Pike: The Pawn Duet, Book One

by Frazier, T. M.

  Pike’s cock hardens even more inside me. “Mic,” he growls, and with a moan that has me coming even harder as I feel him come in long hot spurts, filling my body…while breaking my fucking heart. “Oh, fuck, Mic. What have we done?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply, another tear spilling from my eye.

  He licks the falling tear from my check. “This changes everything.”

  His words a vast contrast to what he said after our kiss on the curb.

  I place my hand on his face. He turns his head and kissed my palm.

  Pike and I aren’t at war. We never were.

  We are what’s left over after the battle’s already been lost on both sides.

  We’re not soldiers.

  We’re carnage.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Pike

  I know what I want, and what I want is Mickey. She’s not going to fight this battle alone. I’m going to fight it with her. I’ve spent all morning preparing plans to keep her safe while taking out the entire fucking Fourth Reich starting with Darius himself.

  I’m standing at the register. The bell above the door chimes after a customer leaves. There’s a sound in the back room. Laughter coming from Mickey and Thorne as they arrange antique candlesticks to take pictures for the website.

  I never understood the importance of sound until today.

  Sound is an incredible thing. The sound of Mickey’s laughter. The sound of Thorne’s nails tapping on keys. The camera clicking away. Even the ringing of the bell above the door of the shop. The sound of Mic moaning my name as I make her come. That one is a personal favorite.

  It’s the sound of normal. Maybe, not normal for others, but normal for us.

  And I’m going to protect that new normal, at whatever fucking cost.

  Another sound that has nothing to do with our new normal comes from the parking lot outside, screeching tires on the asphalt.

  Racing outside, I realize Mickey is close on my heels. “Stay back,” I tell her as a flatbed truck skids to a halt in front of the shop.

  I watch as familiar skeleton-clad men get out of the truck. They’re carrying someone with a burlap hood covering his head. I recognize the burlap sack and the man underneath it immediately.

  I go for my gun.

  “Touch the gun, and he dies,” one of them warns as they shove Gutter to his knees.

  One of the armed men rips the hood from Gutter’s head. He blinks away the blur. Then, his eyes land on me. He smiles. “It’s not your fault, Pike. I had this comin’ a long time, so don’t go blaming yourself. It ain’t your fault. I don’t blame you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened in my life. I consider you to be a son to me. Don’t go getting yourself killed for a nobody like me either. You hear me?”

  One man saunters over to him with a crowbar in hand. “No!” I shout, again reaching for my gun. Another one of the men fires at my feet in warning, creating a patchwork of holes in the asphalt.

  “I love you, kid,” Gutter says with a jerk of his chin.

  It’s only a second, but it feels like hours as the man rears back and bashes in the back of Gutter’s skull.

  Bullets or not, I race over to Gutter, firing my own gun at the truck that’s now speeding away.

  I drop the gun and pull Gutter into my arms, but there’s no way he’s alive. There’s too much blood. I lift his head, and chunks of it fall to the parking lot. And not enough skull. I frantically try press the fragments of bone against the blood and gore oozing from his brain as if I can bring him back to life if I can just make his head whole again. “Gutter. Fuck, Gutter. Don’t be dead,” I yell at him. “I didn’t die on you, so you can’t die on me,” I say on a strangled sob. Dropping the piece of his skull to the asphalt, I tug his gaunt lifeless body against mine. “You can’t fucking die on me!” I yell, but I know he can’t hear me.

  He’ll never hear me again.

  Mickey

  “The sound of the tires on the pavement. It will always remind me of that moment. Of him,” Pike says, sounding far away, as if he isn’t in the same room as me. He’s still covered in Gutter’s blood.

  I make a move to touch him, and he steps away.

  “Echoic memory. Another name for sound memory. It registers specific moments and connects them to auditory information,” I rattle on, realizing that a lesson in how sound memory works isn’t really what Pike is looking for right now. I grimace, “Sorry.”

