Wild Cards

by R. C. Stephens

  Luc moved in closer to me now, so that he’s lying beside me on his side facing me, his hand slowly caressed my arm. “I didn’t like to see you with another guy either. That’s why I followed you into that room. I needed to know what you were doing, only I didn’t have the guts to stop you….then you stormed off and I tried to pull away from the redhead, but she kept on pulling me back to her and rubbing her…” I put up my hand to stop him from speaking; I didn’t want to hear it.

  “Sorry,” he said with a shy smile. It made me laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked with a silly grin.

  “You, Luc, you’re such a contradiction to me…you are this big massive guy. You're strong and powerful and honestly, I think you almost made Scott Wellington pee himself. You are one scary dude. When you said you were raised mafia, I didn’t get it until I saw you threaten Scott. Holy shit, you were fucking scary. I was glad you were on my side,” I giggled.

  “I want to always be by your side,” he said, caressing my cheek with the back of his hand. He was like a gentle giant.

  “That’s what makes me laugh, Luc. How you can go from scary mafia to soft caring man in less than ten minutes.”

  “It’s who I am, Vicky. I was raised to have power. I was raised to control things and garner respect. I never wanted that life, but I know how to use it if need be. If it means I can protect you, then at least I know it wasn’t for nothing. I always want to protect you.”

  “I’m broken, Luc, I don’t know what I have to offer you,” I admitted sadly.

  “I am a broken man too, Vicky, and I don’t know what I can offer you, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting you.” he said, as he slowly caressed my hair, then my cheek. Then his fingers moved over my lips as if he was tracing my face. “You are so beautiful. Please let me in,” he said with a deep raspy voice.

  “I want to, Luc, but you may not like what you see once I do.” It hurt to admit the truth.

  “That’s for me to decide,” he said, looking me square in the eyes, it almost sounded like a challenge. “Even though the truth is you may not like what you see once I reveal my truths. I’m a monster. I’m not good for you. I just can’t help myself. I can’t stay away from you,” he said with deep conviction. He really believed it. I don’t understand, he’d been watching out for my wellbeing since the first night we met. Those are not the actions of a monster.

  “Explain it to me, Luc, I want to understand. You’ve been kind to me since the moment I met you,” I said as my shoulders deflated.

  “I’m no good. I was trying to spare you, but you keep on getting yourself into trouble and I can’t walk away knowing that you do that.”

  “I don’t want to be spared. Trust me, I’m a tough girl, I can handle whatever it is you need to say. I don’t know what it is but when I look at you, when I see the sadness in your eyes, the fact that you are alone…I feel the same way… I have no family. I’m alone like you… I’m drawn to you….” I confessed as my desperation for him skyrocketed. I wanted him so badly it hurt.

  “I know…” he answered, gazing at me with heated eyes. “I’m drawn to you too…but I don’t know what to do with it, Vicky…you need to understand that I am not a good person. I’ve done bad things….me and you…we aren’t the same. Whatever has made you sad is not something bad that you’ve done. I’ve hurt people. I’m a dangerous man,” he admitted, shaking his head. “I’m sorry I’m giving you mixed signals here.” He got off the bed and walked over to his closet. A moment later he stepped out with a large white t-shirt. “Here put this on,” he said passing it to me. “If we are going to talk, I can’t have you half naked beside me,” he grinned softly.

  Watching him contemplate his next words, I realized what an intense man he was. Everything about him was puzzling and contradictory. How could he be bad when he was so good? Even his looks were an enigma. He was big and strong, and tough and rugged on the outside, but inside was something else. He was broken and soft, despite his rough around the edges demeanor.

  Luc’s sad green eyes flicked up to mine as he lay back down beside me on the bed. “The fact that we are alone in here makes me nervous,” he admitted with a boyish grin.

  “Why? I don’t understand when you say stuff like that. You’ve said you are experienced with women…” I began to say when he cut me off.

