by Aubrey Irons
Smooth, Quinn, so smooth.
“I just mean with him running the new healthcare program at Archer and everything; he keeps me pretty busy over there!”
The Major’s brow raises with jus the slightest hint of a smile on his face as he nods; “Logan’s a good man, you know.”
I laugh, maybe a bit too harshly and quickly than I mean to; “He’s, uh, he’s something alright.”
“He can be prickly”
I do hold back a snort this time, but Major Lawson chuckles; “You know, your father had a way of seeing things in people that others didn’t, including themselves.”
“Not everything is what it looks like on the outside, you know.”
So what is it that I see in Logan? What can I possibly -
No. I shake the thought from my head quickly. God, what am I thinking? I don’t see anything in Logan except a mistake I need to just put behind me and move on from. Except if that’s the case, why am I still dwelling on it? If Logan is such a cataclysmic and obvious bad decision, why am I having such a hard time getting him out of my damn head and just forgetting about the whole sordid thing?
I force myself to push the whole thing with Logan out of my head for the time being, and spend the next thirty minutes or so chatting with Major Lawson. But it’s right back there in my head the second I leave his office, it’s still floating around as I grab a coffee at a cafe down the street, and it’s still gnawing at me as I make my way over to the National Mall.
Ok, enough of this, I finally think, setting my jaw and staring across the reflecting pool. One mistake one night is not going to mess with my head this much, and I decide right then and there that it’s time to just cut this whole thing loose and just move on.
Simple.
*****
“Been enjoying the view?”
I’m sitting on the steps near the top of the Lincoln Memorial when I turn to see Logan walking down towards me; “I was,” I say petulantly at him.
He smirks and nods his chin towards my chest; “Yeah, me too.”
I frown at his glance and look down to realize the top button of my shirt is open a bit more than it should be. I frown and try to shove the burning blush from my cheeks as I hastily button back up; “Do you always have to be the man-child?” I shake my head at him.
Logan shrugs, grinning at me; “Keep your shirt on and maybe I won’t stare so much.”
I roll my eyes; “Like it’s my fault my button came undone.”
“Like it’s my fault you’ve got great looking tits!”
The childish tete-a-tete comes to a screeching halt as we both glare at each other before turning away in silence.
Oh yeah, moving on is going swimmingly.
“So when’s our flight?” I say, hoping to change the subject; “I was wondering if I have time to get dinner here in D.C. before we head back.”
Logan shrugs; “I mean, it’s my plane.”
“Oh, is it?” I say with overly-dramatic mock surprise.
He grins; “I meant we can go whenever you want to.” He shrugs; “You know, we could also just stay the night; grab some dinner, a hotel room-”
“In your dreams, Logan.” I say, shaking my head, but also trying not to grin at just how damn shameless he is.
He laughs; “Hey, don’t flatter yourself, darlin; you get your own room.” He strokes his chin like he’s really pondering something; “Hmm, actually I wonder what Peyton is up to tonight.”
Just the thought of him doing something like that with her - heck, with anyone - has me seeing red, even though I know he’s just trying to get a rise out of me. I open and close my mouth a few times, before I just give up and shake my head at him. It’s infuriating how likable he is, even when he’s trying to get under my skin like this.
And deep down, I know that’s the problem here. On the surface, I’m basically spitting in his face every chance I get as if our little run-in from that night is entirely his fault. But I knew exactly what I was doing when I leaned into him that night, and I knew damn well where kissing a man that made me feel like that in the dead of night in his bed would lead. The wall I keep throwing up is more to save my own face than it is to keep him out, which is a moot point since all he has to do is grin at me before the whole thing comes crashing down anyways.
Logan laughs, and drapes his arm around my shoulders, and for the first time, I actually just let myself enjoy his company without worrying about trying to keep this tenuous wall up between us.
“You really are infuriating, you know that Logan?”
“Darlin, you have no idea.” He starts to lead us down the stairs; “Comon, let’s get some dinner somewhere and then my plane will chauffeur us home.”
I’m laughing, and actually enjoying a moment with Logan Dempsey, and then his phone rings. He frowns as he pulls it out of his pocket, and then his face goes dark and he swears under his breath as he looks at it.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He shoves the phone back into his pocket and his arm drops quickly from my shoulder. Well, whatever it is has his mood changing like the flip of a coin.
