We rocked together like that for several minutes, panting and moaning in unison. Then I eased out.
“Hey, we’re not done yet,” he complained.
“Not leaving, adjusting. Turn over, and put that pillow under your hips.”
“Bossy.”
I had to stand so he could roll over in the narrow space. Once he was situated, I positioned myself between his legs. I bent to lick his cock from root to tip before lifting his legs with my arms and entering him again. This time my cock nudged right into his P-spot, and he shouted. Chasing Nick’s pleasure, I sped up my strokes, reveling in the way he bit his lip as he moaned.
“God, Nick,” I panted. “You’re perfect.”
He answered with a wink, then hooked his ankles behind my ass to draw me closer. We traded sloppy kisses as I slid back and forth over his sweat-slicked body.
“Touch yourself,” I begged. “I want to see you come.”
The way his dick was leaking, it’d be over quick. Never taking his gaze from mine, he stroked himself until the combination sent him spurting. The sight of his pulsing cock sent me over the edge with a guttural moan.
We clutched each other, chests heaving. When our breaths calmed, I gently pulled out and turned to dispose of the condom. He tugged the pillow out from under his hips, yanked off the case, and used it to mop up the come on his chest before dropping it on the floor. I returned to cuddle up behind him, my hand lazily stroking his chest. Then we did what men do best after good sex. We fell asleep.
A shift in the room’s atmosphere woke me. I yawned and checked the clock. We’d only been dozing for an hour or so. I tuned in to the house and sensed an uneasy stirring. Something was up. I slid out of bed and pulled on my jeans.
“Where’re you going?” Nick mumbled, still half-asleep.
“Upstairs. I’ll be right back.”
I gave him a peck on the mouth before scooping up my T-shirt and heading upstairs. I’d just entered the living room when I heard it—the click and scrape of metal. Someone was trying to pick the door lock.
Mom.
Just who I wanted to speak to.
I flipped the dead bolt and flung the door open. In fell Jerry, on his knees and still holding the Swiss army knife he’d been using on the lock. My mom stood behind him, mouth gaping open with obvious shock. She recovered quickly though, pushing past Jerry and coming inside. I let her. We had some things to discuss.
“Sasha! I had no idea you were here.” She laughed and scanned the dim room with rapid eye movements. Scabs littered her forearms where she’d been picking, and her hair hung in greasy hunks. I could tell she was high by the way she talked with her hands, waving them around in wide arcs. “Thank you for keeping an eye on the house for me. Oh, and it looks like you cleaned! Such a good boy.”
“Mom, we need to talk. Jerry, get the fuck out of here before I have you arrested for trying to break in.” I pulled the phone out of my pocket to drive my point home.
Jerry scrambled to his feet. “I wasn’t breaking in! I was helping my woman get back into her house after you changed the locks. Go ahead, call the cops! We’ll have you arrested.”
I picked up the notice from the City Assessor’s Office and shook it. “Oh yeah? Well, per the city, I own this property. Isn’t that right, Mom?”
Jerry looked to Mom as if for support. Her expression shifted from shock to guilt and into resolve. “Jerry, go wait in the car. I need to speak with my son.”
He fumed at the dismissal, but when she didn’t give in, he took his tools and stomped off.
I switched on a table lamp. Mom squinted in the light, but her dilated pupils didn’t shrink. I really didn’t want to have this conversation with her when she was high, but if I waited for a better time, it might never come.
“I appreciate all your help around here.” Mom smiled, clearly thinking she could smooth things over between us. “Now, give me the keys so I can swap out the old ones.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not giving you keys.”
“Don’t be silly, Sasha. I’m home now.”
“This isn’t your home. It hasn’t been since you were eighteen and you abandoned me here.” I held the tax notice out again. “Besides, I found the secret you’ve been keeping from me.”
She crossed her arms and gave me a So what? look.
“I own this place, Mom. Me. Not you. And you knew about it this whole time, didn’t you?” My voice broke with emotion. When Nick first showed me the notice, I’d thought there was no way my mother could have known that the deed was in my name. It was one thing for your adult child to leave home because they didn’t want to live under your roof, but it was a whole other thing to kick them out of their own house and force them to live in the streets while you trashed the place. My mother was messed up and selfish, but I’d never thought she was malicious.
“Of course, I knew. Do you think I’m stupid? But why should I live in one roach-infested apartment after another? With the old man gone, I could finally live here without his nagging.”
“But it’s my house!”
“And I’m your mother! You have no respect for me. Neither of you ever did. This house should’ve been mine, but my father always chose you. From the time you could talk, you sucked up to him. And he got off on it. ‘Oh, Sasha has such good grades. Oh, did you know Sasha’s the best musician in his school?’ He always loved you more!”
“He was keeping you informed about your child.”
“He was rubbing it in my face! And then he goes and gives you the house. He didn’t care at all what happened to me.”
“And what the hell did you think was happening to me for the last year? I’ve been sleeping in parks, in shelters, in doorways, in abandoned houses. Cold. Hungry. Scared. Where the fuck were you when I needed you, huh? You knew I had a perfectly good bed right here, and you kept me from it.”
