by A. J. Downey
“Y’all figure out where the leak is coming from out of the department, yet?”
“Ugh, God…” Driller looked a little green. “Been working with the rat squad, do you have any idea how much fun that is?”
Chuckles went around the table.
“Worth it to catch a rat,” I said.
“Too true, and we’ve come up empty for the most part. I hate to say it, but it was a dead end.”
“Which is why we have to move you two,” Golden chimed in.
Everleigh sat up straighter and turned her full attention on him.
He smiled a little sadly and asked, “You like it here, do yah?”
She nodded and he shrugged and said “Sorry, darlin’, but it’s not safe here for you anymore.”
“Ah-huh, is that why the backup?” I asked.
Driller, Yale, and Skids nodded.
“It was Skids’ idea, actually,” Golden continued.
“What was?” I asked; Everleigh had gone rock-still in my arms, her fingertips biting into my shoulder.
“Had Driller let it slip out in the open about the fishing cabin, and that he owned it, but not where it was,” Skids said.
“Before that, he had me make a trip down to the assessor’s office, and drop notice that if anyone should come looking for information with my name attached to it, that they should give us a call.”
“Rat squad sitting on the office?”
“Yup.”
Everleigh stood up abruptly and was out the back door in a flash. I stood up and so did the rest of the guys. I waved them down and said, “Let me go talk to her.”
“Guess she really likes it here,” Yale muttered and I nodded.
I found her standing by the river, her chest heaving, bent double with her hands on her knees as if she’d just run a marathon.
“Easy, just take it easy, it’s only me,” I said when she’d like to hit the roof when I came up on her.
“Why would they do that?” she asked, her tone agonized.
I shook my head. “Sometimes, it’s what you have to do. When all else fails…”
She shook her head violently, as if she didn’t want to hear it, and it clicked for me: she was angry and she didn’t have anywhere to put it.
She’d told me how she’d grown up. How her dad was an abusive fuck and how her mother just let him do it, sided with him over her own daughter, told Everleigh to stuff it down, to be a good girl, to not rock the boat, etc., etc.
She’d been a girl with a stutter and he’d beat her ass for it more than once, until she’d just stopped trying to talk altogether. She’d grown out of the stutter, but her anxiety about speaking in front of anyone, well… it’d reached epic proportions. Left her scarred, left her broken in some ways, and made her so much stronger in others.
I couldn’t blame her for hopping on the back of the first bike to roll through that shit town of hers. I also couldn’t blame her for not looking back. No matter how bad it’d gotten, back there was worse for her, so she only looked ahead.
“I know you love it here, babe, and this isn’t forever. You knew we’d have to go back eventually…”
“No, I know,” she said. “I just… Why did it have to be so soon?” For this, she did start to cry.
“I feel you, there,” I murmured and went to her, and she folded herself against me so beautifully.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked, voice muffled by my still-wet tee-shirt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re going to have to go back inside to find that out. I can tell you one thing, though…” She tipped her head back to look up at me when I didn’t finish right away, which is what I wanted her to do. I needed her to look at me for this. “It doesn’t matter where we go, I’m going to be right there with you.”
She nodded and I dipped my head to kiss her. She met me half-way, standing on her toes. Our lips touched and fire raced through me, breathing tired muscles back to life. I held her close, but carefully, my hands gentle against her waist, curving around to her back as her hands slid over the swell of my arms, over the caps of my shoulders to twine around my neck.
It was one of those movie-perfect kisses that made women sigh and men wish they could be that guy on the screen, and damn, did it ever feel good to be her man. To be the one to hold her, to be here for her, and to love her… because without a doubt, I did.
Out of the ashes… I thought to myself, because that was definitely what we were. A couple born out of the ashes of bitter circumstance, and while those circumstances weren’t over yet, we had this. We could take on anything as long as we had each other. I needed her to know that. I needed her to believe me.
A gentle clearing of a throat, and we broke apart, though not guiltily. Not in the slightest. There wasn’t room for anything negative between us.
“Damn, that was hot,” Driller said, and Everleigh blushed and hid her face against my chest.
“The natives restless?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Fuck ‘em,” I said. “They can wait.”
“What can’t wait is you guys packing your shit up. We’ve gotta go first thing.”
“You get a call?” I asked, and he looked at me like I was dumb.
“Ain’t none of us getting a call out here, you know that! Which is why we need to go first thing.”
“Where the hell you even got us going?” I demanded. I didn’t like not being a part of the plan, but I trusted Driller with my life, and there wasn’t anything about to change about that.
“Youngblood and Chrissy’s,” he said.
I rolled my eyes.
“You serious?”
“You rather park it in yet another shitty hotel?” he inquired patiently.
Everleigh answered that one for us both, shaking her head violently.
Driller laughed and said, “That’s what I thought.”
She turned her face up to mine and sighed, the heartbreak turning to resignation.
“Guess we need to get this place sorted,” I murmured, and she looked back longingly at the cabin. She reluctantly nodded, and led the way.
