by Toni Blake
“What was Wayne in prison for?”
Mick swallowed back his disgust over what Jenny would think. “Armed robbery.”
He sensed her drawing in her breath. “What…did he rob?”
“The time he got caught, a quickie mart. And he would’ve been out by now, but he, uh, wasn’t a model prisoner. He has a way of getting himself in trouble. Always has.” He stared back out over the dark water below them, to the perfect cottages on the other side. He couldn’t see them, but even now, in the dark, he could feel them—and feel how far away they were, how far away they’d always been.
“Were…you there? When he, um, got caught?”
She sounded nervous again, and the question burned in his chest. She might not think he was trash, but she also apparently knew the truth about him, a fact which stung. “No,” he said softly, “or else I’d have probably gone to prison, too. But I’m getting pretty damn tired of keeping secrets, so you might as well know—I…I haven’t exactly been an angel.
“The thing is, though,” he went on, “the thing I want you to know about me is…Wayne going to prison changed my life, changed me. I…don’t do those kinds of things anymore, Jenny. I haven’t for a long time.”
She stayed quiet too long, the silence wrenching his gut, before whispering, “Did you ever rob a liquor store in Crestview?”
His shoulders slumped forward in automatic response, and he pushed his hands back through his hair, unable to answer, hating his life. He knew the fact that he didn’t tell her no right away pretty much said yes—but still, somehow, he couldn’t spit it out. Finally, he asked her, “Does that make you afraid of me?”
“A little. All of this does.”
His next words came out in a rush. “I’m different now, Jenny. I live in Cincinnati, and I work as a bricklayer and stonemason. I had a job there, a decent job contracting for a big homebuilder, and I had an apartment.”
She turned to look at him in the dark. “Had?”
“I had to give that stuff up to come take care of Wayne. I had a little money saved—but not enough that I could pay my rent for a few months with no job. So I put my stuff in storage, drained my bank account, and came here, for now. I wish I was back there. I wish I wasn’t waiting for my brother to die.”
He felt more than saw her eyes on him, but was glad for the dark—glad it meant she couldn’t see him very well, either. “How much…time does he have?”
Mick shrugged. “Another month or two, maybe three, according to the doctors he saw. Right now, he’s mostly tired, but he can take care of himself, get up and out of bed and all that. Tonight,” he stopped, sighed, remembering and feeling awful about it, “I forgot to give him his pain medication. So he woke up in pain. That’s why we were up in the middle of the night. But usually, I’m able to keep him comfortable, and he mostly lies in bed and watches TV, or sleeps.”
“Where did you get…pain medication?”
He drew in a breath. Despite how shaken she’d seemed initially, Little Miss Pussycat kept coming up with hard questions, sounding less and less afraid to ask them. “He brought ’em with him. I didn’t ask where they came from. But he found out what he’d need, and he got it before he came here.”
At least she sounded calmer now, more curious than freaked out. “So…what do you do with your time? When he’s sleeping or watching TV.”
He peered out over the lake. “I go out for the things we need—I drive over to Crestview to get groceries and do laundry to make sure no one recognizes me. I go fishing with an old rod and reel I found in the shed. I come across the lake and see you.” And I dig. But she didn’t need to know about that part. The uglier parts. That a man had to have a grave. And that a grave took a damn long time to dig.
“You’ve only come to see me twice. But you said it like it was a regular thing.”
I think about you a lot. Our sex. Your face. While I give Wayne oxycodone and slap duragesic patches onto his skin to take away his pain, I use you to take away mine. “Guess it seemed like more,” he murmured.
Beside him, she lay back in the grass and looked up at the sky, so he did, too. Damn, there were a lot of stars here—way more than in the city. He supposed he didn’t see them much, living under the trees the way they did. He hadn’t noticed them on the nights he’d crossed the lake to her, either, but he was noticing them now. “Tell me what’s so special up there, pussycat,” he requested quietly.
“The sun is one of literally trillions of stars,” she began, “in the Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way is one of more than a billion galaxies. We are…so small, Mick, as to be almost non-existent.”
He kept looking up, trying to wrap his mind around the scope of what she’d just relayed to him. “You say that like it’s a good thing. To be non-existent.”
“That’s not how I mean it. I mean that, if we’re that small, how big can our troubles really be?”
“Mine feel pretty damn big right now, honey.”
“Look up for a while and think about everything else out there and maybe it won’t feel that way so much.”
He did. He tried. And he felt it. Just a little. Not a lot. His brother was still going to need another pill in the morning, and his seventy-two-hour patch with the fentanyl in it would need to be changed, too. And at some point soon, in a month, or two, the meds would quit working and things would get much worse. But thinking about all those stars, all those worlds out there, did take him away from it all, just for a few minutes, just like thinking about Jenny always did.
Only then, like a freight train, Mick’s big problem came roaring back into his mind, nearly mowing him down, zapping his strength. Jenny knew about Wayne now. Jenny knew about Wayne.
And maybe when he’d asked her to keep his presence a secret it had been easy for her because she hadn’t known why. But now she did—now she knew he was breaking the law, hiding an escaped convict, for God’s sake.