  He smiles, but it only makes him look sadder. “Don’t ever apologize for being smart, Mic. It’s your thing. Own that shit.”

  His gaze wanders around the bedroom like he’s noticing it for the first time. He pads around the room, running his hands against the walls, looking truly lost.

  He stills when he comes to a picture on the nightstand of him and Gutter holding up fish and grinning like idiots. He picks it up and runs his hands over the image.

  My heart breaks for him as his eyes glass over. His shoulders slump in defeat. Slowly, he sets the picture back down. Straightening it several times. “How did you survive the death of your entire family?” he asks in a whisper that I wouldn’t recognize as his voice if I hadn’t seen the words pass through his lips with my own eyes.

  Pike drops to the floor, and I join him, our backs to the bed. I recognize the pain in his eyes. The questions. The blame. I feel it as if it’s my own because in a way I own that kind of pain. I don’t think before I act. Reaching out, I wrap my arm around his head and pull him down onto my lap.

  “In some ways, I didn’t,” I confess, smoothing back his hair, petting him as if he were a stray cat in need of affection. “A big part of me died when they did, and what’s left of me isn’t someone I recognize anymore.”

  Pike leans into my touch. I clear my throat, choking back tears he doesn’t need to see me shed right now. “You know,” I offer, “One thing that helps is talking to them.”

  “I’ve heard you talking to them before,” Pike replies. “You were talking to them when I first met you that night. Thought you were crazy.”

  “You weren’t wrong. I was delirious that night, but even now, it’s not something I try and hide. I don’t care if people think I’m crazy. It helps me to imagine that they’re all around me, here whenever I need them or when it all gets to be too much and I think I can’t…” I sniffle. “You know, even in my own imagination, my sister Mallory still pesters me.”

  “I think I would have liked Mallory,” he says softly.

  I smile. “I think she would have liked you.” I chuckle, imagining how Mallory’s boy-crazy eyes would look the first time she saw Pike. “Too much.”

  “Does it ever stop hurting?” he asks, staring up at the ceiling.

  “No,” I reply honestly. “But the hurt changes over time. It morphs from something that feels like hands wrapped around your neck choking you to something that’s like someone constantly pinching your skin. It still hurts, but it’s a pain you learn to live with.”

  “Your revenge. You think getting it will make it hurt even less?” he asks.

  “It might not make it hurt less, but I think it will make living with it more bearable. In the end, it’s not about my pain, but making them suffer for what they’ve done. Making them feel what they felt, what I feel.”

  Pike is quiet as I pet his head. “You know I can’t stay,” I say with a sigh. Tears form in my eyes. “Not because I don’t want to, but because I have to go. I have to finish what I started.”

  He doesn’t reply.

  I look down to find his eyes closed.

  For the moment, sleep makes him look peaceful. That is, until his hands twitch. Even in his sleep, Pike’s hands are balled up into fists, his knuckles white and ready for a fight.

  But this fight is mine. They started it. I’ll be the one to end it.

  And if everything goes the way it should, Pike won’t be caught in the crossfire.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Pike

  I wake to what sounds lik
e a thousand cats pattering across the roof. The room smells like fresh earth. It’s raining, I realize as I blink off the blur of sleep.

  Gutter is dead, and there’s a piece of me missing. Not just in my heart, but in my bed. It’s empty and cold.

  I turn my head and find that Mickey is no longer asleep next to me. A quick scan of the room, and I find her standing at the window. She’s bare-legged, wearing a large white sweater that hangs off one shoulder and is just long enough to cover her ass, revealing the smooth slope of her lean athletic thighs. The long sleeves cover her hands, the excess material gathered in her palms like makeshift gloves.

  She’s beautiful in a way that makes me realize I’ve never understood beauty before. My gut twists with the same need I felt last night as I watched her sleep. The need to keep her safe, to keep her happy.

  To keep her.

