by Nikki Wild
Did I mention I was real horny?
We also went over Millions’ known enemies – a list almost as long (and potentially incomplete) as the Bible. I knew there were names missing, but I also knew plenty of people who were out of the question. Either because they were doing time, or because they were dumber than hell and simply incapable of wielding enough clout to turn Millions’ friends away from him.
I felt like I had some foundation, though. Someplace to start. And by the time we were pulling into the Denny’s twenty miles outside of town, I had enough threads in my mind to very nearly help me forget my dick. Always did like a puzzle, and this was a good one.
Maybe it was that tension between my brain and my balls that got me too distracted to see it coming. Because he was impossible not to see coming. They didn’t call him Tank because he was a tennis pro. Misty and I had just told the waitress we wanted coffee when he found us; I didn’t see him, but I saw Misty’s eyes going wide, giving her that look like a fawn again. My first instinct was to pull a gun I didn’t have, and my second was to spin around and land a punch on whoever was scaring her.
In prison, I might have done just that.
But we weren’t in prison, we were in Denny’s, and it was with no small amount of will that I forced myself to turn slowly in my seat.
I was, stupidly, relieved. Because I knew him, and knew he wasn’t one of my kind. Dangerous, I mean. He wasn’t a criminal or a gangbanger or someone who might need a getaway car at some point in his life. He was just a big, dumb, muscular pile of sports talk radio.
“William,” Tank said, voice as low and flat as the bottom of the Grand Canyon. “You are a sick, sorry, stupid sum’bitch.”
My efforts to keep things civil failed immediately. The big guy took a swing at me and I had to duck nearly under the table to avoid it. I darted out into the aisle where he lumbered after me.
“You know what you did to her, William? You know how ‘set she was? Cried for two damn weeks, William. My own little sister, and I had to hear her cryin’ for two weeks, and knowin’ it was my own damn friend who was makin’ her…”
He kept advancing, though I had my hands up in retreat. It wouldn’t look pretty if my first post-prison act was getting into a fistfight during the lull between breakfast and lunch at the local pancake shack.
My parole officer would have a few words to say about that, right before throwing me back into my cell for the next two years of my life.
“Tank, man, c’mon, it was four years ago, and I didn’t call her because I went to prison,” I lied. It was four and a half years ago, and I spent five months not calling her before I went to prison. I barely remembered her name, but knew it would only help my cause. “Lily’s a nice girl, Tank, I didn’t want her messed up with a guy like me, I was trying to do right by her…”
“You’re a bastard,” Tank roared. We were attracting plenty of attention. I didn’t want to fight him for fear of breaking parole, but I also didn’t want to let him lay waste to me and ruin my first day of freedom – and my ability to convince Misty I’d be a decent bodyguard.
Tank lunged for me, his fist glancing off my shoulder as I swerved to miss him. He stumbled a bit, but a second later he had his hands around my waist and was pulling me to the ground. People started screaming. I needed to take this outside – if we were outside, they wouldn’t call the police, would they? Shit, shit, shit, it was fucking hard to think with three hundred pounds of redneck muscle pinning me down and hollering in my ear about a one-night stand I could barely remember.
“Get off him! Get off him, Tank!” I could hear Misty’s voice above the rest of the shrieking, and managed to get my feet under his chest; with a grunt, I kicked him off, watching him bounce backwards into a coffee cart. He scrambled back fast, his unwieldy body surprisingly spry. But I was on my feet, too, and I headed straight out the door into the relative safety of the parking lot.
“Alright, meatbag, c’mon, let’s go,” I hollered, readying my body for another round of the two-fist tango. I’d fought bigger and badder guys in Guvcheck, and I could fight Tank if I had to. But the assault I expected never came.
Turning, I could see everyone in the restaurant standing with their noses against the glass. Everyone but Misty, who was – what was she doing? Was she talking to him? Holy fuck, she was! She was talking to him…and whatever she was saying, he was listening.
