by Meg Jackson
It had been just over six months, and outside of some trips to Delaware to testify against the men who’d hurt her, Tricia had been living in Massachusetts, where there was an outpatient clinic for crime victims and the safety of distance between her and the remaining members of the Steel Dragons who might want to silence her before she could bear witness. Living in a strange town, with a temporary name, a temporary address, a temporary job, a temporary everything had taken almost as much a toll on her as the actions that had made such precautions necessary. She missed her friends and her family. She wanted to come home.
But as she watched the landscape slip backwards on the interstate, her knuckles tight on the steering wheel and her jaw aching from tightness, she wondered if she shouldn’t take some wise words to heart.
You can never go home again, she thought.
4
She was naked on his bed, honey-colored hair draped across the pillow, eyes like melted gold looking up at him. Her lips, full and pink, pouted slightly. Moving down her body, her breasts generous, round as peaches and just as soft; her sides tapering down and then out again over the curve of her stomach; her hips wide and luxurious; thighs strong; calves quivering.
His hands at her neck were all fingers tracing her collarbone, the place where her ribs met. His mouth on her breast, then on her lips again, then playful, dipping into her bellybutton. Her thighs parted to meet him, and when he entered her it was with the sort of wild satisfaction that drew all existence to a single point. She was endless, and he had everything to give.
It seemed he would never stop finding places to bury himself inside her, that this first thrust would last forever. He bit down on the flesh of her shoulder, wincing as the smooth and warm walls of her accepted every inch of him and begged for more…
Damon woke up with his mouth dry, his heart pounding, and his cock hard as stone. He groaned, closed his eyes, wanting to keep dreaming that dream. But daylight was pouring over him, across his eyes, filtering in between his eyelids. And the dream was gone; all that remained of it was the throbbing between his legs, the insistent and annoying need.
Damon hadn’t masturbated since he was a teenager. It was a matter of principle, willpower. He felt that it would cheapen the real thing. Just because he could come whenever he wanted to didn’t mean he should. But mornings like this made that self-deprivation especially hard to keep up.
There was nothing for it but to wait for it to go down on its own. Luckily, he was alone in the trailer. That was the case more often than not these days, with Kennick and Kim living in the trailer that used to be the greenhouse and Cristov spending most nights at Ricky’s. He rose, trying to think of anything that would quicken the slow fade of his erection. Coffee. His morning run. A prayer. The fight that was rapidly approaching. Anything but the fact that Tricia was coming back to Kingdom.
His cock didn’t soften when he made coffee. It didn’t soften when he ate a bowl of granola. It didn’t soften when he stepped into the shower, even in the cold water. Normally, he would have waited until after his morning run to shower, but the idea of trying to keep pace with an advertisement for Viagra in his shorts was painful to even think about.
Somewhat amused by the resilience of his lust, but mostly frustrated by it, he hung his washcloth across his stiff member while cleaning himself off. When it still refused to recede as he stepped from the shower and into his bedroom, he hung a clothes hanger from it and swiveled his hips back and forth to make it swing. Finally, he felt his blood begin to rush back, and he watched patiently as the clothes hanger slid off, clattering to the floor.
Dressing for his morning run, Damon opted against a shirt. It was proving to be an unusually hot early summer, and at his size, Damon would easily sweat through even the lightest fabric. Before leaving, he checked himself in the mirror. He’d need to trim his black, bushy beard. His hair needed a trim, too; the same midnight black as his beard, he kept it short. A shadow of sideburns completed the dark frame around his face.
He cocked his head as he flexed slightly. Until he’d gotten the call about the fight, he’d been more lax than usual in his workout, and it showed. He was still considerably massive; far bigger than his brothers, and big enough to make kids on the street look at him wide-eyed. But he had some catching up to do, it was true.