  It’s stronger than any other compulsion I ever felt before, and it’s because it’s not a compulsion at all. It’s just her.

  For a moment, I watch her silently as she leans one shoulder against the window pane. Her eyes are focused upward on the sky, watching the storm as it passes. She raises her hand and pushes her sleeve to her wrist, pressing her fingertips to the glass as if she’s trying to close the distance between her and the rain.

  I realize she’s aware that I’m awake when she speaks although she keeps her eyes focused out the window. “I once asked my father if he could see what I saw in the raindrops. The way the light shines differently off each one. The varying shapes, the different colors they reflect.” Her voice is eerily calm and soft. “He told me no. He said that it takes a special gift like mine to be able to find something unique about each drop where most people just see water falling from the sky.”

  Sliding my feet off the side of the bed, I push to my feet and pad over to Mickey, leaning against the wall next to the window so I can face her, glancing momentarily at the rain that has her so fixated.

  She flattens her palm to the glass. “It’s…I think it’s a shame that people can’t see what I see, yet sometimes, I wish I could see it as they do.”

  I’m taken aback by the thought that she wants to be like everyone else because Mickey isn’t like anyone else. Not even close. She’s a different species of human, one I hate to admit, that I actually like, respect even. “It’s a gift. It’s your gift. Don’t wish it away. It’s what makes you…” I wave my hand at her, wishing I was as good with words as she is. “You.”

  She leans the side of her head against the window, shifting to face me. I’m met with bloodshot eyes and tear stained cheeks. Mickey’s been crying. Noticing where my attention is focused, she wipes her cheek with the sleeve of her sweater.

  “It’s a curse in the same way that it’s also a gift.” Her eyes glass over as they fill with tears. Her calm voice grows shaky, catching in her throat. “There are billions of people on the earth, but none of them are like you, Pike. You’re not just water falling from the sky. You’re so unique and so special, and no one will ever see you the way I do. And because of this curse and this memory, I can’t ever unsee you.” She sniffles, yet it’s me who feels my chest tightening and my throat closing. She blinks and a tear spills down her cheek, traveling the same path as the stains of tears that came before it. “Even if I wanted to. Even if I try really hard. You’ll be here.” She presses my hand to her temple. “Reflecting a different kind of light than anyone else.”

  “You don’t ever have to unsee me,” I tell her. “I’ll be right here. With you.”

  I grab her wrist and press her palm against my chest so she can feel the beating of my heart. Her wet lashes flutter against her cheeks as she looks up at me with uncertainty in her eyes. I have no words of comfort to offer her. No words of encouragement or meaning. Nothing that can make her feel better because I have no idea what the future holds for either of us. I tug her into my chest and wrap my arms around her, resting my chin on the top of her head. She fits so perfectly against me, in this room, and in my life.

  I lift her up and carry her back to bed, where I lay down with her on top of me, keeping her soft body pressed against mine as she sobs against my skin. Her tears spilling down the side of my chest in a warm stream of contagious poison that pricks at my eyes, threatening tears I never knew I was capable of producing.

  She clutches at my chest, nails digging into my skin. I grit my teeth and take it because it’s the least I can do after she comforted me last night. After a few moments, she stills. The crying stops, and the rhythm of her breathing evens out and slows. She’s asleep.

  My chest constricts, and it’s not because of Mickey’s weight. She’s not heavy enough to bruise, never mind crush my chest.

  With my lips pressed into Mickey’s hair, I inhale the smell of her girly shampoo as her little exhales heat the skin at the crook of my neck. I watch over her head through the window as the rain comes down harder and harder. I squint and try to discern one raindrop from the next as it falls down in sheets, blurring the sky. Of course, I can’t do what she can. It all looks like water to me.

  You’re not just water falling from the sky. You’re so unique and so special and no one will ever see you the way I do.

  No one has ever said anything like that to me and more, I never would have cared if anyone said that to me before. But I care now and only because of her.

