The next six months were going to be fucking unbearable.
I took a deep breath and sealed my fate. “Alright then,” I said. “Let’s grow some weed.”
Louise
The next day, after my shift at the garden store, I went to visit Kayley. I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to tell her about the plan. If she knew what I was doing she’d start talking sense into me, repeating all the things that were already keeping me awake at night: that I’d get caught, or shot, that people would find out what I’d done and hate us. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to so easily push all the protests aside, when they came from her. And even if I did ignore her and go ahead, all she’d have to do would be to threaten to go to the cops and then I’d have no choice but to shut down. She had to stay totally oblivious.
I’d thought I was going to have to fake happiness with Kayley, but it was surprising how easy it was to slip into it. We’d spent so much of our lives together, there was a kind of inertia that the disease couldn’t stop. We talked about boys at school and getting her a new backpack; about whether she was allowed to watch that cop show, Blue & Red, on Netflix (no, way too much sex and violence); about new Ben and Jerry’s flavors we’d like to see.
And then I made the mistake of mentioning last year’s vacation. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I tried to scrape together enough for us to go somewhere each summer: last year had been camping in the Los Padres forest. Kayley grinned excitedly. “This summer—” she started.
And then she stopped. And her lip trembled.
I pulled her quickly into a hug. “Hey,” I said, stroking her hair. She was starting to tremble. “Hey! It’ll be fine. We’ll just make it fall, instead of summer.”
She gulped and nodded. But when she eventually pulled back from me, her face was white. “Can we plan it?” she asked.
I looked at her, thrown for a second.
“Can we plan it?” she asked again. “Really plan it?”
And then I understood.
“Yeah,” I said. “Absolutely.” We got out her phone and started planning where we were going to go, once she’d recovered, and what we were going to do when we got there. Every meal. Every last detail. Because both of us needed to feel like it was really going to happen.
While we were browsing hotels, she suddenly said out of nowhere, “This isn’t bullshit, is it?”
For once, I didn’t pull her up on her language. “No,” I said firmly. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “It’s not bullshit.”
And I told myself it wasn’t.
I’d been wavering since the talk with Sean the night before. I knew I needed his help and I was glad of it. But getting mixed up with him changed the whole feel of the thing. When it was just me doing it, in my apartment, I could almost kid myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It felt just like growing any other plant. But as soon as I started working with him, it felt like I would become part of the whole system, a drug grower connected with dealers and enforcers and God knows who else.
I knew it made sense. I knew I couldn’t operate in a vacuum if this was going to work. I knew I’d been kidding myself that I could. But none of that made it easier. By even talking to Sean, I was getting myself—and by extension, Kayley—involved in a world I’d always swore I’d stay away from. Sean was everything my folks had warned me about when I was a kid. I’d always been a good girl and men didn’t come much worse.
Except...sometimes, when I looked into his eyes, he didn’t seem as ruthless as everyone made out. I was still scared of him, but less than when he’d first grabbed my arm, up on the roof. I was having trouble imagining him actually hurting me. But I was having no trouble imagining him doing other things to me.
I flushed and hoped that Kayley didn’t notice. Whenever I was around him, my mind slipped into fantasy mode. Each touch of his hands was enough to send me into a downward spiral that always ended with him on top of me...or me on top of him...or him behind me. I was finding that I was permanently, shamefully wet when he was close. No man had ever done that to me.
What was maddening was that sometimes, just occasionally, I’d feel his eyes on me, a lick of heat traveling up and down my body, or he’d narrow his eyes in that certain way, when we were arguing, like he wanted to take me over his knee. I’d get just the tiniest hint that maybe he wanted me too. Then it was gone again, too quickly for me to be sure I hadn’t just imagined it. If he hadn’t been interested in me, it would have been easy: I could have written off my fantasies as just that, fantasies, and pushed them down inside. But the little hints of interest were just enough to keep them bubbling up to the surface, every damn time.
Hence the wavering. Could I really become a criminal, like Sean? And could I even function, working side-by-side with him for six long months? What if something...happened? What if the hints were real and he made a pass at me? Hell, what did I mean, make a pass? Sean wasn’t the sort of guy who’d make a pass, he’d just throw me down on the ground and—
I pressed my thighs together.
Nothing was going to happen. I wasn’t going to get involved with him. I wasn’t going to bring someone like that into Kayley’s life: no way. I’d take cold showers three times a day if I had to. Sean and I would be just business and, at the end of six months, we’d go our separate ways.
I pulled Kayley close and kissed the top of her head. For her, I’d make it work.
***
After the hospital, I headed straight for Sean’s apartment and knocked on his door. A moment later, he opened it...and froze.
“What?” I asked. I looked down at myself. I wasn’t wearing anything out of the ordinary, let alone sexy, just a green scoop-neck top and blue jeans.
He glanced away for a second, then back at me. “Nothing. Come in.”
He wasn’t topless, this time, although the black tank top didn’t cover much. It almost made him look bigger, drawing attention to his tight waist and the way he seemed to flare out in an X from that point, up to the broad, muscled chest and shoulders and down to his hips.
