by Nicole Fox
"What do you mean?" I asked. I didn't pay much attention to my dad's work.
"If he's got the goods on Rassi, then he's home-free," Porter said. "Hell, even if your dad had heard what the two of you were up to last night," I blushed vividly, "if Asa can give us Rassi, then your Dad will throw him a parade."
"You really want this guy," I said. It was a pretty dumb thing to say, when I thought about it.
"We want him. We want his organization. I'd tell you some of the things we think he's done, but which we've never been able to tie him to, only the thought makes me sick. He is a bad man on a whole other level. But that's why we have to be sure. If we go into this and fail, then your dad and I, and especially Asa, are going to be targets for Rassi and his boys. And the sort of executions they stage aren't the nice polite ones that the state is inviting him to. They take days."
I shuddered at the thought. But I was feeling better about Asa's chances. Dad might never have liked him and might like him a whole lot less because I was in love with him, but he believed in serving the community. He was a good sheriff, and the chance to rid his town of someone like Rassi was not one he would turn down.
As I thought this, the door re-opened, and Asa came through with Dad behind him. Dad looked from me to Porter, his face as frustratingly unreadable as ever.
"All right," he said, finally, "Let's do it."
Chapter Twenty
Asa
I've done stuff in my life that I haven't wanted to do. I've done things that have needed to be done, but have been difficult. I've found myself in awkward situations and places I would rather not be. Never, in my life, have I felt more uncomfortable or less happy in the place in which I had ended up, than when sitting down to negotiate the terms of my freedom with the man whose daughter ran off with me. And, of course, that was only the tip of the awkwardness iceberg where relations between myself and Brian Dugas were concerned. I found myself unwillingly wondering, would he ever be able to look at me and not think, 'This man is doing my daughter?’ Certainly, I could never look at him without thinking, 'I'm doing this man's daughter, and it's the best sex I've ever had.’ Of course, I tried not think about it, but the more you try not to, the more it dominated your mind. I could only imagine how it was affecting Dugas.
That being the case, our conversation went extraordinarily well. At the start, I was constantly on the alert for him leaping across the room to pistol whip me again, but soon I realized this was not going to happen. As ever, the one thing you could say about Brian Dugas was that he played by the rules. He might have let his emotions get the better of him earlier, in the heat of the moment, but that was an anomaly. He was here to do a job, and he would do it professionally, only ever mentioning his daughter when it was necessary to clarify the story I was relating. I, in turn, tried to be equally upfront and honest. I hid nothing. I gave him the bare facts, exercising a certain laxity over detail where Corinne was concerned. Dugas neither needed nor wanted a blow by blow account of our relationship.
The sheriff remained tight-lipped and stone-faced throughout, but at the end, he nodded curtly and outlined how we might proceed. I had told the truth, and he had recognized that. We got up and shook hands, not as friends, but as men who found themselves on the same side and trusted each other. Perhaps also there was an unspoken bond in that we both cared for Corinne.
"One more thing," Dugas said as we headed for the door. "I hardly think it needs to be said, but I'm going to say it anyway."
"If I hurt Corinne, you'll kill me?" I suggested.
Dugas shrugged. "I was going to say 'cut your balls off and feed them to you,’ but I guess that would probably kill you. So, yes."
I nodded. "I would never hurt her."
Dugas watched my face with the same granite expression he had worn throughout, and I think he once again recognized that I was, indeed, telling the truth.
When we re-entered the kitchen, and Dugas delivered his verdict, I kept my eyes on Corinne. The sight of her face lighting up in relief and happiness was worth everything. Whether she admitted it or not, Corinne had been torn by the loyalty that she felt to me and to her dad. These few days had been difficult for her and had forced her to address feelings that had lain dormant a while. It had been so easy, a week ago, for her to go against her father's wishes and hook-up with the bad-boy biker. In fact, it had been a wicked pleasure for her to break his rules. But, strangely, in breaking those rules, she had learned how much her father meant to her, and how much hurting him rebounded on herself and was an almost masochistic urge. I liked to think that I had played some part in that learning process, and that I had brought daughter and father closer together. If all this went wrong, which it easily still could, then perhaps that might be the legacy of my relationship with Corinne—that she and her father would be closer than they had been for years. It might end up being the one honestly worthwhile thing I had done in my life.
As I watched her now, these thoughts playing through my head, I found myself a little woozy, and leaned against the door frame. Corinne reacted instantly.
"If that's all settled, can we please do something about Asa's head? He's bleeding."
"Barely at all," Dugas said, perhaps feeling a little guilty for hitting me.
"I've had worse," I said.
Corinne rolled her eyes. "God save me from men who think medical care is an affront to their masculinity. I'm sure you'll make a very manly corpse, but not a very useful one. So how about you let me put a bandage on it?"
I looked to Dugas, who shrugged. "Go on," he said. "Porter and I have to talk police stuff anyway."
