by M. O'Keefe
He turned toward me again, his lips curled in a smile that made my heart ache. “So, yeah, I left. And I was going to stay away but my brother called me back and I went back, knowing it was the end for me. Lagan. The club. Pops. Any one of those things could have killed me. I never expected it would be you with a bomb strapped to a chair. But I wasn’t even surprised when Rabbit pulled that gun.”
He hadn’t been. I’d seen his face that night, resolved in the firelight. He’d seen that moment coming a mile away. And again, I understood that down to my feet.
“You should have stayed in Arizona.”
“Yeah, and maybe it would be my brother who was dead. Or Pops. Or Annie. For sure you’d be dead. Blown up by your own damn bomb. So, I’m glad I came back. And now…” He stared up at the sky for a long time. So long, I didn’t think he was going to say anything. But finally he laughed. “Fuck. I’ve got four days in a condo by the beach with no brothers at my back. No Lagan. No drug deal. Nothing except a bunch of prospects who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
“You could just…walk away. You did it before. You could do it again.”
Max stretched his hands wide, looking at the muscles and the tattoos. Or maybe it was me looking at the muscles and the tattoos.
“Jesus, Max, don’t you see?” I said. “You’re getting a second chance. Like…a real one.”
He didn’t say anything and I understood that, too. Laying claim to something, owning up that you wanted more than you had was like asking for it to be taken away.
And second chances were a fucking miracle for people like us, because all our chances were used up before we were even born. For a second, I was so jealous I couldn’t breathe. My throat was clogged with envy.
He got the light of a new day and I was heading down so dark a road, I couldn’t even see the end of it.
It would be better when I got Jennifer back. It would be worth something once she was free. I would do anything for her shot at a second chance.
“I’m glad,” I said, the words squeezing through the tightness in my throat. “For you.”
“Joan—”
He reached for me and I shrugged away so fast I hit my shoulder on the lawn chair.
“Don’t…just don’t.”
It seemed proof of something, the way I turned away from comfort. The way he curled his outstretched fingers into a fist and then reached for his beer as if he’d never reached for me.
“You’ve got this bright, shiny new chance,” I said. “You don’t want to get involved with me. I get it. I’d only fuck it up.”
“No!” he said. “God, no, Joan. That’s not it.”
I laughed at him. Or at myself. I wasn’t sure. I was laughing at something and it wasn’t all that funny.
Laugh or cry, that’s where I was. That’s where I lived. Black and white. Survive or die.
“Listen to me.” His hand grabbed mine and I tried to wiggle it free, but he wasn’t letting go. “You want to fuck, let’s do it. Let’s burn down the fucking place. We got that in us…between us. But when it’s over…all I’ll leave you are bruises. Because that’s all I have to give you. And a few months ago, fuck…two days ago, that would have been fine.”
“Why not now?”
He didn’t answer the question. And I didn’t, either. Neither one of us wanted to talk about what had changed between us. The shit we’d shown each other—told each other…it made everything more dangerous. In ways I couldn’t even see in the shadows we lived in.
“You got enough bruises, Joan.”
Oh God, he wasn’t staying away from me to protect himself. He was doing it for me.
“So do you,” I said, and he nodded.
He was right. He was exactly right. There’d be no comfort between us. There would only be more pain.
So, I left him there. His bruises and his tattoos black in the light of the glowing blue pool.
Chapter 17
I went to sleep on the love seat, but I woke up alone in the bed. The sheets beside me were cold, but the pillow next to mine still carried the dent from his head.
He’d moved me in the night. Picked me up in his tattooed arms despite his hurt ribs and carried me into the bedroom. And then didn’t spoon me, or try to seduce me. He didn’t even cup my breast.
Bastard.
Screw him and his kindness and respect. He didn’t have to rub it in.
I crawled out of bed, feeling a little like I’d been hit by a car. I’d slept so hard, for perhaps the first time since we got down here. The clock on the microwave in the kitchen said 10:30.
Jesus. Almost twelve hours of sleep.
“Max?” I said. He wasn’t in the living room or the bathroom. There was no note from him.
Perfect.
I’d had this thought last night, before drifting off, that I would go back down to Eric and ask if he could put some kind of spyware on Max’s phone. That way, I might be able to find out something about the people calling that number. I ran into the kitchen where my phone was charging on the counter, but it was alone.
Shit.
I checked all the plugs in the condo to see if he had his phone charging someplace else. But they were all empty. The drawers in every room in the condo were also empty.
I opened up the blinds and looked down at the pool deck only to find Max sprawled out on a deck chair, facing our side of the condo unit. He was wearing black trunks—where he got those, I had no idea. His chest was bare and his arms were lifted above his head, wrapped around the plastic strap above his head.
That tree and skull tattoo was revealed to the world. It felt intimate, that tattoo. I wanted to run down there and cover it up.
Every wiry muscle in his body stood out in relief. The bare skin of his chest not covered with bruises or tattoos glistened with sweat and his black hair was damp, slicked off his head.
