Devil on Your Back

by Max Henry

  I don’t need saving, son. I don’t need to ruin you.

  His cries echo through my head as I close my eyes again, and welcome the grey blur as it slowly fades into black. Not long now, and I’ll see her again. Not long, and I’ll see her beautiful smile.

  I’m coming, Julie. I love you, baby.

  My body jerks, and a final wash of pain ricochets through me before the black wins out.

  • • • • •

  “TAKE IT from the top,” Alice instructs as Jane sets down two bowls of steaming chocolate pudding.

  I like her already.

  “How far back you want me to go?” I scoop up a serving of the gooey mess. It looks so good.

  “What happened after I left?” He swallows, and glances at Jane. “I thought you just let me go, cut me off, and forgot about me. But Jane thinks I could be wrong. Tell me, Dad, am I wrong?”

  “Entirely,” I assure him, and then stuff a mouthful in. Jane smiles at my appreciative groans. “It’s been so long since anyone made me pudding,” I tell her when I finish the mouthful. “So long.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” She smiles.

  “After you left, I tried to find you.” I glance at Alice who’s leaning back in his chair, giving me his full attention. “I rang all your friend’s houses, I tried the neighbors, the hostel on Second, and went as far as to be that parent who hounds the fuckin’ ERs, determined you were there. But you were good—you just vanished without a trace.”

  “Helps that I was young,” he says, relaxing a little. “I had no money, so no bank cards for you to trace. I had no phone to follow—nothing. I didn’t give you anything to go on.”

  “Where did you go?” Placing my spoon in the bowl, I wait on the answer that I’ve been dying to hear for the last nineteen years.

  “Streets. Hung out in the darker corners, learnt pretty fast how to avoid the PD when they did the rounds, clearing the streets at night. After a while, I kinda had this mental map all figured out”—he taps his temple—“and I had every good restaurant marked on it, every takeaway joint who threw out a heap at the end of the day.”

  I notice how shocked Jane is at his admission. My guess is he’s just like his old man—too proud to share a story that involves his weakness with anyone . . . until now.

  “And the others?” I ask. “How did you get tangled up with them?”

  “Met Bronx brawling outside a bar I used to go to for free meals, and Ty . . . well, he was an accident waiting to happen.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He came from money, lots of it. Left it all behind, though, and didn’t have the ‘life skills’ to make it for very long. I still take the mickey out of him, reminding him he’d be dead if he hadn’t met Bronx and I.”

  I shovel in a good mouthful of pudding and think it over. Alice learnt how to survive, operate like a stray dog, and if I dare say so, seems to have come out stronger for it. If I had found him back then, pulled him off the street, what would he be like now?

  “If Ty came from money,” I ask, “then how the fuck did he end up living on the street?”

  Alice shakes his head. “He won’t say. I’ve figured out there was some major falling out with his family, but he’s never elaborated.”

  “They ever track him down?”

  “He spends a lot of money every year makin’ sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “Must be deep.” A stray bite evades my spoon. “How did you get mixed up with Carlos?”

  “He had work, we needed work. Mutual agreement was met.”

  Jane excuses herself, heading down the hall. Alice’s eyes follow her, and he frowns.

  “You do realize you’re playing with fire?” I ask.

  He pins me with a malicious stare and smirks. “We are the fire.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I bite out, pissed at his cockiness.

  “The morons in these outfits think we’re the ones on the back foot—that they have the upper hand because of their status, size. But they don’t—we do. The four—three of us,” he corrects, “have the ability to start one big fuckin’ war if we want to. We have knowledge about them all; knowledge they don’t exactly want their rivals knowing.”

  “That would be a pretty stupid thing to do,” I growl. “You have any idea what kind of a fuckin’ mess that would make?”

  “Like a bomb,” he says cheerfully, accentuating his point by making an explosive sound and gesturing with his hands.

  “You’re still that bratty fuckin’ kid who walked out on me, you know that?”

  “And you’re still that asshole kill-joy.”

