by A. J. Downey
“I’m so scared for you, of what could happen to you being near me. I feel like a magnet for disaster and how do I know if it’s over? I mean, really over, you know?”
“Don’t care if it is or not, precious.” I picked up her hand and kissed the palm, breathing her in. “You belong here, with me. I need you.”
She scoffed a bit of a self-deprecating laugh and said, “I think you have that backwards, Detective. I’m pretty sure it’s me who needs you.”
“Fuck it, we need each other, and I love having you here. I love you and you said you love me, too and I believe it.”
“It’s a natural thing to want to protect the ones you love most above even yourself,” she whispered and she pushed herself up, flinging a leg over my hips and straddling me. God, that was so hot…
“What’re you trying to say, you want to protect me?” I asked.
“Like I’ve never wanted to with anyone else before… I’m not lying when I say I feel like a poison, Tony. After everything that’s happened?”
“You may feel like a poison, baby,” I said, sitting up abruptly and capturing her body, wrapping my arms around her and holding her to me so she couldn’t slip away, “But I’m telling you, you’re the cure. You make me stronger, you complete me in ways no other woman has.” I winked at her then and said, “So what if you’re not Irish.”
She laughed then, scoffing, and leaned down, cupping my face, and whispered against my mouth, “You’re sure?”
“Gonna end up with some leave time I’m gonna have to take after shooting someone… Happy to use it to help you move your shit.”
“I kind of like the sound of that,” she murmured. “The leave time, and spending it with me… not the whole you had to take someone’s life, part.”
“Hey, you’re right, I’m not okay with that part but I’m sure it’s going to get better, especially if I have you.”
“You have me,” she said and it sounded like a promise. I closed the small gap between us and pressed my mouth to hers. She kissed me back and it tasted like forever. I felt a tension I hadn’t known was riding me let go, and relief flooded through me.
I made love to Chrissy in our bed, the whole time in the back of my mind putting together plans to get her moved out of that shit-hole apartment of hers and sorted out. I would have to pitch some of my shit to make way for hers, and I was okay with that. I really was.
“I love you,” she whispered between panting breaths filled with ecstasy, and I loved that. I loved what I could do to her and I loved what she did for me, and I loved how we just fit. How she’d come in here like some kind of a refugee but she hadn’t stayed that way long. How I’d come home to dinner already started some nights, or made, depending on how her arm was treating her. How I’d realized I hadn’t had to clean a damned thing in a week or more because she’d already quietly taken care of it.
Hell, even my cat liked her, and she liked him, too… obviously, because she’d just sort of naturally taken over feeding him.
Everything about having her in my life made it better, and I would fight until the end of fucking days to keep her in it. That just was what it was.
I came, deep inside the condom I’d put on this time, inside her and teased her clit until she came around me, which fuck, she’d nearly been there. I held her close, and we kissed lazily, and I’d worn her out but good, because she fell asleep again, against me first. I honestly wasn’t far behind her, though.
***
Three days later, I was on voluntary leave, my appointment with the department shrink had gone well, and everything was looking up for both Chrissy and I. I’d called in the rest of the McCormick boys and whoever else was available when it came to my club to help us move her into my place and had spent the better part of the last couple of days going through and packing up her apartment and pitching what couldn’t be saved. Even her crazy ass drag queen nurse from the hospital was pitching in over at her place right now.
“You sure, man?” my older brother, Thomas, asked me.
“Yeah, bro. Take it. If you think Cassie could use it, by all means.” We were talking about the twin bed in his old room which we were going to convert into an office for Chrissy. Cassie was my brother’s oldest girl and getting ready for a big girl bed of her own.
“Yeah, can probably paint it, stencil some flowers or princesses and shit on it, I think it’ll fly and it’ll save me some money which is great.” His ex was trying to bleed him dry on child support and alimony but he had some good lawyers and was fighting for custody of both his girls. It was an ugly and rough row to hoe, though.
“No sweat, you bring your truck like I asked?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool, let’s haul this to the front and drop it in and we can get moving down to Chrissy’s after that.”
“Cool. You uh, you’re really sure about this?” he asked.
I nodded, “Yeah. Yeah I am.”
“She looks pretty, from everything I saw on the news, and shit.”
“Drop dead gorgeous,” I affirmed.
“Well, she’s gotta be some kind of special if she landed you, bro.”
I laughed, “You’re so full of shit!” I declared and he shook his head.
“No, man, I really mean that. I may be an engineer, but sometimes I really feel like out of the four of us, you’re the only one who really went for it, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said frowning.
“He means that out of all of us McCormick boys, you’re the only one that actually made something out of yourself,” Daniel, the brother next in line after me, said from behind me. I turned to see him leaning nonchalantly in the doorway, my youngest brother, Sean looking over his shoulder.
Sean asked, “So when’s the wedding? Ma’s gonna be thrilled.”
I laughed and said, “I’ll get there, little brother, just one thing at a time.”
“Uh huh, so where is she?” he asked.
“Her apartment with some of the guys from the club. Like I said, one thing at a time.”
