by Fields, MJ
She doesn’t say anything; just keeps walking.
Feels a little fucked up at my age, holding hands with a girl. Fucked up, but not horrible. Hell, maybe even good.
We end up back at the lake, where she stops and looks down at our hands and then up at me.
“I think I’m good now,” she says quietly.
“Not sure I am,” I tell her honestly.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing; why you’re doing this.”
“Not sure, either. But it feels good, so why not just let it happen?”
She looks confused, then pulls her hand away, and I let her.
“I’m not in a place to start a relationship.” She stares me straight in the eyes. “If I was, it wouldn’t be with someone like you.”
“And what exactly is someone like me?” I ask, a little fucking irritated.
She shakes her head. “Someone who just wants to get laid.”
“Be honest with yourself and answer this: what exactly do you want?”
“To be me. To be strong. To not be what everyone needs.”
“Except Mandee?”
“Mandee isn’t expecting anything from me. She’s my friend. I was able to get away from everyone and everything because of her.”
“It’s give and take with her, then,” I say, walking out onto the dock.
“Exactly.” She follows me. “See.”
“I see.” I motion to the dock, and she sits.
I sit behind her and pull her back against me. She tenses up.
“What are you doing?”
“What feels right.”
“It doesn’t feel right, Gage. It feels like you’re trying to fuck me so you can get off and get on with whatever issues you’re not dealing with.”
“Not gonna say that’s untrue.”
She elbows me, and I laugh.
“What? You got off. Did it feel wrong to you?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Exactly.”
“I’ve been cheated on, used, and deceived by people I trusted.”
“I’m not deceiving you. Been straight up with the fact I wanna fuck you. I’m not gonna use you any more than you’ll be using me. And Phoenix, I’m not asking you to be mine. I’m not here for that long. Neither are you. So, no promises will be broken. And I’m not asking you to promise me shit, either.”
“That’s not who I am,” she says quietly.
“Says the girl riding my lap a couple hours ago.”
Again, I get the elbow.
“Not being a dick. It was hot as fuck.”
“That’s not who I am.”
“Squirt, I have a feeling you have no fucking clue who you are, but I’d be glad to tear you open and show you.”
She stirs a little, but I don’t let go.
“I don’t think you know who you are, either.” She looks back at me.
“I know exactly who I am.”
She looks at me, not saying a word, with a clear question in her eyes. Who is Gage Falcon? Therefore, I give her what I can.
“Life fucks with good people, Phoenix. Can’t control anyone but you. Hell, you can’t even trust people you thought you could because they change. I’m not changing shit. I’m me. I say I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it.”
“Honest Gage, like honest Abe.” She smiles a little.
I nod. “Yeah. Just hope my life doesn’t end like his did.”
“Me, too.”
I am two seconds from taking her mouth because her eyes are begging for it, when she looks away.
“Fucking killing me, smalls,” I mutter then brace for the elbow.
She squirms out of my arms, and I have no choice but to let go. I have given her honest, yet she’s still lying to herself.
I get up and look out over the lake as I listen to her walk away.
I’m two seconds from giving her an expiration date on my offer when I feel hands on my back, pushing me hard. I reach back and grab her wrist as I allow myself to fall.
“No!” she cries out in a laugh, right before we hit the cold lake water.
I laugh when I pop up while she’s gasping and choking.
I grab her wrists and lift her up high. My feet touch the bottom; hers sure as hell don’t.
She stops choking. “It’s fucking cold, you ass!” Then she laughs.
“You’re flirting like a teenager, Phoenix.”
She laughs. “I am not acting like a teenager.”
“Good, ’cause you’ve got some big girl decisions to make.”
“And what decisions are they?” she asks, floating toward me.
“I’m not gonna chase ass that doesn’t want to be had. Never had to before.”
“I’m sorry I’m not a slut.” She doesn’t say it pissed off. She actually laughs.
“I can assure you I wouldn’t want you if you were,” I tell her straight up.
“But those other—”
“I was trying to...” I pause and shake my head.
“Look, if I’m going to consider doing something I never in a million years thought of doing before, you better at least treat me like you would a friend.”
“I don’t have female friends.”
She swims away, and I watch as she pushes herself up onto the dock. Then she looks back at me and smiles.
“If I’m gonna trust honest Gage, he better trust me.”
I swim over and climb out.
She’s shivering as she walks away.
I follow her up the path, soaked to the bone, just like her. She looks back a few times but keeps walking.
When I get to the Ranger, she stops on her front steps. “I’d offer you a shirt, but it wouldn’t fit.”
“Feel free to take it off, anyway.”
She rolls her eyes, hugging her body, her teeth chattering.
“Go inside and get warm,” I say as I walk up Mags’ steps to say goodnight, knowing damn well she’s waiting up to see that we made it back.
I look in the window as I start to tap and see her lying on the floor.
“Mags!” I yell as I open the door and run to her. “Come on, Mags. Babe, wake up. Wake up, Mags. Just wake up!”
“Gage?” Phoenix says, running in.
