by Sophia Gray
Yes. To that last one at least, yes. I remembered the way they used to press against my mouth, hungry and desperate almost every time, as though I was the first and only person he was ever going to kiss again.
That was just Nester, though. He was an all or nothing kind of man. It didn’t matter if he’d done a thing a thousand times, there was some urge inside him that made him treat it like the first.
It always made the bedroom a heated experience for me.
As my eyes traveled higher, I found his eyes, lined in thick black lashes that were still so silky. But his eyes…they were the same blue I remembered, sky blue, robin’s egg blue, the perfect blue. But they were cooler than I remembered, like someone had poured ice into them and left them out in the cold to freeze. Even in the heat of a Florida summer night, I shivered at the sight of them. At the way they narrowed in on me, stared me down in a frightening challenge.
And that’s when I realized it. He’d seen me. With Santos.
Nester brushed past me easily, my body automatically getting out of his way as I cringed a little at myself for the spike of fear that came. I’d never been afraid of Nester, and even now, in the heat of his anger, I knew that I wasn’t. Not really. It was only a flinch.
“Nester, I…” I began, not really sure what I would say, but knowing that I needed to make him understand now, because it would be my only shot.
But it didn’t matter, because he cut through me quickly, not giving me even half a chance to come up with some kind of explanation. Not that any would be good enough for him. I’d done too much for something like that. Far too much and Santos was simply the cherry on that sundae of betrayal.
“Shut up,” he snapped at me, the coldness in his eyes melting as fury overtook him. “You don’t get to talk right now. Not until I’ve gotten some words out. Not until I’ve said every wretched think I can think of and you’ve—”
He stopped suddenly and I had no idea why. His words were coming out rapid fire, angry and heated, but at least they weren’t like cold steel plunging into my gut. I could take his anger, because I knew Nester. He was the kind of guy who needed to get it all out, and if I could just let him, then I knew we could talk. We could talk and maybe I was wrong, that I did still have a chance, if only he could let some of that anger go. But I’d never seen him like this before, stopping mid rant and going still as stone. It scared me and unnerved me far more than any bout of anger ever would.
“Nester?” I got out in a tiny voice, afraid of what was to come.
I stepped forward and saw his eyes shift with me. That was when I noticed where they were focused. On my hand. More specifically, they were locked onto my ring finger where a giant rock was planted heavily. The thing was huge, a sparkling, gaudy diamond that I hated more than I ever appreciated. More than a few women at grocery stores and movie theaters and restaurants had noticed it and told me what a lucky woman I was, but I’d hated it since the moment it was slipped onto my finger.
How many times had it gotten caught in my thick hair? How many times had it torn fabric or knocked against something or spun around on my finger until it was hanging upside down awkwardly?
Thousands, though I supposed that wasn’t really the point. No, the point was that it wasn’t my kind of ring. It was Santos’s.
Sucking in a deep breath, I rooted myself to the spot. I wasn’t sure what to do now. Nester’s gaze was still locked onto that stupid ring and I knew he would ask about it and I sensed by his anger, by the way he’d glanced at me so coldly when I first opened the door for him, that he knew whose ring that was and that on some level it still hurt him.
Part of me was relieved; I’d thought he had gotten over me while in prison. The rest of me was eaten up inside. It didn’t matter if he’d gotten over me or not in the end, because I knew that we were over. Permanently. Forever.
Something clutched at my heart, but I pushed the feeling away. I’d made my choice.
“What the hell are you thinking?” he asked suddenly, his voice oddly quiet.
I was used to loud Nester who shouted what he thought, not caring who heard or what they thought of what they heard. And I was used to sweet Nester who whispered delicious and sometimes dirty sweet nothings into my ear while we indulged in each other’s bodies. But this? I wasn’t used to quiet Nester, and I sensed that it wasn’t a good thing.
“I…” But I didn’t know what to say, so I folded my arms across my chest, subconsciously hiding the ring beneath my right arm when I tucked my hand in the crook of it.
His eyes narrowed at the action. “How could you ever get married to a snake like Santos?” His eyes flashed and I saw that anger again, but it was deeper than before, more destructive.
I swallowed heavily and clenched my eyes shut. Why was I marrying Santos? I had my reasons. Important reasons. The kind of reasons that changed a game mid play and changed your opinions of people and actions, even though maybe you never thought they could. Nester had hated Santos for a long time—I wasn’t stupid enough to have missed that. But when Nester got arrested, everything had changed. But he was so clouded by rage that he would never understand. And that was how I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth.
“I know that you guys have a history,” I began tentatively, knowing that I had to choose my next words carefully or it was a waste of breath. “I know that…that you have some bad blood, but, Nester, he’s not such a bad guy!”
He actually laughed at that and I couldn’t help but wince at the harshness of it. “Not such a bad guy?” he repeated incredulously.