He turned and eyed his newest ink, reminding himself that Cristov still needed to finish it up. The bold-lined, bright-colored lighthouse reached down his ribcage, the tattoo a recent addition to a body full to bursting with traditional American designs. Eagles and dice and pin-up girls lounging in martini glasses, Felix the Cat drawn as a skeleton, a devil eating a melty slice of pizza, a bow-legged cowboy. He liked the strong lines, the bravado and the humor.
Outside, just as he’d known, it was already muggy and warm despite not yet being 7am. He started his run at an even pace, taking a few laps around the trailer park before hitting the road. He waved to Dago Tenniss, who was standing guard at the trailer park entrance. It was 3 miles to the start of town, 3 miles back. He usually spent his morning run going through the salient details of his upcoming day. What was happening at his cheese shop, what was happening in the kumpania, when he would go to the gym and what he would eat for dinner.
He had plenty to think about that day. He was expecting a shipment of very unique, very expensive brunost, Norwegian brown cheese, at his store, Let it Brie. He’d promised to help Ana set up for a tasting event at her store, meant to capitalize on the early-season tourism. A trip to the barber shop was in order, and there was a workout to fit in somewhere, too. And, the arts theater a few towns over was doing a one-night screening of “Wild Strawberries” with an accompanying lecture from a film studies professor down from Delaware State.
But, with all those things he could have been thinking about, he couldn’t stop thinking about Tricia. She would be back any day now. Would she come to see him? Should he go to see her? She would be different. She had to be different. Would she be so different that what he saw in her, all those months ago, would be gone? Or would it be even better? Would she even want to see him – or would he be just a reminder of all she’d been through?
She’d covered for him when the police arrived to investigate the kidnapping. Damon had shot a man who wasn’t posing an immediate threat to either of them. Rig, the man he’d killed, barely even had time to pull his gun before Damon’s bullet met his chest. Tricia had told the police that Damon saved her life, that the man had a gun to her head. She could hate him for that.
She could hate him for being part of the reason she was kidnapped in the first place. She could hate him for knowing more about her than any human should know about someone they’d met twice. Damon had seen her the night Cristov brought her home, bruises like a necklace from what her boyfriend had done to her. And then he’d seen her tied up and shivering, had carried her through the woods as she clung to him like a child. He’d seen her at her worst. If the roles were reversed, he didn’t think he’d be too eager to see himself. Not if he wanted to move on.
Six miles went by quickly, and Damon found himself back at the empty trailer, guzzling water. His phone was buzzing in the bedroom, but he took his time checking it. Cristov had texted him, presumably from Ricky’s bed.
Tricia coming back next Tues, R. planning a dinner for everyone at diner on Wednesday. You in?
Who was everyone? Was it Tricia’s idea, or Ricky’s? He sucked in a breath. He wanted to say yes. He wanted to see her. Soon. It had felt like long enough since the last time, at the trial, when she’d been ushered in and then away so quickly that they’d barely made eye contact. But Wednesday…that was the night he planned to leave for Miami. Fate had decided for him this time.
Can’t that night, he typed back. Cheese stuff.
He threw the phone on the bed and went back into the bathroom to take his second shower of the morning. He made it quick, washing off the sweat and stink. He still had an hour before he needed to be at the store, and he spent
it at the kitchen counter with another cup of coffee.
He listened to the clock tick, uneven. That clock had been slightly off for as long as he could remember. It was at the half-hour; the seconds slowed just slightly, almost imperceptibly. It was only through years and years of listening that Damon could recognize it.
He’d mentioned it to Cristov, once, and been surprised when his younger brother had no idea what Damon was talking about. Kennick said he’d noticed, and always wanted to get a new clock, because it drove him crazy. But Kennick never remembered that when he was at the store. Damon urged Kennick not to replace it. He liked the inconsistency. It helped him meditate.
He supposed that was a testament to the difference between them all. Cristov couldn’t sit still long enough to pay attention to minutia. Kennick paid attention to everything, wanted to fix everything, but his priorities made some things more memorable than others. Damon didn’t just pay attention to the minutia, he focused on it so deeply that he accepted every flaw, every little detail, as purposeful, useful.
