I was 25 years old and had been all over the world. I’d been through worse shit. I should be a lot more calm and mature than this, right?
But I wasn’t. I was a hot-head. I looked over at Talia and she was sniffling, tears streaming down her face, the little yellow Minion her only comfort.
Because obviously, I couldn’t be.
Chapter Twelve
Talia
What the hell was that back there? Oh, my God. Why didn’t he just drive off when that maniac got out of the car?
And “Ripper”? What kind of name is that? I was frightened that Ellis knew the guy – and that the guy knew him! It was clear there were things he hadn’t told me about his past. What a real shock. Not.
But the fact that thug had mentioned that Ellis should have gone to prison with him had me terrified beyond anything.
I was sad that such a wonderful weekend has been ruined. Couldn’t I get lucky, even once, to have someone treat me nice and take me places? I thought I’d had. I thought we’d turned over a new leaf in our relationship – or had just begun to finally build a “real” one. But it looked like that was not gonna happen. It was time for me to put some distance between myself and him. No way am I going to be involved with someone like that. I knew he had a temper but this was unbelievable. Watching him pummel that guy in the street was so awful to watch.
Plus, it’s not like I’m going to get over having a gun pulled on me. Not ever. I’ll be having nightmares about that for years to come, I’m sure. I looked down at my trembling hands and had to force myself to breathe in and out before I passed out from fear and pain. I tried hard to keep a tear from slipping out of my eye but it was no use. It trailed down my cheek and I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
He pulled up into my apartment complex and I got out before the car had barely stopped.
“T! Wait!” I heard Ellis behind me.
I shook my head, my bag around my shoulder, the Minion under my arm as my voice shook with emotion. “Just go, Ellis. Please. I need some time alone.”
He spun me around before I could get the key in the door. I could hear that his car was still running. “No. I’m not going to go. Not like this. Please let’s go inside. I need to explain some things to you that I should have told you a long time ago. You deserve to know. I did not mean for my past to collide with my present, and now it’s time for me to pay for those sins. But the one price I refuse to pay, though, is losing you. Please.”
I turned around and put the key in the door. I opened it, not caring if he followed or not. If he left, fine, I could get some time to think. If he came in and talked to me… whatever. Then I’ll tell him to leave once he was done.
“I’m going to turn off the car. Please give me just five minutes, okay?”
I still didn’t say anything, I left the door open and went inside.
I heard the car turn off and he walked slowly inside, closing the door behind him. I was standing in the kitchen getting a glass of water. I just glared at him from behind the half-wall counter, my arm propped against the sink.
“Well, speak,” I said shakily, not caring if I sounded like a bitch.
He nodded and came to stand on the other side of the counter, sitting in one of the barstools. “T, I was going to talk to you about this when the time was right. This weekend was so damn perfect, I didn’t think us talking about our pasts would have been the best thing right now. I just wanted us to be happy and carefree for a couple of days, not bog it down with the heavy stuff.”
I nodded, telling him to continue.
He blew out a breath. “When I was a kid, I did not live in a good area. My mom did her best to raise me, but we had no money. My dad was in prison and I was an only child. When I got to high school, I barely attended. I found friends on the street and began hanging out with them more and more. They were not good people, and even though deep down I knew this, I still kept hanging out with them. I learned later through a government shrink that I did this because I needed to feel a sense of belonging from having a broken family unit, and from being left alone so often.” He said the last part as if he was quoting from some kind of psych book.
“Go on,” I said, still sniffling.
“Well, I ended up in a street gang called the Orlando Aryan Boys.” He looked up at me for my reaction. I now remembered him saying something about a gang when we were in the car at the pier but I had sort of blown it off, thinking it was probably just a stupid high school thing. But this really rocked my world.
“An Aryan gang? Really?” I said. “That’s really stupid, Ellis.”
His face twisted into something between regret and anger. “I know that now. Misguided youth and all that.”
“Continue,” I sighed.
“So I began to commit petty thefts and other minor crimes like vandalism and stealing parts off of cars and selling them with my… gang. The guy from today, Ripper, he was sort of our leader.
“So, one day we, in our infinite wisdom, decided it would be really cool if we broke into a large department store and stole guns and ammo. We thought it would make us a more powerful gang. At this point I’d already been shot at twice while entering into another gang’s territory, even if it was just a simple restaurant or store that another gang would claim as ‘their’ part of town. It was all just so dumb.” He sighed and raked a hand through his black hair.
“Ripper busted the lock while I tagged the building with OAB in spray paint. Again, real smart of us to tell the cops who’d been there, huh? Anyway, the alarms blared and we got away with some weapons and stuff, and I thought we’d gotten away with it ‘til some cops showed up at my door with video surveillance photos. I was done. Too many priors and now a felony? I was only 17 and they told Mom they were gonna charge me as an adult, since my birthday was less than six months away.”
I was now staring at him in shock, my resolve softening a little. “Ellis, I…”
“Don’t, T. Don’t look at me like that. I hate that look. I don’t do pity or sympathy. Please just let me finish or I just won’t…”
I nodded.
