by Nicole Fox
Finally the zip-ties break loose. Logan spots it and circles around so that Moretti has his back to me. He widens his eyes and I get the message: be quiet.
“You’re a real brave man, Moretti,” he says. “A real brave bastard.”
“Who ever said violence was fair? Listen to that.”
Upstairs, more gunshots sound.
“You had some men hiding.” Logan shrugs, wincing at the movement. “My men’ll make short work of them.”
“Maybe they will. But will they be able to get here in time, I wonder?”
“No.” I creep forward, and then leap the final few paces. “But I will.” I bury the piece of wood in Moretti’s neck, pushing it with all my strength, letting out the rage I felt when he had me tied down, when he looked at me like I was his plaything. I push until I can’t push anymore because the wood has disappeared into his neck, and then stumble backward, shocked at the blood, shocked at the sheer reality of it.
Logan grabs the butterfly knife and slits Moretti’s throat for good measure, and then shoulder-barges him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. The spider-fingered man rolls onto his front, making gurgling sounds which might be words.
Then Logan rushes to me, his strong arms wrapping around me, his lips kissing my cheek, my forehead, my neck, my everything. I fall into him, letting out my pent-up tears, crying without shame into his shoulder, my body rocking with the madness of the last few hours. There’s blood on my face, in my hair, on my hands. Logan tears away a piece of his shirt and cleans Moretti’s blood before it dries, dabbing at me skillfully and quickly as I stand there, stunned. The man is dead, and I killed him. He was a bad man and he was going to do evil things to me, but still, I never prepared myself for something that brutal, for something so sudden and violent.
“I couldn’t let him hurt you,” I say, sobbing as I speak, my words hardly understandable even to myself. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
Logan smiles, and then winces and clutches his side. “I need to bind these,” he says. “Can you help me? We’ll head to the hospital, but in the meantime—”
“Okay, okay. What shall I do?”
He tears away more of his shirt, exposing his belly. “Use these.” Then he slumps down against the wall.
I take the pieces of fabric and tie up his wounds as tightly as I can. My hands are shaking and my head is still groggy, and to make it worse, upstairs a few gunshots still fire. I meet eyes with Logan and I know we’re both thinking the same thing: please let his men win. If Moretti’s men win and come rushing down the stairs, I don’t know if we’ll make it out of here. Once I’ve bound him up, he leans over and takes Moretti’s pistol, aiming it at the basement door.
“How’re you feeling?” he asks.
“Hurt—hurt and scared.” I laugh awkwardly. “I was going to lie to you then. It’s been my habit for so long to lie and pretend that I’m fine, that I’m too tough to be scared. But the truth is I’m hurt and I wish those gunshots would stop.”
They echo down the stairs, sounding like the last seconds of popcorn in the microwave.
“They will.” He glances at me. “How’s your face? You’ve got dried blood all around your lips.”
“Yeah.” I giggle. I don’t know why that’s the response that comes bubbling out of me. The giggle turns into manic laughter. Wiping a tear from my eye, I say, “Most of all I’m worried about my belly. We need to get to the hospital. They hit me in the belly and the baby, Logan, if they’ve hurt the baby …”
I trail off, suddenly aware of my words. Logan’s eyes go wide and his lower lip trembles. He looks at my face as if trying to gauge the truth of my words, trying to work out if I’d tell a lie like that for some unknown reason, and then looks down at my belly. “Oh, shit,” he says.
“I didn’t mean to drop it on you like that.”
“And is it …”
“Of course it is,” I say. “I haven’t been with any other man. I haven’t even wanted to.”
“No, me neither,” he mutters.
“What? You haven’t been with any other man.”
He laughs, and then sucks in a painful breath through his teeth. “Don’t do that,” he says. “You’re pregnant. Goddamn, Cora, you’re pregnant with my kid. I’ve got a kid. There’s a kid in you. My kid. I’m sorry. I know I’m rambling. It’s just … a kid, a little baby. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel.”
“Are you happy, sad, angry, annoyed? Give me something!”
Tears stream continually down my face, but they’re not all bad tears. There’re some happy tears in there, and some tears which come from relief at having told him. I no longer feel so isolated. Even if he wants nothing to do with the child, it’s out there now. But I do want something to do with the child. Putting the baby up for adoption seems ridiculous now. A strong maternal instinct I never knew I had kicks in, growling like a tigress.
“Logan?” I urge, when he doesn’t respond.
“I’m happy.” He nods. “I reckon I’m happy, anyway. I’ll be happier when we can get you checked out. I don’t know if now’s the best time to talk about it.”
“No.” More gunshots fire, tap-tap-tap. “You’re probably right.”
“Wait a second.” He struggles to his feet. I grab him by the elbow, helping him up. Then he waves me away and limps toward the stairs. “Wait here.”
“Logan—”
“I’m not having the mother of my kid sitting down here not knowing if our baby’s okay or not, so just wait here.”
