by Lane Hart
“No, you don’t,” I argue when I step in front of him and take his face into my hands. “You are nothing like Jimmy.”
“Jimmy?” my father asks from behind me. “He’s Jimmy’s boy? You’re his son?”
“Yes,” Ivan says when he reaches up to remove my hands from his face. “And I killed him, so I should be the one who goes to prison for it.”
The jingle of what I assume is keys has all of our heads turning as Knox strolls over to the front door and starts to open it.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Ivan yells before he runs over and jumps on Knox’s back. He puts his arm in front of Knox’s throat and pulls back on it. “Here’s the lesson…on the rear-naked…monkey choke…you wanted.”
The keys clatter to the ground so that Knox can use his hands to try and pry Ivan’s arm from his neck. When that doesn’t work, he turns around and then slams Ivan’s back against the door to try and shake him loose. It doesn’t work.
“Grab the keys!” Ivan yells when Knox falls to his knees.
My father moves faster than me, snatching the keys up from the floor and yelling at them to knock it off.
Ivan finally removes his arm from Knox’s throat, causing him to gasp loudly and remain on his hands and knees sucking in deep, shaky breaths.
“That…was…fucked…up,” Knox says.
“I’ve got the keys, and I’m locking the door and going to bed,” my father declares when he reaches over the guys and turns the deadbolt again. “We’ll figure this out in the morning when I have more than two hours of sleep.”
After Ivan’s hazel eyes cut to the door, I know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s considering walking, maybe hitchhiking for a ride back to Raleigh.
“Please, just stay here tonight,” I beg him. “Tomorrow we’ll figure everything out.”
Ivan considers it for a moment, then turns to Knox. “Are you gonna try and leave?”
“Not on foot in the dark I’m not,” he grumbles while rubbing his throat.
“Good. Then we’ll all sleep in here in the living room to make sure no one leaves,” Ivan suggests. Knox nods once in agreement. With a heavy sigh, he says, “I’ll call Cain back and tell him to go home tonight.”
Since they seem to be telling the truth, and Knox will most likely stop Ivan if he decides to flee, I walk back to my father’s bedroom, open the door and slip inside since the light is on.
Daddy is not getting ready for bed. He’s on his phone, pacing back and forth in front of the bed.
“Can we talk?” I ask him as I take a seat at the foot of the bed.
“Get your things,” he tells me. “We’ll sneak out the window and take the car…”
“What?” I exclaim as I jump to my feet. “Are you serious? You’ll just leave Ivan and Knox here?”
“There is no good solution,” my father says. “And if we don’t leave the country soon, we’re gonna go down with them. You heard what that woman on the phone said! The police know I’m connected to the murder.”
“No,” I tell him. “The guys were just helping us, Daddy! Remember? You can’t let them get thrown in prison!”
“I told you it was personal for Ivan, even more so than I expected if Jimmy really was his father,” he says. “He would’ve killed that man no matter what. We just happened to benefit from the timing…”
“I can’t believe you!” I yell at him. “What if I go tell Ivan and Knox that you’re taking the car instead so that they can stop you?”
“I am your father and you will do no such thing!” he whispers.
“You’re a coward!” I tell him. And based on his cringe, I know my words have hit a nerve. “Those two men in there are arguing because they both care about each other so damn much that they’re trying to protect each other. All you care about is yourself!”
“What do you want me to do? I can’t save them, but I can save us from this sinking ship!”
“I’d rather drown,” I tell him with my teeth clenched and tears clouding my vision.
“You can’t be serious, May,” my father says. “I like Ivan, I do, but you barely know him! He’s not worth ruining your life over.”
“I don’t have to know someone to want to save them from a life prison sentence they don’t deserve,” I argue. “And Ivan didn’t know me either when he put his life at risk to try and save me from the mess you made, because he knew how dangerous Jimmy was! You owe him for that if for nothing else,” I tell him. Then, I walk over to the door and jerk it open before slamming it shut behind me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ivan
“Do you care about me?” Maylin whispers as we lay facing each other on the sofa, with me on the inside so I can make sure Knox doesn’t leave from the recliner he’s sleeping in across the room.
“Do I care about you?” I repeat to make sure I heard her correctly.
“Yeah. Even a little?”
“Of course I do,” I tell her, reaching up to sweep her hair out of her face. “More than a little.”
“Then why would you want to get yourself thrown in prison?” she asks.
Blowing out a breath, I say, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“No, it’s not,” Maylin disagrees. “And I’m not saying Knox should be locked up either, but there has to be some other option.”
“There’s not,” I assure her.
“But if you go away, I won’t get to see you,” she says before leaning forward to softly cover her lips with mine. “And I won’t be able to kiss you.” Her small palm roams over my chest underneath our shared blanket and then slides down my stomach until she’s squeezing my cock through my pants. “Or touch you,” she says as she strokes my growing length. “And I definitely won’t be able to make love to you again.”
“Oh, baby, you think I don’t know that?” I ask as my hips flex begging for her hand to keep moving on my dick. “But Knox would have to give up even more…”
Popping the button on my jeans and then lowering the zipper, Maylin slips her hand down inside my boxer briefs to caress my flesh.