“Right, so let’s get to it, I’d kind of like to see Indigo City’s top media sensation for myself,” Daniel said and I shook my head.
“Word to the wise, buddy. Don’t let her hear you call her that, and damn sure don’t treat her that way.”
“Oh, I saw that interview on the courthouse steps, I wouldn’t want to piss her off,” Thomas declared. He had the bed mostly apart and I started passing shit to our younger brothers.
“Start taking this shit out to Tommy boy’s truck and let’s get moving,” I said.
“Yeah, sooner we’re done the sooner the grill’s fired up,” Sean said, grinning and I had to laugh.
“Dude, you are entirely too food motivated,” Danny said.
“Don’t I know it, but look at me, I can’t keep it on.”
Sean was right, he had a metabolism like you wouldn’t believe and he was already in his mid-twenties with it showing no signs of slowing down on him.
“Besides, if Reflash is cooking, I don’t wanna miss that shit for the world,” he called down the hall and I had to laugh.
“Pretty sure Reflash is cooking,” I called back.
We hustled things out to Tommy’s truck and then piled in mine for the drive into the city. We had to circle the block a few times, but finally nabbed a spot across the street from Chrissy’s place. The guys already had the dumpster in the alley mostly full of broken shit, and the moving truck only had a couple of big pieces of furniture to it. Mostly her desk that’d been in the living room that looked more like an armoire. Somehow it’d managed to escape the destruction which had been good, so had her entertainment center. Not so much with what’d been on it, though.
Her television had never been recovered, her couch had already been trashed… the one lone living room chair had been slashed and had been gotten rid of a long time before this. Still, there were a lot of boxes. Mostly clothes, dishes, kitchen equipment, and shoes.
We
found her standing with Backdraft, Golden, and Pasquale and she looked up from her phone, “Aw, I was trying to call you! We’re all done.”
“Yeah?”
“Baby,” she said with a laugh, “you called in an army when I just plain didn’t have an army’s worth of stuff to move…”
“Yeah, well, only the best and most efficient for my girl.” I pulled her against me and smacked a kiss against her lips. She laughed and sighed a bit defeated.
“Still a lot of cleaning to be done, I’m pretty much giving the deposit up for dead.”
“Cleaning we can do,” Danny offered up, then said, “Tony, quit being a dick, introduce us.”
“Yes, please!” Pasquale echoed, he hand one hand on his hip, the other up in some kind of vogue while he eyed my three brothers. “Any one of you gay?” he asked.
Tommy laughed, “No.”
“Ah!” Pasquale threw his head back, melodramatically affronted and walked away, back straight, chin high. My brothers and I had to laugh, and Chrissy did, too.
“I hear you laughing at a sister!” Pasquale accused of Chrissy. “See if I ever go shopping with you again!”
“Oh come on, don’t be like that!” Sean called and Pasquale waved him off and went and checked his lip gloss in the moving truck’s side view mirror. I shook my head and ignored the queen and introduced my brothers to my woman.
“Precious, these are my three asshole brothers. That’s Tommy, he’s the oldest, then there’s me, Danny’s here and that’s Sean.”
“Hi,” she greeted them all warmly and shook hands and said, “Well, I would really like to finish this and go home. I feel like I can finally really start putting some of this mess behind us by getting out of here.”
We all trooped upstairs and with three and four of us to a room got the final cleaning pretty well knocked out in nothing flat.
“I’m going to catch a ride back to your place with these guys so Chrissy can ride back with you,” Daniel said and I smiled, hugging him.
“Thanks, man.”
“No sweat, she seems real nice.”
Chrissy was right, the real work wasn’t at her apartment, it was back at the house. A whole bunch of shit got shuffled around, the house almost taken apart and put back together, and that was cool. There were more furniture pieces that were headed for a consignment shop by the end of the day, and even a few more that were just plain headed for the dump.
Boxes were piled in her new office, and more in our bedroom, and those would have to be dealt with later. The rental truck was returned and by the time I got back from that, everyone was on the back deck, three picnic tables lined end to end to accommodate everyone, and Reflash was manning the grill with Skids in a support role.
I caught Chrissy and pulled her in, kissing her soundly and asking, “How you doing?”
“Really good,” she said and sounded surprised.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she smiled and it was the lightest thing I’d seen in a minute.
I told her, “I love you,” and it totally transformed her. She went from lighter than air to completely transcendent, totally angelic at the words.
“Awww! Would you look at that,” Backdraft cried and there was a track of masculine laughter.
“Jealous?” I asked, not taking my eyes off my woman.
“A little,” he confessed, and there was more laughter. He and Torrid had ripped each other apart and he was crashing here until he could score a new pad.
“Here, here!” Skids called, “A toast, I think this needs a toast.” People fell in with their beers and sodas and Skids raised his Mexi-Coke.
“To family, both blood and chosen,” he said, and he turned to Chrissy, “To a beautiful woman, and a love that lasts. Salute!”
“Excuse me, excuse me!” Pasquale cried, waving his hand until everyone had eyes on him. “That’d be women, you silver fox.”
Laughter broke out and Skids shook his head, “I stand corrected,” he said and raised the glass bottle his soft drink was in and cried, “Salute!”
