by Nikki Wild
And wouldn’t you fucking know it, ten minutes later we were all sitting around that table with steaming mugs in front of us. Misty had found me some whiskey after all, and spiked my drink liberally.
“So,” she said. “Are we ready to have a civilized discussion? Yes? Good. Who wants to go first?”
Trick and I blinked at each other, both keeping our mouths shut. She scoffed.
“Alright,” she said. “I’ll go first. Rev and I have an agreement. There are some bad dudes after me, and he’s helping me figure out why they’re after me, and how to get them to stop coming after me. We’re here because those dudes have started making good on their threats. That sum it up well enough for you?”
Trick’s eyes were mostly dead, but he regarded Misty with a steady concentration. Then he nodded.
“Now, if this is going to be a place where all of us are safe, I think it behooves us to be up-front about why we’re here,” Misty went on. “Trick, I don’t think you came here just to detox, did you?”
His eyes darkened, and he glanced at me. But then he nodded. Slowly.
“Someone’s coming after you, too, aren’t they?”
Again, he nodded, looking like she was torturing him to tell the truth. But all she was doing was talking. All she was doing was asking. Something about Misty got people wanting to tell her the things she wanted to know. I think it was the only reason Gino told us what little he could tell us. You looked in her eyes, and found that lying was just harder than telling the truth. Even for those of us for whom lying is as easy as breathing.
“Do you want us to help you?”
Now, it was my turn to turn on her.
“What? This isn’t any of our business, Misty. I’m not risking my ass fighting two damn battles at the same time…”
“Rev,” she said, turning those damn eyes on me. “Don’t you think it would make our lives easier, and this safe house safer, if we helped your brother out?”
“No, I don’t,” I snarled. “I think he better make himself fucking scarce. He had his time here. Now, it’s our turn. I don’t owe you shit, Sam. You were always a little shit-stirrer. And I’m not letting another one of your royal fuck-ups threaten my ass. Get on your bike and get gone.”
“Rev!”
“What the fuck do you think this is, Misty? Oprah? Dr. Phil? This doesn’t end with hugs and handshakes. This ends when he gets the fuck out of Dodge. That’s it, alright? Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a wound to clean.”
I turned the chair over getting up too fast, and grabbed the bottle of whiskey before leaving them both in the kitchen. Fucking Misty, trying to be a fucking mediator or some shit. I was done cleaning up after Trick. She didn’t know a damn thing about him. She didn’t know a damn thing about me. I stomped upstairs to the room that had always been mine, and slammed the door so hard everything shook. Finally, I was alone. Finally. Time to think. Time to breathe. Time to lay down and forget all the shit that had gone down in the past six hours.
I took one good swig of whiskey, and it did me in. I’d been shot and chased down and teased and sewn up and wrestled and put in my place by a doe-eyed little woman I couldn’t begin to figure out. Sleep was a force I couldn’t fight, and didn’t rightly care to. The bottle fell from my fingers and liquor trickled over the floorboards, staining the wood a darker brown. The last thing I thought before I was dead to the world was that she’d tasted even better this time around.
Chapter 20
Misty
In the morning, I managed to get enough ingredients together for pancakes. The night before, having left Rev to his own devices while Trick moped off into the front room without a word, I’d been abandoned in the kitchen just my warm cuppa to keep me company. At least Rev left the heavily spiked tea behind, even if he took the lion’s share of the whiskey. Even Purrloin was nowhere to be found. Food didn’t entice her. She was probably very pissed at me for everything. We had that in common.
Eventually, I found a bedroom, and sheets in a drawer for making up the bed. I slept well, all things considered. In the morning, after a bit of searching, I found some women’s clothes. Dusty and out-of-fashion, but better than nothing. There was such a wide variety of sizes and styles, the clothes must have come from twenty different women.
