by Sara V. Zook
Ricky’s face was beet red, but he did exactly what Seton commanded him to do without the slightest peep coming from his big mouth. One of the Triplets kicked the guns out of reach as the three of them each took on one of the guys and started punching them, beating them to a bloody pulp, the same thing they had just done to these girls. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the one girl still standing behind the bar as she watched the scene unfold in front of her. She had her arms crossed in front of her like she was cold. She looked like she needed a shower, some stitches and a hug.
“Get rid of them,” Seton told the Triplets who picked up the men from the ground as if they weighed nothing and headed toward the door. “Remember what I said.” Seton bent over so that he was next to Ricky’s ear. “If I see your face again, you’re dead.”
The Triplets left the room with Ricky Hamilton and his two guys. The same middle-aged guy we had followed down the steps popped his head back in the lounge. His face was one of relief as he hurried to walk over to Seton and shake his hand. Seton stuffed his gun back in his waistband and extended out his hand. His vein was slowly going back into his neck where it belonged. He patted the guy, who I assumed was the bar owner, on the cheek. “Problem solved, Tony.” He rubbed his hands together as if getting the dirt off.
“Thank you so much, Seton.” His eyes went from me to Hagan. “All of you, really, thank you. You don’t know how grateful I am.” He rushed over to us to shake our hands. I stared at his face for a moment. We had one thing in common, that’s for sure, our gratefulness. I was just glad someone hadn’t gotten their face blown apart, and especially glad that someone wasn’t me.
The guy Seton had called Tony motioned for some of his club workers to enter the room, and they started cleaning up the mess. The Triplets came back in.
“We’re all good?” Seton asked them.
They nodded their heads. They weren’t big on conversation.
“Good.” Seton looked over at Hagan, who made his way to Tony. He leaned in close to him and whispered something in his ear. In return, Tony nodded his head and slipped an envelope into Hagan’s hand, who in turn put it in the inside pocket of his big brown coat.
I walked over to the bartender who was still standing all alone. I couldn’t believe no one had tended to her yet. “You okay?” I asked her. “Need a ride to the hospital or something?”
She smiled and tried to fix a portion of her hair that was matted by blood to her face still. “A hospital? No.” She made an awkward laugh. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“Put some ice on your face,” Tony instructed her, hollering out from behind me as he made his way to the other girl still on the ground. She hadn’t moved since Ricky had hit her. “Come on, honey.” He lightly shook her. “Wake up for Tony. Wake up.” One of the Triplets came over and bent down next to the waitress. He started to get his arms under her limp shoulders. “Oh,” Tony said to him, “she probably shouldn’t be moved yet…” Carmine’s big guy scooped her right up in his arms. Tony looked a little frazzled by what had just happened to his worker. A line creased across his forehead. “Oh… never mind then.” The girl moaned as her eyes started to flutter.
“Do you think she’s okay?” the girl beside me whispered, her fingertips rubbing against her lips as she watched her co-worker dangle in one of the Triplets’ arms.
I nodded. “Looks like she’s starting to come around.”
The girl grabbed some ice out of a bucket behind the bar and pressed it against her swollen face.
Seton whistled over at me. “Hey, Cain, you coming?”
“Yeah.”
“You can put her in a room over here,” Tony told the Triplet who was still holding the girl as she moaned. They both left the lounge.
Hagan took a few steps toward me. “What’s her name?” He made eye contact with the bartender.
I also turned to look at her. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Hagan gave me a look like I was a jackass.
“What’s your name, doll?” I asked her.
“Jane.”
“Well, Jane, looks like you now have the rest of the day off. You want to come with us?” Hagan asked her.
Her eyes shifted from Hagan to me. She smiled. “Yeah, sure. Just let me go get cleaned up.”
Hagan nodded. “Yeah, go get cleaned up. We’ll wait for you outside.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
Seton and the Triplets were standing at their car when we got back out. “We’re headed back to Carmine’s.”
