by Aly Martinez
I shrugged out of his hold and started pacing. “It’s not okay. It’s going to be another fucking tragedy all over again.”
“No, it won’t. This time, we’re in control. Just be nice to her. Figure out what she likes and doesn’t like. Talk a little. Listen a lot. And be there when she needs something. Too easy.”
I stopped and leveled him with a glare. “And if she gets hurt?”
There was no if about it though. When she got hurt was more like it. I’d known it would happen coming into this. I just hadn’t realized I’d be the man responsible—or that I’d even care.
I’d always been of the thought process that all was fair in love and war.
But two days with that woman had me reconsidering everything.
She wasn’t collateral damage. Or a pawn we needed to move.
She was an incredible woman who needed a life raft, not another shark in the water.
Drew moved back to the couch and sank down. “She’s been hurt a lot. A heartbreak is the least of her worries. But…if it comes to that, we’ll make it right.” He threw his legs up and resumed his position with his head on the armrest, his eyes closed and aimed at the ceiling.
“How exactly are we going to do that if we’re both dead or in prison?”
“One day at a time, Penn.” He turned his head, bringing his gaze to mine. His façade was gone, all the bravado he usually carried going with it. In its place was the cold, malicious darkness that, years earlier, had become the true Drew Walker.
It was the same vile black that stained my soul. I barely survived with it eating me away like acid from the inside out, eagerly waiting until the day it would finally devour me.
But not Drew. I hadn’t seen that side of him since he’d gotten out of prison, but there it was, front and center, staring back at me with all the gentleness of a dagger.
“You having second thoughts?”
“No,” I answered definitively. “But this does not blow back on Cora. No matter the cost.”
He arched a menacing eyebrow. “Those are some dangerous words, brother.”
“No matter the cost.”
An approving grin pulled at his lips. “Then I guess we’re going to have to make sure there’s no one left to blow anything back.”
Cora
The very next night after my run-in with Penn, the lights on the third-floor breezeway miraculously started working.
Penn, however, turned into a ghost.
Drew showed up every morning bright and early and worked long hours ripping out walls in my apartment, trying to find the source of our water leak, but Penn drifted in and out throughout the day. He didn’t speak. He didn’t linger. He was just there, like a figment of my imagination. But for the way my chest tightened and my body tingled each time he so much as walked into the room, I knew he was very, very real.
I tried to distract myself from harping on Penn’s phantom routine by dealing with the aftermath of Angela’s suicide. However, that only brought me back full circle—Penn working relentlessly to save her.
The majority of the girls had been adjusting well. They were good at that. But the ones who had been close to her were struggling. Some secretly—and some not so secretly.
I was in the secretly category. I couldn’t stop racking my brain for all the signs I’d missed. She’d seemed happy.
But was happiness really possible for women like us?
Sure, we laughed.
And smiled.
And made the best of the shitty hand we’d been dealt.
But happiness? Maybe that should have been my first clue. Prisoners were never truly happy.
It took two solid days for me to find the courage to go back down to Angela’s apartment. Armed with a bucket of bleach, a face mask, rubber gloves that went up to my elbow, and an onslaught of paralyzing memories, I made my way down the stairs with dread rolling in my stomach. As soon as I swung the door open, I suffered a minor cardiac arrest.
Her apartment had been cleaned: the carpet torn out, brand-new linoleum glued in its place. The bloodied couch was gone, and the fresh scent of Lysol danced in the air.
With a lump in my throat and tears stinging the backs of my lids, I spun in disbelief.
There were two possible suspects in the whodunit: Drew and Penn. Only one of those men caused the somersaults in my stomach.
Whoever it had been had known I wouldn’t have survived cleaning that room. At least not in one piece.
“I’ve known you two days and I’m drowning in it, Cora.”
There were no words as I looked around that spotless apartment. Quite honestly, I found it hard to process.
In my experience, people didn’t just do things out of the kindness of their hearts.
Everyone had a motive. And, suddenly, I was desperate to know Penn’s.
So I played a card I’d been hiding up my sleeve for well over a year.
I called our good old perverted pal, Larry the cop. He was a dick, as usual, and hung up on me. But when I texted him a snippet of a video one of the girls had secretly shot during an unfortunate night with him, I immediately received a call back.
If I’d learned anything over the years, it was that leverage was never a bad thing to have.
Larry was none too happy to be doing me favors. Though he was pretty eager to keep that video from landing in his wife’s email.
An hour later, I got a more informative call back.
Surprisingly—and excitingly—enough, Penn was squeaky clean. Not so much as a parking ticket on his record.
And Drew, well… He’d stolen a car. And then, a few days after he’d been released with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and two years of probation, he’d stolen another one. Dumbass. But it wasn’t a violent crime or related to drugs, and he wasn’t on the sex offender’s registry. In my eyes, that was a total win.
Hope had whispered inside me when I’d seen Angela’s apartment. But, by the time I hung up with Larry, it was a deafening roar.
Maybe decent men still existed.
And maybe, just maybe, Penn Walker was one of them.