Who was this woman?
Well, I guess she was Millions’ daughter after all. Man always did have charisma.
I thought I might be going crazy, driven insane by my sudden shift in circumstances, when I saw the two of them hug. Tank had to double down, and Misty stood on her tiptoes, but goddammit they made it work. And even though Tank turned to me and gave me one hell of an evil eye, he walked away. Back from whence he came.
And then Misty was at the door, one hand on her hip, mouth smirking and hair ruffling slightly in the breeze.
“Gonna protect me, huh?”
I was only speechless for a second.
“Listen, if he’d come after me out here, I’m telling you, I would have…”
“I don’t wanna hear it, Brando,” she said. “You could have been a contenda. Okay. Now get your ass back in here. We’re gonna have to leave one hell of a tip for your Grand Slam…”
She was an angel. A real-life, no-joke, every-time-a-bell-rings angel.
And what the hell did that make me?
Chapter 9
Misty
If I hadn’t been chock full o’ doubts before, I was sipping on a mug of them when we sat there in Denny’s. I watched Rev stuff his face with not one but two Grand Slam breakfasts. I made do with an order of biscuits and gravy, but I couldn’t even finish it. I knew it wasn’t showing, but I was halfway to the hen house and going out of my damn mind.
How many more enemies did Rev have in this town? And were the huge brothers of jilted lovers the worst or the best of those enemies? Could he even protect me without breaking his parole? He couldn’t even own a gun, could he? What if he was just one big damn liability, all wrapped up in a stupidly sexy and awfully nice-smelling package?
He sopped up the last dribble of yolk with his toast and sat back, apparently sated at last.
“So, how was the first meal?” I asked.
“A sight better than the last,” he said, and reached into one of the pockets of his pants. He pulled out a small wad of cash.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve got it. Room and board, right?”
Nervous and doubtful as I was, I still didn’t want him spending his only cash on breakfast. Especially since he could be using it to buy rounds for the boys at the Piper and try to loosen some lips.
“Listen,” Rev said. “I really wish we hadn’t run into Tank. I want you to know that. I don’t know what you said to get him off my ass, but I promise you won’t have to do it again. It was a fluke. I meant what I said when I told you I could keep you safe.”
Yeah, right. How could he even know that? And why did it seem like he was trying to apologize without actually apologizing? He didn’t seem humbled the least bit by what just happened.
In fact, it had been easy to get Tank to cool off. I used to tutor him. And once he heard that Rev had just gotten out of prison and couldn’t fight back even if he wanted to, he stopped. He didn’t want to beat up on someone who might as well be a cripple. Besides, I reminded Tank, his sister was married now. Lily settled down with a nice guy from Freemont and had a kid. She had her white picket fence and her pretty little house and her happy little life. Her days of crying over a guy like Rev were a long way gone.
But Rev hadn’t thanked me for doing that. And there’d been no apology, either.
Well, what did I expect? He was a con. A young thug whose only marketable trait was driving cars really fast. Speaking of cars, he didn’t have one. How was he going to get around town to do what he promised – make those visits, pull in those favors – without wheels? I wasn’t going
to be his chauffeur.
One thing at a time, I told myself. Just get him back to the house without another fight breaking out, and work from there. Maybe Janie will let him borrow the Beetle.
Now, that was a mental image that blew all my cares away. Big, bad, rough and tough Rev, king of the motorway, putzing around town in Janie’s nearly-dead Volkswagen bug. That would teach him some humility, wouldn’t it?
I guess my mood was reflected on my face, because Rev was grinning at me with a touch of confusion in his eyes.
“What?” he said. “Got yolk on my face?”
“No,” I said. “It’s nothing. Let’s go and get you settled.”