Hagan nodded.
I lit up the soggy cigarette I’d been dying to have this whole time.
“You know, you should really kick that habit,” Hagan scolded me. “That shit will end up killing you.”
I inhaled deeply, holding it in my lungs for a moment before releasing it back out through my mouth. I leaned against the car as I looked up at the club building, relieved that another one of Carmine’s jobs was over. My eyes shifted to the gray sky above the building. “Hey, Hagan?”
“Yeah?”
I took another hit. “Job’s done. Can I go home now?”
“Really?” Hagan asked, frowning. “The party’s just getting started, man. Don’t you want to get a drink after that bullshit in there? Unwind a little bit?”
I didn’t think I could ever relax around these guys. They were all insane. They carried guns around and pointed them in people’s faces.
“There’s a hot chick in there getting all prettied up just for you,” he added.
Prettied up by wiping the goddamn blood from her face. “For me? She had her eye on you,” I joked.
Hagan chuckled. He squeezed my chin. “Nicky Cain, you have a beautiful face.” He made kissing noises at me. “The ladies of Haven are going to love you.” He released me and burst out laughing.
Jane, the bartender, appeared at the door. Her hair that had been stuck to her skin was now slicked back behind her shoulders. The entire side of her face was purple and even more swollen out here in the daylight. She held up her bag of ice and flashed me a smile. “I’m good to go.”
Hagan slapped his hand against the hood of the car. He looked inside at the driver, who hadn’t moved since we had gotten here. “Okay then. Let’s go.” He opened the back car door. “Nicky?”
I gave him a glare but didn’t say a word as I flicked my cigarette against the building and climbed into the back of his immaculate vehicle. Jane climbed in after me.
10
CROSS
I gazed up at the stars in the sky as he handed me a glass of wine and sat down beside me. “Thanks, Rich.”
We were on the deck attached to his house. He had been such a good friend and had come and picked up me up alongside the road where Mark had left me stranded. I had been so embarrassed to even have to make that call. Rich didn’t ask anything except where I wanted to go. I sure as hell didn’t want to go home, so he offered me a spot on his couch and a taste of some wine he had been saving for a special occasion.
“This is so good,” I told him, taking a sip and huddling in the blanket he had given me to keep out the chill.
“Glad you like it,” Rich said.
“Your special occasion wine used on my pity party.” I chuckled.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. I just enjoyed the peace and quiet, the good buzz I was already getting from lack of appetite earlier in the night at the restaurant.
“Did I ever tell you about the one that got away?” Rich finally asked, setting his own glass of wine down on the patio table.
I watched him smile and wondered what things he was thinking about in that mind of his and who this girl was that had him drawn to her memory this evening. “No. You’ve never told me anything about your personal life.”
He chuckled and kept staring off into the distance. “Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t have.”
I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He just seemed lost in his thoughts. “So,” I said, nudging hi
m with my elbow, “tell me.”
“Her name was Sammy.”
“Sammy,” I repeated, anxious to hear him talk about her, anything to get my mind off Mark.
“She was a hot redhead I met during my internship at Bentley. She was a tennis player.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were into sports.”
“I wasn’t. I was into her. She led me on for a while before finally agreeing to a date. She was pretty preppy, her family loaded.” He smiled again and reached for the bottle of wine to pour himself some more.
“So, what happened? How long did it last?” I questioned him.
“Six years,” he answered.
I almost spit out my wine. “Six years? What? You were in a long-term relationship?”
Rich pretended like he was offended. “Are you saying I’m not long-term material, Lilah Cross?”
I burst out laughing. “You’re definitely not!”
His eyes grew larger in pretend shock.
“Oh, my gosh, Rich, I’m so sorry. It’s probably the wine talking. I just…”
He took a large gulp from his glass. “You just what, Lilah? Tell me how you really feel.”
I couldn’t stop giggling. “You’re just very…bachelor-ish.”