“What?”
He turns and looks at me quickly; “It’s nothing, Quinn. Look, change of plans; we need to head back to New York, now actually.”
“Um, OK?”
His limo is already waiting by the curb as we leave the Mall, and he opens the door and quickly ushers me in.
“OK, what’s with the sudden flip-flop here?” I finally demand as we speed off back towards the airport.
“It’s nothing, Quinn; just leave it.” He mutters, staring out the window with a scowl as he taps his fingers agains the arm-rest in staccato beat.
“Well it really does seem like something, Logan.” I mutter out loud; “Look, stop with the stupid secret spy shit and just tell me why-”
“Just drop it, OK?!” He whirls and growls sharply at me, making me jolt upright. His mouth opens as if to say something, before he just shakes his head and turns to look out the window.
Well, hell; just when I’m ready to start figuring you out, Logan Dempsey, I grumble to myself as D.C. flies past the windows of the car.
*****
He’s silent later, back on the plane as he just stares out the window at the evening clouds beneath us as we cruise back to New York. And there’s a bizarre sort of irony to the fact that I busted him staring at me on the trip here, and yet here I am doing the same thing back.
There’s a metaphor for this whole messed up relationship between us in there somewhere, but I’m too tired to even think about it. And really, “relationship” is definitely the wrong word for whatever is going on between Logan and I. We’re just two people - two separate people - who happened to cross paths in an unusual way. Maybe those paths got mixed up more than they should have, and maybe it’s a bit more complicated than either of us anticipated. But that doesn’t mean we can’t just get on our own paths again and just move on, right?
Logan closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the window next to him, and I catch myself wondering for the tenth time what’s gotten him this quiet and brooding and sullen, as opposed to the loud and obnoxious exuberance that usually defines him. But as I watch him, watch his brow crease as he frowns against the glass and against whatever demons are clawing through his head in that moment. I find myself wondering so much more about him. His sleeves are rolled up, showing the ink of his tattoos, and while some like the boxing gloves and the “semper fi” are obvious, there are other swirling images and effigies that have me curious about their meaning. What stories follow in Logan’s shadows that I don’t even have a clue about? What haunts him when he’s alone? And what else goes through his head?
Me?
I quickly roll my eyes at my own stupid thought and shake my head. No, that’s not a path I can let my mind wander down. Like I said, we’re just two people who found themselves on intersecting lines.
And now it’s time to move on.
I’m daydreaming and letting my thoughts wander when the muffled cheering and jeering of the crowd out by the ring jars me into the present. I blink and grimace at my surroundings. The back room of the nightclub out in Queens that’s serving as a locker room is dimly lit and grimy. The walls are streaked with rusty evidence of old pipe leaks and maybe something worse, and the whole place smells like ammonia and defeat.
What the fuck am I doing here.
I used to love this - the thrill and the rush before the fight; the feeling of burning excitement and the euphoric high of the adrenaline. I used to love the smell of sweat and gym locker-rooms; of chalk-dusted workout bags and sweat-stained gloves. The sound of the crowd used to get me higher than any drug and the sheer anticipation of the primal act of fighting used to have me bouncing off the walls with excitement.
This place is, and does, none of those things for me.
Some girl in a bikini, who I think is probably one of those sign girls or maybe just some other broken individual there trying to latch onto something is smiling at me as she saunters into the room. I frown as she straddles my lap and starts to run her hands up and down over my bare chest.
“You look all tense, baby.”
There’s absolutely nothing tense about the way I’m just slumped in the old rusty metal folding chair, deadened by the weight of even being here.
The girl is gorgeous - all sex and desire, pressing her tits against me and letting her hands trail over my biceps. And normally, yeah normally I’d be very down for this, even though you're never supposed to do this kind of thing right before a fight; no sex before you swing, they say. You need that pent up testosterone and aggression as fuel.
Of course now I’ve got Quinn Archer buried deep under my skin like an itch I can’t reach, and the idea of having this girl scratch that is completely turning me off.
“Maybe later,” I mutter, pushing her off of my lap.
She pouts in a way I’m sure she thinks is cute and sexy, but that just looks slutty, and not in a good way; “Well, maybe after you kick that guy’s ass then?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
No.