And then, of course, there was Mina, who had grown up in that trailer but moved out to live with her girlfriends in another trailer when she hit 16. He’d asked her about the clock, curious. She’d laughed, told him that she did notice the fact that it was a little off. And then she’d leaned in, winked, and told him that the reason it was a little off was because she’d knocked it off the wall one day when she was sneaking some cookies from the cabinet. It had never worked quite the same after she put it back up.
So Damon sat and listened to the broken clock and thought about other things that were a little off. Like dreams and women and hearts and histories. It was plenty to think about to fill an hour.
5
The sigh Tricia released as the storage unit door rolled up could have sent a dandelion’s seeds scattering. Her eyes travelled over the stacked boxes, the familiar furniture, the pictures that had once lined her walls. So much stuff. So much damn stuff.
“Don’t worry,” Ricky said, sensing Tricia’s falling mood. “I’ll help you with everything. And you don’t have to deal with it anytime soon. Mi casa is su casa for as long as you need.”
“Thanks,” Tricia said, turning to her friend with a wan smile. “I appreciate it, really. But I’m going to have to get my life back together eventually…”
“No rush, though,” Kim said from Tricia’s other side. “I mean, the library will definitely take you back, but no one expects you to jump right back into things.”
Tricia nodded, only half-listening to her friends’ comforting words. She’d arrived back in Kingdom the previous afternoon, after spending a few nights at her parents’ house in Dover. She’d gone straight to Ricky’s, where she’d be crashing while she looked for a new place to live and got back on her feet.
She had enough in her savings, including a generous amount that she’d won in her civil suit against the Steel Dragons, that getting back to work wasn’t a huge priority. She’d only gotten the job in Massachusetts because it gave her day structure and routine, and a good chunk of time where she could focus on something other than herself. She expected the same benefits from getting her job back at the Kingdom Public Library.
But the thought of walking back into that little building, where everyone already knew everything, was daunting. She’d known her coworkers there for years, and she didn’t imagine they’d be any better at making her feel normal than her coworkers in Massachusetts had been. She never liked most of those women in the first place, and they’d had plenty of time to twist and turn her story while she was gone. She expected plenty of faux-sympathetic smiles and careful questions. She wasn’t looking forward to it.
Seeing all her things in storage, gathering dust, only made her more aware of how long she’d been gone, how different things were now. Even things that were exactly the same were different. Everything seemed bathed in a new light. All the old streets and stores – they were intimately familiar and yet wholly alien. The only thing that still felt real were her friends, Ricky and Kim, and even they seemed to be handling her with care.
She’d cried when she saw them again at last, the three women colliding in a big, sloppy embrace. She’d cried looking through the photo album from Kim’s wedding, which Tricia had missed. It looked to have been a beautiful day. She’d already seen most of the pictures on Facebook and in e-mails that Kim sent her, but looking at them in person drove an aching desire to turn back time through her heart. She should have been there, standing beside Ricky and Mina at Kim’s side.
Among the pictures of the bride and groom were a few pictures of Ricky and Cristov. When Tricia had left, Ricky and Cristov had been broken up, but they’d gotten back together at the wedding, and the pictures left no question as to why. Both her friends were in love. Real, pure, perfect love. And she felt like she’d missed the chance to see it happen. Even all the phone conversations didn’t make up for actually being there.
And, of course, there were other changes. Ricky had quit drinking. Kim, as mayor, had completely overhauled the town’s Main Street, making it cleaner, prettier, and more welcoming. There were new stores cropping up, businesses revitalized by the influx of tax revenue and tourist money. Tricia’s hometown wasn’t a crumbling phantom anymore. It was a quaint, picturesque hamlet in the hills. It was lovely. Tricia had never felt less comfortable, less at home.
“Are you sure you’re up for dinner?” Ricky asked, pulling Tricia from her thoughts. Kim and Ricky had planned a dinner at Sid’s, the little old diner that was still Kingdom’s best kept secret. Tricia had asked them to invite Kennick and Cristov; it seemed wrong that she had spent so little time with the men who had captured her best friend’s hearts.
