He didn’t miss a beat, returning, “Cher, with your life and the dry spell you endured, you need a lot of things and you’re gettin’ them all from me.”
Of course, Lieutenant Garrett Merrick of the ’burg’s PD didn’t miss my dry spell.
Fuck.
“That shit’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about, Merry. I’ve been down a road where it wasn’t my choice to be on. You think for a second I’m gonna be forced down a road I don’t like where I’m at again, you think wrong. There is nowhere for this to go that’s good and you know it, just like me.”
“The only thing I know is, what’s at the end of the road we’re on is unknown. Along the way, I break through that fortress you’ve built around you and manage to extract your head from your ass, it’ll be worth the trip.”
“And then what, Merry?” I snapped.
“I don’t know, Cher. That’s the point. That’s life. You have no clue what you’ll get along the journey. But you won’t get dick you stay in one place, spinning your wheels.”
“If that place is a safe place for me and my kid, I’m good to spin my wheels for eternity.”
“You may be safe, but are you happy?”
I added a heavy dose of sarcasm when I asked, “You gonna show me happy, Merry, outside of what you can do to me when you’re fuckin’ me?”
“No one can show you happy, Cher, unless you let them in to try.”
“I open the door, is that what you want?” I asked, sarcasm mixed with disbelief now weighting my tone. “You want a shot at makin’ me happy?”
“What I want is to make sure a woman I care about is solid with her kid. That they’re safe. That the cloud of shit hovering in the horizon is not gonna rain down on them, covering them, because they’ve had enough of that. That’s one thing I want.”
His words meant so much to me, unable to hold my head up, I cast my gaze to the floor.
Merry continued talking.
“I also want to know how it feels when you wrap your mouth around my cock. And I want to wake up to you in my bed and look at you sleepin’ to find out if the shit I saw Saturday mornin’ was a dream or if it was real. That bein’, you lookin’ just as pretty as you look after drinkin’ yourself stupid and bein’ rode hard, which is the same as you look when you’re standin’ opposite the bar from me, pourin’ a drink.”
I kept staring at the floor, but I did it now breathing funny.
Merry kept at me.
“That shit is not right. No woman, not even Mia, could go head-to-head with me drinkin’ and fuckin’ and not wake up with mascara-caked, bloodshot eyes, a lipstick-smeared mouth, and a bedhead that is so far from sexy, it made me wonder why I hit that in the first place. Not you. You opened your eyes and looked ready to perform surgery, shake a martini, or ride my cock until we both found it, all a’ that with a camera crew in tow, ready for your close-up.”
Not even Mia?
No. Unh-unh. I didn’t give a shit.
I tried to turn his mind from his thoughts, and me, by reminding him, “You learn that shit when you strip, baby.”
“Then at least that line on your CV was worth somethin’; you got that outta it. Then again, baby, not complainin’ about other skills you learned through your former occupation when you finally managed to climb on top, and I am not fuckin’ with you on that. You’re not hidin’ shit from me, Cher. I don’t know if you’re tryin’, but if you are, stop. You got your head wrapped around an idea, and I get that. I get why. I get there’re a lot of folk out there who’d think that idea is spot-on. But they are not me. I do not mind, not even a little fuckin’ bit, that I got you drunk, naked, and wild, givin’ the lap dance to beat all lap dances, just as long as that’s happenin’ to me.”
“You are so full of shit,” I bit out.
“Jesus, fuck me, Cher. Seriously?” he retorted. “Due to biology being unbalanced, a session like that, I got one shot. We had one session. Seein’ as it’s clear you didn’t pay close attention, when you get more, you’ll know I liked what I got a whole fuckin’ lot.”
“So we did negotiate a friends-with-benefits deal yesterday. Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know what it is, Cher. You want me to put a ring on your finger after fuckin’ you once, I can tell you on that you’ll be disappointed. What I know is, for years, I’ve had good times with you. Friday night, I had a great time with you. Friday night. The night Mia no longer was a possibility for me. Got a lotta people who mean a lot to me, but only one took my back, and you did that more than just fuckin’ my cares away. You took my back and my side when everyone’s been tellin’ me to pull my head outta my ass about my ex-wife. You made me see it different. You made me think. You showed me what it meant to have a friend who had a mind to me and what I should expect from the bitch who owns my dick.”
That meant a lot to me too.
But Merry wasn’t done hitting me with the velvet blows of his honesty.
“What I want is more good times with you, Cher. I wanna fuck wild and I wanna laugh hard, and while we’re doin’ that, I’m gonna look out for you. More, I can’t promise. That’s not enough, then I’m still gonna look out for you. There it is. You gotta get off break, but before I let you go, you gotta know it’s your play now. Make it.”
With that, he hung up on me.
I dropped my phone to my lap and kept staring at the floor.
Merry wanted to fuck wild and laugh hard, having no clue my heart was involved.
He’d been tagging ass for so long with his heart belonging to another woman, he forgot that shit could happen, it did, and it did it all the time.
I knew two things.
I wanted to fuck wild and laugh hard with Merry.