With Penn dodging me, I approached Drew about the cleanup job. He denied having anything to do with it. Though he quickly accepted my invitation to come over for dinner and promised to bring his brother.
I spent the better part of the day cooking, cleaning, doing my hair and makeup, and then agonizing over what to wear. It was ridiculous. Especially when Drew showed up alone.
It was probably stupid, but I was crushed.
Drew stayed for several hours, ate half a pan of lasagna, drank three beers, and laughed and talked with Savannah and River.
I spent those hours warming an untouched beer while staring holes in the door as though I could have willed Penn to appear on the other side.
He didn’t. And the weight of my disappointment was stifling.
That very same night around midnight, I was tidying up the living room before making my way to bed when a sound outside caught my attention. A quick peek out the peephole revealed Penn parked in the hall, wearing that same black hoodie from days earlier, while watching my door like it was his favorite movie.
My stomach dipped, and that spark that only he ignited inside me turned into a raging inferno. I convinced myself that he was waiting for me out there.
Spoiler alert: He wasn’t.
The first night, I made an excuse to go out there by setting the trash outside my door as I so often did. He didn’t acknowledge my fun-and-flirty hello, and after a full minute of awkwardly rocking on my toes, waiting for him to reply, I rushed back inside and called it a night. It stung. A lot. But my trash was in the dumpster the next morning.
When he was out there again on the second night, it started to unnerve me. Never one to beat around the bush, I decided to ask why he was sitting alone in the dark.
Maybe Drew snored. Maybe he liked the fresh air. Maybe he was a serial killer. Really, it was anyone’s guess.
His only answ
er was a grunted, “I like the quiet. It’s easier to think.” Then he stood up and went into his apartment without another word spoken. Thirty minutes later, he had resumed his position. I did not.
The third night, I couldn’t handle anymore rejection, so I casually drank a beer while standing at my peephole and stared at him staring at me. He was beautiful. I was a weirdo. I went to bed.
Night four, I was still a weirdo.
Night five, I forced myself to stop the insanity and instead sat on my couch, watching the same door he was watching, just from the other side. Then I decided that wasn’t any less ridiculous, so I gave up and went to bed.
Wash, rinse, and repeat on nights six and seven.
Each night, I fell asleep staring at Nic’s stars on the ceiling.
But each morning, I woke up with Penn’s piercing, blue eyes invading my dreams.
I couldn’t explain my draw to him. With the way I grew up, with a father who had thrown me to the wolves, then dealing with Marcos and Dante, it wasn’t exactly a mystery why I hadn’t been keen on the Y chromosome throughout the years.
But, when it came to Penn, my body overruled my mind every time.
Too many nights, I’d lain in bed, my overactive (and surprisingly descriptive) imagination as my only company. Those little daydreams had started off innocent enough. In my head, we’d sit in that hallway, talking and laughing. He’d eventually reach over and take my hand or drape his arm around my shoulders. Quiet comfort. Nothing more. Nothing less.
But, as the days rolled on, those daydreams spiraled into something else altogether.
My skin igniting under his callused hands.
His mouth gliding from breast to breast and then down between my legs—giving rather than taking the way I knew only Penn would.
The earth-shattering sensation of being coaxed to abandon, the rest of the world slipping into nothingness, leaving only him, me, and our merciless mouths behind.
Yeah. It had been a rough week filled with cold showers and sleepless nights.
This wasn’t exactly a terrible thing though, because on day number eight, I was tired, annoyed, and all around done.
Done waiting. Done feeling like a stalker. Done with…well, everything except getting to know the real Penn Walker.
So, on that particular morning, with both of the guys clanging around in my bathroom, I decided I was done letting him call the shots.
“How’s it coming?” I asked, leaning against the doorjamb of my deconstructed bathroom. The toilet and sink were sitting in my living room, and all of the moldy drywall had been ripped out, revealing a maze of rusty pipes.
Drew popped out from the inside of what had once been my linen closet. “It’s coming along about as well as you can expect from a building that was constructed by the Pilgrims.”
“I doubt the Pilgrims would be happy with you insulting them like that. Is any of it salvageable?”
His lips curled into a slow grin. “It’s going to have to be.”
I tipped my chin at the only remaining wall that divided my bedroom from the bathroom. “Any chance you can tear that down and put a door in to make it an en suite for me?”
“Any chance you could say that in English, Fancy Pants?”
I laughed. “Like an adjoining bathroom to my room?”
“Ahh. I think that stud might be structural, but I could probably put in a doggy door.” He dropped his gaze, giving me a flirty once-over. “You’re small enough to fit.”
“I’ll pass, but thanks.” Lifting my coffee mug to my lips, I cut my gaze to Penn.
He was on his knees, a wrench in his hand, doing something with the pipes where my sink should have been.
“So, Penn, how’s the apartment working out?” I asked his back.
He remained silent.
Drew answered though. “It’s good. Penn finally Herculesed the old couch and mattress down the stairs last night. Fingers crossed he took all of Hugo’s DNA with him.”
“Oh, gross!”