Feeling my own anger build, I put more force into my words. I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s right. Santos’s been really good to me,” I told him angrily, stepping closer. “He’s taken care of me while you’ve been in prison!”
That last part slipped out before I could think better of it and part of me, most of me, wished that I could scoop the words out of the air and put them back into my mouth before he had the chance to hear them, but it was useless. He’d caught them and there was no taking them back.
“Right. Sure, of course. Taken care of you,” he spat. “Because he wasn’t the one who put me there in the first place, right?”
I bit my lip. There was a chance that it was true, that Santos had been the one to get Nester into trouble. I’d been working hard to tell myself that it wasn’t true, that Santos would never do something like that intentionally, but at the same time I knew how deep the hatred ran between the two of them. Santos hated Nester just as much as Nester hated Santos.
But even so, I had to believe that that wasn’t the case. Even Santos wasn’t so cruel.
I shook my head. “There’s never been any proof that he—”
“He was the one who tipped off the fucking cops!” Nester all but screamed at me, eyes flashing dangerously. “Who else would have done it?”
His words shook me, but I couldn’t let this get to me. I was where I was and there was no changing it. Not now. Probably never. Part of me sunk at that sad, pathetic thought, but I pushed it aside. No time to be weak now. “Oh, so I suppose you didn’t sell drugs at all, then, right?”
I saw Nester’s whole body tense, because he knew on some level that I was right. Whether Santos had set him up or not, Nester had gone along with the deal all on his own. Santos wouldn’t have been able to force him to do that no matter what Nester said. It didn’t mean that it wasn’t Santos’s fault if it had been him to call the cops on Nester, but Nester would have to accept some of the blame, too.
Even if I wasn’t sure that was really fair. This was the only life Nester had ever known; how could anyone expect any different? And in the end, I’d known what he was doing, too. Wasn’t I just as guilty, then?
“Bitch,” he got out between ground teeth, pushing past me.
I winced at the word. Nester wasn’t one to use derogatory words against me, but he wasn’t above it when he thought it was warranted. It hurt to think he thought I deserved that term, but at the same
time, I thought maybe I did, too.
I turned to face him again, but his back was too me. I saw the muscles ripple beneath his tight white shirt and felt the heat on my face as soon as I realized how much I liked the sight.
He ran his hands through his dark hair almost savagely.
“So what the fuck was all of this?” Nester finally asked after a long pause.
I frowned at me. “All this?” I repeated, gesturing about my house as though that was what he was talking about.
He made a frustrated sound. “This. Us,” he clarified, and I felt my heart sink.
I shook my head, but of course he couldn’t see that. It was just that I didn’t know what to say. How was I supposed to answer that? Us had meant everything to me, but that was a long time ago now. What was the point of bringing all that up again? Were we supposed to reminisce and feel all the things we had felt all those years ago only to have reality come crashing back down around our shoulders? How was that supposed to help with anything?
When I didn’t answer, Nester turned around to face me again. There were deep lines in his otherwise youthful face, his full lips pulled down into a heavy frown that was almost more like a defeated sigh. I wasn’t stupid; I knew he was still mad at me, but there was something else there, too.
Hurt.
“What do you want me to say?” I finally asked him, almost letting my arms drop to my side again tiredly, but remembering that the ring was there and worried that it would set him off all over again. Not that this was exactly better, but still.
He let out a whoosh of air. “I want you to remember that time I took you to the movies and you were shocked that it was an outdoor thing with the blankets on the grass and everything. And when it rained everyone freaked out and left except for us. We stayed and made out in the rain, because that’s what you fucking do when you’re…”
He broke off, but he didn’t have to finish. I already knew what he was going to say because that was what I felt that night. In love. So in love that I didn’t care that a security guard shone his light down on us and told us that we needed to go, but seemed really embarrassed about the whole thing. So in love that I didn’t care that my dress was practically see through. So in love that I probably would have let Nester take me right then and there if we hadn’t been stopped.
In love. That was what Nester and I had clung to for so long before everything had suddenly fallen out beneath us.
In that moment, I wanted to tell him everything. But the truth teetered on the tip of my tongue and I couldn’t get it out. Not before his next words.
“Never fucking mind. I’m sorry I opened my damn mouth. In fact, I don’t know what the fuck I’m even doing here,” he said, biting each word off like it was a piece of jerky, tough and a little old and maybe too salty to be taking so many bites at a time. “The girl I’m looking for isn’t around anymore, is she?”
Before I had a chance to answer, to deal with the sudden swell of hurt that filled me, he was turning away. He left, slamming the door harshly behind him, and I was left to stare at the spot where he’d been.
It wasn’t the homecoming I would have hoped for all those years ago when he’d first been put away, but time changes things and people, and I knew that under the circumstances I had no right to ask for more. How could I tell him what really happened?
No, I couldn’t afford to risk Nester or anyone else, so my secret had to stay secret.