His features were so defined. Elegant almost. Like if he were picked up and dropped back in some ballroom in England, he’d work there just as well as he worked here. All those women in corsets would faint at his feet.
See…historical romance novels: fueling sexual fantasies since I was too young to be reading them.
He should not be so hot. Not after last night. Not after we ripped open our pasts for each other and walked away because we were both too damaged to deal. Because we knew that if we touched—if we had each other it would only ruin everything.
But there he was. Sitting in the sun with all his tattoos and his bruises and even his gunshot wound like there was no part of himself he was ashamed of or felt like hiding.
And that was pretty goddamn hot.
And his phone, a small black rectangle, sat on the cement deck beside him.
Max
“Hello there!”
I opened my eyes to what had to be the twentieth little old lady standing over me. I shifted my head so she was blocking the sun. They all looked the same—the only variation being their skin color. Some were brown, some were black, most were white, but they all had curly white hair in a weird halo around their heads. All wore tank tops and skirts or hugely flowered swimsuits, like they just didn’t give a shit about the cellulite on their knees.
You kind of had to respect that.
This one had a swimsuit on, a baggy, nearly see-through thing.
I kept my eyes on hers.
“Hello,” I said.
“You’re one of the newlyweds in 304?”
“I am.” The lie was easy at this point, I’d been telling it all morning.
“Well, congratulations! Dean!” she yelled over her shoulder to a man sitting in the shade reading a newspaper. “It’s one of the newlyweds from 304!”
Dean lifted his hand, but didn’t lower the paper.
“Oh, ignore that man. He wouldn’t look up from The Times if the condo was on fire. Well, we’re just so thrilled to have you here. It’s nice to have younger people to liven the place up.” Now she was really getting excited. If I didn’t scare he
r away soon, she’d sit down on the lawn chair next to mine like the last old lady. I’d had to pretend to fall asleep to get her to leave. “With all us old folks around, it can get pretty boring! And you sitting here has already made it more exciting.”
I was pretty sure the dirty bird was talking about my body. Nice. Or maybe my bruises. I did look rough. I rubbed my hand over my beard which had grown bushier than I liked. Between the bruises, the ink, and my beard—I was pretty outlaw.
“Has anyone told you about the cocktail hours in the lobby?” She pointed toward the two-story building that linked the two wings of the condo building. Every single woman had told me about the cocktail hour. Cocktail hour was a big deal with the white-haired ladies.
“Gayle is making her Chex Mix tomorrow night and—”
“Hello, Susan,” a woman’s dry voice interrupted, and Susan and I both turned to see Aunt Fern standing there in another tennis outfit. This one was orange. It made her hair look like a fire on her head.
“Fern,” Susan said, her voice decidedly less chipper.
Not surprisingly, Aunt Fern was a total buzzkill.
“Hello, Aunt Fern,” I said showing a lot of teeth. Yes, she might have saved my life, but there was the hypodermic needle to my neck, too.
And the catheter.
She stared down at me and then, like it hurt, she smiled. “Hello, Max.”
Susan just kept talking. “I was just inviting Max and his wife…”
“Joan,” I supplied.
“Right. Joan, to the cocktail hour tomorrow night.”
“I’m sure they’re too busy,” Fern said.
“Not at all.” I could tell she was mad because she somehow got even more expressionless. “We would love to come!” I said, just to grind it in a little bit. Fern looked like if she could actually swallow her own lips, she would.
“Lovely!” Susan said. “I am so excited to talk to you about your tattoos. My grandson is a tattoo artist in Portland; he does just the most beautiful work.”
“Susan!” Dean yelled from across the pool and behind the paper. “Leave the poor man alone. It’s his honeymoon.”
“You’re right!” Susan said. “Congratulations again. I hope we meet your wife at the cocktail hour.”
“You sure will,” I said. I had zero intention of going but it was fun punishing Fern.
Susan left with a jaunty little wave and jumped into the pool for some kind of exercise that seemed to mostly consist of yelling at her husband and then helping him do the crossword.
Marriage was weird.
“You’re feeling better,” Fern said, looking me over. The bruise on my ribs was particularly colorful. Purple and black with green edges. It looked poisonous.
“I am.”
“How is the leg?”
“Fine.”
I wasn’t going to tell her anything I didn’t have to, and she seemed to realize that. Her job as my doctor was over and we were both relieved and showing it in the same clenched-jaw way.
“You will not be going to the cocktail hour,” Fern said and then turned to walk away, standing military straight.
She was right and I didn’t care enough to argue, so I closed my eyes for what would be my first nap of the day.
“What about the cocktail hour?”
Oh shit. It was Joan. I cracked open my eyes to see Fern and Joan in stand-off mode. I got distracted momentarily by Joan in that white bikini. Seriously. The girl had a body.
“It’s the same one the residents organize. Every Friday and Wednesday.”
“I completely forgot about those!”
Oh, that she actually looked excited broke my heart a little.