I grit my teeth at his words. If there wasn’t a baby in me I’d follow him up the stairs, but my urge to protect holds me back. I interlock my fingers on my belly and watch and wait, dreading the scenario when Logan has come all this way just to get killed at the very end, leaving me down here at the mercy of the remaining mafia men. Moretti throws up a stink from across the room. I purposefully don’t look at him. Seconds pass, and then minutes, and still Logan has not returned. I think about the first time I met him, the handsome guy sitting across from me in the bar. I try and connect the two pairs of people: the he and I from that night at The Devil, and the he and I in this mafia’s hell. Try as I might, I can’t bring them together.
“Logan?” I whisper, when the stairs begin to creak.
Time seems to stretch as the top two stairs whine. It could be anyone up there, one of the mafia men or one of Logan’s men. I have no way of knowing so I back into the shadows, picking up a steel pipe and holding it in front of me as my weapon. Then Logan comes limping down the stairs.
“We can get out through the side entrance,” he says. He nods at the steel pipe, holding his hands up. “You gonna attack me, Viking lady?”
I drop the pipe and go to him, wrapping my arm around his waist and helping him to walk. “We need to go, now.”
“Follow me, then.”
We limp up the stairs and along the wall, Logan standing in front of me with his arms spread, facing the direction of the intermittent gunfire. “Two bastards holed up in the manager’s office. I’d wager they’ve got about a clip left between them.” Just as he says that, the gunfire is replaced with a click-click sound. “There we go.” He reaches down and take my hand.
“Logan.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re in a fucking toy store.”
He laughs, smiling widely. It’s the best sight I’ve seen all week. “Yes, we are.”
“Wow. Okay.”
He takes my hand and leads me outside. It feels so good to hold his hand again. Time has done some strange things since I’ve been here. The Vikings had a confusing and interesting relationship between the present and the past and the future. I remember reading about it when I was a teenager and going, “Huh,” and not really understanding it. They believed that the past could be somewhat changed by the present, that time was cyclical and wasn’t written in stone. I never understood that concept until now, but walking into the setting sunlight with the father of my child, I thin
k I get it. This moment of victory changes every other moment I’ve spent with him; I’ll never be able to look back upon that moment I saw him in the bar and detach the watching stranger from the protective father.
“Cora. Focus. Stay with me. Your heads up in the clouds, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” I admit.
“Well, stay with me, all right?”
“You’re talking to me like a little kid. Is it because I’m pregnant?”
He thinks, and then nods. “Maybe it is. I’ll try’n stop.”
“It’s okay. I kind of like it.”
“You wanna be babied? You, Cora Snake-Neck?”
I smile. “Maybe just for today.”
We walk to the corner of the street and then Logan leans against the wall. “It shouldn’t be too long …”
A four-by-four pulls up with a Demon Rider behind the wheel. He leaps from the driver’s seat and helps his boss into the passenger seat. I climb into the back and fasten my seatbelt.
“Drive safe,” Logan says. “That’s my woman back there.”
We go to the hospital and get our check-ups. I’m buzzing with nerves during mine, dreading the moment when the doctor tells me, in that stern but sympathetic voice, that my child is dead, died a long time ago from the trauma of being pummeled in the belly. The doctor returns to me after getting my results. She’s a friendly-looking Asian lady with sparkling white teeth and pristine fingernails. I don’t know why I notice the fingernails; it makes me feel safe in her hands, I suppose.
“Miss Ash,” she says, “I’m happy to say that you and your baby are just fine, a little bruised, but nothing we can’t deal with. I’d recommend a cold compress for the pain, but I can prescribe you some Tylenol if you’d prefer, though I do like my pregnant patients to stay as natural as possible.”
“The pain isn’t bad at all,” I say. They’ve cleaned me up. My nose aches and my body pulses here and there, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. “What about the man I came in with? Is he okay?”
“Well, I’m not sure. But I can find his room number for you. You’re free to go anytime you like.”
“Yes, please.”
She gets me his room number. He’s on the bed, sitting up with all his clothes on, as the doctor finishes the last few stitches. He grits his teeth but makes no sounds of pain. I wait off to the side. We have so much to say to each other, so much distance to bridge. As I stand there, I wonder why I didn’t just tell him the first chance I got. I feel guilty, silly, stupid, evil. A wave of emotions crashes into me and I have to sit down, put my hands on my knees and try to focus, find a center where I can properly evaluate the situation. Somehow reality bends and it’s my fault for not telling him, because if I told him he’d never have let me go to work. I think about that: going to work. That was a mistake. That really was fucking stupid.
“Cora?” He reaches his hand down to me. “Are you coming?”
I look up at him, the father of my child, strong and brave and solid-looking. The wavering emotions evaporate. “Yes.” I take his hand and pull too hard. He winces in pain. “Sorry!” I throw my arms around him, kissing him on the cheek, and then finding his lips. He pulls me close to him and we lose ourselves in the kiss for a few moments. When we break it off, Logan tells me he’s called a cab.
