Loose Ends

by Kristen Ashley

  He looked at her again. “I can order pizza.”

  “I’d be done by now,” she replied.

  “And I’d be done by now too, sweetheart, if you weren’t yammering at me.”

  Maddox chuckled.

  Molly rolled her eyes.

  That was so cute, like anytime she did it, D fought taking a further break from finishing on the computer in order to kiss her, but since feeding their girl was clearly priority, he decided to finish on the computer.

  He did that, pulled up the map that showed when the delivery guy was on the way, then reached out and nabbed his forgotten beer, turning toward them, leaning a hip against the counter and announcing, “I’ve got plans with Sixx tomorrow night. She needs backup on some job.”

  Maddox’s head cocked sharply to the side.

  Molly’s sweet green eyes got big.

  “Say what?” Maddox asked.

  “That call I took after I got home. It was Sixx. She needs some help tomorrow. Says it’ll take an hour, the most two. I’ll be home, latest, around ten.”

  “I . . . uh . . .” Molly started but trailed off.

  “You think maybe we should talk about this?” Maddox asked without stammering at all.

  In fact the man looked ticked.

  “About what?” Diesel asked back then stated, “You can do the next job, if she’s got one. But I’m calling it if she needs to fuck someone up.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Molly asked carefully.

  Ah.

  Right.

  He looked to her. “No, baby. She just needs someone to keep an eye on things while she uh . . .” he decided against sharing about the B and E, “does what she has to do. It’s not dangerous.”

  “Why’s she asking you?” Maddox inquired and D looked to him, beginning to get ticked himself.

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “When’d you become her partner?” Maddox pushed.

  “I’m not her partner,” he answered shortly. “Her usual backup is busy so she called me.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mad stated.

  “You don’t have to get it,” Diesel returned angrily. “Clearly she trusts me. Thinks I have my shit tight. She’s in a bind, needs to do what she’s gotta do and needs someone with her, so she asked me. It was a cool thing to do considering she definitely has her shit tight so it’s kinda nice to know she thinks the same about me.”

  “I wasn’t sayin’ that, D,” Maddox said slowly.

  “So what were you saying?” Diesel demanded heatedly.

  “Please don’t fight,” Molly whispered and got both her men’s immediate attention.

  It was law. Straight up. No breaking it. Unspoken but they all knew.

  If any of them were into it with another, the one not in it did not wade in.

  Ever.

  Just like they didn’t fight when the other one was around, when a fight started when the other one was around, that one did not get involved in the discussion.

  D watched Molly’s cheeks get even pinker before she turned in a way that was openly deliberate. She lifted both hands and rested them on Mad’s bearded cheeks, again going up on her toes but also pulling him down to her.

  There, she kissed him, mouths open. D could see her glistening pink tongue and Maddox’s.

  She broke the connection abruptly and didn’t let a beat slide by before she had her hands on D’s face, yanking him to her, again rolling up on her toes, pulling his mouth down on her.

  She slid her tongue inside and he tasted her usual sweet but he also tasted hints of man and beer.

  Maddox.

  Maddox in his mouth.

  She broke the kiss and looked him right in the eye before she took a step away from both of them.

  “I’m grabbing a beer. I’ll be out on the patio,” she mumbled.

  Then she did just that.

  Escaping their fight.

  Giving them space.

  But most definitely making her point before she went.

  Both men stared at the French doors long after she closed them behind her.

  It was D that broke the uncomfortable silence and cut through the tension.

  He looked at Mad and explained, “It’s five hundred dollars cash, this job with Sixx. We need it. I’m not involved in anything she’s doing. She needs eyes so she can enter some guy’s place and do what she’s gotta do. I’ll be gone two hours tops. But we need that money for Molly’s ring. I need that money for Molly’s ring. So I’m gonna tell Sixx, if she’s got other gigs, I’m in. Especially for that kind of cake.”

  Maddox’s brows had risen at one particular part of his speech.

  “You need that money for Molly’s ring?”

  “Equal, brother. And right now what we got in our savings to put toward that buy isn’t equal.”

  Maddox stared at him, that muscle in his cheek flexing.

  He was a man. A man with a huge dick. So he got him.

  He affirmed this verbally.

  “I hear that, D.”

  “Right,” Diesel replied.

  “And I wasn’t sayin’ what you thought I was sayin’,” Maddox went on. “I know you can handle yourself. But Sixx is a badass and if that job at the Bolt is anything to go by, she gets involved with some serious players. Drug dealers. Pimps. She doesn’t blink at that shit. But that’s her job. That’s what she does. You don’t have that experience and it isn’t that you aren’t sharp and fit and aware. It’s just that you have to clue into the fact that, if anything happened to you, me and Molly would feel that. You gotta do what you gotta do, I get that. But whatever you do, even if you’re doing it somewhere else, me and Mol are always along for that ride.”

  Me and Molly would feel that.

  Diesel looked away from his man and took a swig of beer.

  “You know that, right?” Maddox pushed.

  Diesel looked back at him and answered quietly, “Yeah, man. I know that.”

  “So don’t get pissed, tomorrow, I check in before we hit the sack,” Maddox finished.

