash cans. Rats. Mice. The city is full of them, some in human form. Tonight though, these are the smaller version.

  When I return to the top step, I try again. "I'm leaving the door unlocked in case it gets too cold out here and you change your mind." Glancing down at the now empty bowl, I can’t help myself. "Do you want more?"

  She looks up with such startlingly appreciative eyes, I almost laugh, but she says nothing when I take the empty bowl from her hands.

  With a little nod, I add, "I'm getting you more." I dump in what's left, telling myself I'll need four eggs in the morning as well as oatmeal. Dumping in another huge ladle of the stuff, I'm glad it's so sticky and dense and cheesy . . . it should fill her up.

  "There you go."

  "Thank you. I really appreciate it." This time the food begins to disappear again, but not quite so fast.

  Thank you. I really appreciate it.

  Who talks like that? What are you doing right now? Why are you on the street? are all the questions I want to ask her, but it'll scare her off if I drop even one of them. So, I try something else.

  "Do you have a place to be?"

  Shrugging her shoulders, she answers with, "I'm living a peripatetic lifestyle right now," and she keeps spooning food into her mouth.

  I just stand there. How? What? Peripatetic?

  "I'm Lily," she offers as if this explains all.

  I reach down to grab the kitten again. He can’t stay out here.

  "He's going inside, where you should be," I say, and it kills me a little more when I have to close the door on her.

  I kiss Tig on the head before I set him on the floor. He's Lily bait.

  Chapter Seven

  Lily

  When Stone closes the front door, I feel stupid. I mean, I should have just said "yes" to his sofa offer. What is my problem? Why couldn't I just go sleep on his sofa? From this angle, I can see Stone inside, brushing his teeth over the kitchen sink and getting himself ready for bed. It's a one room, studio apartment. He offered me the sofa and he said he'd sleep on the floor. Now, he's bunching up the pillow and throwing the sheet on this tanned, threadbare sofa while Tig dances around trying to stay out of the way of covers. Stone peels off his shirt and I try to avert my eyes.

  But I can't. He is built. And the light above the stove is still on.

  Every muscle is defined, bunching when he moves or just reaches across a counter. I squirm a little with something building in my core. When he lays down, his abs flex and shadows deepen and there's a stirring in my groin when the sheet settles low against his hips, and deadly symmetrical hollows appear just below his navel on either side, defining his obliques. I'd slept most of the day, knowing I'd be up at night, but the adrenaline rush making my heart beat in my chest leaves me breathing fast. I am on alert. I lick my lips. I've never gone for a white boy before. Never was attracted. And he's a Hook.

  He's a Hook. A Hook with a worm.

  Remember that. The enemy.

  He accidentally left that feeble light on over the stove but it's enough to let me watch him slowly nod off. Hitching my hood up, I think back to when he said I could just let myself in and bolt the door. He left it unlocked.

  I could open that door sneak in there and slit his throat. He doesn't know me from Adam. He doesn't know who I am. He doesn't know the problems I have. And yet he does this. He is taking care of me. It feels weird. My parents took care of me. My brother, Sammy, always took care of me. But no one else. Ever. And now Sammy's dead, my parents devastated.

  I shift, the glare of the street light competing with the little stove light for Stone's frame as he sleeps on his back, the pillow disappearing somewhere. Slowly, slowly his breathing evens out and an arm drops to the dark floor. His head slips back little so this throat is fully exposed. The light catches it and I keep looking in through the window.

  I can't take my eyes off of him.

  He's hypnotizing. My underwear is wet and I pull it out a little so I'm more comfortable. Catching a wiff of my own sex, I wipe my hands on my pants. Stone struggles in sleep shoving the sheet a little further down and suddenly I just wanted to touch him. I just wanted to touch that barrel chest. He is so gorgeous. His even breathing, unconscious and vulnerable, is such a turn on.

  Sitting up, I wrap my arms around my knees and edge forward for a better look. A siren wails in the background. There's sounds, something like shots, four in a row and not so far off. I turn around, listening, waiting for a moment or two. But then there's nothing, not even voices.

  When I resume my gaze through the window, something's wrong. He's moving on the sofa, his back arched, his face in pain. An arm flings back and strikes the sofa. Another arm flies up to his forehead, and then he's up on both arms, wrestling with something invisible. Tig's on the floor, his mouth open, crying, and turns to look at me like I should do something.