  “Guess things don’t change much after all.”

  SHOUTING AND the high-pitched giggle of a girl wake me. I’m still on the sofa in the common room, but two major things are missing: Callum and my shakes.

  Lifting my head, I see a grey blanket thrown over my legs, and a scrap of cardboard leaning against my glass of water with ‘back soon’ written on it. The shouting subsides, but the giggles grow close. Not wanting to hang about and see exactly how far away ‘soon’ is, I get up and head up the stairs, blanket in tow.

  The prospects and the pretty things they have with them barely bat an eyelash at me. I’m used to it, and in a way, comforted by how invisible I manage to be in this place. There’s a fine balance between being needed, yet not being required . . . and it’s exactly how I like it. At least, I think it is.

  With my bedroom door shut, I flop onto the bed and reach over for my TV remote. The channels don’t herald much of any interest, but it’s noise, and a distraction nonetheless. I need to quiet my mind, let the memories of the night I lost Mike ebb back into the wee box I keep them sealed in, and regroup. Seeing Bruiser like that was far too familiar: the blood, the mess, and the helplessness.

  “Mike!”

  I run, my speed inhibited by having a broken heel on my one shoe. I kick the pump off mid-flight, struggling to reach him.

  The impact with the pick-up flung me off the back of the bike, sending me through the air to where I landed in the thick of the roadside grasses. My ribs ache, my back screams in agony, but I push through it to reach him.

  His Harley is hooked under the edge of the pick-up’s running board, resting where the vehicle stopped after dragging it one hundred feet down the road. Steam rises from the pick-up’s hood, and a steady stream of fluid leaks out from beneath Mike’s bike. If only it were daylight, then I could tell what it is.

  Lungs searing, I come to stop by his tangled body. More fluid flows from beneath him, but I don’t need sunlight to see what it is. I can tell, even before I feel the tacky warmth under my toes.

  I wipe the tears from my eyes, the feeling of helplessness as fresh as it had been that very day. I should have made him put his damn helmet on; I should have insisted. Maybe then he’d be okay. Maybe then he would have survived, and maybe the impact with the road wouldn’t have been the last thing he ever felt.

  Maybe.

  Maybe.

  Maybe.

  I hurl the TV remote across the room, the plastic shattering into two pieces and the batteries falling to the floor as it makes impact with the wall. It’s not fair. Why did my husband have to be the club statistic? Why did Mike have to be the one to kick-start the annual road toll? It was New Year’s, an evening of fun, and new beginnings, so why the fuck did my beginning have to be so damn shit? What did I ever do to piss off the universe?

  I curl up on my side, letting the sobs wrack my body, repeating my pitiful mantra that I’ve lived by for the last five years: Why me? It’s not fair. What did I ever do?

  Time passes, my comforter gains a large wet patch beneath my cheek, and the dusk light fades to black in my room. By the time my crying eases, I can barely make out my own hand before me, it’s that inky dark around me.

  A party to remember Bruiser is in full swing downstairs, music thumping, women squealing, men shouting, and bottles smashing as they’re tipped periodically into the recyclin
g bin out back beneath my window.

  I should go down there, see if they need help tidying, cooking pies for the boys to fill their bellies. I should go down there and get myself shit-faced, forget the hurt, forget the heartache. But quite frankly, leaving my room sounds about as appealing as pulling toenails. In here, it’s quiet. In here, I don’t have to face any questions, talk to anyone, or pretend I’m okay.

  In here, the only person I have to justify my choices to is myself. And right now, myself doesn’t give a rat’s ass what I do.

  Rolling the aches from my joints, I ease off the bed and resolve to at least make a run to the bathroom for a shower before I turn in. I gather up my toiletries bag, a fresh towel and my nightclothes. Set to wash my cares away for another day, I head for the hall, only to stop dead in my tracks when my door handle rattles.

  Fuck off, not tonight.