He tapped the tip of his nose. “Exactly. Now, if we can get the water back on so we can take a shower or actually use the bathroom without hoofing it down two flights of stairs only to wait in line at three a.m., we’ll be better than good.”
I slapped a hand over my chest and breathed, “Dear God, what is this utopia you speak of?”
Drew chuckled. Penn didn’t.
“Can I get you two some coffee?” I asked.
“Nah,” Drew answered. “I had some black sludge courtesy of the Stop and Shop.”
I faked a gag. “Ew! That place is disgusting. I wouldn’t walk through the door without a hazmat suit.”
He twisted his lips adorably. (Okay, fine. Mr. Plain wasn’t so plain anymore.) “So what you’re saying is I probably shouldn’t have eaten one of the little rolling hot dogs for breakfast?”
My mouth gaped open. “Oh God, no!”
He raked his teeth over his bottom lip. (Yeah, not even close to plain.) “Then definitely not two?”
“Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I hate to be the one to tell you this…but there is a good chance you’re dead right now.”
He used two dirty fingers to check the pulse at his neck. “Nope, still ticking. Looks like you’re stuck with me until at least tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
He shrugged. “They were really good hot dogs.”
I laughed, and he joined me—because that was what Drew did.
And through it all, Penn never so much as glanced in our direction—because that was what Penn did.
“You mind if I take a smoke break?” Drew asked.
“Not as long as you take it outside.”
He offered me a salute, and I turned sideways to allow him space to exit—which left me alone with Penn.
River and Savannah were at school, and my schedule for the day was packed.
Yet I stood there, staring at Penn’s back, determined to make him talk. “Any estimate on when you’ll get the water back on?”
The muscles beneath his shirt rippled and his wrench stilled, but he made no verbal response.
“I mean…a rough estimate would be fine.”
More silence.
“I’m sure you’re doing everything you can. I’m just curious. Are we talking days or weeks?” I shifted uncomfortably, twirling a curl around my finger. “Please don’t say months. I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with this. The girls have been at each others’ throats sharing two bathrooms. I gave them all little plastic baskets I got from the Dollar Shop to carry their toiletries, but if I hear one more argument about someone using someone else’s shampoo or toothpaste, I’m going to have to be checked into a padded room.”
He sighed, allowing his head to sag forward, but his posture remained tense. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
My eyes flashed wide, and a victorious smile split my lips. “I have let it go. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk to each other.”
“Bullshit,” he told the floor. “You think I don’t see you standing at your door every night? Your lights come on and off. Your feet shadow the crack at the bottom. And, worse than that…I feel you. Watching me.” He slowly turned his dark, hollow gaze over his shoulder. “I know you’re there, Cora. Because I feel it when you leave.”
On one hand: Busted!
On the other hand: Oh my gahhhhhhhh. He felt me.
I cleared my throat and straightened my back. “Okay. So…maybe I haven’t exactly let it go. But you’re sitting outside, staring at my door, Penn. You’re not at the railing that overlooks the parking lot. Or the stairs out back that nobody uses. Not even the roof, where you could actually see the stars. You are sitting in the breezeway, staring at my door. If you ask me, that feels a lot like you haven’t let it go, either.”
He shook his head and once again faced forward, muttering, “Why are you so fucking stubborn?”
“Me? Are you going to stop boring holes into my door each night?” Please say no.
Please say no. Please say no.
“Fuck. Me,” he grumbled.
But it wasn’t a no!
Unwilling to crowd him, I remained in the doorway and continued talking to his back. “We don’t even know what this thing is, Penn. I’m relatively sure a conversation is not going to kill either of us. Who knows? Maybe you like mustard and it will be a total wash from the get-go.”
He blew a hard breath out, which I thought might have been in the same sound family as a laugh, but since I couldn’t get a read on his face, I couldn’t be sure. It quickened my pulse all the same though.
“Think about—”
We both jumped when a shrieked, “Cora!” came from my front door.
“Ugh,” I groaned, cursing the evil gods of bad timing.
Another day.
Another drama.
And right in the middle of my own personal drama with Penn.
“Hold that thought,” I told him, shoving off the doorjamb. When I reached the front door, I snatched it open and snapped, “What?”
Guilt slammed into me like a freight train when I saw Brittany standing there with a bloody towel pressed to her shoulder and sporting a grimace.
“What the hell happened?” And why is everyone suddenly bleeding all the time!
I pulled at her wrist, revealing a gash at least six inches long on her collarbone.
“The fucking ceiling fan fell on me.”
My head snapped back. “How is that possible?”
She wrenched her arm away. “Because we live in a death trap! The whole goddamn building is going to collapse on us one of these days.”
“It’s not a death trap… We’re just…going through a few hard times right now.”
Yeah, okay. It was totally a death trap.
“Well, it’s about to become a whole hell of a lot harder for me now. How am I supposed to go to work tonight with this?” She huffed. “‘Sorry, dude. I know you’re paying for a hand job, but the good one’s out of commission. How do you feel about a lefty? Oh, don’t worry about that blood pouring from my shoulder. Fetish is free of charge tonight.’” She tipped her head to the side and shot me a murderous scowl.