  “It’s not because I am nervous because I don’t know what to do with you sexually…” he laughed. “Trust me, Vicky, I know I am good in bed,” he said lifting up a hand. His words caused a burst of lust to surge through my body.

  “What is it, Luc? I want to understand.”

  “I know,” he nodded, looking like he was collecting his thoughts or maybe garnering the courage to speak. “I told you that my family is involved in organized crime. It wasn’t easy for me to leave the family. My father wanted me to take over one day. I was his eldest son,” he paused but I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to interrupt. He was finally talking. “When I left France I went to Canada, Toronto… a large city there…” he explained but I still don’t speak, even though I know what Toronto is and I’d been there.

  “I met a girl, I fell in love with her. I lied to her about who I really was and why I was in Canada. She was a law student and she grew up with an alcoholic for a mother and no father. She was verbally and physically abused her whole life. I found a connection with her and we fell in love and got married. Only it wasn’t so simple, she had no clue that my family was mafia. She got pregnant and I didn’t want to abandon her, like everyone else in her life had. So I married her, without telling her that I was running illegal gambling sites, high stakes poker games, or any other dirty work my father had me do for him,” he paused and turned his head. Our eyes met. I could drown in those eyes, although hearing that his ex-wife was pregnant made my stomach sink for some reason. He was gauging my reaction so far. I bet he was wondering when I would run out the door. I understood that it was hard for him to look at me when he was speaking. He turned his head back down, so that his eyes were focused on his stomach as he lay beside me.

  “Go on Luc, it’s okay, I want to hear your story,” I said, urging him forward. Nothing he had said so far seemed horrific. It sounded like his father forced him into a life he never wanted and wouldn’t let him escape. He was clearly ashamed of his position. His story made me sad because he’d been feeling alone a lot longer than I had. It made my heart hurt for him.

  “My father framed me into doing a large money transfer for him. He was mad at me for wanting to leave the family. To him it was an issue of respect and worrying that other crime families would view my defection as weakness. My father informed me that CSIS and Interpol were following me, and that’s when I broke down. I started drinking heavily and became a real asshole to my wife. Then I was arrested and my cellmate gave me cocaine, which I took willingly,” he explained. I could see how torn up he was over this. It was really hard for him to talk about and a part of me felt guilty that I was making him relive all these bad parts of his life, but I hoped that maybe opening up to me would make him feel better too. He had probably had all his feelings over this bottled up for too long.

  “I want to hear everything, Luc.” Maybe I should be scared of him, his family sounded hard core, but he’s just a broken man and I’m just a broken girl.

  “Okay…I couldn’t handle the jail cell, I had suffered from claustrophobia since I was a teenager, it developed when my father locked me up in a hole in the ground in one of his warehouses,” he said, causing me to gasp.

  “Oh, Luc, I’m so sorry for the things that you have been through,” I said, wanting to hug him, console him, but I know I shouldn’t if I wanted him to talk more. He seemed to want to run away from contact and I didn’t want to push him.

  “When I was released on bail, I went out to a bar to drink and I took more cocaine. I knew at that point my wife knew the truth about me and I had to look her in the face and own up to my lies. Only I was a coward, I was scared s
he would leave me. I found drinking and drugs as a way to cover the pain of loss.” He took in a large inhale and let it out. Still not looking my way. I rubbed his back with my hand and he didn’t flinch. “I beat the shit out of my wife…I put her in the hospital… I almost killed her and I killed the baby growing inside her…. And the worst part is, I don’t remember a thing. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t coming home or why there was blood in our apartment when I finally made it home.” As he said the words, his unshed tears began to fall and I understood why he had been blocking himself off from relationships and women. I felt frozen at the last part of his story, he almost killed a woman, maybe he was dangerous….I pulled my hand away from his back.

  I gasped and a cold shiver ran through my body. “How do you know you hurt her if you don’t remember doing it?” I asked, needing to understand more.