Driller put an arm around her shoulders and she smiled at him. I could tell they’d had a little bonding time before this misadventure, being cooped up in a hotel room for long hours. Still, she didn’t look at him the same way she looked at me. When she looked at me, there was something – I don’t know – a little extra.
I was glad my girl and my best friend got along, and were the circumstances different, I might have even been brave enough to ask if she’d be willing to let us share her. I’d shared with my best friend before, and there wasn’t anything like it. I don’t know, maybe it was because I loved him too, and it was the closest we could comfortably get in that regard without completely crossing boundaries – fuck. It wasn’t like I was in love with him, just… It was hot sharing a woman with him and was something we did every once in a while, and felt amazing and all that jazz.
I shoved it out of my mind and we climbed the stairs, Driller holding Ev’s hand while I had my hands lightly on her hips, a great view of her ass as we ascended. Everleigh paused, just before going inside the back door and took a deep breath. I fitted myself to her back and pecked a quick kiss on the cap of her exposed shoulder and she shuddered slightly before stepping over the threshold, back in with the boys she didn’t know.
“We good?” Skids asked, eyeing my girl.
“We’re good,” I affirmed and he nodded.
Driller sighed and tipped his head back, freezing as he caught sight of the loft.
“Damn, you guys have been busy,” he remarked and Everleigh smiled.
“Actually,” I said, “most of it has been Everleigh’s doing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yup.”
Everleigh tried to hide behind her hair but I wouldn’t let her, gathering it up and laying it over one shoulder.
“Well,” Driller said, and looked to my woman, “where would you like us to begin? We can’t
leave that bed out on the porch like that.”
She smiled and it was brittle, but she made a motion with her hands that we should sit and she stepped around me and back out the door.
“I think she’s going to pack,” I said, and Driller bowed and shook his head.
“Where’s your shit?” he asked.
“I guess that’s my cue that I should pack, too.”
“You get busy,” Skids said. “Yale and I are going to avail ourselves of this chess set you got sittin’ here.”
I nodded. “Everleigh found that up in the loft a couple days ago. She wants to learn, but I’m afraid I suck at it.”
I saw her pop up over her bed outside the window at her name, and Skids chuckled, “I’d be happy to teach her. I think she’d be good at it.”
I smiled and said, “She’s good at everything,” casting a look her way. She blushed and ducked back down.
We got to packing so we could clear out the next morning. Everleigh came in with folded piles of her clothing and placed them on the unoccupied end of the table, looking over at me a little helplessly.
“Bag full?” I asked.
She nodded and I smiled.
“How is your bag too full?” Driller asked.
“Found some things at the local thrift store right up her alley,” I said looking over at him.
Golden rolled his eyes and said with a smile, “Leave it to a woman. In protective custody and still manages to clothes shop.”
Everleigh was warming up to their presence, because she gave Golden the finger.
He laughed and shook his head, putting down my book he’d been thumbing through, back on the night stand.
“I’m a military guy. I can pack with the best of them. Can I see if I can help?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and eyed him cynically and finally nodded. He went over to her and asked, “Where’s the bag?”
She went back out to her bed and brought it in, and set it beside the clothes she couldn’t get into it. He unzipped it and looked in, and said, “Here’s part of the trouble, you’ve folded things you can roll. Here, let me show you.”
“Gah! Dammit!”
Everleigh jumped but Yale wasn’t even looking at her, but rather at the board. Skids sat back with a shit-eating grin. Yale scowled and let his dark eyes rove over the pieces. Everleigh picked one up, a pawn, and cocked her head. Yale looked up and she set it down and pointed to herself.
“What? Do I think you’re a pawn?” he asked. She nodded somberly. He scowled and looked angry. “No, and I deeply apologize if I’ve given you that impression.”
Skids took her hand and she jumped and looked him in the eye.
“The pawn might be small, but it can be a mighty piece in the right hands. Come here and let me show you…”
I smiled to myself as he stopped their game, had Everleigh pull up a chair, and had Yale reset the board.
Golden didn’t complain, just worked at repacking her bag, only stopping them to ask if she’d kept out what she’d wanted to wear to bed and what she wanted to wear tomorrow.
A sort of truce fell over the cabin and Driller and I focused on bringing in her bed, the apple crate shelves, and just generally deconstructing her area out on the porch to take it up to the loft.
“I’m sleeping with you guys,” he said, straightening from fitting the bottom sheet to her bed.
“Motherfucker, this is a full.”
“Don’t care, she’s gonna be the ham in a man-sammich tonight, because I’ll be fucked if I’m cozying up to Skids or Golden. Junior down there is gonna fit his ass on the couch just fine.”
“Fuck you!” Yale called up. Everleigh was fixated on the wooden chess board, not really hearing us, but rather listening to Skid’s low voice as he explained something or other.
I sighed.
“Babe!” I called down, and she peered up at me curiously. “You good with squeezing between me and Driller tonight?”
Her keen green eyes flicked from me to my best friend and searched his face. He smiled down at her and tried to look harmless, which was a joke, and less like the perv he usually was, which was even more laughable. Although, I have to say, for a perv, he was still a bigger gentleman than me; respectful of boundaries, super-big on consent. I mean, I was too, but he was next-level about it.
