by Cat Porter
I wandered around the house, holding my cup of tea, my free hand tracing over the wainscoting in the hallway.
The slight chill in the air had me invading Boner’s closet, where I’d found a faded black hoodie on a shelf with about five other similar hoodies. I brushed my cheek against the worn smooth cotton as I curled up in a corner of the sofa and sipped on my tea. The soft pink-orange glow of dawn was now a stronger yellow filtering through the bay window, and I smiled to myself.
I glanced at the impressive fireplace and the high wall of stone over it.
This house was Boner’s quiet castle of solitude away from the uproar of the clubhouse, but wasn’t it big for a man alone? A man who had been an adamant bachelor all his adult life? Why invest money in it, work on it, if he wasn’t planning on filling it with his own family one day?
My toes curled into the sofa cushion as I pretended for a second that this was my house, and I could wander around in it and feel completely comfortable in it.
But I already do feel comfortable in it.
There I was, like a teenager with my out-of-wedlock kid living in my ex-boyfriend’s childhood room. Camped out and cramped with all of my and Becca’s earthly possessions, but we did enjoy living with Rae and Tania. I liked living with women who had positive energy. I hadn’t had that in a long while.
I belonged and would always belong, thanks to my daughter.
And here was Boner, all alone in this roomy house. Clean, organized, able to be filled, yet he kept it empty.
We were on opposite ends of the spectrum.
My gaze lingered on the open kitchen with its sleek tiled countertop, dark wood floors, and black-and-stainless steel appliances. Maybe he didn’t want to be alone. Maybe in the back of his mind he was hoping, preparing, wishing for another kind of future.
I moved to put my mug on the coffee table. A big piece of paper lay there with Firefly written in big letters in Boner’s handwriting. Writing was visible on the other side of it, and I turned the paper over.
A poem.
A new poem.
A poem about a firefly.
He wrote a poem for me.
For me.
For me.
For me.
He’d said he hadn’t written anything in a long while, and all the others had been about her.
But now, there was me.
Me and Boner.
A shiver raced over my neck, and warmth flooded my insides at the memory of our lovemaking last night. His lips at my ear, his shaky voice uttering incendiary words just for me.
And now this gorgeous poem. I pressed the paper against my chest, my eyes closing.
My man, my lover, my heartbeat.
My phone pinged with a text. I grabbed it from the coffee table.
Grace.
Where’s your old man? LOL Is he avoiding me?
I laughed and tapped the button to call her.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Oh, geez. Did I wake you? I didn’t realize it was so early. I’m sorry.”
“No, not at all. I’m sitting here in Boner’s house, drinking herbal tea, and Becca’s coloring.”
“Oh shoot! That explains it then.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’ve been trying to reach him since last night, but he hasn’t been answering. I intruded on your special night together. I’m sorry.”
“He didn’t say that you’d called, and I didn’t hear his phone ring at all.”
“He actually shut his ringer off? Wow, he never does that. Good for him. I hope it was a really, really special night then. Is he still asleep?”
“Grace, he’s not here. He left first thing this morning with the guys.”
“He did?”
“They went on a run somewhere. He said he was meeting everyone at the club and taking off.”
“Really? Wait, hang on.”
Grace asked Lock about a run, and his deep voice was muffled in the background over the line. Lock usually didn’t go on runs, with Eagle Wings being so busy.
“Honey, there’s no run anywhere. In fact, everyone’s been told to stay put,” said Grace, her voice thinner than before.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. “But Boner made it sound like he would be with Butler and Kicker.”
“No, Jill, nobody left.”
Something cold and hard coated my chest. “But he left first thing, just after five.”
“Did he tell you where?”
“No, he just said…”
“If that bright life could come true, baby, I’d want it with you.”
If.
If?
He’d told me he loved me, said good-bye, and left me a poem, a testament of his soul.
I clutched the phone tighter. “Grace, he’s been acting a little strange lately. Moody, withdrawn, emotional.”
“Honey, none of those things are strange for him.”
“True, but he’s been different the past couple of days. I’ve felt it. Last night, he told me about his life in Denver—before the One-Eyed Jacks.”
“He did?” The surprised tone in her voice was unmistakable.
“Do you know anything about what happened, why exactly he left Denver? He said he’d never shared it with anyone—just with Dig, of course—but I was wondering if you had any insight because…” I took in a breath to squash the wave of emotion that threatened to crash over me.
“Jill, what is it?”
“I think he went back to Denver today, and it may not be a good thing,” I whispered.
“Oh, shit.”
My stomach hardened. “What is it? What do you know?”
She let out a heavy exhale. “The only thing Dig ever told me was that, back in Denver, right before they’d left, he had helped Boner kill someone.”
“Who? Who was it?”
“Some local drug dealer, a gang-leader type who was Boner’s boss.”
“Boner killed him?”
“Yes. Because of a girl.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Inès.
“Dig only told me because it was the first time he’d ever witnessed a kill like that. They were teenagers back then. It had blown him away. It was that awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Boner used an iron crowbar.”
