by K. V. Rose
Benji doesn’t answer my question. He pulls around back, puts the SUV in Park, and then glances over at me.
“Remember,” he says, his voice low, “you wanted to see this.” Then he gets out and walks around the car, opening my door without looking at me.
I hop out and he shuts the door then locks the car. I follow behind him through the parking lot, orange and red leaves crunching under my grey boots. My stomach growls but I cough, trying to mask the sound.
We never did eat that brunch.
Benji walks around the building, to the main entrance. The people in scrubs are gone but cigarette smoke still lingers in the air.
Benji pulls the glass door open and waits for me to enter. We walk through another set of doors, and I see there’s an electric fireplace, a big TV mounted on the wall, and a few chairs and couches around a table currently full of cards. To my left, there’s what looks like a receptionist’s counter.
Benji nods in the grey-haired woman’s direction and she gives him a nod back, a smile on her face at the sight of him.
If she only knew he was a dick.
Maybe she does know.
The people around the table in the makeshift living room are older, save for one guy who looks like he might be in his thirties. He’s in a wheelchair, his hands folded on his lap, and his eyes look blank.
But Benji doesn’t give me much time to digest all of this. He grabs my hand and tugs me down the hall straight ahead. I see numbers posted on the wall, with arrows indicating which rooms are where.
Benji doesn’t glance at that, he just turns right when we reach an intersection. I smell disinfectant, and this place looks and feels like a hospital of some sort. I see some of the doors lining the hall are cracked open and people are in little cots watching television or sleeping. Some have IVs hooked up to their arms, and some have nurses in scrubs inside, tending to them.
“Who are we going to see?” I ask Benji quietly, taking it all in, eyes darting around this beige and white hall.
Benji doesn’t answer me.
But we come to a stop outside of a closed door, room 156 the placard reads. There’s a small pane of glass in the door, like there is in all the others, but I can’t see much from this angle.
He lets go of my hand, and without knocking, he pulls down the lever and pushes open the door.
Cautiously, I follow him in.
Is this going to be a family member? Is his mother dying, too? Have I been a bitch for no reason at all?
I wrap my arms around myself, unsure what the hell is going on.
Benji closes the door behind me, then steps into the small room. I sweep my gaze over everything: the white tile floor, the blinds that are closed, a small TV on a tall armoire pushed in a corner. A bench with clean white shoes beneath it beside the armoire. And then across from the TV, a man in a hospital-type bed, small, with white sheets. Benji steps close to the guy, reaches down beside the bed, toward the wall, and does something I can’t see, then steps back, watching the man carefully, coming to stand at the foot of the bed.
The man is gaunt, but aside from the hollowness of his eyes and his thin skin, he doesn’t look like he’s much older than Benji. He has dark hair, his eyes are closed like he’s sleeping, and his mouth is wide open.
And he has…a feeding tube down his nose.
I stay by the door and watch as Benji takes a step closer to the man, putting his hand on the guy’s foot from outside of the white sheet.
“Morning, Thames,” Benji says loudly.
The guy startles in his sleep, his eyelids flickering until they open, and he looks to me, and then down at Benji. I hear him suck in a breath, and his lip starts to tremble. He tries to wet them, running his tongue across them. They’re cracked and dry.
He fidgets in the bed, as if he’s trying to back away from Benji, but Benji doesn’t let go of his foot. Thames reaches for something beside his bed. It’s got a cord, and a red button. He holds it in a shaky hand.
Benji smiles coldly.
“I’m really sorry to see you like this,” he says, his eyes on the floor as if he’s full of regret. Thames says nothing, but he brushes one hand against the feeding tube down his nose. His eyes are wide and full of fear. I’m not sure he actually can speak. I shrink back against the door to his room.
Benji shakes his head and sighs. He slips his hands into his pockets, letting go of the guy’s foot. A tense second passes, etched out by the tick of the clock above Thames’s bed.