Trick was still asleep when I got up. And no matter how much noise I made in the kitchen, he didn’t rise from his makeshift bed. I wasn’t sure how deep his sleep was, because he thrashed around and made noises like an animal caught in a bear trap. The smell of melting butter didn’t entice him, either. Rev, on the other hand, was a different story. I heard him coming long before he appeared in the kitchen doorway. And even though he clearly loathed me, he also couldn’t sound that hateful when he asked if I’d found the syrup.
I hadn’t.
He clomped across the kitchen, threw open a cupboard, and pulled out a small brown bottle of Vermont maple syrup. It was dusty.
“Uh, is that still good?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder, one eye trained on the batter slowly cooking in the pan.
“Maple syrup doesn’t go bad,” he growled, setting it down on the table and gathering plates and utensils. “They still have that shit from the tombs. In Egypt. Mummies.”
“That’s honey,” I said, flipping the first flapjack.
“What’s the difference?”
“One is made by bees, and the other is…”
“I’m eating the syrup,” he said, putting a plate down with twice the force necessary.
“Fine,” I said, sliding one only-slightly-blackened pancake onto a plate. “But don’t come running to me if you end up with food poisoning.”
“Nothing in your trunk to take care of that?” Rev asked with a quick smile.
“Nothing I’m willing to share,” I retorted.
Five minutes later and there was a lovely, fragrant short stack waiting to be drizzled in ancient syrup. Rev made a big show of drenching the plate in the sappy liquid, and started eating like he was punishing the food with his teeth. I went back to cooking. Trick still hadn’t gotten up.
“Why do you want me to help him?”
I should have known, by then, that Rev wasn’t the type to beat around the bush. Neither was I.
“Because it’s one hell of a loose string,” I said. “Sharing a house with your junkie brother, waiting for whoever he owes money to. Do we need the extra risk? What if…”
“I’ll kick him out,” Rev grunted through a mouthful of food. “I can do that, you know.”
“And then he runs off and says something to the wrong person, and they know right where to find us,” I went on. “I’m sure those guys back at my house got a good look at you. They won’t have to work very hard to figure out who I’ve got on bodyguard duty.”
“So we leave. There’s other places we can go.”
“Like where?” I challenged, looking up from the pan long enough to show him how serious I was. This wasn’t just a life-or-death situation. It was my life-or-death situation.
“I’ll find a place,” he grumbled. The kettle started screaming. I’d forgotten the coffee I was trying to brew, and now I turned my attention to the French press.
“Why don’t you want to help him?” I asked. “Seems to me like he’s your little brother, and he’s in a tough spot, and you giving him a little help would be good for everyone involved.”
“A little help? You call protecting him from some dealer ‘a little help’?”
I sighed.
“What if I could pay off his debt? I don’t have any big pile of buried treasure, but I’ve got a little money. Maybe he doesn’t owe that much, and we can just settle his debt and make all of this go away.”
“And why would I want you to do that? He’s his own man, Misty. I’m not too keen on bailing him out.”
“Look,” I said, frustrated. “He’s your brother. I don’t know what history you two have, but he’s your brother. What happened? He steal your first love? Think Daddy liked him more
? Pawned your prize baseball? Stole your dog? Stole your bike? Ran over you when he was driving drunk? Tell me, Rev. What’d he do?”
“Nothing,” he sneered. “He’s just a junkie fuck-up. He’s always needed someone to bail him out. I’m done being that person.”
“When’s the last time he asked?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Rev barked. “Let me check my diary. What’s your point? I’m kicking his ass to the curb, no matter what you say. You want me to protect you, we do it my way.”
Oh, was that how we were gonna play it? He gets grazed by a bullet and now he’s the damn king of the house? Gonna call all the shots?
Screwy as it was, I didn’t like that idea. I appreciated everything he’d done so far, but I’d rather go it alone than give all the power to a man. This wasn’t a monarchy. My voice mattered, too.
“When did that become the law of the land?” I asked, careful to keep my anger in check.