“Smashing bones turned into a high-paying job though. It became my trademark. I was real popular in certain circles.”
“They ran, they left Denver that night. Boner’s never been back since, he always said he couldn’t go back.”
My stomach clenched, my head swirled, a sour brew boiled in the back of my throat.
“Jill, Boner doesn’t know that I know that. I’ve never brought it up, and he’s never shared. Jill? Jill? Are you there?”
AFTER ALMOST SIX HOURS ON THE ROAD, I entered the Denver city limits on I-25. I flexed my gloved fingers on my handlebars and stretched my back as I lowered my speed in traffic.
I had returned to do what I had to do.
Here I was, running toward the very thing that had threatened me for so long, toward what had kept me running all these years.
And even though it filled me with dread, a lightness seeped through my chest, and a slight grin stole over my lips. I hadn't realized it earlier, but I now knew with conviction that the running in my heart and soul had finally ended.
The cops were the ones who picked me up off the pavement after the Calderones had taken off with Inès. Following a trip to the ER to sew me up, I got hauled off to jail on assault and attempted robbery charges. Some guy had been paid to play the victim, saying he’d slashed me in self-defense. It wasn’t difficult to find witnesses on the street who were more than willing to tell the Calderones’ well-paid version of the God’s honest truth.
I knew it was only a matter of time until I got implicated in my uncle’s death, if not any of the many, many other deaths and assaults for which I was responsible. I’d be in prison all my life or on death row in no t
ime.
Fuck no.
Not for them.
Not for her.
I ended up in a juvie detention center. I got into plenty of fights, starting most of them myself, but one guy didn’t take the bait. Only one—Jake Pence, who would later become the One-Eyed Jacks’ Dig Quillen.
“Relax your ass already,” he said to me after dragging me out of yet another confrontation. “Lay low for fuck’s sake. Use it when it counts.”
He had a mop of dirty-blond hair and a get-the-fuck-out-of-my-face glower permanently engraved on his pretty-boy anglo features.
Jake sure as hell didn’t look like he belonged in juvie with the rest of us. Juvie wasn’t about making friends, but we’d gravitated toward each other. He was like me—couldn’t sit still, burning to get out, burning to be free of other people’s power over him. I saw it in his cold sand-colored eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the way he didn’t talk to anyone.
Anyone but me.
We hung out, made a plan, bided our time. One night, it all clicked into place, and we ran. We made it onto the roof and jumped over and down into a dumpster where we waited in the muck until the truck came to haul it away hours later.
We were free.
“You still want to find her?” Jake asked as we sat on a curb, devouring half-eaten burritos we’d found in a garbage can.
“I have to.”
“True love sure is one fucked up proposition,” he muttered wiping his fingers on his dirty jeans.
“I gotta talk sense into her.”
“If that’s what you want, but we need to get the hell out of here.”
A group of young boys kicked around a soccer ball in the street in front of us. They looked about the same age I’d been when my mother died.
“I can’t imagine my life without her, man. She’s always been there for me, and I can’t just leave her behind. Bottom line, before we go, I need to make sure she’s okay.”
Jake shrugged. “Let’s get this over with.”
Two days later we found her. She was shopping at this small pricey boutique.
“Inès.”
Her tense eyes met mine. They swam in something I had no part of, like a strange liquor or a strong expensive perfume.
Was she afraid of me, as if I were some sort of stranger?
She had lots of makeup on, new clothes. She was someone else.
I blurted out my speech about how I forgave her, how everything would be better from now on. We’d finally leave Denver and it would be the two of us again, the way it was meant to be, the way it had always been; all we’d ever known.
“Santiago, I can’t come with you. I don’t want to.”
“They’ve got you confused. Don’t you see? You’re their prisoner. For what? For their money? Their attention?”
“They’re good to me.”
“Good to you? No. They’re not good at all.” I grabbed her arm. “Let’s go, Inès. Come on.”
“Stop it. Let go of me.”
“I can’t!” I spit out, shuddering. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can. You have to!”
“No.”
“I’m pregnant.”
A punch landed in my chest. My head spun. “What?”
“I said, I’m pregnant.”
I grabbed her hands to steady myself, to feel that connection to her again, especially now. But her hands were cold, and she yanked them from my grip.
I stumbled. “Is it mine? I mean, it could be mine, right?”
“I don’t know, Santiago!” She raised her voice, her face a bitter sneer.
I’d asked her an odious, vile question that she never wanted to answer. I was annoying her.
Fuck her.
“You don’t know?” I repeated, my soul getting sucked out of me, my heart thundering in my chest, blood rushing in my ears. “You don’t know? You don’t know! Why don’t you know?”
The salesgirl in the store backed away from us, her face pale.
Tears filled Inès’s eyes, her head fell to the side. “I don’t know!”
“We gotta go, man. Just take her, and let’s go!” Jake yelled from the doorway.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her face tightened, and she folded her arms.
Clack, clack, clack went her high heels on the polished floor of the boutique as she stepped away from me.