"There's antiseptic and bandages in the bathroom cabinet," Porter said.
Corinne took my hand and led me out of the room. I wasn't wild about the image of being led off by my girlfriend to tend to the boo-boo on my head. On the other hand, it was starting to throb a bit, and I was feeling a little light-headed. That said, I still felt like I had a part to play, and, as Corinne had pointed out to me, playing a role like Asa Covert, President of War Cry, can become second nature, whether you mean it to or not.
"I'm fine. I don't need a bandage."
Corinne pulled me into the bathroom. "Have you even seen it yet? Look in the mirror. There is a gash above your eye that looks like a war wound."
I looked in the mirror. Admittedly, it did look pretty ugly. Brian Dugas hadn't been pulling any punches, and the man knew how to swing.
"A bandage won't kill you," Corinne said, taking charge.
Maybe it was her newfound authority, maybe she was looking especially pretty, maybe it was the thrill of knowing her father was just downstairs, or maybe it was the knowledge that, once again, we might soon be saying goodbye, but, right at that moment, there were other things on my mind.
I captured Corinne with an arm around her waist as she turned back to me.
"Instead of the bandage, how about you kiss it better?"
Corinne gave my forehead a perfunctory peck. "How does that feel? No better? Well, let's try the bandage."
"I don't feel like your heart was really in that."
I kissed her, and she responded, melting into my arms, before reasserting herself and pulling away.
"Quit it. Now, sit."
I sat down on the edge of the tub.
"This may sting a bit."
She applied antiseptic to my wound, but I barely felt the sting as I lifted her top and kissed around her belly, my hands roaming lower.
"I'm sure they don't allow this in hospitals," said Corinne, trying to maintain her cool, although I could hear the catch in her voice and her breath quickening.
"They should. This is the best therapy. I've never felt better."
"Well, at least it ought to stop the blood from flowing out your head, if it's all going somewhere else."
Corinne began to bandage my head as I unzipped her jeans and peeled them down her legs. If I was going to be saying goodbye to her today, then I was going to do it properly. The instant the
bandage was in place on my head, I was up on my feet. Corinne had kicked off the jeans, and she now sprang up into my arms, wrapping her legs around me and feeling me furiously hard against her. I pushed her back against the wall.
"We'll have to be quick," she murmured as she kissed me. "And quiet."
Though neither of us said anything, I knew that she was thinking the same as me—that this might be the last time for a long while. Corinne's nimble fingers made short work of my belt and buttons, and she was soon guiding me between her legs, though by now I knew my own way. I watched her pretty eyes widen as I pushed into her. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out, and I covered her mouth with mine as I began to move inside her.
Although it was a destined to be a short and frantic encounter, and although the presence of Corinne's father just downstairs might have given it an air of the taboo, it felt nothing of the kind. Unconsciously and unwillingly, we were saying goodbye, and neither of us wanted that to be rough or lust-fueled. The circumstances were against us, but our feelings for each other made this more than the sum of its parts. It was tender, and it was loving. It was intense, too, of course, a world of sensation between us expressing the things we could not bring ourselves to say. And it was pleasurable. So completely in sync were Corinne and I that I felt we had perfected a way of communicating through sex. While I had struggled to say, 'I love you,' in words, I had managed to say it last night through my body.
When Corinne had desperately wanted me not to leave her, she had lied and made excuses, but in our love-making she had put forward an honest and heartfelt argument that I understood far better. Now, we said goodbye to each other. No matter that it was quick and fumbling, no matter that it was up against the wall of a bathroom that would leave Corinne with tile prints on her ass, no matter that her father was downstairs, that my movements were hobbled by the jeans around my knees, or that it had all the aspects of a desperate quickie. The meaning came through all of that.
One of those things that people say about great sex with a person is that 'every time is like the first time.’ I wasn't sure if that was true with Corinne and me. It would be truer to say that every time was like the last time, because it seemed that every time might actually be the last time. That was different, and that was special. If you knew that this might be it, then you made every time as good as it can be. Every time had to be the apex. Every time had to be an ultimate expression of what you felt for each other, told through sex. Every time had to be the perfect memory on which you would want to end. Corinne and I were very good at that. Every time was perfect. Even in the most imperfect of situations, it was still perfect.
As was so often the case with us, there was no need for words afterwards. Everything we might have wanted to say had been expressed through the act itself. We kissed tenderly, sealing our goodbye, before readjusting our clothes and heading back downstairs.
# # #
I was a little worried, as I was sure that Corinne was too, that Dugas might have been suspicious of how long bandaging my head had taken, or worse, that he might have heard the rhythmic thumps of his daughter's buttocks against the bathroom wall. We had not taken our time over sex, far from it, but it can be hard to finish quickly when you're enjoying yourself so much. As we entered, Dugas looked up irritably from the table, where he and Porter were seated, discussing the legal aspects of the deal on which we had all decided.