We ride back to his place, sitting close. I place my hand on his thigh and he does the same, and we sit like that for the rest of the ride. He keeps smiling at me. I get the sense there’s lots he wants to say, too, but won’t because he doesn’t want the cab driver listening into our conversation. We go up to his apartment and he drops onto the couch. I take the chair and for a moment we just look at each other. Then he leans forward and says, “So, we’re having a baby.”
“We’re having a baby.”
“Can you get me a beer?” he asks. Then he shakes his head. “I suppose I better get it myself, actually, what with you being pregnant and all.”
“Sit down!” I command, hopping to my feet. “I’m not the one who’s been stabbed twice. When I’m bloated and can hardly walk, you can get your own beers. But right now, you stay put.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiles, leaning back.
I get him his beer and get a juice for myself. He sips the beer, smoothing his hair out of his face. He looks so sexy, so manly, so Logan. “I want to raise this kid,” he says. “I want to stand by you. I don’t know if there’s anything else I need to say about it. Well—I guess there is. It’s just … well, Cora, I don’t know if I’m going to be the best father, ’cause I’ve done some pretty damn horrible things in my life. I’ve killed people. I’ve robbed people. I’ve outlawed since I was a teenager. I’ve fought and I’ve hurt and I’ve made women widows. All bad men, but who’s to say that’s any better? And now with this kid on the way, I’m thinking maybe I ought to just ride to the East Coast and get on a boat and get out of your lives. Maybe that’d be the best thing for it.”
My first instinct is to laugh. It’s a cruel instinct but it comes nonetheless, perhaps because all I’ve wished for today is to see him, for him to save me from Moretti and his goons, and that’s exactly what he did. And also because adrenaline is still pumping through my body with the power of a motorbike, thrumming through me. Everything is upside down. But then I really look at him and see that he means it, he isn’t just talking; he’ll leave if I tell him to, and he’ll stay if I tell him to. He clenches his jaw and stares off into the distance, as though seeing all the violent things he’s ever done, his life on replay right there in front of him.
“Are you saying you want to quit the club?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he replies. “Don’t know what my old man’d make of that, but there’re plenty of other fellas who could take my position. I can think of three or four men who’d do a damn good job right now. But that ain’t the point. This isn’t about me. This is about you, and … I don’t know whether to call it him or her or what.”
“No.” I smile. “I’ve had the same problem.”
I go to my knees in front of him, clasping his hands. “I know you’ve done bad things,” I say. “I could tell you that you did those things to men who deserved it, who chose that life, but I know that won’t make you feel better. So all I’ll say is that it isn’t the past that matters anymore. It’s the future. It’s this child, and what we’re going to do with our lives. I don’t want you to run away. I want you here, with us. I want you.”
He grips my hands so hard it hurts, but I don’t tell him. He’s gripping me with love, or something close to love; he grips me like he’s scared I might float away. “You’ve changed your mind, then,” he says, “’cause I remember not so long ago you wanted nothing to do with me. You threw me out of your apartment, if I remember correctly.”
I slap him across the face, soft and playful. “What did I say about the past, Logan? Huh? What did I say?”
“You better not do that again,” he warns. “I don’t care if you’re pregnant. I’ll still work you over.”
His ice-white eyes burn into me, burn cold like a tundra a million miles away, a yawning icy abyss which never ends. I look into his eyes and I see the future and the past all rolled into one, and then they disappear and all I see is Logan, my Logan, the man who made me forget that I was lonely and hard and cynical, the man who made me forget that I had promised myself never to love. He touches my face, running his thumb along my lip. A thrill runs through me from his thumb to my toes and back again, an electric line that sparks connecting lines, which run to every nerve in my body, lighting them all up. My clit aches as he touches my lips; it’s like he’s touching my pussy. The closeness, the magic of it, is astonishing. He reads this on my face. That’s the sexiest part. I see it in him, a shifting as I shift. He squeezes my face, and then grabs my neck in his hand, looking sternly into my eyes.
“Your injuries,” I whisper.
“You’ll have to be gentle with me,” he replies, a smirk on his face.
“I don’t want to hurt you
…”
But even as I say that, my hand is sliding up his leg toward his cock. Flashes of the violence from a few hours ago come to me: blood and bone and pain. It seems that the only way to fully block this out is to throw ourselves in the other direction: closeness and heat and love. I slide my hand all the way up his leg until I reach his crotch and then press down firmly. His cock is hard, is always hard for me. His eyes have that wide crazed look, that animal look. I rub him up and down as he grips my neck, cutting off my airway just enough to make it dangerous, to make it fun. I unzip his jeans with one hand and pull out his cock, grabbing it at the base and moving my hand up and down, taking my time. I love the way his veins press against my palm, love the way it twitches as though coming alive for me.