“When I brought you here, to my damn property,” he growled. I set a mug of coffee down in front of him. It was kind of cute, this whole homemaking charade. Me at the oven, flipping pancakes and making coffee. Hubby at the table. A bright, cheery, morning-type conversation. Except the maple syrup was old and the hubby was a con and the conversation was bitter as the coffee.
“A man’s gotta care about someone,” I finally said. “If you don’t care about your family, Rev, who do you care about?”
“He doesn’t care about me,” Rev spat.
“There’s something to be said about being the bigger man.”
He was silent for a while. I finished fixing my plate of pancakes and slid into the seat across from him. I reached for the syrup out of instinct, then remembered the dust that had collected on the bottle. They’d be fine dry. I knew he was convincing himself he was right. Sometimes, you gotta tell a man he’s right before he’ll ever understand why he’s wrong.
“Listen,” I said. “You’re right, you know. This is your place. And you do get to choose what happens after this. And maybe your brother doesn’t give a shit about you. Maybe he’s just some fucked-up roper who’ll never care about anyone but himself. Maybe we’re better off chasing him out of here.”
Rev’s eyes narrowed as I spoke. He had to know the game I was playing.
“But we’re all headed to the grave one way or another,” I finished up. “And it doesn’t matter what Trick has to say for himself when he meets his maker. But you? You have the choice now. You can say you looked out for your brother. That you did your best by him. Whether it stuck or not, you did your best. Or you can say you gave up, and maybe drove him to his grave a little sooner than he was meant to get there. That when he needed shelter, you kicked him to the curb.”
Rev growled. But he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look at me anymore, either. Just down at the crumbs on his plate.
“I know what I’d want to say at the end,” I finished. “But I’m not you. I don’t know him. And I don’t even have any siblings of my own to compare him to.”
Rev looked like he wanted to punch something... or someone. When he stood up, hands in fists, I thought maybe I’d pushed things a bit too far. He walked right past me into the front room, where his brother was still doing something like sleeping.
“Trick,” he said, loud enough to wake the dead - certainly loud enough for me to hear. “Trick! Get up. Get your ass in here. Get some fucking food in you. You’re too damn skinny. C’mon.”
I heard mumbling and rumbling and grumbling. I chewed through a forkful of pancake. Purrloin appeared, having spent the night hiding somewhere, and looked at me with contempt. She was hungry, too. Getting up, I prepared a bowl of wet food for her, and by the time I was setting it on the floor Rev and his brother had joined me in the kitchen. Trick could barely keep his eyes open, but he was managing it as best he could. Without another word, I dropped a pat of butter into the pan and poured a dollop from the rest of the batter.
“Get some damn food in you,” I heard Rev mumbling. “Then we’re gonna talk about why you’re here. You’re going to tell me who you owe, and how much…”
He kept on like that for a while, at least until I was back at the table, sliding a steaming heap of pancakes in front of Trick. That got his eyes opening a little wider, and he started picking at them. Rev turned his gaze on me looking unhappy about the situation, but I saw the truth behind those eyes. All I could do was smile. There was a good man in there, after all. I knew that. He just needed some encouragement to bring out his better half.
The longer I sat there smiling, the more it seemed like Rev was fighting a losing battle. He couldn’t hold onto that anger. It started in his eyes before drifting down to his lips. I watched the whole thing melt away, until he was smiling back at me, and very clearly hating himself for it.
We could make a good team, I thought out of nowhere. I had to look away, then, because I realized what I was doing to myself. What I was doing to my heart. I was looking into that abyss, and this time it wasn’t just looking back.
It was smiling, too.
Chapter 21
Rev
I tried not to be too pissed about my brother going back to lie on the couch. Sure, I now had the completely fucked-up job of figuring out how to get Sal Stevens off his back. Sure, I had to wrap my mind around the fact that my kid brother managed to funnel ten grand up his arm. Sure, I already had to deal with the assholes after Misty, and keep myself from breaking parole, and make sense of the sway that woman held over me. But he had a heroin-hangover, and he deserved his rest. Right?