“For some reason, the judge had mercy on me. He knew my father was doing time and maybe he saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself at the time. He gave me a choice. Marine Corps or prison. Believe it or not, at the time, I thought I was such a badass that prison didn’t really scare me as badly as it should have. One night when I was in boot camp, I thought back to that day and realized how stupid I was. My mother pretty much didn’t even let me choose. I was still a minor and she told me I was joining the Marines and that was the end of that. Or so I thought, until today. Ripper, Mom told me, had been sentenced to 10 years. Guess he got out three years early.”
I nodded, knowing more about crimes and criminals than I should. “Probably got paroled early. Overcrowding and all that.”
Ellis got up off the barstool and came around into the kitchen. Standing right in front of me, he placed his right arm on the counter, and rolled up his sleeve. He had a large USMC insignia tat that I’d seen plenty of times. He reached down and grabbed my hand.
“Give me one finger,” he said.
I obeyed, pointing my first finger at him. He grabbed it and traced a large “O” in the middle of the insignia. Then he traced an “A” next to it, and then a “B.”
“I had the OAB tattoo covered with this.”
He still had ahold of my hand. I looked really close and could barely make out the covered up letters. If you didn’t know they were there, you’d never see them. “Good decision,” I said.
He chuckled. “It wasn’t my decision. My sergeant saw it one day while I was coming out of the showers and told me, and I quote, ‘You better cover up that fuckin’ mess or I’ll take a razor blade to it while three other Marines hold you down.’”
My eyes widened. “Wow.”
“Yeah I didn’t know how to tell him I was still 17 and no tattoo shop would take me, so I sort of avoided the topic. I’d gotten th
e OAB tat in Ripper’s uncle’s garage at the time. So anyway, on my 18th birthday, I got this.” He pointed to it again.
“I’m not sure what to say,” I said, feeling stupid. I was still angry but I was glad I had given him a chance to explain.
“You hate me now?” he asked, rolling his sleeve back down.
I shook my head. “I don’t hate you. I’m not one to judge, Ellis.” I pulled a beer out of the fridge and handed it to him. I then went around him and sat on the sofa with my water.
“Thank you,” he said, sitting next to me.
“I buy those just for you, you know,” I said, pointing at the bottle. “I don’t drink beer.”
He chuckled and popped off the lid. “I wondered.” Then he paused as he took a pull from the bottle and then set it on the end-table. “You know, T, I meant what I said that I had planned on telling you all of this. I just didn’t want to tell you this weekend. It just felt too perfect to muddle it with ugly truths and stories of my past.”
“I know, and I believe you. But isn’t that what makes the weekend better? Sharing stuff like this, getting to know each other better? I mean, that’s all I’ve ever wanted since I met you. But you’re so closed off all the time, and would only come over for sex, so I took those small moments with you and cherished them because I thought that was all I would ever get.”
His eyes were big and he sucked in a breath, then raked fingers through his hair. “God. No. I… I thought the same about you, T. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome and all that. Thought you were busy and didn’t have time for any sort of relationship, so I also took what you’d give me. And then when you stayed the night last week, it freaked me out. I didn’t know why it freaked me out until I forced myself to go on that bike ride and think about it. The only thing I could figure out was that I would actually now be in a relationship, if that’s what you wanted. It scared me for about half a second then it made me happy. But you were gone, and pissed, and I thought I’d lost you.”
I nodded, debating my next words, but felt it was the right time. “I’m not exactly a golden child either, you know. My past isn’t pretty.”
He grabbed my hand, and I felt encouraged to keep talking. It wasn’t as bad as his, so I hoped he wouldn’t judge, but then again, I’ve seen people break up over lesser things. So it was my turn to bare my soul.
“My mother, she died of a drug overdose. She couldn’t deal after my dad walked out on us for his much younger secretary. I had a pretty normal childhood until then but it slowly started to fall apart after that. Mom dated men who were not good, and ended up marrying the worst of them all. Rick was an abusive piece of shit who eventually killed her with all the drugs he fed her. I sat back powerless to watch, finally bolting the day I turned 18. I lived with friends and tried to have my own life, then I got the news of Mom’s death and in a strange twist of fate, I turned to drugs to numb the pain.
“I couldn’t hold down a job and would drift from place to place, not caring about myself at all. Then one day, I found out on the same day that not only was I pregnant, but was having a miscarriage. When I began to bleed badly, I passed out and someone took me to the emergency room. You wouldn’t believe how painful it is to lose a baby, even one you didn’t think you wanted or even knew you were carrying. I hit rock bottom. I felt hopeless, and while I never contemplated suicide, I knew if I kept on that track, I wouldn’t live very much longer. I was barely holding onto the job at the coffee shop, so I called Bo to come get me from the hospital. She practically forced me into rehab. The hospital threatened to call the authorities with how much coke was in my system, too. I knew it was time. I went through a painful rehabilitation and got better. Fast forward to now. Been clean two years. Doesn’t mean temptation doesn’t slither around and entice me back on the wagon every once in a while, though.”