“You never would have let me stay here.”
“Maybe I would’ve, maybe not. We’ll never know now.” I ran my hands through my hair and gripped tightly. It wasn’t worth fighting with her like this. “If you would just clean yourself up, get a real job, stay out of trouble—”
“I will not be lectured by my own kid,” she yelled. “Who’s the parent here, huh? You think you’re so much better than me, is that it?”
She was spiraling into a hissy fit, and I needed to get her back on track. “Mom, can’t we have one serious conversation about this? The last thing I want to do to anyone is kick them out of their home, but I won’t live with the drugs. How about we work together to get you clean? I’ll go to meetings with you. I’ll go with you to that free mental health clinic and see about getting you some counseling. Or better yet, maybe you could go back to that rehab place and give it an honest chance.”
“I’ve tried, Sasha!” Her tiny fists were clenched and shaking at her side. “How many times have I told you and Abba those state rehabs don’t work. They’re as dirty and corrupt as the streets. Last time I was in there, a male nurse was sneaking in pills in exchange for blowjobs from the female patients. And then there was the ex-con bitch who was pimping out patients to the night janitor in order to supply her in-house heroin ring. Hell, I met Jerry at an NA meeting three years ago. He goes sometimes when his weed sales are down.
“I’m sorry the last year has been uncomfortable for you, but my life has been nothing but shit for the last twenty-five years. I’d love to get clean, Sasha. Get clean, finish my GED, get a job, find a stable relationship with a man who has his shit together . . . but that kind of life is only for people with means that I don’t have. I’m doing my best here. I’ve got it under control.”
We glared at each other, her visibly trembling with her anger.
“Okay,” I said. “You have everything under control. Is that why your skin is all pockmarked and scabby? Why your teeth are gray and rotting? Why you smell like—”
“Stop it! You can’t talk to me like that.”
“Actually, I can. This is my
house. And if you want to live here, you know what you need to do.”
Her lip shook. “My stuff—”
“You can come by when you’re sober and go through the house to take what you want. I’m not dealing with you anymore when you’re high. Go on. Get out. I’m done.”
Rina hitched her ratty purse onto her shoulder and stalked out, head held high like it was her idea to leave. I slammed the door on her ass and flipped the bolt home. Pressing my forehead to the cool door, I let out a shuddering breath.
“You okay?” came Nick’s voice. I turned to see him leaning in the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed over his bare chest.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think so. How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough.”
I shoved off the door and crossed to him. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I buried my face in his neck. His arms embraced me, and he sank one hand into my hair where he always played with my curls.
This is home to me. Not the house, but Nick.
When had that happened? When had this man come to mean more to me than where I slept at night?
“I’m sorry about your mom.”
“No. She’s just Rina now. I have no mom. Never really did.”
“Hey, Dad,” I said wearily, patting him on the back as he sat belly-up to Damey’s bar, eating a cheeseburger and chili-cheese fries.
“Good to see you, son. Jesus, Nick! What did you do to your face?”
I touched the faded, yellow bruise beneath my eye. “Just a stupid accident.”
“Looks like you accidentally fell into somebody’s fist.”
“No worries, Dad. A little disagreement.”
“And it looks like you haven’t slept in days. You’re not working yourself too hard, are you? Maybe you should take a few days off.”
“I’m fine.”
He was right; I’d barely slept and had spent every waking moment I could working on that damn house. And all morning, I’d felt like I was on autopilot. Earlier, my mind had been so preoccupied with my task list that I’d stumbled over a small stack of lumber and almost face-planted. Sasha had insisted I take a break and go pick up lunch. Now, I perched on the stool beside my dad with my knee bouncing, frustrated with wasting time when I could be finishing the built-in bookshelves.
Damien stepped out of the swinging door from the kitchen and refilled the glasses of a couple of old men at the end of the bar. I nodded a greeting to him.
The lunch order probably had a few more minutes before it was ready, so I tried to will my exhausted body to relax a moment. I wanted to lay my head down on the bar, but feared I’d fall asleep.
Now that the roof was done, I’d decided to keep the Manpower guys on in a hopeless attempt to get back on schedule. In addition to my skeleton crew, Steven had talked a couple of his friends into coming over to donate some labor. They were skilled guys and I’d take any help I could get, but they could only be there a few hours in the evenings. Steven had probably promised to pay them on the side, but I was too embarrassed to ask. Maybe if I got the house sold, I’d be able to pay him back.
If I was smart, I’d pack up my things and leave town.
Damien typed into the register and ripped off a bill, slapping it onto the bar in front of me.
I slid my credit card to him. “Don’t forget the family discount.”
Damien swiped my card and passed the slip to me to sign. “You mean like the one you gave me when you replaced my electrical panel?”
“That was a hell of a lot of work, and I did give you a discount, remember?”
“Yeah, that minus three cents you wrote on my invoice was hilarious.”
“Quit bickering, you two,” Dad said with a mouth half-full of burger. “Always were embarrassing me in public.”