Chapter Three
Nester
I drove around angrily for most of the night. Hurt and fury built inside until I was a monster of my own rage, blinded by it until it was probably unsafe for me to be driving, but I didn’t care. I needed my freedom and I needed time to work through what Zelda had told me tonight.
How could it be Santos? How could she, of all people, knowing what a goddamned monstrous snake he was, go to him? And she told me she couldn’t date a criminal. So what the hell was she doing sleeping with a fucking wretch like that?
My stomach twisted and knotted uncomfortably at the thought of them together, lying and twisting and writhing in pleasure. I could imagine the look on Santos’s face, warped with pleasure as Zelda’s eyes stared up at him, switching between vengeful ecstasy and remorseful pleading.
I felt bile rise in my throat and had to force it back. I swallowed it down, determined to keep my cool and my sanity alike.
After the sun finally crested the horizon, I went back to Jackson’s. He was pacing nervously, like some damn mother hen, when I got back and it was clear that he was both waiting for me and dreading the moment when I would arrive. He stopped his pacing as I walked through the door and waited for what he must have sensed was coming.
My eyes narrowed at him dangerous. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
He chewed on his inner cheek and his lower lip until it looked like he was mangling them both in his mouth like dinner, preparing to regurgitate them for his newborn. After a moment, he released his lip and sighed, shaking his head. He ran a hand through his thinning brown hair, working through every nervous tick he had before finally addressing my question.
“Things were hard when you were in the slammer. They changed, you know?” he began by way of both explanation and appealing to my sense of justice and righteousness. I wasn’t sure I had those things anymore, but I tried to stay calm and reminded myself that revenge wasn’t really about shooting the messenger.
“Right, changed,” I spat, letting myself plop down onto his old, worn couch. I glanced at the stairs which led to the second floor. Jackson had a kid, but only part time and I didn’t know if the kid was here or not.
Jackson must have noticed my gaze, because he shook his head in answer. “No, Angel’s with her momma tonight. Meeting that new slab of meat that keeps trying to get her to call him daddy. I’ll break his fucking neck if he…” He broke off and shook his head, forcing his breath out in a heavy whoosh.
It looked like I wasn’t the only asshole having adjustment issues. “Focus,” I told him, bringing him back to the thing at hand. “Why the hell didn’t you guys tell me? If things were changing so badly, why leave them up in the air?”
Jackson shrugged again. He took a seat in the overstuffed chair, just as old as the couch and maybe matching or maybe just so faded you couldn’t tell one way or the other anymore, and leaned back in it. My tone had softened ever so slightly and it must have been enough to settle him, because he wasn’t as tense as he had been moments before. Not as tense and not prone to the same typical nervous ticks that he usually did when he knew something bad was coming.
“Because what could you do?” he answered finally after a long pause. “I mean, really? So we tell you, right? Then what? You come busting out of prison to kill Santos and Zelda both? That doesn’t really come off as a sound plan. Even if you could bust out, you’d go straight back, and for longer because of it. No, in the end, you couldn’t do a damn thing while you were in, so we decided it wasn’t a smart thing to tell you.” He shrugged again, apparently his move for the night. “We didn’t see the point in upsetting you any more than you already were.”
I rubbed at my eyes, suddenly feeling tired, burned out. I’d been out and back for only a day now and already it felt like the world was shifting beneath my feet. Was this really how things were?
Yes, I thought. And you’d better fucking learn to accept that, you chump, before things get worse. Before you look weak.
Running my hands through my hair, I thought about my options. There were things that I obviously needed to do. The top on my list was get revenge on Santos. Despite what Zelda thought—or claimed she thought; I’d seen the hesitation, the uncertainty in her eyes—I was convinced that Santos was behind my getting put away. She could redirect the blame all she wanted—yes, I’d gone with the plan, yes, I’d done a thousand drug deals over the years—but in the end there was only one man I could truly blame for what had happened to me.
Santos DeArma.
But the thing about reve
nge was it was easier said than done. I’d been intending to rally my guys and take down Santos the old fashioned way, but my encounter with Zelda had changed my opinion on a few things. Maybe hitting Santos where it hurt wasn’t just about the club, though I decided quickly I would have to start there.
It just wouldn’t end there as I’d originally planned.
Looking up at Jackson again, I asked, “How many are still loyal?”
He looked up at me in surprise at my question, almost like he’d forgotten I was there. Maybe he had, lost in his own thoughts about the dad who was muscling in on his girl or the woman he never could hold on to. “Berserker?” he questioned, though he surely already knew the answer.
I nodded. “Yeah, how many stuck around?”
He hesitated, running a hand once more through his hair. It was getting thinner than I remembered, though he was only a couple of years older than me. He’d always gotten the short stick as far as hair went and eventually he’d just shave it all off. He just didn’t want to, so he was trying to hold on to what little he still had, almost desperately.