Then Benji’s emerald-brown eyes meet Thames’s own.
Benji smiles. It’s not even directed at me, but I feel the urge to bolt from this room. Instead, I stay where I am. I asked for this.
“But I guess you won’t be putting your hands on Bianca again, will you?” Benji asks, his voice low.
He takes a step toward Thames, who blinks rapidly. Thames presses himself further against the mound of pillows at his back. His trembling hand fumbles with the emergency button.
I realize I’m holding my breath.
Benji’s legs bump up against the bed and Thames presses the big red button over and over again.
Benji laughs and shakes his head. “Sorry, man,” he says darkly. “You’ll have to get a new one.”
Thames keeps pressing the button and I’m surprised an alarm hasn’t sounded. I glance out the pane of glass at my back but see nothing in the sterile hallway.
Benji leans down close to Thames’s face, and Thames stops pressing the buttons. His entire gaunt body is shaking.
“I broke it. Just like I broke you,” Benji whispers. He laughs again. Thames can’t look away. Hell, for that matter, neither can I. “Just doing my monthly drop in to make sure you’re still broken.” He brings one hand out of his pocket and curls his fingers around Thames’s feeding tube.
“Benji...” My voice is hoarse, and I don’t even know if he’s heard me. He doesn’t look my way and he doesn’t put his hand down. Instead, he yanks on the tube and Thames’s eyes clench and then widen, and I see tears there, one falling down his face. He doesn’t make a sound.
Benji yanks again. My stomach churns. But I still can’t look away.
“You miss the taste of real food, Thames?” Benji whispers. His lips are hovering over Thames’s. They’re close enough to kiss. Close enough for Thames to feel every word Benji speaks. “You miss the taste of pussy, man?”
He laughs loudly, almost manically, and it sounds unnatural. Kind of like he did last night, on the floor of Riley’s condo. Out of place in this eerie room. Coming from his beautiful mouth.
“I sure miss the feel of your face beneath my fucking tires.”
He yanks the tube one more time and I turn away as he straightens. I hear something that sounds like Thames’s fists beating on the railing of his gurney, but I can’t watch anymore. I open the door and fly down the hall, taking in nothing and no one.
Benji doesn’t say my name behind me. I’m not even sure if he’s following me. I’m not even sure if I want him to be.
Nineteen
I see her by the car, leaning against the passenger side, her head buried in her hands. It’s the reaction I expected, but it doesn’t make this feeling any better. And the feeling…it isn’t regret. I’m not sorry for Thames. For what I did to him. I’m not even sorry for the time I spent in prison; I deserved it. More, actually. But Thames deserves exactly what he’s got, too, and I can’t really feel any remorse for that.
At least now most of my skeletons are out of the closet. If Ava walks away, well, I can’t blame her. But I showed her more than I’ve ever shown any woman I’ve been with.
I walk across the lot, unlock the door.
Ava picks her head up, eyes locked on mine for a second, and then she yanks open the door and hops in, slamming it shut behind her.
I hate when people slam my car doors. But I’m glad she’s got this reaction. It means she’ll probably run the fuck away from me when we get back to the States. And that’s exactly what she nee
ds to do…run.
I get in the driver’s side, start the car, and she doesn’t say anything as we pull out, back onto the desolate road the assisted living facility is situated on. After I beat the shit out of Thames and ran over his head with my car, the one we’re in right now, this seemed like the best place to put him.
I pay for it myself. He doesn’t have family, and he sure as hell doesn’t have friends. Bianca doesn’t even know he’s here. I like it that way. I don’t pay for this place out of the goodness of my heart. I do it as a reminder to myself, of what I’m capable of. As a reminder, too, to anyone who threatens that and what I do. I have no qualms about showing anyone who wants to fuck with me and my work what I would do to them.
“Who was he?” Ava finally asks me, a few miles down the road. Her voice doesn’t shake, but she doesn’t look at me when she asks the question.