Ellis looked at me with the same pity I’d given him. He leaned forward, putting his arms around me and pulling me into a hug. I melted into him and sniffed back tears. It was still so painful to talk about that part of my life. My mom, the shame of becoming an addict, the baby. I avoided it at all costs, mostly. But I felt I owed it to him after what he had told me. Plus I was still emotional and on edge from the day’s events. I was a serious mess.
“I’m sorry I’m so messed up. I wish I could change my past, but I can’t,” I sniffled into his ear.
He murmured back, "We're all a little damaged, T. Some of us just know how to wear our fucked up on the inside and mask it with normalcy on the outside."
That made me smile a little bit. He was so right.
He stood up and offered me his hand and I took it after setting my water down. He led me into the bedroom where he undressed me, and I let him. Then, as I stood there stripped bare, he reached over to the long nightshirt I had laid over the chair and slipped it over my head. Kissing me on the lips, he peeled off his clothes down to his boxers and pulled the covers back on my bed, instructing me to get in. After flipping off the light, he crawled in behind me and pressed his body up against mine. With both arms around me, he whispered, “Goodnight, sweetheart.” We both fell asleep quickly. It was nice.
He was there when I woke the next morning.
Chapter Thirteen
Ellis
I woke the next day feeling like a huge weight had been lifted. After I left Talia’s, I applied for that prison job, so that was out of the way, and a huge relief. I had no idea how long it took to hear back but I wasn’t going to stress about it. I laughed at the thought of working in one. I’d feel right at home around those dudes, wouldn’t I? Hopefully I got some training on how not to feel comfortable around them. And hopefully my past would not catch up with me. The judge had told me since I joined the service and had received an honorable discharge, that my juvenile record would be sealed permanently. I damn near cried hearing that.
Not only did I have that going for me, Talia had forgiven me, she’d opened up to me, too. And damn, I’d felt so shitty when she told me about her past, but the part that hit me the hardest was her miscarriage. My own mother had told me that she had one before my pops had gone to prison. He’d gotten drunk and slapped her around and she lost the baby. She still had a little sonogram picture thing of the baby in her jewelry box. I’d seen it once as a teen when I was going through it to see if she had anything valuable I could hock for some extra cash. I thank God every day all she’d had was cheap costume jewelry crap, because now, there would have been no way I would have forgiven myself for stealing from her. Seeing that baby picture had sobered me up anyway. She had told me about it once but I never asked about it again. Bummer I never had a brother or sister, but they could have turned out even worse than me, and really, the world doesn’t need that.
After Talia had told me about the baby, I sorta wanted to ask her if she wanted kids ever, but decided not to. I wasn’t even sure I did, and it really wasn’t relevant. Two fucked up people trying to raise a kid? Probably not a good idea.
I smoothed some goop into my hair and gave myself a quick shave before spraying on some cologne. I again contemplated if I should get a haircut but there wasn’t time. Talia was gonna be here in 10 minutes and my house was sort of a mess. I threw on some jeans and a dark blue T-shirt and some button-down thing with a checkered design on it over it. I rolled the sleeves to the elbows and shoved my feet into my Justin boots. I loved these damn boots. Brown, worn, and comfortable as fuck.
I left my room and closed the door, then I wandered into the kitchen and quickly put some dishes in the dishwasher. I then got rid of the plates, cups, and beer bottles from my living room and dining room and put them in the kitchen. God, I’m such a slob.
The doorbell rang just in time. I answered the door to see Talia standing there in a white flowy-looking sundress and those damn cowboy boots that drove me crazy. Her hair was down, the wild curls falling around her face. As usual, she didn’t have on much makeup, but her pretty pink lips were all shiny. I felt myself stiffen in my pants.
I chuckled, kissing the top of her head. “You just saw me this morning.”
“I know,” she laughed. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, patting myself down to make sure I had my keys, phone, and wallet. Check, check, check.
We walked out into the parking area, and when I saw her car parked next to mine, I said, “Your car is locked, right?”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Yes, dad.”
I grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Don’t sass me, or I’ll have to spank you.”
“Promise?” she asked, a mischievous glint in her pretty eyes.
We walked to the restaurant we’d agreed on earlier. It was only a few blocks from my house, and it was a nice night. She planned on staying over, so her coming to meet me here just made sense.
I held her hand as we walked, the warm night not too hot and not cold, just perfect. She told me some more about her mom and a younger brother who had received a college scholarship and was living somewhere out west to get his degree. I talked to her about my mom and stepdad and told her I wanted her to meet them one day. That made her smile. I finally opened up about my visit with Harper Mathis and the job prospects she’d given me. She looked so happy, I tried to memorize her face.
“Ellis Anderson?”
We turned around slowly when a male voice said my name with an authority I recognized. Two Tampa P.D. officers were standing there, looking stern.
“Yes, sir?”
The larger of the two walked over and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “Sorry, son, but you’re under arrest for assault and battery of Justin Silver.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. I didn’t even need to ask. That pussy bitch Ripper had pressed charges.
“Oh, my God! No, please don’t,” Talia said, seeming to know why I was being put in cuffs. “That thug attacked us first!”
Field Stripped: 15 Steamy Military Romances Page 76