  They all started their days early. Both Mad and D with jobs where they worked outside in the Phoenix heat, in order to work during the time when it baked, but not as bad as it did in the late afternoon, their days could start at six or seven.

  The good part about that was they were usually done around two thirty or three.

  The bad part about that was, with the physicality of their jobs on top of early start times, they couldn’t get around going to bed early.

  Molly had arranged her schedule at work so it was as close to theirs as it could be, that being seven to four.

  This meant at least two of them were in bed at nine every night, mostly because at least two of them fucked before they went to sleep.

  He’d probably come home either to both of them out, or both of them in bed, but awake, waiting for him to come home.

  Considering Maddox seemed to be able to man up, Diesel had to try to kick in to do the same.

  “I’ve needed some space lately. Shit in my head,” he said low. “It didn’t occur to me you’d feel that as me pullin’ away because honest to God, I didn’t realize I was. When I’m at a place I can actually wrap my brain around what that shit is, we’ll talk it out. In the meantime, totally lame, but totally true, one hundred percent true, buddy, I promise. It’s me. Not you.”

  The relief that Maddox allowed openly to wash through his face made Diesel’s mouth fill with saliva.

  “Okay, bud,” he said softly. “I can give space.”

  Diesel jerked up his chin.

  “And I’m there when you’re ready,” Mad continued.

  Diesel looked him in the eyes and for that, gave him a full nod.

  Mad’s full lips embedded in his thickening beard twitched. “And good call, not pointing out to Molly we have three bottles of ranch dressing in the house.”

  Diesel burst out laughing.

  Maddox chuckled along with then.

  Right.

  There
they were.

  They were good.

  Good.

  For now.

  More than Everything

  Diesel

  “ONLINE,” DIESEL SAID into the transmitter in his hand, his eyes on the laptop on the seat beside him in his truck as a picture filled a quarter of the screen, replacing static.

  “Right. Thanks,” he heard Sixx say in the earbud in his ear.

  Yup.

  Earbud in his ear. Little transmitter that looked like a miniature microphone in his hand which was bluetoothed to a new app that Sixx had downloaded on his phone. A laptop on his passenger seat that had a split screen on it, four views, all of them now showing pictures since Sixx had successfully installed the last camera in the hallway that led to her target’s apartment door. A cord plugged into the laptop reaching out through a crack in his window in order to get the camera signals.

  Another view was inside the elevator. And another was in the lobby. The last was at the door to the elevator bay from the underground garage.

  Sixx was tricked out in kit on this sleuth shit.

  It was fucking fantastic.

  He also had a slim-line pair of binoculars and a file holding an eight by ten glossy of a guy’s face and a piece of paper with the make, model, color and license plate number of a car, both he’d already memorized.

  His truck was positioned across the road, opposite the entry to the parking garage to the apartment building. He was seated where he was because the guy was out in his car. D should be able to spot him driving in.

  If not, added insurance, there were cameras everywhere and no way, unless he was Spider-Man and went in through his window, could the guy make it into his apartment without D being able to give Sixx the heads up.

  On the bottom right of the laptop screen, he watched Sixx break and enter.

  Right, not so much breaking as picking, but she entered and the door wasn’t shut before he heard in his earbud, “I’m in.”

  “See that,” he said in the transmitter, deciding he was going to ask her to show him how to pick a lock. “Have fun.”

  “Always do,” she replied.

  Reaching out to the binoculars because a car just then turned into the parking garage, he checked it out.

  Chevy.

  He was looking for a Ford.

  The cool stuff over, Diesel settled in, alert, watchful of the front door he could also see, scanning even the cars that passed, checking the faces of anyone who appeared on the cameras.

  He figured it’d get boring but the complex was a cush one off 1st Avenue. It was after eight thirty, but there was heavy traffic, car and foot, so there was always something to keep his eye on. And considering if he fucked this up, Sixx was caught and the guy was able to do the impossible—subdue her and call the cops—she’d face a felony charge, the stakes were high.

  Even sitting in his truck, it was a rush.

  So much so, fifteen minutes slid by and it felt like five.

  “Anything good?” he asked in the transmitter. “Like an inspired porn collection?”

  Sixx was laughing when she replied, “Dude’s b-o-r-i-n-g. But I’m in on his computer. Maybe he’s into Japanese sex anime.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Diesel returned, speaking while thinking Sixx laughed a lot.

  He was also thinking he used to do that.

  A lot.

  When he was with Tommy, before and after he left town. They yucked it up all the time, when they weren’t fucking.

  He didn’t laugh much when he wasn’t with Tommy.

  But he did when he arrived in Phoenix.

  He’d had no money. No job. Was living in a shithole while he tried to get a life started.

  And still, he felt light for the first time in his life.

  Light.

  Easy.

  Free.

  Life was good.

  He ate crushed tortilla chips in salsa for breakfast lunch and dinner because it was all he could afford and he did this for months, until he scored a job that didn’t get him out of that shithole, but it did allow him to go to a burger joint for dinner.

  And still.

  Life was good.

  From age twenty-two to twenty-eight, when he’d met Mad.