“Bachelor-ish? Nice word.”
“You know what I mean.” I elbowed him again, this time too hard, and he cried out from the cheap shot to the ribs. “You claim to always want to settle down, but you aren’t exactly looking either. And look at this place, it’s just very…”
“Bachelor-ish?” he asked, half of his brow cocked.
I burst out laughing again. “Exactly!”
“Well, excuse me for not having flowers out here on the deck in girly pots, that my sink is piled up from last week’s dishes, and there aren’t loads of pictures plastered all over my walls.”
“Aw, you’re not offended, Rich, are you?” I tried to study his face, but my vision was a little off right now.
“Very offended,” he replied. “Very.”
I tried to elbow him again but this time, he dodged out of the way. I just realized my glass was empty as he filled it to the top again. I tried to gather my thoughts, but it wasn’t turning out so well for me. “Insert foot,” I whispered.
He laughed.
“I guess I just don’t see you as that kind of man, and if you ever do settle down, it would be with someone who you’ve been with for a while, because you’d want to make sure. You don’t just do things on a whim. So I guess I’m a little surprised at the six year thing, because to me, six years for you would mean that would be the girl you’d marry. I guess my next question would be, why did you let her get away?”
“You’re surprisingly correct for being so drunk,” he stated, taking out a cigar and lighting it up.
“I didn’t know you smoke,” I chastised him.
He shrugged. “You know, just socially.” He grinned. The smoke gathered around his face making him appear even hazier to me. He got very serious again. “I mean, there’s no huge thing that made it end. She just left.”
“She broke your heart?” I asked.
He nodded. “She did.”
“That bitch.”
He laughed. “Guess she just got tired of me not proposing or not being serious about life. She always said I was too carefree. I was young. People grow up, change.”
“What happened to this Sammy?” I asked, noticing half of my glass was already gone. This was not how people drank wine, I reminded myself. Sip, not chug.
He stared out into the night again, more smoke filtering out through his nostrils as a breeze came along and stole it away. “She’s married now, has some kids. I lost track.” He looked down for a moment.
I felt sad that he was sad. Rich was such a nice guy. Poor thing.
“You know,” he began, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you deserve better than Mark and all that kind of stuff, because you already know it, and you don’t need me repeating that.”
I sighed. “I know. Life didn’t always used to be so…complicated.”
“People grow up. They change,” he repeated, looking me straight in the eyes so he knew I had heard him.
“I’m so done with him, Rich, I am, but I’m just trying to figure it all out. You know what I mean? I need to figure out how to get rid of him exactly. I know you’ll just say file for divorce, but he leeches off of me. He’s not going to sign.”
“Hey,” he said, putting up his hands, “no judgment here.”
“Yeah, thanks. I guess you’re no Andrea.” I chuckled.
“Oh, lord.” He threw back his head. “Thank god you don’t think I’m like her.”
We both laughed.
“Just promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t like to say that to you, but he seems…different.”
“He’s definitely getting worse.”
“Throwing you out of a car? I mean, what’s next? If he ever lays a hand on you…”
I put my hand on his arm to stop him. “I know, Rich, thank you. I really appreciate your picking me up so I didn’t have to spend the night in a bug-infested hotel by myself and sleep in this dress.”
His eyes moved down to my dress. “Well, we have work tomorrow, so…”
I smiled. “Yeah. Bedtime.”
“Right.” He stood up and offered me his arm so I could steady myself.
“And I’ve got to get up even earlier so I can sneak home to shower and change,” I added.
Rich led me inside and into the living room to the couch. I collapsed down on it and took off my heels. They landed with a thump on the hardwood floor.
“Let me grab you a pillow and blanket.”
I watched as he disappeared. My eyelids felt so heavy. Damn wine gets me every time. I rolled over onto my back, my arms behind my head, and thought briefly about the night, how grateful I was to have been able to drown out everything Mark had done by chit-chatting with Rich. I could feel myself passing out. I was just so sleepy. What time was it anyway? Oh, who cares…?