Right.
Misty hadn’t hung around for the tête-à-tête with Trick. Soon as Trick started talking she slipped away. Leave it to this woman. Dig me into a situation I didn’t want to be in, and leave me there to handle it. I slammed the dishes into the sink and went upstairs, meaning to take a shower.
And of course she was already fucking in there, using up all the hot water in the house.
I didn’t like how she’d gotten me to do something I didn’t want to do, but I knew she had a point. A really good point. A point so sharp and true it was like a brand-new dart, burrowing straight into cork. I wasn’t used to admitting I was wrong. And while she didn’t make me say the words, my actions spoke louder.
But who was she to tell me what a man ought to do? I was supposed to be telling her what to do. I was protecting her. I was in charge here. I spent four years letting people telling me where to shit and now that I finally had my life back, I was letting some hot piece of ass run me around.
Shit mood or not, every bad thought in my head disappeared as I stepped into the hallway.
It wasn’t my fault. She’s the one who left the door cracked. I swear on heaven and hell and everything in between, I had to walk past the bathroom to get to my bedroom, and I had every intention of walking right past the bathroom. Every single intention. But then I saw the door was open. Not full-on, swinging-on-its hinges open. But not “just a little bit cracked” either. Ajar, as they say. The door was fucking ajar.
And I probably wouldn’t have looked, except for how clearly I could hear her voice. The water was running, but she was standing at the sink. She was singing something in a pained voice. I saw a slip of peach flesh, my limbs went rigid, and next thing I knew I was pressed against the wall and looking straight into that open door.
She stood at the sink with her bra still on. It was one of those half-cup deals that made her neat, palm-sized breasts jiggle slightly as she moved. I wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t even myself, really. One look at her and I may as well have rolled my tongue out onto the floor like some kind of goddamned cartoon character. Her body was slim but curved, her hips far too perfectly wide for the rest of her. Shaped like a pear, and just as enticing. The way a pear at peak ripeness spills down your chin and melts in your mouth. I could taste it.
I could hear all the words she sang, but they didn’t mean anything to me. She was doing something to her hair - unpinning it, I guess. Lo
ck by lock, it tumbled down around her shoulders, brown waves framing her face. She looked like a deer again. But this time, I was a wolf. She wasn’t cute, she didn’t make me feel all tender inside. She was dinner. I was drooling. Every instinct told me to pin her down and keep her there. She stopped singing, looked into the fogged-up mirror. She reached forward and wiped it clean, looking at her own reflection.
“Stop. It,” she said. “Stop. It.”
She gripped the sides of the sink and leaned in, groaning. She leaned in far enough to press her forehead against the glass, shaking her head back and forth.
“Just stop,” she moaned now. “You can’t have him, and you don’t want him. You can’t have him, and you don’t want him. He’s no good. Not for you…”
This little mantra of hers could have been offensive, but it just made my blood pound harder. I didn’t give myself time to think she might be talking about anyone else. Pretty little Misty-Lee was tormented over me. Fair enough, considering that street went two ways. Finally, she sighed and leaned back, turning toward the shower. The bra fell to the ground, and her panties did the same, giving me a spectacular view of the ass she’d been hiding. I was harder than I’d been in my entire fucking life as I stood there imagining that ass in my hands, bouncing against my hips as I drove my cock home again and again, hearing her scream. Scream my name…
I was lost in the fantasy. It didn’t matter that my brother could walk up the stairs any minute, I couldn’t help myself. My dick was straining against my jeans as I stood there listening to the water splash around her body, its tempo changing as she washed herself clean.
And all I could do was think about making her dirty again. Thinking about pumping every last drop of my essence deep into her innocent little body. Thinking about making her beg for it. Making her come so many damn times that she’d work hard to finish me off just to give herself some relief.