Could she keep that a secret? From her father? Would she?
Everything depended on it. Wayne’s death. And Mick’s life—his freedom.
Fear and fury gathered inside him and, without warning, without planning, he rolled toward her until he was on top of her, clamping his hands around her arms as he brought his face down close to hers. “You can’t turn me in, Jenny! Tell me you won’t, damn it. Promise me.” The words came out harsh, hard, angry—he felt them in his chest, pounding there. “Damn it, tell me!”
That was when he saw one glistening tear slip from her eye. That was when he saw the look on her face. Oh God, he’d just scared the shit out of her.
And he should have wanted that—God knew that had been his goal in the beginning, that night in the woods. And from a practical standpoint, it was a damn smart goal.
But a bigger part of him hated himself for this, for what this situation made of him, for letting it take him back too close to his old life, back when all he’d wanted was to please his big brother, no matter what it took. He hated making Jenny Tolliver cry.
And so he released her arms from his grip and moved his hands gently to her face, pushing her hair back off her forehead, stroking her cheek. “I’m sorry, pussycat,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Please don’t cry. I’m just…really fucking afraid here, you know?”
Beneath him, he felt her nod, and he used his thumb to wipe away that lingering tear on her cheek.
She moved to sit up, so he helped her, kept his arm around her afterward, wanted to make her feel better—somehow.
“I won’t tell, Mick,” she said, her voice soft as the dark night. “I promise.”
“Really, pussycat?”
She nodded.
But it wasn’t enough. “Because I know you’re tight with your dad, and I know it might be tempting…”
She let out a heavy breath, yet shook her head. “I won’t tell.”
“Why?” he whispered.
“Because I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Thank you,” he said, th
en leaned his forehead over to touch hers.
A few minutes later, Mick walked her down to the canoe. And he believed her, he really did—but it was still hard to let her go paddling back across that lake. He believed her, but he hardly knew her, and now he had to trust that she was as good and kind as she seemed most of the time. Damn, she was a nosy little thing—yet kind at heart, he reminded himself. He was depending on that kindness.
“Goodbye, pussycat,” he said, low and soft.
“Bye,” she murmured, but as she turned toward the canoe, Mick’s instincts made him grab on to her hand.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Come here,” he breathed, and pulled her to him, close, tight. He hadn’t planned it, but he wasn’t quite ready to go back to that stuffy cabin where death was coming. “I just…need to hold you a minute. That makes it better.”
Her arms had closed around his waist now, yet she pulled back slightly to peer up at him. “Makes what better?”
“Everything, honey. Everything.”
He never meant to kiss her, either, but before he knew it, his mouth was on hers, and her lips were so soft—everything on her was soft. He went hard in the space of a heartbeat as she kissed him back, kissed him back even now, even knowing his darkest secrets—and that made him kiss her even more hungrily.
Oh God, he needed her—bad. He hated admitting that to himself, but he knew it—he needed her now, to take all the rotten stuff away.
Shit, he’d let that happen too fast, way too fast—he wasn’t a guy who got attached to women often—but this was different. This was about slaking the pain, about finding a way to feel good when everything around him was bad. And Jenny made him feel damn good.
Her hands were in his hair, his on her sweet, round ass. He got lost in the kissing and touching, and soon couldn’t keep from moving, driving himself against her through their clothes. Her breath grew ragged, which he loved. It excited him to make a girl like her lose control.
But when he reached for the button on her blue jeans, he realized—oh God, oh shit—he was trembling. What the hell? His hands shook, and inside…inside he suddenly needed to be with her so bad he could barely get her out of her clothes. God, what was happening?
He didn’t know, but he quit thinking and pressed on, urgently now, unzipping her pants, tugging to get them down. She reached for his, too, and they worked feverishly. And despite how much he’d loved her breasts that last time they’d been together, he didn’t bother removing her tank top—by the time both their pants were lowered, he couldn’t wait another second.
He moved behind her, instinctively needing her in a whole new, rough way. He used his hands to press hers to the rough bark of the nearest tree. Then he closed one palm over her hip and wrapped his other arm full around her waist, and plunged inside her.
Oh God—yeah.
They both cried out at the firm, deep entry, and all he wanted to do was fill her, fill her, fill her, over and over. He still quivered a little, but nothing mattered in this moment but thrusting into her sweet wet warmth, again, again.
He soon let the arm that supported her dip between her thighs, let his fingers sink into her slick folds to stroke the little nub there, swollen beneath his touch. When she began to move more rhythmically, he knew he was hitting the right spot.
Sweat rolled down his temples, his chest, and he felt it gluing their bodies together below, too. The dark water looked like black glass beside them, reminding him how alone they were here. Turned out there were one or two things this godforsaken land was good for, and just now, he was glad the other side of that lake was so damn far away.
“I want to make you come, pussycat,” he murmured in her ear. He wanted to feel her convulse against him, wanted to hear her sobs of pleasure. In front of him, her breath grew labored, rough, beautiful. She moved more intently against his hand, saturating his fingertips with moisture.