“You are not going to go.”
“Why?”
“Joan…” Fern said like a warning. “We had a deal.”
Hmmm…I guessed the deal had something to do with keeping a low profile and not embarrassing Fern.
That killed the excitement on her face and for a second she looked hurt. And I never would have seen that, never would have been able to recognize that split second of hurt before last night. But now I was wise to it. Now it was all I saw, even after she put it away, hid it behind an expressionless face. Behind all that bravado of hers—nothing but pain. “Right. Keep my head down.”
Fern blinked like maybe she saw that second of hurt, too.
“They’re dull. You must remember that.”
Joan smiled, briefly. “I remember Jennifer got drunk on tequila sunrises that one time.”
“She thought it was juice.” Fern’s expressionless face cracked just enough to register some other emotion. Not that I could tell what it was.
“No, she didn’t,” Joan corrected her, kindly. “That’s just what we told you so you wouldn’t get mad.”
Fern shook her head. “I should have known.”
“I told her she could have one, but she must have had like ten. Threw up all over the beach.”
“You and I chasing after her with water and aspirin,” Fern said. “You were so worried.”
“She was never much of a drinker after that. A good lesson, I guess. But we never thought the cocktail hours were boring. The food was good.”
“It’s mostly unhealthy garbage.”
“Exactly,” Joan said. “And that Murray guy…who plays the piano.”
“He died a few years ago.”
Joan blinked, clearly stunned. Clearly pained. “Of course,” she whispered with a gruff voice. “He was so old. That…shouldn’t be so surprising.”
“I’m sorry,” Fern said.
“Me too. He was really nice. Reminded us of Dad.”
Now it was Fern’s turn to look surprised. “Murray reminded you of Derrick?”
“They both really liked music.”
It looked for a second like Fern wanted to argue about something. About how unlikely the Murray-Derrick connection was. But something in Joan’s face, that deep layer of nostalgia maybe, made Fern keep her trap shut.
“But I get it,” Joan said. “No cocktail hour.”
Fern nodded, short and sharp, and the matter was over. “Enjoy the sun,” she said. “Try not to draw too much attention to yourselves.” Her eyes glanced over Joan’s body and then over to mine, covered in tattoos and bruises.
Me and Joan—we were a scene just breathing.
Fern slipped her big sunglasses down over her eyes and walked away toward the small brick wall and the gate that opened onto the brilliant white beach. She left a chill in her wake.
“Old habits are hard to break, huh?” I asked, closing my eyes again, letting the sun soak into my bones. I grew up in Florida, but I felt like I never got to appreciate the whole Florida experience. Not like the rich folks that came down every winter with nothing to do but sit and pick up shells.
I never even had a boat. It was practically a law—if you lived in Florida you needed to have a boat.
I had some money put aside. Not a lot. A few hundred thousand I kept in different safe deposit boxes and bank accounts. Some of that money could buy me a little fishing boat.
“What does that mean?” she asked. Something in her tone made me open my eyes and I saw her looking after Fern like a puppy who’d been left behind.
Right, I thought, softening toward her and not just because of the white bikini. Some habits were fucking impossible to break.
“Sit,” I told her, because I didn’t like seeing her that way. “Come get a sunburn.”
“Sunburns are for chumps,” she said. I could feel her in the air all along my left side. I could smell her—a mix of flowery shampoos and soaps and lotions.
Sweet. She smelled sweet.
I would know her in the pitch black. Without touching her or feeling her body, I would know her.
Shit.
I shifted in the chair as my dick started to stiffen.
I glanced over at her and she was rubbing sunscreen on her shoulders. I closed my eyes, because I didn’t need to make a scene with an erect
cock.
“You left the condo early,” she said.
“Nice day, bright sun. Seemed a shame to waste it.”
“You really going to just sit here for four more days?”
“I’m thinking of buying a boat.”
That made her laugh and I reached over, my eyes still shut, and touched her leg. Ran my knuckles over the smooth skin of her thigh. She was like silk under my callouses and bruises.
Her laughter stopped.
“Your phone,” she said.
Ah…now we were getting to the point of things.
“What about it?”
“Don’t be fucking obtuse, Max. My sister is in trouble.”
I blinked open my eyes, staring right into her face. “Lagan didn’t call. No one called.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
“Why can’t you let me have your phone?”
I cracked one eye. “Why can’t pigs fly?”
“It’s not like you care.”
“Doesn’t matter if I care or not. The phone is mine. Stop wasting your breath arguing.”
“You’re a dick.”
“No. I’m an asshole. Not a dick.”
“I’m beginning to get confused by the distinction.”
I grinned up into the sun and said nothing.
It took her a long time to relax. I could feel her radiating tension and anger and a kind of thwarted grief. She was reckless and strung too tight and not thinking clearly. It was the same kind of vibe Rabbit had, and Rabbit had been a sociopath who jumped at every shadow. He started fights with everyone who breathed his way.
And he had probably died a shitty death.