I left cash on the table and we were on the road again, closing in on Sorghum Bend. Rev quieted down significantly as sights started becoming familiar to him. The burned-up barn. The high school. The giant truck that stood above Chet’s Moving and Hauling Service, keeping its slow and constant rotation, its eternal spinning a trademark of our town. Really, that rotating truck signaled the moment when you entered Sorghum Bend. The official “Now Entering” sign wasn’t for a mile or two, but that truck told you that you were home.
I lived in a little two-bedroom condo not far from Main Street. Janie’s main car wasn’t in her driveway; good. I didn’t want her busting in on us, eager to get a look at my new boarder. Rev grimaced as we pulled up to the curb.
“What?” I said, offended by his disapproving look. “Don’t like flamingos?”
I had four pink flamingos on the front lawn. They came with the house. Daisy, Peter, Jonesy, and Lynnette. One time, a local punk stole Lynette and Jonesy – which was totally inappropriate, because they were divorced and Jonesy was currently wooing Daisy even though she secretly pined for Peter who had an on-and-off-again relationship with Lynette. I went on a rampage that included letter-writing, door-to-door canvassing, and posters pinned to the telephone poles. They were returned swiftly and safely, the perp’s identity never to be known. It was quite the neighborhood scandal.
“Uh, no, they’re fine,” Rev said, quirking an eyebrow. “It’s just…well, that lock looks pretty old.”
I looked at the door. He could tell from this far away? It was an old lock. But I figured locks didn’t degrade over time, did they?
“And you might want to invest in bars for the windows,” he went on.
In this neighborhood? People would think I was taking the whole flamingo-stealing incident a little too far.
“Flamingo stealing incident?”
“It’s a long story,” I replied, shaking my head.
“And do you actually have that security system, or did you just steal the lawn sign to trick people?”
Damn. He was right about that.
“Also, your garage is attached to the back of the house? That’s not great. Garage doors easy to trip.”
Okay, so maybe he did have something to offer in the way of security.
“You know,” he said, turning to me. “We really shouldn’t stay here while we’re trying to figure this out.”
And that’s where I stopped listening.
“No,” I said. “This is my home. This town is my home. I know it’s stupid. I know that. But…but I’m not leaving until I have to. If we have to, eventually, then I’ll go. But until then, I’m not letting anyone push me out.”
I spoke with every ounce of nerve and fire in my heart, and Rev must have seen that. He held my gaze in his for a moment, then nodded. That gaze of his was a goddamn wonder. One minute, it was blatantly obvious he was undressing me in his mind, and the next he was looking at me like I was sitting across a chess board from him, and the next he was almost convincing me that he actually had a heart underneath all that machismo.
For two pools of inky black, they were the most expressive eyes I’d ever had the pleasure – or misfortune – to look into.
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “I get it. But I need to know: do you trust me to tell you when we have to leave? When I say it’s the only option, are you going to believe me? If this is going to work between us, you need to trust that I know what I’m talking about – and that I have your best interests in mind. This is my job now, Misty. I’m here to keep you safe. And I take my jobs very seriously.”
The car was idling and I turned it off, still caught in his gaze. Trust him. Believe him. Could I do that? Did I even want to try?
Did I have a goddamn choice?
“Yeah,” I said. “Alright.”
“Good,” he said, one hand on the door handle. “Shall we?”
Letting him into the house, I pointed out the spare key that hung on the nail beside the door – his key now, I supposed. His eyes lingered long on the TV, the sofa, the fridge, the bathroom with its private shower and door. Like a starving man looks at cake. Four years without the basic luxuries of modern life had left him hungry for it all.
The only thing that snapped his attention away from the novelty of normalcy was Purrloin, who made her presence known in a way I had come to expect: she launched herself from some hidden corner directly at Rev’s leg, howling like a banshee. He let out a wild scream of his own, stumbling backwards as she clung to him with her death grip. For a minute, I thought my big bad bodyguard was going to be felled by my five-pound house cat, but he regained his balance and composure within seconds. Purrloin herself fell off his sweatpants when her claws failed to find enough traction.