I shook from the inside out. My body swayed.
I tore my shirt up. The angry red scar hadn’t healed. It still sizzled on my skin. “This is what you did to me. Look at me! You cut me. Why? Why?”
“No, no.” She shook her head, her hands stretched out. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. No.”
“You did this to me.” My voice seethed. “You. What have they done to you?”
Her back straightened, she blinked. “You don’t understand, Santiago. You never will because you’re a boy. They’re men. People listen to them. People look up to them.”
“People are afraid of them, you little fool.”
She raised her chin. “I’m not afraid of them. I love them, and I don’t want to leave.”
Love. The word we’d used together, for each other. Now, it wasn’t ours anymore. Not anymore. She had tipped a cauldron of molten tar over me with that goddamn word.
“We’ve got to go!” Jake yelled.
“Go, Santi. Please go.” Inès said, her voice suddenly soft, pleading, her hands twisting at her sides. “If they find you here, they’ll kill you.”
“You already did,” I breathed.
Jake grabbed me by the arm, and we tore out of the back of the shop and down the street to the corner.
The fucking Coronet glided to a halt in front of the store.
That night, I got my crowbar from its hiding place in the basement of my old rathole building. “You in?” I glanced over at Jake as I pulled the iron bar from behind the brick shelf, my limbs lightening at the familiar weight in my hands. “I get it if you ain’t.”
“I’m in. Sure as fuck,” he said, those odd light-brown eyes of his gleaming like tarnished gold coins in the glare of the flashlight he held for me.
“You take this.” I tossed him my 9mm.
I slid the plastic baggie with my mother’s rosary and the photograph of us out of its hiding place behind a loose brick and tucked it in my jacket pocket.
We found Julio, and he suggested a junkyard that was one of the Executioner’s new domains. Felipe was lingering there at about four in the morning with a flunky who was out taking a piss.
Jake got the bodyguard from behind with a knife to his side as I garroted him with a wire cord. His thrashing in our hold, his struggling, his helplessness made me high. Grunting, we finally dropped his lifeless body to the ground.
I approached Felipe, and I didn’t even have to say a word. He raised his gun at me, and Jake shot it out of his hand. The crowbar was alive in my grip, conforming to my palm like the soft and unbending iron it was for me. The weeks away hadn’t changed that. It propelled me forward—again and again and again through Felipe’s howls, through the splintering cracks, through the thuds. The force of my hate and the fury of my rage empowered me. The authority of my anger was so loud, it made me wild.
Inès’s voice saying “love” fueling me.
“Enough!” Jake dragged me away. “Jesus!”
I hurled that fucking iron crowbar on Felipe’s broken, mangled body.
I was covered in blood, bone, gunk, sweat, and grief.
So much grief.
Jake and I ran, becoming a part of the shifting shapes of the darkness. He got us out of Denver, out of Colorado. He had thought ahead, had made detailed plans for us, and I followed, grateful he’d taken on that burden.
I was burnt from the inside out.
We ended up heading for Utah in the back of a truck crammed with fertilizer.
“We’re never going back,” Jake muttered. His head sank onto his knees, his body shuddering.
Poor kid. All that adrenaline had finally run its course, a
nd all that blood and gore had shaken him up. He’d never killed anyone before this.
I leaned my head back against a crate, the stench of manure unbearable.
“Thank you,” I whispered into the shadows between us.
I couldn’t remember when I’d last said those words, and I meant them now. It was a relief, it was the truth. He could have called me insane and taken off, but he hadn’t. Jake had seen this through with me. He’d had my back. No one had had my back for such a long time.
A long, long time.
“You don’t have to thank me.” Jake wiped at his eyes. “That felt good. Freaked me the fuck out, but it was good.” He sat up straight. “You know shit. You know shit I want to learn, and you’re going to teach me. ’Cause that’s the only way from here on in. The only way.”
I raised my head and was met with hard eyes. Eyes blazing with determination.
What had burned me, had lit him on fire.
What had drained me, had breathed new life into him.
Ah, here were demons. But were his real or were they ghosts?
“You sure? That’s what you want?” I asked.
“That’s what I want.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, good.” He grinned. Brittle hope and brutal confidence.
“You ever used a gun before today?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Well, you got good aim. Got a bright future ahead of you.”
He laughed.
I got him to tell me his whole fucking story, and I told him mine. Oh, his demons were real, all right. Real and bloody and unavenged.
But my fight was done.
He leaned forward. “Plenty of places for us to go. Plenty. We’ll change our names, too.”
“Jake, I—”
“I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry about a thing. You’ve been through enough lately.” He reached out a hand, wrapped it around my neck and squeezed. “We’re in this together now.”
Jake was a believer in a better day, a blacker one, but it would be a day of our own making. That was something I could believe in, that was something I could hold onto.
He lifted his chin. “You and me, Santiago.”
“You and me.”
A new fucking era was born for Jake Pence and Santiago Arana that night in the back of a foul smelling truck hurtling down I-70.