  Busy nights like this when there are partygoers everywhere, I’ve had couples crash my room, looking for a quiet spot to fuck their troubles away. Usually it only takes a gentle shove or a few choice words and they’re on their way, but tonight I just don’t have the strength in me to fight it.

  I gear up for the confrontation, and wait it out as the door eases open. My heart seizes in my chest, and all the tears I’d carefully pushed back rush in for a second round. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard you weren’t feeling so great.”

  My knees give out, and the false pretense of strength I’d been faithfully clinging onto leaves me in a whoosh as I hit the floor. Having him here, having somebody who sees me, has relieved me of a burden I didn’t realize I was carrying—the burden of pretending everything is okay, that I can beat this.

  Vince walks in and closes the door behind him. My chin quivers, and I duck my head from him as he gently removes the items from my grasp and lays them out on my set of drawers.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  I shake my head and scoot backwards until I find my back against the edge of the bed. “I can’t right now. I’ve had enough of thinking about it.”

  “I get it,” he offers as he settles down beside me. “I get to the point where I can’t stomach the thought as well.”

  “Tell me about you,” I sniffle. “Talk to me, Vince, and give me somebody else to think about.”

  He sighs, and fiddles with a scuff on the toe of his boot. “I don’t want to complicate things.”

  “Why would it complicate things?”

  “It just would.” He flicks the scratch in the leather with finality and twists so he can pull me into his side. I settle my shoulder under his arm and take the comfort he’s offering.

  “We don’t have to talk at all,” he says. “I can hang out until you’re ready to tell me what’s taken that gorgeous smile off your face.”

  I nod, and lean my head against his hard chest. He lets out a heavy breath and twirls the ends of my hair in his fingers. “I didn’t mean to be such an asshole, Sonya. If that has anything to do with this . . .”

  “It doesn’t.” I’m not completely sure myself if it did have an impact or not, but ultimately, it wasn’t the root of the problem, so why make it such?

  “Why were you having a shower at this hour, anyway?”

  I realize that I didn’t even check the time when I woke up. “Why? What is it? Midnight or something?”

  “Try just after four in the morning.”

  I simply stare. “Why did you come in here, then? You must be exhausted.”

  “I saw your light on, thought I’d pop in before I found somewhere to crash.”

  My expression softens, and he sees it.

  “King is a bit worried about you,” he adds.

  I offer a small smile, and shift out of his hold. “Must be some serious club business if you rode through the night to get home. I’m sure you’ve got your hands busy with whatever it is, so if you want to go, I’ll be okay.”

  “Sonya . . .”

  “No, I know how it is; you can’t tell me about club business, so don’t feel like you have to explain. I underst—”

  My words are cut short by a set of warm soft lips covering mine. I startle, letting go of a small whelp. He wraps a firm hand around the back of my neck as I go to pull away, grumbling through his assault.

  What the heck . . . why not.

  I give him everything: all the pent-up sexual frustration I have after five years of self-imposed abstinence, the need I have to be loved again, and the pain at feeling as if I’m not enough for anybody to want anymore.

  I look for happiness in his torment and he gives me nothing in return but an unspoken desperation to ease his own needs.

  I break our union and look him square in the eye. “Why do you want me?”

  He frowns. “This,”—he taps his head—“doesn’t want a bar of this; a relationship. But this”—and he taps his chest over his heart—“wants to feel nothing but the way I do when you’re around.”

  I assess him, searching his gaze. “Why does your head say no?”

  “Because it thinks that you only need me for what I’m about to give you.”

  “Why? Why would you think that? Do I come off as that kind of person?” Truth be told, I’m a little hurt by the idea.

  “Not at all.” He shakes his head. “It’s because my head thinks my heart should stay true to another. My mind plays games, tricking me into believing nobody else will ever love me the same.”

  “You miss your wife,” I fill in.

  He nods. “It’s silly, I know.”

  “Not at all.” I shake my head vigorously. “I completely understand.”

  “Is that why you were so upset with me on the phone? You miss him?”