  “I had one of the family contacts track her down, it led me to a hospital. She was in a psychiatric ward, Vicky. I broke her. I did that to her. After all the abuse she experienced at her mother’s hands, I almost killed her. She told me herself,” he explained with a shaky voice and red eyes.

  “I, I…I don’t know what to say….” I said, wrapping my arms around my waist. I knew he expected me to run at this point. Maybe like everyone else that had run from him his whole life, but I wasn’t running. I just needed time to think, to process everything.

  “Do you understand now why I am a monster? Why I can’t touch you?” he asked desperately. Maybe he wanted to scare me off, but I still wasn’t running. He was torn up over what happened to his wife, but he didn’t even remember doing it.

  “How is it that you don’t remember the attack, Luc?”

  “I went to see a psychiatrist when I arrived to New York, I needed to understand myself…he explained that I suffered from a drug induced psychosis. It means that the drugs and alcohol mixed in my system had put me into a psychotic state, in which I must have become paranoid. Because I had been locked up and I was suffering from a severe amount of stress from the slew of charges against me, I cracked Vicky,” his voice cracked as he admitted it sorrowfully.

  “You said that you haven’t had sex in two years, but do you drink alcohol or do drugs?” I asked, knowing that this would be the obvious precursor to his bad behavior.

  “No, absolutely not,” he answered vehemently. “I’ve always become an asshole when I drank alcohol, it’s like an allergy for me. It does bad things to my personality and brings out a violent side I don’t normally have.”

  I nodded my head hoping I understood. The fact that he had a problem with alcohol scared me a bit, especially with having an alcoholic father at home. Only my father hadn’t become violent, only resigned. From the sounds of it, he was a tortured soul. So he couldn’t drink alcohol. It seemed like he had that part of it under control.

  “Where is your wife now?” I asked needing to know. Was he still married? Was she dead?

  “Ex-wife,” he corrected. “She’s with her high school sweetheart. She had warned me from the start that she wasn’t capable of love. I thought it was because of her broken past and her parents’ divorce. She was never completely explicit about the fact that she had been in love with the same guy all her life, and he had gone and disappeared on her. If she had told me that much I would have understood I never had a dying chance with her. Instead she gave me the part of her that she could, and I had hoped for more….I came to Canada in search of a normal life. Alexis was part of that, she was smart and real, not like the sluts I told you about back home. I put her in danger, Vicky. Since I am coming clean with you, you should also understand that contact with me is dangerous,” he said lifting his t-shirt and revealing a delicious eight pack. His wide shoulders and strong chest were smooth and over his left chest muscle was the tattoo of an eagle with its wings spread out. As my eyes roamed his chest down to his abdomen, even in the dim light of the room I noticed the rough skin in the center of his stomach. Was that why he wore the tank top?

  I scoot over the bed to get closer to him and lowered my head to the level of his stomach. He had a serious scar. As my finger ran over the scar, Luc hissed as if my touch had burned him. It made me sad to think that he’d been so broken that it was hard for him to feel the touch of a woman.

  “What is this?” I asked, inspecting the scar closely.

  “A bullet wound.”

  “You were shot?” I asked with round eyes.

  “Yes, my father had threatened Alexis, he sent my brother Henri to send a message. He would hurt her if I tried to leave the family. My father called me up to warn me that Henri was going to pay Alexis a visit, and by the time I reached her, Henri was threatening her, we fought. Henri had a gun on him. I think he wanted to scare Alexis or maybe even kill her…” he paused. It must be the look of terror on my face at the mention of threats and guns.

  “I told you I was a monster, have I scared you enough for one evening?” he asked with sheer honesty.

  “Please tell me more,” I urged him forward, despite the fact that yes, he was scaring me.

  “Henri had smashed Alexis against a wall and she was hurt, we scuffled and I got a hold of him, hoping Alexis would run away. Only she was probably in shock and she was stuck in the same spot. Henri had held a gun to her and he still had the gun flailing everywhere as we fought. I feared it going off and Alexis getting caught in the crossfire, but that’s not how it played out.”