  Then finding Maddox. Making him smile that cruel smile of his. Laugh that gravelly laugh. Doing both along with him.

  That was more good.

  Adding Molly and giving her the same.

  That was all good.

  He’d just simply had it good for the last decade.

  And it all ended that night at the Bolt when he knew at the beginning of the scene how Mad was going to play it and he did just that, ending the scene displaying Diesel on his back on a padded table, sucking him off then fucking his ass while their mouths were connected.

  Nope.

  Not fucking his ass.

  Making love to him.

  After that, the laughter hadn’t died but it didn’t come as easy anymore.

  Why?

  They had it good. Nothing had changed.

  So . . .

  Why?

  On that thought, his phone rang, he saw who it was and considered not taking it. Not because he didn’t want to talk to the caller, he always wanted to talk to her, but he had to keep tight for Sixx.

  Still, she was only twenty minutes into a job that would take at least an hour and he had nothing to do but keep an eye out.

  So he took the call and put it on speakerphone.

  “Yo, sis,” he answered.

  “This is not a voice from beyond the veil. This is me. Live and in Denver. Wondering why the hell I never hear from my brother,” Rebel returned.

  He grinned at the computer screen.

  Rebel.

  Now Rebel could always make him smile.

  “Wassup?” he asked.

  “Wassup?” she repeated back to him.

  “Yeah. Wassup?”

  “Diesel, I haven’t heard from you in over a month,” she declared.

  “I was unaware I had to report in to my baby sister.”

  “Okay then, I’m now making you officially aware you have to report in to your baby sister.”

  “Reb, baby doll, the phone goes both ways.”

  “Yeah, and I just said into mine, ‘Call my asshole brother who doesn’t stay in touch,’ and we’re rapping now, aren’t we?”

  Anyone else, he might get pissed.

  Rebel, not a chance.

  First, she was hard to get pissed at. She might be more about cinnamon than sugar, but she was still all sweet.

  Second, she was just busting his chops since that, apparently, was what baby sisters were born to do.

  Still, his baby sister had it down to an art.

  Diesel looked through the binoculars at a car entering the garage (not their guy), but did it asking, “So, are you gonna tell me what’s up?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  Shit.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Mom wants a family Thanksgiving,” she announced.

  Fuck.

  “She’s ticked you haven’t been home in a while,” she continued.

  Shit.

  “That would include you and Molly,” she went on.

  Fuck.

  “So,” Rebel continued, “while she’s burying herself even further in denial about who Maddox really is to you and Mol in order to buck up and phone you to ask you and Molly for Thanksgiving, at the same time making it clear Maddox is not welcome, but trying to do that politely, I thought I’d give you a heads up so you could think of a good excuse to tell her you can’t go without it being something like, ‘I’m bi, Ma, you don’t dig, you can go fuck yourself.’”

  Diesel blew out a breath, staring hard at the feeds on the laptop screen.

  “D, you there?” Rebel called.

  “We’re looking at rings for Molly.”

  Christ.

  What was the matter with him?

  Shit just k
ept vomiting from his mouth.

  “Oh. My. God!” The last word was squealed with so much excitement, his sister lived in Denver, they were separated by masses of land that included mountain ranges and deserts, and he could still feel her thrill whisper across his skin.

  He wanted to smile at that.

  He wanted to get all puffed up like a man about to stake his claim to his future knowing he had it all.

  He didn’t.

  “I’m leaving them,” he let out.

  Fuck!

  “What?” she whispered.

  Time to backtrack.

  “Listen—” he began.

  That’s as far as he got.

  It was a wonder with Rebel and what just came out of his mouth that he got out the “L” sound.

  “How are you buying Mol a ring in one breath and leaving them in the next?” she demanded to know.

  “Right, Rebel, I’m in the middle of something right now and—”

  “Oh no. Hell no, D. Are you and Maddox looking at rings for Molly?”

  “I can’t talk about this right—”

  “Are you?” she snapped.

  “I’m gonna need to shut that down,” he told her, feeling his gut start aching to the point he felt sick.

  “Are you crazy?” she asked, sounding like she thought he wasn’t crazy, he was straight-up certifiable.

  He checked out another car through the binoculars (not their guy) as he replied, “Babe, seriously, this is not a—”

  “You know, if you can’t tell them, I will. I’ll be happy to do it, D. I’ll take that hit for you and, unlike you, I’ll enjoy it. And straight up, since we’re finally here, talking about this, you’ll lose Dad. You’ll lose Gunner. And neither are big losses. Especially Gunner. He’s a bully. He’s been a bully since we were little kids. He’ll be a bully until the day he dies, which will be alone, unloved, and wondering where he went wrong, not understanding you can’t be a total dick to every being who crosses your path and have a single one of them give a damn about you. Mom, she’ll freak and she’ll listen to Dad’s shit, but after a while, she’ll get over it. And when she does, she’ll go against Dad. She can be weak but she has her times of being strong. And those times have always been about her kids. So she’ll get there. She will, Diesel. You’ll just have to give her space and wait it out, and in the end, you’ll have the only one worth something. That is, not including me. You’ll always have me.”