Burn Down the Night

by M. O'Keefe

  “I can’t right now. Joan just got out of surgery. We’re in a hospital outside of some town called Pickens. But…when I can, how about I come up to that fortress of yours on the mountain? I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Okay. That sounds real good.”

  “I’ll be bringing Joan with me.”

  “Yeah?” His voice implied all kinds of things.

  “Yeah.”

  I put my head against the wall and closed my eyes. Somehow I’d fallen for her. Hard. The kind of hard a guy never recovered from. Like Pops with Mom. Like Dylan with Annie.

  “I love her.”

  “Does she love you?” It twisted my heart how protective he sounded, like he would come charging down his mountain to defend me against Joan if that’s what was needed.

  “If she doesn’t, she will.”

  “You sound confident.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “You need money, or anything. A job. You can come work here with me if you want. There’s always a place for you here.”

  “I got some money saved up. I’m thinking of buying a boat.”

  That made Dylan laugh, and the sound of it coming over the phone was both agonizing and comforting.

  “What do you know about boats?”

  “Nothing. But I can learn. You want to go fishing sometime?”

  Dylan sucked in a hard breath and my eyes burned. “Yeah,” he said, all gruff and beat up. “I’d like that.”

  “Me too.”

  “Max. I’m here. Everything…is here when you’re ready.”

  “I love you,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Max—”

  “I gotta go. But I just…I wanted to tell you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I hung up and went to find Olivia.

  —

  She didn’t wake up the first day out of surgery. The doctor said not to worry, but I couldn’t help it. They seemed to understand that Jennifer and I wouldn’t be abiding by visiting hours and a very nice nurse rolled a cot into Olivia’s room. Jennifer slept there. I sat in the chair beside Olivia’s bed and watched my girl breathe. I watched her breathe and would have given everything I had to see her eyes open.

  But they didn’t.

  The next morning, they kicked me and Jennifer out of the room to run some tests. Jennifer went to the bathroom to clean up and I collapsed into the plastic chairs in the hallway outside Olivia’s room.

  I felt tethered to her. Leashed.

  If she didn’t wake up…I didn’t know what I would do.

  “Hey.”

  I lifted my head at the sound of a familiar voice. One I did not expect to hear here.

  It was Dylan. And Annie. Hand in hand. Dylan was carrying a tray of coffees. Annie had a duffel bag over her shoulder.

  Exhausted, I rubbed at my eyes like they were an illusion. But they were real.

  “What…?” My voice cracked. “How did you know—?”

  How did you know I needed you? How did you know how scared I was?

  He was my brother. That’s how.

  Dylan shook his head and sat down beside me.

  A sob rose up in my throat and I tried to swallow it down. But couldn’t. It was hard and solid and when I opened my mouth to breathe it broke right out of me.

  Dylan leaned his shoulder against mine.

  He was here. My brother was here. I was not alone. I didn’t have to be alone ever again.

  “She hasn’t woken up,” I said.

  “She will.”

  His faith gave me faith. He handed me one of the coffees.

  “You stink,” he said, which made me laugh. “And you’re covered in blood.”

  “Yeah,” I said, putting my hand against the rusty stains covering the shirt.

  “We have clothes,” Annie said. “For you and Joan. We have food and we got a hotel room if you want to—”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  Annie nodded, like she didn’t expect anything else.

  “But there’s a girl in the bathroom. Jennifer, she’s Joan…Olivia’s sister. She might need some clothes.”

  Annie nodded and turned to go find Jennifer. Another wild sob sat in my chest, but I kept this one down. I was too tired to talk, and Dylan seemed to know it because he just sat beside me. His shoulder pressed into mine. Support when I needed it most.

  Olivia’s door opened and the nurse stuck her head out. “She’s waking up.”

  Part 3

  Chapter 30

  Olivia

  Oh, the drugs were good. The drugs were so good. It was like I was floating around on pink fluffy clouds. I could do this all day. All damn day.

  But there was a reason why I couldn’t. Something…something I had to do. Right? Jennifer had school. She was probably sleeping in again…I swear that girl, she could sleep through anything.

  The pink fluffy cloud suddenly had teeth—sharp ones—and they clamped down hard on my side.

  I sucked in a breath and my eyelids fluttered open.

  The green walls were not familiar. The bed was not mine.

  “Hey.”

  I turned my head toward the voice and there was Max.

  Max.

  The sight of him was like sunlight right into my body. Like an infusion of something good and healthy. Something my body needed and gobbled up with greed.

  “Hey,” my voice was barely a breath. Not even a whisper.

  The chair he sat in scraped across the floor as he pulled it closer. I closed my eyes at the sound. “Did Jennifer get to school?”

  “No, baby.” Was he…laughing at me? I opened my eyes and caught his smile as he smoothed his hand across my forehead and down over my head. “Do you remember what happened?”

  I blinked. Blinked again. Something awful and sharp was breaking up the nice pink clouds.

  Jennifer!

  “Where’s Jennifer?”

  “She’s fine. She’ll be here in a second.”

  “The FBI?” I asked. “The lawyers?”