She knew that she would always have a place in the sisters’ lives; by extension, that meant she should try and figure out her place in the Volanis brothers’ lives. Besides, she owed them her life. After they’d burst into the barn to rescue her, she’d only seen them fleetingly, in police stations and courthouses. She hoped that seeing them again, under normal circumstances, would bring her one step closer to feeling like it was all truly over.
“Of course,” Tricia said, nodding enthusiastically. “It was my idea that they come, remember?”
“Right,” Kim said, stepping forward to pull down the storage unit door once more. “Well, then we should get going. Here’s the key, by the way.”
Kim slipped the little fob into Tricia’s hand while Ricky linked her arm into Tricia’s. While the three women moved through the maze of hallways towards the exit, a question lingered on Tricia’s mind, unasked for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint – or didn’t want to pinpoint. Would Damon come?
She hadn’t specifically asked Ricky and Kim to invite him, but a part of her hoped they would do so. And, the Volanis brothers were close – if Kennick and Cristov weren’t with their women, they were with Damon. So it would make sense for him to come along. But she hadn’t asked. She didn’t know. Maybe…
“So, Sid’s wife, you know, Alise, she and Ana, who runs the market, they’ve been thick as thieves ever since they met, and Alise had Sid add all this weird stuff to the menu. I mean, not, like, weird, but like…weird. Not diner food, anyway. Spaghetti in squid ink. Borscht. Beef tartare.”
“No shit,” Tricia mused, sitting in the passenger seat while Kim drove and Ricky leaned forward from the backseat, speaking a mile a minute. It was Ricky’s car, but everyone felt safer with Kim at the wheel. Ricky may have quit drinking, but she was still an impulsive – and angry – driver.
“Some of it’s okay,” Kim offered. “I like the borscht.”
“That tartare thing though…” Ricky’s nose scrunched.
“It’s raw beef,” Kim said in a low tone, as though sharing a secret.
“Raw beef? Isn’t that illegal?” Tricia asked, mimicking Ricky’s expression.
“Raw fish is legal,” Kim said, turning into Sid’s parking lot. “They have that thing on the menu now about how pregna
nt women can’t eat it.”
“They still have that oyster po’boy on the menu though, right?” Tricia asked, licking her lips in anticipation. Ricky grinned.
“Yup. And the best French fries this side of the Delaware River,” Ricky said, leaning back to unfasten her seatbelt.
“The boys are already here,” Kim said, pointing to a Ford pick-up parked a few spaces away. “That’s Kennick’s truck.”
The boys, Tricia thought, then felt her heart tightening slightly. She looked at the truck. There was a backseat, but it was small. She didn’t think that three big men like the Volanis brothers would feel comfortable sitting in it together. Her heart loosened, falling at the same time. She told herself to stop having feelings she had no right to have. If she wanted Damon there, she should have asked them to invite him. If he wasn’t there, she couldn’t be disappointed.
He probably doesn’t even want to see me, she thought suddenly. All she could do was remind him that a man had died at his hand. Maybe he didn’t care about that, about what he’d done. But she remembered the look on his face, when they’d finally got to safety. It was the look of a man who wouldn’t sleep well that night. Who wouldn’t sleep well for some time to come.
That was at least one thing they had in common.
Inside the diner, the gentle and happy clatter of conversation and silverware against ceramic covered the final confirmation of Tricia’s disappointment. Cristov and Kennick sat waiting for them at a corner booth. Cristov turned when Kennick nodded in the girls’ direction. Tricia put a smile on.
Kennick greeted his wife with a kiss, Cristov doing the same for Ricky. There was room at the end of both seats for Tricia, and she chose to sit beside Kennick and Kim – mostly because she was more interested in watching Cristov and Ricky. Marriage had settled things for the husband and wife. A boyfriend and girlfriend would provide more entertaining body language.