She smiled faintly and nodded, and he raised a knee and jerked his elbow back and was like, “Ungh! Yeah, baby!”
“Guess it’s you and me, G.”
“Stay on your own side of the fuckin’ bed, old man, or I’m totally handing you over to Lys when we get back.”
Skids rolled his eyes and said, “Because Lys is totally someone I need to be afraid of.”
“You’ve never pissed her off.”
“Which I am sure you have with fair regularity,” Yale said with a smirk.
Golden smirked back and said, “She’s fuckin’ sexy when she’s angry.”
Everleigh smiled and yet still managed to roll her eyes. I came down the loft stairs and said, “Babe, you might want to make sure it’s set up to your liking up here.”
She looked up and nodded, standing reluctantly from the chess board.
“Doesn’t have to be right now, I ain’t done showing you this yet.” Skids smiled at her and she gave a smile back that was bordering on her impish self, and I felt a knot of tension ease in my chest. She sank back down in her seat and turned her eyes back to the board.
Driller and I exchanged a look and his eyebrows went up, questioning. I nodded and he nodded too, getting my meaning from my expression alone.
Patience. It would come up, I was sure, but now was definitely not the time, with how overwhelmed and stressed the fuck out we all were.
“It’s starting to get dark in here, where’s the lights?” Yale asked.
Everleigh stood up and went and got the lantern from the kitchen and he blinked at her.
“You’re joking.”
She smiled brightly and shook her head.
Skids chuckled. “I can see why you love this place.”
She beamed at him as she lit the lantern with a strike-anywhere match and I went down to light up some of her candles along the porch rail outside. Driller got the hurricane lamps we’d brought up to the loft, and pretty soon, the cabin was a warm, cozy glow.
21
Everleigh…
At about the fourth yawn, Skids declared that our chess lessons were over for the night. I pouted, absorbed in his teachings and with a sigh, lovingly put away the hand-carved pieces in their velvet-lined little drawers on either side of the raised board.
It was a beautiful piece that I’d found packed away in an old suitcase with a busted lock in the loft. The suitcase had been trash, but this treasure had to be kept.
I picked up my nightgown, a find from the local thrift store, all peach satin and ivory lace, and probably straight out of the 1970’s with that vintage feel. It fit like a dream and made me feel beautiful.
I slipped into the bathroom and changed into it, and when I came out, the men were all in various stages of getting ready for bed, themselves. I crept up to the loft, Yale staring at me with those dark eyes that felt like they could burn a hole right through me if only they weren’t so cold.
I paused at the top of the narrow stairs and rested a hand on the rail that ran the length of the loft. I was going to miss the soft golden lamplight and the old wood worn to a satin finish. I was going to miss the quiet, the rushing sound of the river through the porch screen, and the lazy chirp of insects. Narcos stared at me from the edge of the bed and a sorrow passed briefly between us. I could tell he mourned the loss of our time together, too, the end of the peace and the solace this special place brought to us amidst the chaos, and the magic of it that brought us together despite, what seemed from the outside, absolute insurmountable odds.
I would treasure the scars on my hands, I decided. It was a momentary pain that had been unbelievably worth it, if only for the way he looked at me
now.
“Come to bed, babe,” he murmured softly, and Driller, who’d been hauling his shirt off over his head, completed the action.
With a crooked grin and a wink, he said, “Ladies first.”
I went to Narcos, who backed his way across the bed and turned on his side, putting his back against the metal bars of the daybed’s surround. I slid across the crisp sheet and cuddled up to him, fitting my head on his shoulder, beneath his chin. His arm drifted across my shoulder, holding me to him as his partner and friend slid onto the bed behind me. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, stiffening with uncertainty.
“You’re all good, bright-eyes,” Driller whispered in my ear, and he laid an arm gently over my waist, his hand resting on Narcos like they’d done this before. It struck me that they probably had, but something about this felt like, at least to me, that it held more weight.
I closed my eyes and relaxed slowly into the front of my lover’s body while his best friend pressed a light kiss to the back of my shoulder, his hand smoothing lightly over the satin of my gown, over the swell of my hip, to lightly squeeze my thigh with reassurance.
“Ain’t no place safer than between the two of us with three brothers to go through downstairs,” Driller murmured, his breath stirring my hair.
I realized he was right and I reached back and rested a hand on his jeans-clad leg. He chuckled lightly and settled and before long, was breathing deep and even. I listened to that deep and even breath, felt the rise and fall of his chest against my back, and listened to the steady tick of my lover’s heart beneath my other ear.
It was a rhythm and cadence that was hard to resist and before long, I was sound asleep myself and honestly, had never felt safer or more protected ‒ more cherished ‒ in my life.
The next morning, I was woken by the weight of my hair being swept aside and the soft press of lips to the back of my shoulder, making tracks to the back of my neck. I sighed out happily, and those silky soft lips pressed a kiss behind my ear. A girl could get used to waking up like this.