  “Jennifer and I both talked to them.”

  “And what happened?”

  “They’re still working shit out. But it’s not looking too bad for me. Or for you, in case you were worried.”

  I hadn’t been worried. Not about myself. Jennifer and Max, yes. Myself not so much.

  “Lagan?”

  “ICU somewhere and then jail. For a long time.”

  I relaxed back against my clouds, which weren’t actually clouds but a rather uncomfortable hospital bed. It was all coming back to me in slow drips.

  “I was shot!” I put my hand to my side where the low ache was throbbing. Max caught my hand and pulled it away.

  “You were. In the side. It nicked your spleen. You lost a lot of blood. You’ve been asleep for a day.”

  My eyes went wide. A whole day. I finally got a good look at Max, who was wearing a dirty shirt and a day’s worth of sleeplessness.

  Of course he wore it well. Like a badass.

  I turned my hand around so instead of holding my side, I was holding on to him. “You came,” I said. “It was a trap and you knew it and you came.”

  He nodded, blue eyes rimmed in red. Filled with concern and something big and rich and deep and it made me want to shrink away. I felt afraid and worried and unsure. Scared, really.

  But I forced myself to look at him. To soak him in. His exhaustion and beauty. His bravery and selflessness. I made myself accept the fact that he was here for me. And that I deserved that.

  I deserved him.

  “I will always come,” he said. “If you need me. I’ll be there.”

  “Why does this feel so scary?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a second chance. For you and me. For your sister. For all of us. But we gotta change our lives if we’re going to take it. We gotta trust each other. We gotta believe we’re enough. That it’s not either-or.”

  My hands were in fists because I wanted to grab on to him so ha
rd I hurt.

  I licked my lips. Oh God, they were dry. I was dry. I was a desert in need of rain. A woman in need of him.

  I thought about my sister and my future. About how I kept making these decisions that closed us off instead of opening us up. How not trusting anyone had left us so little room to move.

  “I want that,” I said, suddenly greedy. Every chance and opportunity I never imagined for myself or pretended that I never imagined—I wanted all of it. Him. My sister. I wanted to go to school and be a nurse. I wanted to sit by a pool on a honeymoon. I wanted Max to get everything he wanted and I wanted to be by his side when he got it. “I want everything.”

  “There’s my girl,” he said and leaned in to kiss my lips. So softly. So carefully. Like I was precious.

  And I kissed him back the same way.

  “I think…” Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was all this new courage and hope, but I was suddenly braver than I’d ever been. “I think I’m going to fall in love with you.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, as I stroked his beard, ran my thumb across his lips.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, because I already love you, baby.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “I mean…we barely know each other.”

  “Barely know each other?” he said. “You know that’s not right.”

  It wasn’t. I knew him and he knew me. And I knew that once this man loved someone, he loved them forever. That he and I…we would be forever.

  “I’ve waited for you for so long,” I breathed.

  “I’m here now,” he said, kissing the knuckles of my hand. “We’re both here. We made it, baby. We made it.”

  Epilogue

  CHRISTMAS ONE YEAR LATER

  Max

  Olivia put holly in her hair for the party. I mean, it was fucking adorable. And her hair was red, her natural color—full of secrets and spice just like her. Which just about drove me crazy. She was such a redhead. Green eyes, fair skin. Temper as hot as hell.

  I loved it.

  I pulled her forward into my arms once we got around the front of the car and kissed her head, right by the plastic holly.

  But that wasn’t enough for her, nope. She put her arms around my waist and kissed me on the mouth. A big, wet, happy smacker.

  Olivia was a kisser, color me surprised. She kissed me. She kissed her sister. She kissed the friends she’d made at nursing school. Every once in a while, we went out to a strip club and she kissed a few strippers while I watched.

  Hard to complain about any of that.

  Hard to complain about anything, really.

  It took us a few months to get here. I ended up doing a little time under house arrest. Which had been mostly okay. Olivia had been there, keeping me company. And we’d both been doing a little court-ordered counseling. Which was just as much bullshit as you might think. But it made Olivia happy. She came back from those appointments a little lighter. A little easier.

  And I’d been right about a happy Olivia—the world could barely hold her.

  I kissed her back, curling her into my arms, because it was winter and winter was hard for her, with memories of her father and that year in the woods.

  And I kissed her because she was so beautiful with her holly.

  And I kissed her because I was so damn grateful to have her in my life.

  It wasn’t easy, this transition. Going from outlaw to civilian. But she helped. She made it possible.

  “Get a room!” Jennifer yelled as she got out of the back of the car.

  “Great idea,” I murmured, my hands cupping her ass through her long coat. “Let’s bail on this and go back to the hotel.”

  We would have stayed at Dylan’s house, but Pops was living in the guest room and to be honest, it wasn’t great for Pops and I to spend too much time together. We’d both spent too much of our lives without any collars. And it wasn’t always easy for me to be with Dylan, either. Sometimes when we were out on the boat together, or working on a car, the past would come up and swamp me and I had to walk away from him. I had to be alone just so I could breathe.

  The regrets gave me some pretty dark days sometimes.