  Scrambling to stand, I realize it’s got be a dream. A nightmare. Stone's yelling and without really thinking, my hand is on the door knob, and I'm still leaning over, trying to see what the hell he's doing.

  Stone rolls to his side, his back to the cushion. He can't breathe. A fist comes up and he hits is own chest. Trying the knob, it doesn’t turn. I lean over and peer though the window again. Now he's writhing, head back, mouth open, choking. I lunge at the door and throw my weight against it and Tig yowls as it cracks open and I fall into the room.

  The noise must have jarred Stone loose from whatever had him in its clutches because in a second, he's sitting straight up, scrambling off the sofa, grabbing cover and sheets around his waist, standing, panting, staring down at me. He's coated in sweat.

  "What the hell," he says, reaching down to scoop Tig up before he bolts from the apartment. I just look up at him, splayed on the wooden floor, supporting my weight on my arms, feeling like an idiot.

  "You looked like you were choking," I managed. "I thought you were, like, having a seizure or something."

  Stone's face remains impassive, and he scoots my legs over with a foot so he can shut the front door. With his back to me he says, "I'm leaving it unlocked so you can get out if you feel like you have to."

  Forget the door. I stare at him. "You scared me to death. I thought you were dying."

  "Why would I be dying?"

  As I start to stand, he lifts me by one hand, holding Tig in the other. I watch his pec flex as he hoists me up. His nipples look hard.

  "I don't know. Traumatic brain injury. You know, like concussion. I don’t know. Something."

  "Because I'm a fighter?"

  My stomach drops. "You're a fighter?"

  Oh shit, the autographs. Duh.

  Chapter Eight

  Stone

  After a dreamless night, Lily's sitting on the sofa, unpacking TBIs for me, explaining shredding concussions and successive concussions, minor and major concussions.

  I watch her arms and hands, how they move as she speaks, how her hair catches the light. She's got braids on either side of her head tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck . . . and her neck. Man, it’s like a black swan's neck, long, curving, beautiful.

  Who the hell is she? Why is she here?

  Last night, she ended up sleeping at one end of the sofa and I at the other, because she wouldn’t let me sleep on the floor and I certainly wouldn’t let her. She's stubborn for a kid. But she's punching up, so I listen.

  When
I woke it was nearly nine, but Tuesdays are my day off, and I had started a giant omelet I figured we could split. She clearly liked cheese.

  I hear covers shift and then Lily stretches and rises.

  "This smells so good," she says coming around the counter and then starts looking around. "Where’s Tig?"

  I point to an empty gallon milk jug I've sliced in half and filled with shredded paper. My shoebox experiment proved a wash. "He's learning how to be a man."

  The tiny kitten is pawing at the shredded paper and looking a little shocked that he's been asked to do his business in a particular spot.

  Watching me separate the eggs she sighs.

  "Would you like a regular omelet?" I ask.

  "You’re making egg white ones?"

  I nod.

  "It just seems like such a waste."

  I smile. "I'll give you my yolks."

  "You train to fight?"

  I don't really want to talk about what I do, but my silence registers as an invitation.

  "Come on. What kind of fighting is it? Do you box?"

  Pouring the eggs into the round pan, I sigh. "I'm a cage fighter."

  There's a long silence, this time from her.

  "What's that?"

  She's gotta be fucking kidding me.

  I just turn to her. "You don't know mixed martial arts? MMA?"

  "Well, yeah," she says, looking a little startled. "Of course, I know what that is."

  Clearly, she doesn't.

  "I mean, I know it's martial arts. But what about the cage?"

  "Well, you fight in a cage. Three rounds. You just fight until the end."

  There's another long silence while I pile on the shredded cheese and green onion.

  "Are you in a gang?"

  I feel a stab in my side, like an old wound. Shifting my weight, I try to sound casual. "I was. But I'm not anymore."

  "You got out?" There's something in her voice. Relief?

  "My coach, the guy at the gym? He bought me out. I don’t know how."

  For some reason, this seems to make her relax. Usually people think it’s cool to be in a gang. It's not. It's a fucking nightmare.