Damien and I exchanged grins. It was only our way of messing around. He knew I had actually charged him half of my normal labor rate on that electrical panel, just as I noticed he hadn’t charged me for the bottles of soda he always included in the bags.
I signed the slip with a messy scribble, adding a three-cent tip for the hell of it, and handed it back.
Damien glared at it and muttered, “Asshole.”
The door behind us opened. Damien glanced up, and his expression turned from welcoming to concerned. I looked over my shoulder, and my stomach dropped. In the door stood two track-suited giants and one bug-eyed man who only came up to their chests. Frank fucking Diamond.
“Nicky! I’m surprised to see you here. Thought for sure you had too much work for leisurely lunch breaks.”
The tracksuits positioned themselves to block my exits and stood with their hands clasped in front of themselves like Secret Service agents on duty. Out the window of the front door, there was another one stationed on guard, presumably to prevent anyone else from entering the bar. I could hold my own in a regulation jiujitsu match, but as I’d learned last week, my fighting skills were nothing against multiple guys who didn’t worry about fighting fair.
I sat up straighter on my stool, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel. Every nerve in my body was on edge. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Damien grasp the handle of the baseball bat he had tucked under the bar. My father glanced from Frank to me, obviously trying to figure out what was going on.
With a grin that could only be described as menacing, Frank stepped forward. “You must be Mr. Cooper. I’m Frank Diamond, a business associate of Nick’s.”
My father nodded, not offering a hand. It didn’t take a PhD to look at overconfident Frank and his Wall of Traveling Muscle to know exactly what kind of man he was. Thankfully, Dad didn’t ask any questions, just sat up a bit straighter, probably trying to accentuate his height, which wasn’t nearly as impressive as it had been in his youth.
“And this must be your brother. Damien, is it?”
Damien studied Frank wearily. Somewhere under the counter was an alarm that reported to the police department. I wasn’t sure if it was within his reaching distance, but it made me feel better knowing it was there.
Frank maintained a creepily pleasant smile while he glanced around the room, presumably noting the position of the two security cameras up in the corners. Then, he turned his cold gaze on me.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt. This was all a message to me. That he could get to my family. He knew who they were and where they hung out. I felt like a tightrope walker navigating above a pit of crocodiles in the dark. I had to get Frank away from them.
“Something I can help you with, Frank? Maybe we can go outside and talk.”
“No, no. It’s all right. I saw your truck outside and thought I’d come ask how our house is coming.”
“Good,” I said, my voice pitched too high to be natural. “Picking up some lunch for the crew. I gotta get back soon. Lots of work to do.” Thank fuck I hadn’t brought Sasha with me today. Frank didn’t seem to have realized that Sasha was more important to me than an employee.
“That there is.” Frank wandered over to one of the two stained glass windows that flanked the bar. This window showed a scene of old-timey monks getting merry with barrels of ale. “Beautiful job restoring this place. You have these windows made locally? They look too delicate for a tavern. You know, when these break, they shatter into a million pieces.”
Damien watched as Frank pressed a finger to the glass. “This is a friendly neighborhood place. I don’t tolerate roughhousing in here.”
“You must have good security.”
“The best. It helps that the cop shop is just down on the next block. Any trouble, and they can be here in an instant.”
He chuckled softly and held his hands up. “Good thing I mean no trouble. Well, Nicky, don’t spend too much time lollygagging around. July first will be here before you know it.”
I gave a tight nod.
Frank waved to his men and they left, taking most of the oxygen in the room with them.
When the door shut, I let out a heavy sigh and dropped my head into my ha
nds.
“Who the fuck was that, Nick?” Damien’s eyes blazed with a deadly combination of anger and fear.
“Son?” Dad said, resting a hand on my arm. “You in trouble?”
“No, Dad, it’s nothing.”
“Sure it is,” Damey huffed. “What was that ‘our house’ business?”
Dad clasped my forearm and gave me a look that I hadn’t seen since high school. “Nick, tell me what’s going on. What did he mean by ‘business associate’?”
“Really, Dad. It’s nothing. He’s a local boxing promoter, runs a gym.”
“Quit dodging my questions. You doing some sort of business with his guy? Is it drugs?”
“No, of course not.”
“And what’s all this ‘Nicky’ bullshit?” Damien demanded. “You never let anyone call you that, even when we were kids. What’s he got on you? Oh, shit! Don’t tell me . . . He’s the one financing your house flip.”
Before I had a chance to answer, Tasha, the lunch cook, came out from the kitchen carrying two big bags of boxed lunches.
“Here you go, Nick. Six burgers with the works and extra fries.”
“Thanks, Tasha.” I stood, gathered the bags and patted my dad on the back. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m not in trouble. He’s just a little man who is constantly surrounded by men twice his size. He tries to intimidate everyone. Now, give Mom a kiss from me. See ya.”
I turned and, somehow, made my way out of the bar on shaking legs, ignoring my dad’s call behind me. I’d barely made it to my truck when someone grabbed my sleeve, startling my heart up into my throat.
“Not so fast,” Damien said, glaring. “I was right, wasn’t I? You borrow money from that guy?”
I stared at my brother, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make him freak out further. I must have taken too long.
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