“Salute,” everyone echoed, and took a drink, and how could you not drink to that?
Chrissy blushed and hugged herself closer into my side and I felt like my life was pretty fucking complete.
Epilogue
Three months later
Chrissy
“Knock, knock…”
Yale and I looked up from where I was signing some final paperwork.
“Hey, you! What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Didn’t think I was going to miss this moment, did you?” Tony asked and I went around my desk and reached up, my left arm only giving the barest of twinges at the back of my shoulder as I put my arms around him and hugged him hard. His arm went around me, his hand pressing to the satin of my blouse, and I breathed him in. He smelled of leather, the road, and clean air and I loved that about him.
“What moment would that be?” I asked, “Starting a new job?”
“Not just starting a new job, precious, but the day the infamous Chrissy Franco, scourge and bane of ICPD and the Indigo City’s prosecutor’s office switched sides.”
I grinned at him ruefully and took a step back. The office was fairly nice, Indigo City’s taxpayer’s dollars at work. It was also mine. A box of my things rested on the corner of the rich, reddish wood desk, waiting for me to find them their place on the empty shelves behind it and along one wall.
“It was a long time coming, I think.”
I had essentially fired myself from Reardon, Colfax & Price when I got myself a civil attorney and filed suit against them for keeping the information about the threats silent. I’d helped myself to several of their internal memos that they had stupidly also sent to my email which I then promptly printed for my own records. Memos that all but made my case for me. They were trying to settle with me now, but had yet to offer me a number that I knew would sufficiently hurt their bottom line enough to make them change their policies.
“Yeah, well, long time in coming or not, we’re glad you’re on our side now,” Yale, I mean Mr. Parnell said, giving me a wink and shuffling the final employment papers I’d needed to sign into their legal folder.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
There had been a lot to celebrate lately. Life living with Tony was good, both the man who had published my address online and the man who had kicked in my door had taken plea deals, even though the prosecution had them both dead to rights, the case against Cohan for murder and attempted murder would have been hard to prove without Silver’s corroborating testimony.
Silver would be in prison for the next twenty to twenty-five years for Sami’s death, while Cohan would be inside for the next twenty. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I looked down into the box with the picture of me and Sami looking out, and any pity I might have had for his actions evaporated.
Anyone who said words couldn’t hurt you, obviously needed to walk a mile in my shoes.
“Soooo what’s in the bag?” I asked Tony, biting my lip as he set a big paper shopping bag with those twisted paper handles onto the small round table the office had sitting by the door.
“First things first,” he said pulling out a bottle of champagne and some plastic cups.
“Yale, you sticking around for this?”
“Absolutely,” he said grinning, and Tony untwisted the wire cage over the cork.
He popped it over my trash can and poured three cups. Pink and sweet, it was my favorite kind. I laughed.
“To Christina Marie Franco,” he said, “prosecuting attorney-at-law, and the love of my life.”
“Here, here!” Yale said and raised his glass. We all sipped and no one complained about my girly taste in champagne.
“Mm, so what else is in the bag?” I demanded, raising an eyebrow.
“K, Yale, now you need to get out.”
Yale nearly shot champagne out of his nose and shook his head, “I don’t even want to know, she’s been here five minutes. Clo
se the door and whatever it is, don’t get caught.”
He left my office to peals of laughter, some of the people outside stopping to look, but then Tony shut the door and grabbed for me, pulling me close. The kiss was sweet with the taste of champagne and happiness and I smiled.
“Seriously, you’re killing me, what’s in the bag?” I asked.
“Jesus Christmas, you’re a bitch to surprise,” he said, smiling.
“Mm, I’m just a bitch period,” I said sipping the bubbly liquid in my cup.
“You’re definitely a bitch when you’re on your period. The rest of the time you’re pretty cool, you know, for a Wop.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “You’re going to be one dead Mick if you don’t tell me what’s in the bag.”
He laughed and handed it over and it was heavy. I set it on my desk and pulled the tissue paper off the top, my frown deepening as I reached in and pulled out leather.
“What is this?” I asked as they unrolled and I gasped, looking back down into the bag. “No!”
“Figured if you were going to carpool in with me, you were gonna need the right clothes to ride.”
“Does this mean..?”
“Get naked, I’ll keep my hands to myself, suit up and let’s go.”
I squealed and threw my arms around him, excited for this new adventure. Tony wouldn’t let me ride with him, he said, until a time he deemed me healed enough to go.
He grinned at me and it was full of mischief, “Get to it princess, I’m parked on the street and time’s a wasting.”
I stripped slowly, making damn sure he had a boner before I redressed slowly. I pulled on the pair of my jeans he brought me and he helped me here and there with some of the more unfamiliar things when it came to the chaps. I left my heels at the office and pulled on my brand new ladies motorcycle boots and asked nervously, “Well?”
“I need to get you home and right back out of that getup.”
“I kind of like that idea.”
“Mm, mm, mm, that’s nice.”
He handed me the last item out of the bag, a helmet, and we left the office, hand in hand, headed for the elevators.