  I might not be able to see one rain drop from the next, but I don’t need to tell the difference in the rain to feel a difference taking place in my heart. To be able to see special and unique in something others might otherwise look over as one of the masses.

  She sees me, and I see her.

  And right now, my own little rain drop is fast asleep on my chest. I can’t offer her anything other than a warm body. A chest to cry on. It’s all I have, and it’s hers for the taking.

  The tears that had threatened to spill make their presence known and flow past my lips into Mickey’s hair. For her and her family and what they’ve gone through. For Gutter.

  All I have to give her is me.

  And I know it’s not enough.

  After a while, I place her beside me and dress to finish making my plans that got interrupted when Gutter was murdered on my fucking doorstep. I check in on Mickey a few times throughout the day, and each time, she’s sleeping with new tear stains lining her cheeks and I can feel them as if her sadness and mine are one in the same.

  When the day is over and the plans have been made, I trudge back to my apartment, ready to tell Mickey that I’m not going to risk her life and that I’ll help her get her revenge as if it’s my own, but this time, she isn’t crying or sleeping.

  Mickey’s gone.

  And so is my gun.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Mickey

  “I thought you left me there to die,” I say angrily.

  “I thought you were dead,” Darius replies just as enraged.

  The thing about Darius Alban is that when he says something or asks a question, he’s always asking something else entirely. The trick is to read into the real meaning behind his words. It’s something I’ve perfected over the years.

  He smiles curiously. “We were waiting for Pike to come exact his revenge on us.”

  What did you tell him? Is what he is really asking.

  “He doesn’t know that it was you who stole his shipment,” I lie. “Or that you are the one who returned it. He doesn’t know I’m with you. I didn’t tell him anything. I faked a brain injury.

  “How did you manage to do that?” He raises a suspicious eyebrow and crosses one leg over the other.

  I’m trying to figure out if you’re lying.

  I stretch the truth. “Pike knocked me out when the others ran off.” I narrow my eyes at the men who came with me that night. “When I came to, I told him that I didn’t remember why I was there or who I was with. I convinced him that I’d lost my memory.”

  “And he believed you?”

  This is very clever. If it’s actually tr
ue.

  I nod. “He gave me a lie detector test. I passed.”

  “He didn’t see the brand?” he asks, suspiciously.

  Did he see you naked?

  “No. Another woman was responsible for my care, and she never saw anything. If she did, she didn’t know what it was and didn’t say anything.”

  “Did he hurt you, my dear?” Darius asks, playing with the ends of his mustache.

  Did he fuck you?

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I answer, with my chin up and my hands behind my back like a good soldier. “This didn’t happen until I escaped.” I motion to my leg.

  “He did not rape you?” he asks as if he can’t believe it because apparently I’m super rape-able.

  This one he actually means.

  I shake my head. “No. His interests were in finding out who I was working for. He spent his time with me trying to trigger my memory.”

  Darius seems satisfied with my answers to his inquisition. He slaps the arms of the chair and rises to his feet. His face plastered with a victorious smile. “Welcome home, Michaela.” He opens his arms and wraps me into a hug. His heart beats against my cheek, and I resent each and every thump. “Our plans will continue as planned. You are a smart girl. I knew you would not let us down.” He snaps his fingers. “Someone get Banjo in here, and have him take care of her wound.”

  The wound he’s referring to is the self-inflicted gunshot to my thigh. It’s gushing blood through the piece of Pike’s t-shirt I’d wrapped around it.

  If you’re going to head back into hell and run back to the devil himself, you go prepared or not at all.

  Darius places his arms around my shoulder and snaps his fingers in the air. One of his men opens the door behind his chair. “Only now, we have much to celebrate because your betrothed is finally home.”

  Slowly, a figure appears from the shadows until he’s standing in front of the firelight. He’s tall and muscular. His shirtless, pale torso covered with hateful racist tattoos that extend up the back of his bald head to the center of his scalp.