I start to lift her up, and she opens her eyes, looking at me in confusion.
“What happened?”
When I lift her, she cringes.
“Gotta put me down, my boy. It hurts.”
“What hurts?” I ask. “What hurts, Mags?”
I hear Phoenix on the phone, giving out the address to what I assume is the 911 operator.
“My hip,” she says. “I think I fell.” She puts her hand on her head. “Yes. Oh, it hurts.”
“Okay, Mags, we’re gonna get you to the hospital and get you all checked out, okay?”
“No, don’t fuss over me.”
“Mags, shut the hell up, you stubborn, damn woman.”
Mags laughs, but I know damn well she’s in pain. I know this woman better than my own mother.
“Don’t move her,” I hear Phoenix from behind me.
I look back at her. I’m pissed, scared, and she seems to get that shit.
“They’ll be here soon, okay?” She walks up and grips my shoulder, squatting down by Mags. “You get into that mason jar, Mags?”
Mags smiles. “No, honey girl, but it sounds pretty good right now.” She looks at me. “You two take a swim?”
“She pushed me in, Mags.” I laugh because I know she will get a kick out of it, and I need to see her smile.
“You deserve it?”
“Suppose so,” I tell her truthfully.
“And you pulled her in with you?”
Phoenix smiles. “Yeah, he did.”
“You two are good for each other.”
“Friends?” Phoenix asks me.
“Yeah, squirt, friends.”
“That’s my boy.” Mags squeezes my hand.
I sit on the floor, soaked, with Mags’ head on my
lap, while Phoenix stands.
“I’ll be back.”
“Where you going?” I ask.
“To get you some dry clothes. I’m sure you’re gonna want to ride with her,” she says, walking out the door.
“She’s a good girl, Gage,” Mags says quietly.
“She’s a pain in the ass.”
She winks, but doesn’t say anything else. She’s hurt. Mags is fucking hurt.
Phoenix gets back at the same time as the ambulance.
Mags gives them some hell. I expected it. While she is being a pain in the ass, I change my clothes again.
I pull off my shirt, and Phoenix looks away, scowling.
I look over my shoulder at the source of her annoyance and see a female EMT checking out my back.
Shit timing, but otherwise it works.
I drop my shorts for added affect, and Phoenix looks at me, mouth dropping open.
“What?” I ask, trying not to let on that I know exactly what.
Her eyes cast down at my boxer briefs and they get wide as hell.
“You think I should turn around?” I ask.
She looks up at me. “As your friend, I’m thinking, unless you want that bimbo to grope you with her hands and not just her eyes, then you might wanna stay facing this way.”
“And as your friend, I’m asking how it feels.”
“What do you mean?” she hisses.
“That motherfucker at the bar staring at your tits pisses me off just as much as this is pissing you off.”
She opens and shuts her mouth, trying to say something smart back, like a fish trying to get air as I throw on clothes.
“Save it for when you, a grown-ass woman, can speak your truth. You want me just as much as I want you.” I turn around and walk over to the stretcher.
“Why the hell do I need an IV?” Mags snaps at the chick Phoenix was pissed at.
“Mags, let the woman do her job so we can get you to the hospital and see what we’re facing. Sooner that happens, the sooner you get back to the Landing.”
She sighs and looks up at me as the woman sticks her a few times, trying to get a vein.
It hurts her, and I hurt because she hurts. This fucking sucks.
Chapter Eight
Black
Phoenix
I look out the window in Mags’ kitchen, knowing she’s not coming back for a while. She broke her hip, had surgery, and at her age, things don’t heal fast or easy.
I followed them to the hospital and waited in the waiting room to give Gage a ride back home. It was six hours before he came out. Well, six hours before I was awakened by a big hand clamping my knee and startling me.
He asked what I was doing, and I told him. He looked shocked that I had come, and I told him that I adored that woman, too. He took me to her.
In her drugged-up state, she told me to take her boy home and put him to bed. Gage laughed at her words, and then told her he wasn’t going to leave her because she needed surgery, and if they threw her in jail, she wouldn’t get it. She fell asleep shortly after that, and he sent me home.
I came back the next day and waited with him for her to come out. I actually held his hand. It was awkward at first, though he didn’t seem to think so, and it became less so to me very quickly.
She came out of recovery, miserable and ornery, which made him a lot less anxious than he had been while she was under the knife.
I convinced him to go home, shower, and get some sleep. When he came back three hours later, I knew he hadn’t slept at all.
It’s been a week, and Gage has been with her every night. I go down into the city during the day to sit with her so he can leave and work on the property—that damn fence he’s hell-bent on building alone—and also because I miss her like crazy.
She’s miserable to most of them, but not to me. By the smile she gives him when he comes in, she’s not to Gage, either.
He messages me about an hour after I leave and at least a couple times throughout the night.
- You good?
I reply, Yep. You good?
His reply: Yep.
Other than that, we don’t talk much. In a sense, it’s good. I mean, I don’t feel pressured to give in to what he wants. What I know I want more and more every time I look at him, see him with Mags, or breath in his scent.