“What if I was pregnant and it was your baby?” she asks, making my blood turn to ice in my veins.
“But you’re not,” I say with certainty. We’ve only been together a few times the last week or so… “You’re not, right?” I ask.
“I may have forgotten a pill or two,” she says. “And they’re not a hundred percent effective...” she adds. The effects of her words are simultaneously scary as fuck and something else I can’t quite figure out…
“But you can’t be,” I say again to be sure. “It hasn’t been but a week or so…”
“Yeah, I’m probably not, and it is too early to know,” she says while her hand keeps pumping my dick, making it hard to think. “What if you turned yourself in tomorrow and I found out that I am next week?”
“Fuck,” I mutter when I realize exactly what she’s doing. “That’s unlikely, though.”
“Is it?” she asks. “Are you willing to take that chance?”
“I-I don’t know,” I answer. “Because the only thing I want to take is you, right here, right now,” I say as I ease my palm under her shirt to cup her bare breast.
Covering my lips with her panting ones, she asks, “Do you have a condom?”
“No,” I reply with regret. “Maybe…maybe Knox does.”
“He’s asleep, and if we wake him…” Maylin reaches for my hand in her shirt and slides it down, under the elastic of her pajama bottoms where my fingers find her soaking wet.
“Fuck,” I groan as beads of pre-cum spill from my cock.
Her shorts are gone a second later, and then she’s pulling me on top of her. I go without putting up any resistance. Reaching to free my cock from my pants, Maylin rubs the head through her wetness, stealing my breath.
“Take me,” she whispers. “But only if you’ll stay.”
“I can’t,” I tell her as I close my eyes and savor her wet heat and the idea of giving her a
part of me someday.
No. Hell, fucking no. A part of me is a part of Jimmy fucking Russo. “I can’t,” I say again with more conviction.
“Please, Ivan. I need you,” Maylin begs, clasping my face between her palms and kissing my doubts away.
Our mouths are still connected when I plunge all the way inside of her, muffling both of our moans.
While I ride her beautiful body like it’s the last time, I try to remember the way she feels underneath me, her sweet scent, her addictive taste and the way her nails dig into my back, urging me on.
And when her body tenses and her slick walls clench around my cock, it takes all of my self-restraint not to come. Which is ironic, since before Maylin I tried my damnedest to come and never succeeded.
Unable to last another second, I reluctantly pull my cock out and use my fist to finish on her stomach.
“Ivan?” Maylin asks between pants. “What are…what are you doing?”
“You can’t have my baby. Not now, not ever,” I tell her. “And if you find out you are…” I start as the last of the tremors subside. “End it. This world doesn’t need another murderer like me or my father in it.”
“Ivan, no!” she begs.
When I climb off of her to stand up beside the sofa, Maylin rolls to her side, giving me her back so I can watch her shoulders shake as she cries.
There’s no better time than now to try and sneak out, since Knox is still unmoving despite us fucking a few feet away from him. I fix my pants, slip on my shoes that are on the floor, and then tiptoe over to the front door. As quietly as I can I turn each of the deadbolts. When I get to the last one, I know that I’ll have to hurry through the next part because the door opening is going to be loud.
Taking a deep breath, I look back over to the sofa where I left Maylin crying, covered in my fluids like the bastard I am, and then turn the doorknob to jerk the door open.
Imagine my surprise when I step outside on the porch and see that the car is gone.
While I had been resigned to walking to the main road to try and find a ride, it’s still surprising to see it’s gone. That means…
“Where the fuck is the car?” Knox asks when he comes running out behind me.
“If we’re both here with Maylin, then I guess Liam took it,” I mutter.
“Son of a bitch. Jade’s gonna kill me!”
“Goddamn him,” I groan and reach up to tug on a fistful of hair when I figure out exactly what his departure means for me. Without Liam to watch over Maylin, there’s no way I’m gonna leave her here alone to go turn myself in. I would never leave her behind with Knox either, and that asshole knew it.
“Guess you’re fucked,” Knox mutters. “And not in the good way like a few minutes ago on the sofa.”
Should’ve known he was pretending to sleep.
“So what the hell are we gonna do now?” I ask him.
“Call Cain for a ride?” Knox suggests.
“A ride in what? He doesn’t have a car.”
“Guess he’ll have to borrow one the good old-fashioned way,” he replies.
“And then what?”
“Fuck if I know,” Knox grumbles. “I am so fucking screwed.”
“Guess I better go tell Maylin,” I say with a sigh.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I’ll call Cain.”
…
Maylin
When I come out of the bathroom after cleaning up and changing, Ivan is standing in the living room with the front door still wide open.
“You’re still here?” I mutter.
“Your dad’s gone,” he says, making my feet freeze in mid-step.
“No way,” I say before I spin around to run down the hallway and check his bedroom. Opening the door, I find the room empty and the window open. “Oh my God!”
“Do you know where he would’ve gone?” Ivan asks when he follows me inside.
“He wanted me to leave with him, to get out of the country,” I admit. “I told him no, but I just can’t…I can’t believe he would leave me.”
“I’m sorry,” Ivan says.