  Right. I guess the counseling was a good thing for me, too.

  “I know you’re not serious,” she said, pressing down the lapels on the fancy fucking coat she’d made me wear. I swear to God, if Dylan wasn’t wearing a coat, I was peeling this thing off the second we walked in the door. “You’re excited to see Dylan.”

  I was excited to see Dylan. It’s not like it was perfect between us. Like we just snapped back to the way we were when we were kids. There was way too much water under the bridge for that.

  But we were trying.

  “Whose car is that?” I asked, looking over at a beat-up Ford parked in the far shadows of the parking area. Dylan’s crew were such gearheads, no one would drive around in that POS. I felt like I was slumming it, showing up in the old Buick that Olivia would not let me get rid of.

  “I don’t know,” Olivia said, looking past my chest. “Carolina plates. Maybe one of Annie’s friends.”

  Of course. The car was quickly forgotten as we walked toward the house.

  Olivia and I lived near Tampa where Jennifer was going to college and Olivia was finishing up her nursing training. Jennifer lived in an apartment above our garage, which gave me and Olivia some privacy and Jennifer some independence.

  It was also close enough that Fern and Eric could visit every once in a while. It was close enough that I could do some work for Eric, too. Not a lot. He was starting me out slow, but I liked what I was doing. He was teaching me some of the computer stuff, too. And I was surprisingly good at it.

  Jennifer had already walked right into Dylan and Annie’s house, leaving the door open behind her.

  “That girl,” Olivia said through her teeth.

  I smiled, because she barely meant it.

  “Did she tell you how she did on her midterms?” I asked, keeping my arm around her as we walked toward Dylan’s strange house on a cliff.

  “No! Did she tell you?”

  “Two As and one B.”

  “What!” Olivia cried coming to a stop. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  Because she told me, I thought. And I’m so fucking grateful that I matter in Jennifer’s life because she matters in mine.

  “I don’t know, because you’d give her a hard time about that B?”

  “She’s not a B student. She’s….okay. Fair point.” I smiled and put my arm back around her, walking into the slice of light let out by the open door.

  Annie had decided to throw a Christmas party and since Dylan quite literally did just about everything Annie wanted—they had a Christmas party.

  Dylan’s home was a weird thing, built up into a cliff and over a waterfall. Sometimes it honestly killed me how rich the guy was. He kept trying to give us money, but me and Olivia were used to living small. And with her waitressing job that she worked around her school schedule and the work I did for Eric, we were okay.

  The front door was actually two doors. The first door opened into a dark and wide foyer and the other door opened to the kitchen and the bright lights and noise of the party.

  And between Annie’s friends from school and the guys from Dylan’s shop, the house with its amazing views was full to the rafters with family and friends.

  I was halfway through the door when Olivia pulled on my coat, stopping me.

  I turned and saw her. A woman in the shadows. Pale and terrified.

  “Jesus, Tiffany?” Olivia breathed. “Is that you?”

  The woman blinked wide eyes. “Joan?”

  “Yeah.”

  The woman, Tiffany, took in all the beauty that was my girl. “You look different.”

  “You look scared shitless.”

  Tiffany laughed, a feeble thing. “Thank you,” she said. “It was the look I was going for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another party to get to. The holidays, you know? So many par
ties.”

  “Wait.” Olivia stopped Tiffany from going out the door and she glanced at me over Tiffany’s thin shoulder. Get Annie, she mouthed and I nodded.

  “This…this was a mistake…I should go—”

  Before I could step through the kitchen door, a big guy stepped out like he was about to leave the party. The light was behind him, so he was mostly in shadows, but I caught a glimpse of the hard face of Blake, Dylan’s business partner and part of the family that kind of adopted Dylan after he got out of jail. Which made Blake Dylan’s brother in a way. A relationship I was really grateful for and at the same time resented the hell out of.

  “Hey man!” he said with a wide smile, because the guy had no such resentment for me. Or if he did, he didn’t show it. Come to think of it, the guy didn’t show much of anything. He was slick like that. Hard to get a hold of. You didn’t know anything about him unless he wanted you to.

  I knew he was rich as fuck. And protective of Dylan and his mom, Margaret, who kind of kept things running smooth up here on the mountaintop. And he was the kind of handsome women fell to their knees in front of.

  But there was something under the surface of his millionaire suits I recognized. The animal in me scented an animal in him.

  Sometimes I got the impression he was just barely holding on to the leash of that animal.

  And that made me real fucking nervous.

  “Hey, Blake,” I said, shaking hands with him. “I’m looking for Annie, we got a situation—”

  He glanced over my shoulder and saw Olivia and Tiffany.

  “What the fuck?” Blake said like he was breathing fire, and stepped past me. He grabbed Tiffany’s arm. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, Blake!” Olivia got herself between them, because she did not tolerate men manhandling women. Which meant I was getting in the mix, because no one was touching my girl. “Back off.”

  But Olivia and I didn’t need to worry, because Tiffany hauled that thin arm back and then let fly, clocking Blake across the face hard enough to snap his head back.

  “Don’t touch me, asshole!” she hissed.