“You want coffee?” he asked, and walked through to the kitchen area.
I trailed behind him, a little thrown. I’d never thought about him doing something normal, like eating breakfast or drinking coffee. I guess until that moment, I’d only seen him as a criminal, smashing stuff up or picking up women in bars and pounding them into the mattress so loud I could hear it through my floor. I knew now he played guitar. What else did he do? Did he have friends? Family?
He leaned against a wall. I hopped up onto the counter and perched there, then took the mug of coffee he poured for me. “You—” He caught himself and started again. “We...are going to need a grow house. Somewhere we can give over entirely to growing.”
I nodded and sipped, looking surreptitiously around. I suddenly wanted to know more about him. There were no family photos that I could see...actually, there were no photos at all.
“It’s got to be in a neighborhood where people won’t ask too many questions,” Sean told me, “but close enough that it’s not a pain in the arse to drive to, because we’re going to be there a lot. And we need to be on the right turf.”
“Turf?” I asked disbelievingly. “Like, West Side Story, ‘you’re on our turf,’ turf?”
He nodded.
“It’s really like that? I mean, I know about gangs and stuff, but….”
“If we grow in someone else’s area, our place will be trashed. Or burned. Or reported to the cops. At best.”
“At best? What’s ‘at worst?’”
He looked away, suddenly unable to meet my eyes. “It won’t happen. I know a neighborhood that’s quiet, now. We can grow there.”
My stomach churned. From the concern in his eyes, he was worried specifically about me. God, what the hell am I getting into? And then I thought about how I’d been going to try to do all this on my own, without six-foot-something of criminal muscle on my side. I winced.
He drained his coffee. “Yo
u ready to go house hunting?” he asked.
God, we’re really doing this. It wasn’t just taking the step of finding a grow house; it was the fact I was heading out with him, trusting him to take me who-knows-where for who-knows how long. Until now, I’d only ever seen him for a few minutes at a time. This was like our first proper date.
He led me downstairs and around the side of our building to an alley. His car was a glossy black 1960’s era Ford Mustang and it loomed with almost as much evil, muscular charm as Sean himself.
“You park it here?” I asked, looking around. The thing must have been worth a fortune. Without answering, he opened the door. “You don’t even lock it?!” I couldn’t imagine my car lasting an hour if I parked it in a dark alley, and my car is a piece of junk. “Why doesn’t it get stolen?”
He just looked at me and then I got it.
It didn’t get stolen because everyone knew who it belonged to.
I climbed in. The inside was just as impressive as the outside: old, but every bit of chrome was shining. “I thought you’d drive something European,” I mumbled. When he turned to look at me, I said, “You’re Irish, right? I mean, originally. You sound Irish.”
He nodded. “Born in Ireland. Ended up here.” He went quiet for a moment, staring at the steering wheel, and I stayed quiet, too, hoping he’d say more. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to, he ran his hand over the dash and said, “It’s been with me a long time. I like it because it’s American. I wanted to fit in.” And then he shook his head, as if he thought he was being stupid.
Before I could say anything, he turned the key and the engine roared into life, the V8 throb echoing off the walls of the alley and booming back to us, making the whole car shake. It was deafening and over-the-top and wonderful. Sean reached down for the gear shift...and everything stopped.
I was suddenly aware of just how close we were, in the car. His hand, gripping the knob of the gear shift, was inches from my knee. He could grab that just as easily and my whole body stiffened minutely as I imagined the warmth of his palm through my jeans, the way his fingers would squeeze hard before he swung his whole body across the car and onto me, a leg pushing between my thighs, his other hand sliding up under my top—
The car didn’t move. His hand just stayed there on the gear stick. What’s he waiting for?
Unless...he was staring at my knee, imagining the exact same thing.
My breathing started to speed up. I told myself I was being crazy. Of course he’s not thinking about grabbing you. I waited three more breaths and then forced myself to look up at him.
He looked up at the exact same moment and we stared into each other’s eyes. The expression on his face made a slow-motion explosion go off in my chest, the embers falling down to ignite a new fire in my groin. He looked...hungry. As if he was barely restraining himself from pouncing on me. And he looked angry, as if it was all my fault, as if I was teasing him into it. But I’m not doing anything!
I heard the gears shift as he finally moved the stick. Only then did he break my gaze and look out through the windshield. We surged forward.
And drove into hell.
Sean
Normally, driving the Mustang makes me forget everything else. For me, the low rumble of the engine, soaking through the steering wheel and into my body, is better than any massage, no matter how many oiled-up women you throw in.
But that afternoon, as we cruised through the streets, all I could think about was who was sitting next to me. Even when I wasn’t looking at her, I was more aware of her than I’d ever been of any woman. I could hear every soft breath she drew, smell the warm, spicy scent of her skin, hear the scrape of her denim against the leather as she shifted position....I’d been in bed with women and thought about them less. And when I did glance across at her, pretending I needed to check the door mirror...it was hard as hell to look away again. This girl had done a number on me. Some sort of goddess-of-nature witchcraft, maybe.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to grab hold of her, drag her onto the back seat and ram those jeans down her legs, push between her thighs and bury myself inside her. It was bad enough that she had to get involved in my world to save her sister. I wasn’t going to mess her up even more by letting her get involved with me.