“Sorry for what?” I spin around and snap at him. “For my father abandoning me or for being a fucking jerk?”
“Both,” he replies as he lowers his eyes to his boots. “I don’t want to leave you. In fact, that’s the last fucking thing I want to do, but I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t! If I don’t go, then Knox will get caught! How can you even think I would throw my best friend for the past six years under the bus like that?”
“I don’t want either of you to turn yourself in!” I tell him. “Let’s all three try to get across the border. The chance of getting caught is better than the alternatives.”
“No!” Ivan yells. “I am not putting you in danger.”
God, I hate this stupid Catch 22 shit we’re in.
“Then fine!” I shout back when I come up with an idea. “I’ll stay here, but you two both have to leave and head south. Once you’re safely across the border, you call, and I’ll come down there with my passport the legal way.”
When Ivan doesn’t immediately shoot my plan down, I pray that means he’s actually considering it.
“Please, Ivan.”
“Okay, yeah,” he says softly. “I guess that’s the best we can do. As soon as we get a car, we’ll need to try and change our looks, and Knox will need long-sleeve shirts to hide his tats…”
“Yes! Thank you!” I exclaim in relief when I throw my arms around his neck to hug him. “This will work. It has to,” I say.
“We need to move fast,” Ivan says when he pulls away. “The farther we can get south today before that video goes nationwide, the better off we’ll be. Let me go talk to Knox.”
“Okay, yeah.”
“Once we’re gone, wait an hour or two here with Cain and then call a ride to come out here and pick you two up. Then, I want you to stay with Cain and Gabby until you hear from us.”
“Sure, yes, I can do that,” I assure him with a smile, so happy that we have a new plan that doesn’t involve anyone spending life in prison. “But only if you promise not to abandon Knox at a rest stop or whatever to try and come back.”
“No, I won’t. You’re right; I don’t want to leave you, and the only reason I was going to turn myself in was if it meant him getting caught. And I don’t think he’ll turn himself in if I don’t, because I know how badly he wants to meet his son or daughter.”
“Good,” I say. “And about earlier,” I start. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not…I haven’t missed any pills or anything. I just didn’t want you to leave me.”
“I know. And that’s never what I wanted either,” he says. “I guess I wanted you to hate me instead of miss me…”
“I could never hate you,” I tell him honestly. “Even if you’re being a jerk.”
Giving me a small smile, he leans down and brushes his lips over mine.
“Let’s go talk to Knox, and then I have to call Cain really quick to ask another favor,” Ivan says.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ivan
“We have a plan,” I tell Knox when Maylin and I return to the living room. I explain everything to him, with one small addition. “Also, I called and asked Cain to give me a duplicate tattoo,” I inform them.
“What? Why?” Maylin asks.
“Just in case the cops stop us.”
“But we don’t have time for you to sit for a four or five-hour tattoo. And that’s just for one arm!” Knox argues.
“I know,” I agree. “That’s why Cain’s just gonna draw the transparencies and put it on my arm, you know, like a temporary tattoo of the outline?”
“So it’ll wash off in a few days?” Maylin asks.
Nodding, I say, “It’ll last long enough for us to get across the border.”
“Fine,” Knox agrees, probably because he doesn’t think the police will go for it if we get caught and it starts rubbing off
. That’s a chance we’ll have to take since, like he said, there’s just not enough time to do the real tattoo if we want to try and make this getaway work.
While we wait for Cain, I take a quick shower to get ready. But when he arrives, the whole plan of ours goes up in flames.
“Gabby just called me after I pulled up,” Cain says when he walks into the house. Knox, Maylin and me gather around him at the door to hear what he has to say. “She’s been watching the news, keeping an eye on any updates about the investigation…”
“And?” I ask, waving my hand impatiently at him so he’ll continue. “Have they already released the fucking video?”
“No.” Cain glances at Maylin and then back to me. “Liam showed up at the police station ready to talk…”
“What?” Maylin exclaims as she slaps her palm over her mouth. “Th-that’s where he took the car? To rat you guys out?” she asks as her eyes well up with tears and they start to fall. “I can’t believe him!”
“No, Liam didn’t go to point fingers or name names for the murder,” Cain says with a shake of his head. “He confessed to killing Jimmy.”
All of us are silent as that late-breaking newsflash sinks in. Maylin, of course, is the first to react. “No!” she shouts as more of those tears coming pouring down her cheeks. “Why? Why would he do that?”
When she starts to collapse, I grab her before she hits the floor, holding her to me as she sobs unconsolably.
Cutting my eyes over to Cain and then Knox, both look relieved and yet guilty about it at the same time. While we may not be home free yet, it sounds like Liam has taken the fall for us, which is a brutal blow to Maylin. He’s all the family she has in her life; and if he confessed to a murder, he’ll die in prison.
Even though it’s not smart with an ongoing search for us still possibly hanging over our heads, I tell Maylin, “Get your things and I’ll take you to see him.”
“You…you will?” she looks up at me with red, swollen eyes and asks.
“Yes,” I assure her. I know she needs to talk to him, to get answers like why he did this for us. Hopefully, it will help her come to terms with it since, once he confesses, the chances of him taking it back are slim to none.