I’ve got one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the center console.
“I don’t know,” I answer her. I mean, it’s not technically a lie. I had never heard of Thames Gunthrey before I went knocking on his door to find Bianca that night that changed my entire life. That obliterated any sense of family I had painstakingly gained over the years of living with my adoptive parents down the street from Caden. That fucking shattered my heart.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” she snaps at me, and I sense her turn to stare at me. I can feel her anger, too. It’s nearly a palpable thing in this car. I knew that pulling out the feeding tube would get to her, twist her heart, make her hate me.
I knew it, and that’s why I did it.
This thing between us, whatever it is…it’s gotta be nothing. Because sooner or later, Rolland will die at my hands, and then I’ll come back here and leave Riley to finish school and she’ll come here, too, and I’ll have no need to go to North Carolina ever again in my entire life.
And Ava Culwen is the goddamn mayor’s daughter. She has a future, even if she took a detour failing a semester. In the grand scheme of things, that’s a blip on her life. She’ll find a good job, make more money than even her father did, she’ll find a good man who will hold her when she cries over her mom, gone too soon. She’ll do everything right in life.
I never will.
I never have.
I won’t fuck up her future for a chance that she might be in mine.
I shrug. “I mean I don’t know,” I answer her.
“Did you really…” I hear her swallow as she struggles to get her thoughts together. “Did you really…run over him?” she asks on a whisper.
I turn back toward the city, wondering when Riley and Caden will be done fucking in their new house, because I know Riley will want it, whatever it is. She just wants to be by Caden’s side. She doesn’t give a shit about anything else.
I nod. “Yes,” I answer Ava.
I hear her sharp intake of breath but don’t dare look at her. I want her to know who I am, but I don’t really want to see what reaction she has to that. To the sick fuck that is me.
“But…why?” she gasps out as we head back into the city.
I don’t answer her for a moment, wondering if she really wants to know. Wondering if what I tell her will make any sense at all in her mind. I dodge in and out of morning traffic, guessing she probably doesn’t want to eat now. I heard her stomach growl and felt bad about Bianca interrupting our brunch, but I’m sure her appetite is long gone. I’m sure I’ve got worse things to feel bad about right now.
“Why, Benji?” she demands, her voice rising. I glance at her and watch as she punches the side of the door. “Why did you do that? What does he have to do with that…that woman that was all over you?” She shakes her head, runs a hand over her face. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I huff a laugh at that. “So many things, Ava.” I shake my head as I pull into a parking garage. “So many things.”
I put the car in Park and turn to look at her.
“How you feeling?” I ask conversationally. “You happy you got to know me?” I smile at her and it feels wrong on my face. “Glad you saw that?”
She twists in her seat but doesn’t undo her seatbelt. I see the strap dig in between her breasts, pressing against her sweater.
Her eyes are narrowed into beautiful blue slits. I was never a fan of blue eyes, but hers are something else. Especially when she’s angry, like she is now.
She slams her hand on the center console, narrowly missing mine. “Why did you do that?” she asks me. “Why did you…” She shakes her head, bites her lip. She doesn’t want to say it again.
“Why did I run over that poor man’s head?” I mock her.
She doesn’t answer, she just stares at me, waiting.
I lean my seat back and stare out at the parking garage, surprisingly not crowded for once.
“Does it matter?” I ask without looking at her.
“Just fucking tell me,” she grits out.
I sigh. “He was a shady dealer. So in that regard, I really helped clean up the streets—”
“Get to the fucking point!” she screams at me.
I still don’t look at her. I brush my thumb over my lip, close my eyes. “He was a dealer. That woman who was all over me,” I use her words, “Bianca, started using, buying from him. Bianca and I were…together. For a while. One night, I come home, and she isn’t there. I find her at this dude’s house, in his bathtub. He beat the shit out of her.” I turn my head and watch Ava. Her expression is unreadable, but she’s hanging onto every word, trying to make this make sense in her head. Trying to still make me out to be a good guy. To feel safe being in another country with me.