But I didn’t need the heartbreak that would lead to in my life.
I lifted my phone, hit the text button, and tapped in my play.
I didn’t send it until hours later, when I was off shift, sitting in my running car, ready to put it in gear and go pick up my kid from my mom’s.
I hit send, threw my phone on top of my purse on the passenger seat, my eyes so dry they stung, and I set my car on course to get my boy.
* * * * *
Garrett
I’m happy spinning my wheels.
Garrett stared at the text.
Then he drew his arm back and let fly, the phone sailing through the air and embedding in the shitty-ass drywall of his living room.
He stared at it a beat before he walked out to his balcony to have a smoke.
Chapter Five
Proceed
Cher
Late the next morning, I was leaning over the basin in Ethan’s and my bathroom, stroking on waterproof mascara, when my cell on the counter rang.
I looked down at it, and since I’d seen that number before, I knew who it was.
God, my life sucked.
I hit the screen to take Walter Jones’s call.
I then immediately hit the screen to hang up.
I went back to stroking on mascara.
The phone rang again.
The motherfucker probably thought he lost connection.
I took the call and then hung up.
He called again.
I engaged and disengaged.
Done playing, I went in, blocked his number, and went back to finishing my makeup.
* * * * *
I walked into J&J’s, surprised to see the place was deserted.
Then I saw Feb pop up from behind the bar.
Years ago, when I’d first met her, seeing all that was her did not do good things for my mental health.
There was a reason Dennis Lowe picked me, having obsessed on Feb and Colt since they were all in high school together.
Wanting Feb for his own, he’d found a replacement in me.
In other words, we looked a lot alike.
Obviously, we still did, both of us tall, built, blonde, and brown-eyed.
Though, there was more to it and it was uncanny.
<
br /> Honest to God, she looked like my older sister.
For obvious reasons, these making me a target of an ax murderer, even when she turned out to be awesome, it had fucked with my head. Lowe had even called me Feb and February, saying it was a nickname because we’d met in that month, but doing it because that was who he saw in me.
He also told me his name was Alexander Colton and he was a cop, not what he was in reality—a geeky software guy who hid the batshit crazy.
Since she and Colt were looking out for me, I covered my reaction to our physical similarities and what that all bought me in my life, burying the wince every time someone said her name.
It took some time, but I finally pulled my head together, twisting my thinking process to what it should be.
Feb was gorgeous. She’d been in her early forties when I met her and was smack in the middle of them now. That shit had not faded. She was the kind of woman men would look at when she was sixty and they’d still think, oh yeah.
She also had an edge, like me. Hers had softened over the years since she got Colt back and they had their baby, Jack, but it wasn’t totally gone. Lowe had also forced her life on a trajectory where she didn’t want to be, and that had started decades ago, so it had lasted a lot longer than mine.
Her edge made her cool, however. It made the sweet she had in her a surprise, which meant it ended up feeling like a gift when she gave that to you.
And if she had all that and kept it, my big sister who wasn’t of blood but was of a different variety, it boded well for me in the coming decades.
“Yo,” I called.
“Hey,” she called back.
I braced for her to start something with me about Merry, but she didn’t.
This was surprising.
Then again, I was surprised my cell hadn’t lit up since Friday, not only from Feb but from all the hens in our coop.
“Darryl was last in last night and he didn’t restock. I’m doin’ that and takin’ stock while I do. Need to get an order in. Can you take care of the bar while I do that? I’ll help if things get busy.”
Tuesdays during the day at J&J’s were the same as Mondays, so watching the bar while Feb did her thing would not be tough.
Even if it was, for her, I’d break my back doing it.
“Sure,” I said, heading to the office so I could dump my purse. “And I’ll help with the restock.”
“That’d be cool.”
I went into the office thinking it wasn’t surprising Darryl forgot the restock. If he was on alone on a weeknight, shutting down the bar, more often than not he forgot something. The only thing he never forgot to do was securing the money from the register in the safe.
Darryl could forget something you told him two seconds after the words left your mouth.
I didn’t think this was because he was stupid (entirely). He was just one of those people who didn’t have all their synapses firing. It took patience, but if you had that with him, he got where you needed him to go eventually.
I made it to the office, dumped my purse on the desk, and turned my mind from Darryl to the decision I’d made in my car on the way to work.
After I’d texted Merry last night, he hadn’t texted back. With the games we were playing, that could mean anything.
But he seemed entrenched.
As for me, I needed to protect myself, and part of doing that was getting him out of my business, any business I had. To accomplish that, I had to sort out the Trent and Peggy thing, and considering I had a job and a kid, limited money, and no investigative skills, I had to call in help.
If I was going to be facing lawyer fees to keep Ethan, I also had to hoard my cake.
All this led me to one conclusion: I had to find someone who’d do the legwork for me and do it for a price I could afford to pay.
I dug out my phone, scrolled down to that name in my Contacts, and hit call.
Ryker answered on the third ring.
“What’s goin’ on with you and Merrick?” he asked as greeting.