  “I’ll always miss him; I’ll never forget what we had. But the thing that screws with my head,” I say, “is that although I know it’s perfectly okay for me to move on, I’m scared I’ll just hurt the other person by forever making them compete against Mike’s memory.”

  “What if there’s no comparison?”

  I chuckle. “Rate yourself that highly, huh?”

  He smiles, and shakes his head. “Hardly. I mean, what if that other person understood that you need to have room in your life for Mike, and that he’ll always have a piece of your heart.” He pauses, and I see his frustration as he chooses his words carefully. “Sonya, you’ve given me hope that I can do the same—that somebody would understand that I can never forget Julia. She was taken from me . . . violently. It’s not as though she up and walked out, or we had a fight, or that it was a mutual divorce. She was taken, and I never wanted her to fuckin’ go.”

  “I understand,” I say, stroking the side of his face, and realising how red his eyes are becoming. “Trust me, I get it.”

  He swallows hard. Opening up like this is taking a toll on him, one I can sympathize with. “Do you think we can do it?” he asks. “Live in a relationship with the ghost of the people we’ll always love? I mean, I think I could, but I don’t know what that would do to you.”

  “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  Swallowing away my apprehension, I rise and climb onto his lap. His hands find my hips, and guide me down as I settle in.

  “Sonya . . . I want you to understand that if I ever do anything to hurt you, it’s not because I intend to. I’m trying here.”

  “So am I,” I say, laying a gentle kiss on his forehead. “So am I.”

  He kisses the point of my chin, and moves down along the line of my throat and collarbones. Instinct takes over and I drop my head back, closing my eyes. My body knows what it wants, and right now, it wants to be worshipped like the sexual being it is.

  My fingers find his hair and I give it a little tug, pulling him closer to me. He growls against my flesh, dangerously close to the line of my bra. Oh my God, how I want his mouth under there. Vince continues his lazy trail across my chest. I place both hands on his shoulders and give a little push. Confused, he pulls back, but that lazy smile which driv
es me wild graces his lips as he watches me tug my T-shirt over my head.

  “Jesus, Sonya.”

  I marvel at the sight of his huge hands covering my breasts. “You can be a bit rough,” I say. “I don’t mind it.”

  The heat in his gaze when he flicks his eyes to mine? I need to shirk my underwear before it’s only good for the trash.

  His fingers massage my flesh, firm and deliberate in their touch. The more he handles me like this, the more I want it harder, faster, crazier.

  I push his cut over his shoulders.

  He unclasps my bra.

  Off with his T-shirt. Holy shit.

  My bra lands on the other side of the bed.

  I scramble down his body, impatient to get to the damn buckle I’ve been feeling pressed against my sex out of the way. He wriggles about on the floor, helping me pop the dome and shift the denim off his hips. Right as I hover over the top of him, ready to resume my position straddling this fine man, he stops me.

  “All’s fair.” Vince points to my jeans.

  They’re gone in five seconds flat, as are my panties.

  I drop on his lap once more, and seal his mouth with mine. He pushes his tongue between my lips, and what started as a kiss that tested ground and showed my intrigue in this man ends as a frenzied make-out session, the two of us dueling tongues like a couple of teenagers on their first night out alone. Hands wander over flesh, and fingers graze nipples. Our bodies grind against each other, the raw desperation between us so severe, I’m amazed we haven’t hurt each other yet.

  Vince takes me by surprise when his hand comes down hard on my backside, leaving a sharp burn in its wake. His eyes stay trained on mine, watching for my response.

  “I’ve wanted to smack that curvy ass since I first saw it.”

  I grind my pelvis against him, and startle myself at just how slippery I am.

  “How does it feel? Being so wet, baby?”

  I smile, and feel my cheeks heat. “Like I need something filling me up.”

  He hisses between his teeth and effortlessly lifts me off his lap enough to let his rigid cock spring into position. Gently angling me as he lets me down, he nudges against my entrance, causing my muscles to twitch greedily.