"That was quick. Give us another five minutes, will you?"
"Sure, Dad," Corinne said, and she and I retreated to the living room.
We exchanged glances as we left, and a lot of unspoken words passed between us. It would have been easy to say, 'I wish we'd known that we had another five minutes,’ but the truth was, nothing would have made it more perfect. If that was to be our goodbye, then at least it had been a good one. The best one. A perfect one.
Chapter Twenty-One
Corinne
Regardless of how much it was part of the plan, it was nonetheless difficult for me to watch the man I loved being led away in handcuffs by the father whom I also loved.
"Are the handcuffs really necessary?" I asked.
"Maybe not necessary," Porter admitted. "But when you bring someone in to be an informer, the last thing you want is any appearance of chumminess. And that goes double when the informer is sleeping with the sheriff's daughter."
"It looks like preferential treatment?" I suggested.
"For sure," acknowledged Porter. "There is also the safety of the man himself to consider. If Asa comes in looking like the sheriff's best buddy, or prospective son-in-law, then how are his enemies going to react? Or his friends, for that matter. In Asa's world, the one thing you don't do is talk to the cops. If it looks like he's coming in willingly, then they'll skin him alive in jail."
I nodded. "I get it. Although, I don't think there's much chance of him looking like my dad's prospective son-in-law."
Porter shrugged. "Maybe not yet. Give it time. They're actually pretty similar people."
"That's what I said!"
"Don't tell your dad I said it," Porter said seriously.
"Asa wasn't that wild about me saying it either," I admitted.
"Another thing they have in common." Porter put his hand on my shoulder comfortingly. "It is all for the best, you know."
"You think?" It was hard for me to believe that now.
"I'm not saying it's the ideal situation," Porter hedged. "But, given the situation, this is what needs to happen. And I think it'll all work out."
"Based on what?"
Porter shrugged again. "Blind optimism? Come on, let's get you home."
Between us, we had decided that, while Dad took Asa to the station, Porter would take me home. It wasn't ideally what I would have wanted. Obviously I would have preferred to stand by Asa as he went through this. On the other hand, I could see an upside. Given all that I had been through in the last few days, the idea of going back home to see Risa sounded pretty good. Looking back, I wasn't even sure how many days it had been. They had all blurred into a haze of travel, talk, and sex. There had been some bad moments and some wonderful ones, and, when you put the whole thing together, it was emotionally draining.
# # #
Risa met me at the door and waved goodbye to Porter as he headed off to work, then we went inside. This time I managed to hold off from crying when unburdening myself to my sister, who simply sat and quietly listened throughout. I think I told her everything. I never felt the need to leave out anything when talking to Risa. I told her what had happened and why, I told her how I had felt, and I told her how Asa had urged me to try to better understand Dad's point of view in all this.
"You really love him, don't you?" Risa asked, when I was finally done.
"I told you that already."
"Yeah, but ..." Risa paused. "You know, Cor, there's love, and there's love. It's easy to fall in love with the first guy you sleep with, because he opens a whole new world to you. But this sounds a lot more like actual love. I'm sorry I didn't believe it when you first told me."
Leave it to Risa to apologize for something perfectly understandable. "Maybe it wasn't then," I admitted. "Or maybe I got lucky. I don't know. Seems to me like the odds of finding the person in the world who's perfect for you are pretty slim, and, yet, somehow people make it happen."
Risa nodded. "It's starting to sound to me like maybe you weren't the only one who got lucky."
I knew what she meant and looked up hopefully. "You think?" It meant a lot to me that Risa might think something good about Asa.
"The guy seems to have given up his whole way of life, just to please you. And maybe his freedom too."
I sighed. "I hope not. And that's not why he did it. Not for me. For himself. He was always a decent man. He was just a victim of circumstance."
"Maybe," Risa mused. "Maybe he didn't do it for you, as in, to make you happy. But I don't think he'd be doing any of this if it wasn't for you. You seem to make him want to be a bette
r person. And that's not nothing. You've saved him from himself."
"Or doomed him to jail," I said ruefully
"Either way," Risa went on, "you've given him something special. Something that's maybe worth whatever jail time he might have to do."
"I haven't given him anything," I scoffed. Asa had given me so much, but what could I claim to have given him?
"Oh, yes, you have," Risa insisted. "In fact, I'd say that you've given him the same thing that he's given you. You've given each other yourselves back."
Maybe another person wouldn't have understood that, but I knew my sister and instantly knew what she was trying to tell me. I had been lost, a stranger to myself and to my family. Asa had found me and brought me home. And Risa thought that I had done the same for him. Maybe it was true. He too had been struggling to resolve who he was inside with the life he lived and the things he did. If I had been any part of helping him find a way back to the good man underneath, then I was very proud and happy.