“So I beat the shit out of him, then I ran over him. Then,” I smile again, “I went to prison for a few years.”
That’s half the story. But the other half…well, Ava isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to think about me and Bianca.
“But…” she clenches her fists. “What does any of that…what does that have to do with Riley and Caden and sneaking into my house to watch over me?”
“It doesn’t. Not really. But in prison, I found my true calling, which turned out to be doing more things that could send me back to prison. Riley…well, her story is her story to tell. But all you need to know is someone is after her, and wants to hurt her, and I’m going to hurt them first. When I find them.”
“What does that have to do with me?” she asks, wringing her hands together. “I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me—”
“They threatened you, too,” I tell her quietly. She really doesn’t deserve to know any of this shit, but she does deserve to know that.
Her face goes pale, and she runs her tongue over her bottom lip. I look away from her, listen to her quiet breaths. In and out, in and out.
“Why?” she presses.
“Because the guy is a piece of shit, that’s why.”
She actually laughs, and it’s bitter. “And you’re, what? A hero?”
I straighten my seat and turn to gaze at her. “No, Ava,” I answer her with a smile. “Not even close.”
We pull up at Riley and Caden’s soon-to-be new home. Ava hasn’t said another word to me. I know she wants to leave, to go back home, but the lovebirds aren’t ready yet and they were dying for us to see this place, so here we are.
It’s on a cul-de-sac that reminds me of the one me and Caden grew up on, but with bigger lawns and taller, wrought iron gates.
Ava gets out of the car before I do, slamming the door again, and I cringe, but don’t say anything.
She walks up the stone steps to the massive front porch, and the door that looks like it belongs on the Vatican rather than a house. She stares at the door a moment, examining the knocker that’s shaped like a gargoyle which I assume is a Riley thing because it sure as hell is not a Caden thing. There’s no doorbell, and I’m about to call out for her to just try the door, when it swings open.
I don’t see anything at first, just a brightly lit ent
ranceway that looks like it’s carved from stone.
And then Riley’s face peers around the door and she beams at us.
Clearly, she likes the place.
Another woman walks into view, and I see Angie, Caden’s housekeeper. Today, her short hair is aqua blue.
I watch Ava’s head turn from Riley to the older woman and back again. She’s clearly confused. Angie throws a lot of people off.
“Come in,” Riley says happily, pulling the massive door open wider.
“You must be Ava,” Angie says, smiling and holding out her hands. Ava makes to shake one but Angie pulls her into a hug. “Are you with Benji?” she whispers. Loudly.
I walk through the door into the cold house, and Riley, with a sigh, lets go of it, and it thuds closed behind us.
“That door is fucking heavy,” Riley muses.
“Get Caden to replace it.”
She glares at me, her arms crossed over her black hoodie. “Shut up,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I didn’t hear what Ava said to Angie, but now Angie is pulling me in for a hug, too. I wrap my arms around her small body and she squeezes me.
“She said she isn’t yours,” Angie whispers, this time truly whispers, in my ear. “You better fix that.”
Then she pulls away, flashes us all a smile, and walks down the stone-floored hallway, disappearing around a corner.
I sweep my eyes over the place, taking in the vaulted ceilings, the lamps that look like sconces on the stone walls.
“Was this once Dracula’s cave?” I ask Riley, slipping my hands in my pockets. There’s a staircase to my right, with dark red steps. It really looks like a vampire might have once lived here.
Riley rolls her eyes. “No. It was a famous painter,” she corrects me. “An artist, Benji. Something you don’t know shit about.”
I sigh. “Guilty.” Unless fucking up my life every damn day is an art form.
Ava is taking in the house, too, and she looks pretty damn impressed. She flips her long blonde hair over one shoulder and looks at Riley.