I step away from the window and grab my cup of coffee off the counter and finish it before heading into the shower so I can head to the hospital. They may be transporting Mags to a rehab center today.
Pulling down the dirt road, I see Gage pulling in. I move from the middle of the road so he can pass by.
He stops when he gets beside me, and I roll down the window.
His aviators are covering his eyes that I assume are red from lack of sleep, his beard needs a trim, and although his hair is totally gorgeous, it’s a mess.
“She’s full of piss and vinegar today,” he tells me.
“Are they moving her?”
“They say so. She told them to go to hell. She’s getting crankier and crankier. I offered to have a nurse and physical therapist come to my place, but she told me she wouldn’t be my problem. Then she told me she was sick of me sitting there, staring at her, knowing I had shit to do. Told me to get out.”
“She did not!” I gasp.
He shakes his head. “Yeah, she did. Told me I should make sure you don’t stop in today, either.”
“Ouch.”
He nods. “Got a bunch of boards in the back of the truck. Gonna build a ramp today. She gets thrown out on her ass, she’ll need it.”
“You need help?”
“Nah, you probably have shit to do.”
“No. My afternoon schedule just cleared itself up.”
“You know how to use a hammer?”
“No, but I’m sure you can teach me.”
A shit-ass grin creeps up on his face, and all the feelings he evoked in me that had been asleep for a week wake up.
“Get your ass turned around then and follow me down.”
The entire trip down to his house, I am tension and tingles. I’m going to be alone with Gage for the first time in a week. In the times I have been away from the bar, away from Mags, away from him, he is all I have thought about.
Stepping out of the Jeep, I watch as he opens the tailgate to his truck and pulls out a large piece of wood. A two-by-four? I have no idea, but watching him lift and pull it out does nothing to calm the fire igniting inside of me.
I wipe the moisture off my forehead, embarrassed that I seem to be sweating.
He looks up and sighs. “Rain.”
Thank God. I almost laugh at myself.
He turns and looks at me. “Gonna have to do this in the barn.”
For an hour, he saws and measures, and I write down numbers as he spits them out to me. I love watching him concentrate and the way his eyes squint when he’s trying to figure something out, the way he gives a little nod when he’s mastered it, and the way he looks back at me when giving me a number or measurement and looks pleased that I’m there.
The rain starts coming down harder, and the sound of it against the tin roof is almost mesmerizing.
When the lights flicker, he sets down the round saw and steps toward the door.
“Looks pretty bad out there.” I walk over and stand beside him.
The clouds are moving fast, nearly black ones replacing the light gray. The wind is howling, and the rain is coming down harder.
“Probably gonna lose power.” He turns around and looks up. “Should get the extension cords to hook up the generators.” He looks back at me. “I’m gonna lift you up, and you grab them.”
He points up and I look.
“Don’t you think a ladder would work?”
“They’re in the other barn. Not sure we have time.”
“I have a skirt on.”
He holds back a smirk. “I won’t look.”
I stand in front of him and lift my arms. “I feel like a two-yea
r-old.”
He chuckles as he bends down, gripping me below the knees, and hoists me up toward the orange extension cords hanging on a huge nail on the beam.
I try to pull the first down, but it’s stuck.
I look down and tell him, “It won’t come down.”
“Gotta stand up. It’s probably looped around the spike.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
He grips my ass that’s on his shoulder and lifts me. “Grab it and pull, Phoenix.”
“Oh, my God, you’re crazy,” I squeal.
Just then, the lights go out.
“Gage!”
“Squirt, I got a hold of you; why you yelling like I’ve disappeared?”
“It’s dark!” I yell, and he laughs.
“Grab the cords, and we’ll fix that issue.”
“I can’t feel wherever it’s stuck...Oh shit!” I start to fall, and he catches me.
“Phoenix, you’ve got to relax.”
We end up nose to nose, and I can feel his hot breath against me.
“Gonna lift you one more time,” he says, breath labored.
“Okay,” I whisper as my stomach knots.
As he lifts me, I feel his nose slide down my chin. Then soft skin is against my neck. His callused hands move under the fabric of my shirt, and I hear myself let out a whimper.
He pauses. “You good?” His voice is rough and strained.
“Um, yep. Yes, I’m good.”
“You reach up there and grab it, okay?”
I do and pull myself up to reach where I think it’s stuck. The cord gives, and I slip.
Legs and arms flailing, I spin to grab him so I don’t fall and end up wrapped around him.
He grips my ass tight. “Christ, Phoenix.”
His muffled moan is against my bare thigh, and I realize just what position we have ended up in, in the dark.
I hear him groan and inhale deeply. Then I feel something, his nose, rub against my upper thigh.
I grab his hair as my body tenses.
He lifts my other leg to his shoulder.
“You smell like heaven,” he groans.
“Oh, God.”
“Can you reach the cord?”
I lift one arm up and blindly reach for what I know is there.
“Got it.”
“Good. Now hang on tight.”
Half a second later, I hear a rip and feel his tongue.
“Oh, hell.”