I felt hot breath on my ear, but I thought I was still sleeping. “Don’t go to sleep yet, babe. Come on, stay up a little longer for me.” Then wet, warm lips moved over mine, followed by a tongue opening up my mouth. I felt like I was suffocating and sat straight up on the couch. Rich fell backward and looked up at me from the floor.
“What the fuck, Rich?” I yelled out. “What are you doing? Were you—on top of me?” My heart was beating fast. How long had I been asleep? Minutes? Hours? I still felt exhausted and drunk, but my boss was just freaking on top of me trying to make out with me in my sleep!
“Calm down, Lilah!” he hollered back.
“I won’t calm down!” I screamed. “What the hell? Why’d you do—that?”
He got up and sat down on the edge of the couch near me. “You were going to sleep…”
“Because I’m tired and you said we have to work tomorrow,” I reminded him, furious as I wiped his slobber from my mouth in disgust.
His face twisted like I had just done something wrong to him. “What? I said that to get you inside. I thought…”
I glared at him. He didn’t finish his sentence. “What was it you thought? Huh?”
“I didn’t think you called me up to come over here and whine about Mark all goddamn night. I mean, you obviously called me ‘cause you needed some comfort.” He smiled, gliding his fingers up my arm.
I jerked my arm away from him and stood up, scooping up my heels where I found them laying on the floor. “You told me to call you anytime I needed you.”
He looked so confused. Had I made a mistake in thinking he was just being a good friend? Of course I had. What a dumbass I was. Guys don’t think you call them because you need a friend. Guys think you call them when you need a fuck.
Rich stood up and faced me. “Wait, Lilah, I thought you were into me.”
“What the hell gave you that impression?” I yelled at him, taking a few steps backward. “Wa
s it the part where I told you my husband just left me stranded alongside the road, or was it the part where you poured your heart out to me about some bitch that broke your heart? Please, enlighten me and let me know where I went wrong with signals tonight.”
“I just thought…”
“You didn’t think,” I growled at him, wine heavy on my breath. “You really just fucked things up between us. Way to make things awkward.” I headed toward the door where my purse was.
“Lilah…”
I turned around. Thank god he wasn’t following me. I thought I may barf if he touched me one more time. I wasn’t attracted to Rich like that. He wasn’t that good looking and really was kind of boring now that I thought about it. Actually, I didn’t want to think about it. This night was one for the history books. Could it really get any worse than this?
“Where are you going? Can’t we just talk?” he pleaded.
I opened the front door. “I thought we already did talk,” I snapped at him. “Talking to you obviously is code for I want you to sleep with me.”
“Lilah,” he repeated. “Come on, don’t go like this.”
“See you at work tomorrow.” I slammed the door and walked down the deck steps toward the street. I was already fumbling in my purse for my phone so I could call a taxi and get to that rat-infested hotel for the night.
11
CAIN
I was sitting at Carmine’s place near an open bar complete with its own bartender—a brunette with a short T-shirt tied in the back and tight black shorts. She smiled at the Triplets as they went over to her and handed out their beer. There were couches and chairs everywhere complete with pool tables and places to play poker. The floor was black tile and shined as if just cleaned—probably had been. There were no windows in this place, probably for protection purposes. It was really cool that Carmine gave his guys their own room to chill in, and even nicer with how loaded up he had it.
I didn’t know how I had let it happen, being back here again with these guys. I was supposed to be heading home to my mom. I lowered my eyebrows in guilt, realizing I hadn’t even thought about Lazerne in a while. Haven was getting too interesting and had kept my mind occupied. Considering what I’d just seen the last few days, what a messed up thought that Haven had seemed to suck me in and make me forget my purpose for coming here in the first place. I looked around at this crew—these idiots—and wondered what my place was here. I didn’t carry a gun, and I wasn’t built to pound a guy into the ground.