Come, he willed her, come for me. He’d always enjoyed bringing women pleasure during sex, but with Jenny, it was different. It was as if…making her come made him worthy. And despite himself, he wanted that, he wanted to be worthy of Jenny Tolliver.
“Come, baby,” he whispered in her ear. “Come hard, just for me.”
“Close,” she breathed, the word barely audible. “So close.”
And then her body jolted in front of him, and she let out a hot little cry, and she moved against his hand harder for a few amazing seconds, whimpering her pleasure. And she started to go still after that, limp, clearly weak, but he couldn’t let her. He anchored his arm back around her to keep her upright, and as blood gathered below and heat shot through his veins, he said, “Damn, honey, I’m coming, too.”
His head fell back, his eyes shut, as he drove into her welcoming body, groaning his release again, again, again. He kept plunging inside her, to the very last, grabbing on to every ounce of pleasure he could take—because he needed it so bad.
He could never let her know that, of course, how bad he needed what she gave him. And now that the waves of orgasm were passing and sanity was returning, he knew he’d come too close to that tonight already, too close to letting her see the power she suddenly held over him. He didn’t want to scare her anymore, but he also didn’t want to appear weak. To her, or to himself. He’d had a few moments of weakness with her here tonight, but he needed to be strong for Wayne, strong for what was coming. So he said nothing when it was over, simply pulled out of her and tried to forget that the girl had actually made him tremble in her arms.
It was as they both drew their blue jeans back up that she said, “We didn’t use a condom again.”
He let his head drop back, releasing a huge sigh. “Shit. I wasn’t expecting to find—”
“I know,” she cut him off. “A girl sneaking around your house in the middle of the night.”
“That about sums it up. Sorry, pussycat.”
“Well, it takes…two to tango, as they say.”
She stood before him, biting her lip, looking innocent and wild all at once. And he wanted to kiss her some more, but decided it would be a bad idea. So instead he just said, “’Night, honey.”
“Goodnight.”
Be careful on the lake. He wanted to tell her that, too, but held it in. It was too much, too much like caring.
Yet she’d never know if he stood on the shore, watching the dark shadow of her canoe glide across the lake’s surface, creating the tiniest of wakes in the moonlight, until she’d reached the other side. And that was exactly what he did.
* * *
We’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul…we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
Neil Armstrong
* * *
Eight
I’ve lost my telescope again.” It was an embarrassing admission, all things considered, but at the moment it didn’t seem as important to Jenny as it had the first time.
“What?” Sue Ann gasped, turning to face her. “Where?” They sat side by side atop a picnic table in Creekside Park, watching Sophie play on the swings.
“Outside the Brody cabin.”
Sue Ann blinked. “Outside the what?”
Jenny gave her only a short, sheepish glance. “You heard me.”
“Well, I hope you’re not planning to drag me back over there with you to get it this time.”
Something inside Jenny felt somber, sad. She just kept watching Sophie’s swing glide back and forth as she said, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’m pretty sure he’ll bring it back to me again. Because I’m pretty sure he’s going to feel the need to check up on me again.”
Clearly, Sue Ann began to comprehend the enormity of the situation, since her voice dropped an octave and she grew more somber herself. “I guess this means you know what he’s hiding now.”
She nodded succinctly. “Yep.”
“Well?”
/> Of course, Sue Ann expected to be told. And it was the first time in her life that Jenny had seriously considered keeping something from her best friend. In the end, though, she’d decided, just like the whole first Mick Brody incident, that she had to tell her. They were practically sisters. How could she not?
Before she spilled the beans, though, she turned to Sue Ann and took both her hands, because this wasn’t just any secret—this wasn’t just sex in the woods. “This is some serious shit, Sue Ann, so you have to swear you will not breathe a word of this, and if you think you can’t make that promise, tell me now. I mean it.”
Sue Ann looked appropriately worried, even gulping, and took a minute to think. Finally, she bit her lip and said, “Okay, I promise. I swear.”
Jenny let out a deep breath—one that it felt like she’d been holding all night since leaving Mick on the southern shore of the lake—and told Sue Ann about Wayne. It had been eating her up since she’d found out, and she’d never felt so caught between a rock and a hard place in her life.
Thankfully, they were in a quiet area of the large park, so at least she could talk with Sue Ann without worry they’d be overheard. She concluded with, “So, as you can see, this is freaking serious. There is an escaped convict across the lake from me, and Mick is harboring him. It’s so illegal that I can barely fathom it. And now I know about it, Sue Ann—I know about it.” Then she gasped. “Does this make me an accessory?”
Next to her, Sue Ann looked understandably horrified. “Now I’m kinda sorry you told me.”
Uh-oh. “Why?”
“Because maybe now I’m an accessory to the accessory.”
Jenny winced. “Oh damn, sorry—I didn’t think of that.”
Just then, Sophie stopped her swing, digging small tennis shoes into the sand beneath it, and yelled over to Sue Ann. “I’m going to the castle,” she said, pointing. Apparently, this was what Sophie called the big plastic apparatus just beyond the swings consisting of numerous tunnels, ladders, and slides.