Arriving was almost a relief, because it distracted me from thinking about her. I heard her intake of breath as she got her first look at our new home.
I’d taken her to the neighborhood where I’d scared off the Serbians. Malone’s turf, and I knew him well enough that I could make that work. He’d insist that we sold through him, but that was cool—we had to sell to someone.
In the daylight, it looked even worse than at night. Single story houses built so cheaply that they started leaking and rotting the second they went up. Chain link fencing, sometimes with barbed wire. No one gave a shit about mowing their lawns here, so every yard was overgrown. Sometimes there’d be a plant in a pot, but it was always yellow and sickly or just plain dead, left behind by some previous resident when they’d seen sense and gotten the hell out.
“God….” said Louise from the seat next to me. Our apartment block was bad, but I don’t think she’d realized how much worse things could get. We drove past gang members sprawled in lawn chairs, watching us pass with one hand on their guns. We passed pit bulls and Dobermans who ran at the car, snapping and snarling at us before their chains brought them up short. Many of the houses were boarded up. Of the ones that weren’t, maybe half were occupied by the kind of people you really didn’t want to mess with. The other half were like fortresses, with bars on the windows and reinforced doors, their occupants living in fear of the first half.
“We really have to grow here?” Louise whispered.
“People won’t ask questions,” I told her. “The cops aren’t welcome, here.” I pulled over and pointed to a rental sign. “How about that one?” Like all the others, the house had been white once. Now it was every shade from gray to green, bleached by the sun, and stained by mold. The houses on either side were derelict.
Louise looked up and down the street. “Why that one? That’s like the worst one on the street.”
“We’re growing in it, not living in it. We want the worst one. The realtor’ll be desperate to rent it and they won’t care who to.” I punched the realtor’s number into my phone, then passed it across to Louise. “You call,” I said. “They’ll trust a woman.”
The call gave me another chance to drink her in. It wasn’t just that gorgeous face with its delicate cheekbones and that full lower lip. It wasn’t just the body with its perfect curves. It was her whole manner: the softness of her voice, the way she looked so serious when she listened to the realtor’s reply, the way she nodded and bit her lip as she thought. She was classy, a world away from the women who flung themselves at me in bars. She didn’t belong in this place any more than a Ferrari or some exquisitely carved violin.
Louise gave me back the phone. “We can look round it tomorrow morning,” she said. Then she shook her head. “But how the hell are we going to pay the rent? I mean, it’s cheap compared to my apartment but I’m flat broke. The hospital bills are eating everything up.” She looked up at me with big eyes.
I’d been worried about this. It wasn’t that I didn’t know a solution; it was that I didn’t like it.
“You need a loan,” I said. “Enough for the rent for six months. That way it’s taken care of and you don’t have to budget for it every month. And it’ll be cheaper if you pay six months up front.”
She shook her head again. “I’ve been calling loan companies since this started. If I take every loan I can get and max out my cards, I can just barely pay the hospital bills Kayley’s insurance won’t cover. I’m going to be up to my neck in debt. There’s no more credit left.”
My guts tightened. “Not that sort of loan.”
Louise
Sean drove us to a strip mall that had long since died. At first, it looke
d as if every business was closed down, their windows boarded or broken. But there was one other car in the parking lot: a gleaming Audi. It was parked in front of a small single story unit, the sort of place that could have housed a dental surgeon or a lawyer, and that place looked as if it might still be open. There was no sign on the door, though, and the blind across the window meant we couldn’t see inside. There was no clue as to what sort of business it was.
Sean parked and then sat there staring at the place as if he’d rather walk off a cliff than through the door.
“What?” I asked. “What is this place?”
He looked at me, then looked at the office in front of us. “Just...do as I say in there okay?” I’d never heard his voice so tense. Tense with anger, as if he was having to count to ten, over and over again, just to hold himself in check.
We got out and Sean slammed his door so hard it hurt my ears. He stalked in ahead of me, glaring from side to side like a soldier entering enemy territory.
Inside, there was a waiting room. One guy was sprawled in a chair, flicking through a magazine. Another lounged against the door that led through to the back room. Both of them were in suits, but they didn’t look like they belonged in them. They were both heavy-set, bulky with muscle under a thick layer of fat. The sort of guys who barely seem to have necks.
They must have known Sean, because they both sneered at him when he walked in. Their expressions changed when I came in behind him. I felt two pairs of eyes work their way down my body. Crude, but practiced, as if they’d done it plenty of times. I shrank away from them a little. Sean stepped forward aggressively. “Tell him we’re here!” he snapped.
The one guarding the inner door knocked, leaned inside and muttered something: The Irish and then a lengthy description of me that ended in -itch. I saw Sean’s biceps swell as his hands tightened into fists. I put a hand on his back, acting on instinct, and saw his lungs fill as he took a slow, deep breath.
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