  “Your brother shot you?” I asked with disgust.

  “Yes, then he ran away and Alexis’s boyfriend and long-time love came to help us. He stopped me from bleeding out onto the road and he took care of her.”

  “You took a bullet for your ex-wife?” I asked, smacking my hand to my mouth, his story was becoming more than tragic by the passing minutes, and he didn’t even end up with the girl. Who was this Alexis? I didn’t like her one bit by the sounds of it. She led him on. Even though he lied to her, she wasn’t honest either. I now understood why he was being so open and honest about his past and his feelings. He had been burned before.

  “Luc, I’m so sorry that you have had to live through such a hard time,” I said apologetically. I knew I couldn’t push him and I didn’t want to touch him and make him more nervous than he clearly was.

  “I should get you home,” he smiled lightly.

  “I don’t want to leave, not yet. I have another question?”

  “What is it?”

  “Is that why you created the women’s shelter, is that why you dedicate your time to that cause?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I told you that my intentions were not altruistic. I do it to make myself feel better.”

  “But you are giving all these women a second chance,” I said, like I am trying to prove him wrong. Why was I proving him wrong? Was he not the bad guy? I already knew what I felt inside.

  “Vicky, you have to understand that I am running after my redemption, but I don’t know if I will ever feel true salvation.”

  “That is tragic, Luc. Did your ex-wife ever forgive you, or did you ever discuss how you felt with her?” I asked needing to know. He had wronged her in so many ways. Was she able to forgive him?

  “I saw my ex-wife after I had been shot. She did forgive me and her fiancé forgave me too. They are the ones that introduced me to Bryce. You haven’t met him yet, but you have a cousin named Brad, he is a good friend with my ex’s fiancé Dylan. It was Dylan who set me up here in New York.”

  I sat up from the position I had been lying in. This was a lot of information to process after everything that had happened tonight with Scott. His ex and her boyfriend had forgiven him and yet he didn’t forgive himself; it’s tragic. I brought my knees up to my chest in a protective stance. I tried to mull things over in my mind. Since the moment we met, he had only been trying to help me and watch out for me. If he hadn’t shown up when he had to save me from Scott, then Scott would have probably raped me. Goose bumps sprung up along my arms and do
wn my spine just thinking of it.

  “What is it?” Luc asked, maybe noticing my shiver.

  “If you would have found me, even five minutes later tonight, Scott would have probably forced himself on me again. You saved me from that, Luc. I think he has mental issues. He called me Vicky at first, but then he switched to calling me Jenny. I think this Jenny must have done a real number on him because it felt like he wanted to cause Jenny pain. I knew he was a sick guy before, but I think someone made him snap. Shit, Luc, I was so scared I became useless to myself. I didn’t fight him, I lay there and took what he was dishing out,” I admitted as my eyes swell with tears. I’m not the emotional type and here I was, an emotional mess, feeling, hurting.

  “I am not a hero, Vicky. Don’t make me out to be something I’m not. I try to do good and stay out of trouble because my soul is dark. I’ve seen and done dark things and when I help someone, it’s the only thing that keeps me from drowning.”

  “I want to keep you from drowning,” I admitted, looking at him with a serious expression.

  His lips tugged up at the corners. “Thank you.” His smile was beautiful and light. This man needed to smile more, he was too damn intense all the time and now I understood why.

  “I like your smile.” I tilted my head to the side and grinned at him.

  “I like you,” he answered, cocking his head to the side and tugging his lip up at the corner.

  “Can I stay here?” I asked, knowing my question would probably make him nervous.

  “It’s one o’clock in the morning, can you sleep with this music? Last time the guests stayed until three a.m. I can sleep on the floor you can take the bed,” he said with a soft tone. He looked tired and defeated. I was disappointed he wouldn’t stay in the bed with me.