“So I guess this is the other girl I’m laying my life down to protect?” Rev said, engaging in a classic standoff with Purrloin, who was slowly backing away, eyes narrowed and back arched.
“That’s her,” I said. “She doesn’t much care for men.”
If he didn’t have to apologize for Tank, I wasn’t going to apologize for Purrloin.
“Is that so,” Rev said, dropping to a crouch. I cringed and stepped forward, meaning to tell him that I was dead serious about her not liking men, and that getting his face too close to her might result in the unexpected removal of his nose. But to my amazement, when he reached forward, she didn’t automatically launch herself at him. She hissed and her back arched higher, but she didn’t attack.
“Come on, lady,” Rev said, voice surprisingly gentle. “I’m not such a bad guy. Give me a break, will you? Don’t judge a man by his rap sheet…”
As he spoke to her in low, dulcet tones, Purrloin slowly began to relax. Her back straightened, her fur flattened. Her hissing abated, and she meowed a few times. She looked as confused as I was by her reaction, twisting her head around the room as though looking for the wizard who was making her feel okay about the dude who’d just entered her territory. And then she stepped forward, sniffed his hand, rubbed her head against his palm, and sprinted out of the room.
It was, without a doubt, the friendliest Purrloin had ever been to anyone (besides me). Ever. She still hated Janie; she didn’t full-on attack my best friend anymore, but if Janie happened to get too close, she was likely to get an earful of screeching and a healthy taste of cat-claws.
“That was…what the hell? Was Jackson Galaxy your bunkmate?”
Rev looked up at me and blinked, his face blank. I guess My Cat From Hell wasn’t a popular choice at prison TV time.
“Nevermind,” I said quickly. “It’s just that Purrloin kind of hates everyone. Like, really hates them. That was the most affectionate I’ve ever seen her.”
“Does she hate you, too?”
“No,” I grinned. “She adores me. We’re soul mates.”
He smiled back and stood up.
“I’ve always just liked animals,” he explained. “And they’ve always liked me too.”
“Huh,” I said, my disbelief forcibly suspended. “Well, I guess you’ll find living here a little bit easier, then. What with not having to deal with sneak attacks from Purrloin the Barbarian…”
I led him towards the bedroom as I spoke, and opened the door to show him his new room. He walked in, silently, looking at everything with a blank face I couldn’t quite read.
He threw his mesh bag on the bed and sat down beside it.
“So…it’s alright? I mean, you think you’ll be comfortable?”
“Misty,” he said, shaking his head a bit, looking into space. “I’ve spent the last four years sleeping on cardboard while a three-hundred-pound man on the bunk above me rattled the whole frame whenever he decided to jerk off.”
He smirked and met my eyes, and something about his face at that moment made me melt all over, like my wet dream was back for round two.
“This is paradise.”
Paradise for him, maybe. My hand gripped the door handle even tighter. For me, if this craziness in my lady bits didn’t calm down, this was going to be utter hell.
Chapter 10
Rev
Misty had work that night, the late shift. I guess someone needed to stay with the pups at the animal shelter once the office closed. She’d be occupied from five to midnight, which left me ample time to get some rest and then head over to the Pied Piper and try to make some headway.
The Pied Piper is Sorghum Bend’s most popular watering hole. Not for the normies, mind you – the upstanding citizens do their drinking at the Sweetshack or Mitch’s. All three bars are very nearly identical, except for the clientele. The Piper is exclusively patronized by low-lives, criminals, parolees, prostitutes, card sharks, bookies, pimps, gangbangers, crime lords, cronies, wannabe cronies, dealers, wannabe dealers, druggies, muscles for hire, muscles for free, muscles that used to be, drunks of every size and shape and sex and religious affiliation, and the occasional skinhead.
And recently-released felon getaway drivers with no car.
That last one is me, if you couldn’t guess.