“Hey there, cabrón!” The man with the dark hair and dark black eyes like those of a shark - the man who’s the singular reason I’m here - steps through the doorway grinning that fucking leering, toothy smile of his; “Hey there’s my buddy!”
I’m not his fucking buddy and he damn well knows it. I’m his captive.
“You ready for this?”
I set my jaw as I stand from the chair and take a step towards Javier Toro, my jaw tightening. I’ve got at least six inches on him, and easily forty pounds of muscle, and I would love nothing more than to just pound that fucking shithead’s face in right now. Hell, even just a shove would be nice.
But I don’t, of course. I’m hotheaded, but not dumb, even if Javier’s completely let himself go physically since we knew each other before, back in the jungles of Ghana.
“You hit like a bitch, you know.” Javier spits in the dirt, his arms up and his body flitting side to side like a dancer as he circles me; “You gotta keep em up, like this. You let that guard down, and you’re gonna get smacked upside the head again.” He jabs suddenly, and I swear as his glove connects with my ear.
“See? Just like that, Irish! I should start charging you for these fuckin lessons!”
He hoots as he signals fight over and yanks his gloves off before coming over and clapping me on the back; “You ain’t so bad, you know. You got a fire inside of you that most guys don’t, Irish. I just gotta figure out what gets it burning and then you’re gonna be one mean son of a bitch in a ring.”
We walk over to the old roadside motel that Blackriver has taken over and repurposed into a sort of barracks in the abandoned village we currently occupy. The fact that we’re the only building for fifty miles in any direction with electricity, let alone running water, satellite television, and the internet only makes this whole thing even more surreal. It’s like some sort of tech-savy version of Marlon Brando’s jungle-fiefdom in “Apocalypse Now”.
If life can get any stranger than playing soldier for hire in a mercenary corporation stuck in the middle of Africa, I’d almost welcome the chance to see it.
Javier pulls two beers out the fridge and hands me one; “My name’s not actually Irish, you know.”
He grins at me; “I figured your mama wasn’t that mean.”
“You’ve clearly never met my mother.”
We both chuckle as we sip on the cold beers, looking out from the porch over the dirt boxing ring and the jungle past it.
“It’s just- you know, I feel like a lotta guys here who signed on with Blackriver come from some pretty hardcore backgrounds.”
“Like you and your two buddies? The drunk and the junkie?”
I grit my teeth at the mention of Hudson and Byrce and shake my head. Hudson’s trying - kind of. But Byrce; shit, Bryce’s addiction is getting worse every day, and the fact that you can literally buy smack for cheaper than a bottle of clean water in this place isn’t exactly helping things.
“Yeah, well, we’ve seen some shit.”
Shit like one too many drone strikes on innocent people; one too many bombs dropped on fucking schools or villages back in Afghanistan. After that last one, where we all almost died, we snapped. I guess we all broke in different ways.
Which is why we’re here, in some God-forsaken part of the world playing soldiers for hire, because there’s just no going back home after you go AWOL from the Marines during active duty.
Javier nods; “Seems like it. I’ve seen some shit too, amigo,” He shakes his head; “But Papi, you got that cold hard cowboy look on your face like I’ve never seen before.”
I force out a laugh and sip the beer; “Well, I guess we all get the shit we carry from wherever we come from.”
“Yeah? And where’s that, Irish?” Javier clinks his beer against mine and peers at me curiously; “Where’d you come from?”
*****
“Hey, wake up, Irish!” Javier snaps his fingers in my face, startling me from my daydream, and his grin widens as he sees the bottled up hate behind my face. He narrows his eyes as he leans in closer, as if daring me to hit him; “Don’t fucking forget, buddy, you get to win this one tonight; comprendes?
“Yeah, fuckin comprendes.”
His eyes narrow again and he looks quickly at the girl still standing there and jerks his head for her to leave.
“Listen, Logan,” He hisses at me after the door closes behind her; “Don’t get all soft on me.”
“I’m not, fuck off.”
Javier nods slowly; it’s the same calculating look I first saw in Ghana, back when he was teaching me to fight. Back when he knew who I was, which consequently means he still knows who I am. Not Logan Dempsey, billionaire finance manager at Archer Holdings. Not the man working to rebuild the future from the wrongs of his past, brick by fucking brick. No, he knows who I really am, which means he owns me.
And I fucking hate feeling owned.