I set my teeth, not surprised Ryker knew something was going on with Merry and me because Merry had dragged me into the office at J&J’s. Morrie saw that, probably fifty other people saw that, and no doubt at least forty-eight (if not all fifty-one) of those people were talking about it.
I shared the minimum. “Something happened. One-time thing. We’re movin’ on.”
“One-time thing?”
“One-time thing,” I confirmed.
“You stupid?” he asked.
I decided not to answer that or react to it all, but I only decided that because I needed him.
I changed the subject. “I got a situation.”
“No shit?” he told me.
Thinking he still was referring to what he didn’t really know was going on between Merry and me, something I was done talking about, not to mention I had to get out and help Feb, I kept our conversation firm where I wanted it to be.
“Listen, I need a favor,” I said.
“I play, you pay,” he replied.
This was not a surprise. Ryker did nothing for nothing. You always paid. But I was speaking to him because he had three options he accepted for compensation: you owed him a marker, you gave him information, or you gave him money.
There was no marker he’d be willing to hold from me. And I didn’t want to spend the money on an investigator, not one as good (or expensive) as Tanner Layne, not one who was probably shit but less expensive, and not Ryker.
But I worked at a bar and Ryker dealt in a lot of currencies, information being one that for him was most lucrative.
“My ex and his wife are making rumblings they might wanna take my boy from me,” I shared.
“Sucks, sister,” he muttered but didn’t jump in to offer services for free.
“They may be happy just to negotiate more time with him. Before I sit down and do that, I wanna know, they get that time, he’s goin’ to good people. I need you to help me on that. And as a down payment to that shit, I’ll tell you the renters two doors down from my place had a short but loud conversation I overheard and the name Carlito was mentioned.”
I didn’t know if Ryker had any interest in Carlito.
I just knew that Ryker had interest in anything, specific things being worth more, and those specific things he took an interest in was the kind of guy Carlito was.
Ryker was silent.
I opened my mouth to speak.
“You at the bar?” he barked, his tone so loud and severe, I automatically jerked the phone an inch from my ear.
I felt nastiness slithering up my neck into my scalp at the sudden extreme Ryker was aiming at me.
“Yeah,” I answered hesitantly.
I got nothing in reply.
“Ryker?” I called but heard beeping, telling me the call ended.
I stared at my phone for a second, went to recent calls, and called him again.
He didn’t answer.
Shit, that was not good.
I left a voicemail of “Call me,” stowed my purse, shoved my phone in my back pocket, and headed out to help Feb.
“You need me to get anything from the storeroom?” I asked over the bar she was hunkered down behind.
“Took stock and grabbed everything I needed. Just gotta rotate it.”
I went behind the bar.
There were four fridges back there. She was at fridge two.
I went to fridge three and dragged one of the boxes she’d filled toward me.
“Heard you took care of Merry after the Mia news made the rounds,” she remarked casually.
Lying in wait.
Shit.
I knew I wouldn’t get away with it. She was my big sister in a lot of ways.
I opened the fridge and pulled out the front bottles of Bud.
“Yep,” I confirmed.
“That go okay?” she asked.
I looked to her. “We got drunk. We fucked. Shit got wrinkled. We’re ironing it out.”
Her eyes got big at the we fucked, but I ignored that and went back to the fridge.
“You two ironing it out…is that working?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered her question, unsure if it was a lie, a semi-lie, or what I hoped it would be—the truth.
“Cher,” she called.
I turned my eyes to her and there it was all over her face—that sweet that rode close to her edge, easy to get to if she gave a shit about you.
“It’s cool,” I assured.
“Shit like that goes down, a girl can get ideas.”
I grinned and did it to hide the pain. I was good at it, so I was relatively certain she bought it.
“Not a girl like me.”
The sweet didn’t move from her expression. It also didn’t hide the concern that started seeping in.
I twisted on the balls of my feet to give her my full attention.
“Listen, Feb, he’s in love with another woman.”
“I know that,” she replied, the absoluteness of her words driving that thorn deeper. “I just don’t want you to get hurt while he’s workin’ through that. And I know Merry’s a good guy, but even good guys do stupid shit when they’re workin’ through hurt like that, as evidenced by the pile of stupid shit he’s amassed while doin’ just that for the last however-many years.”
“I know the score,” I told her, something she had to know.
It seemed she didn’t when little wrinkles appeared between her brows and her head tipped to the side.
“What’s the score?”
“He’ll work through it, just not with me,” I said the last quickly to reassure her. “He got what he’s gonna get from me on that. And it was good, Feb. He needed it, and it was far from shit bein’ there to give it to him. But that’s done. If we can iron things out, we’ll get back to what we had, keep that, and I’ll be happy when he finds what he needs to get happy.”
She didn’t believe me and didn’t hide the fact she didn’t. It was right there with the sweet, the gentle, the concern.
She knew.
She knew I was in deep with Merry.
There was a lot I’d share with Feb, lay on her, lean on her to help me work it through, bitch at her just so I could get it out. Anything. Practically everything.
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