by Ruby Scott
I turned to Mom, who had her arm around Charlie, giving me that bemused smile that she did when she wanted to ask questions but couldn’t because we were in polite company.
“Oh, I know Christian from high school,” I said after a few moments of trying to figure out what she must be trying to ask me with her psychic powers that didn’t actually exist.
“Oh, how nice, then you’ll be able to get along admirably, Tara,” Mom said, leaning her head against Charlie’s shoulder. Mom wasn’t short, but Charlie was tall, topping off on the upper side of six feet, all lean muscle that had come from his boxing career early in life. I had always wondered if he had taken it as a self-defense for surviving on the streets. He had the look of someone who had seen a lot in his years and wasn’t about to tell every single person who he met about it. He knew how to keep secrets. His brown eyes seemed depthless as I gazed at him, wondering what the hell had possessed him to propose to my mother, and for her to say yes.
Unlike me, she’d always gone for the trouble-makers. That’s why I never even met my dad. Once he figured out that she was pregnant, he’d high-tailed out of there as quickly as you could say ‘baby.’ You’d think that would knock some sense into her, when she suddenly had to support herself and a new baby all alone, but it hadn’t stopped her from dancing with the darker side occasionally.
Christian grinned at me again, and I felt myself blush as his gaze slithered along my body. Dammit, I hated blushing. “We’ll get along just fine, won’t we, Cher?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”
I couldn’t deny that I was still physically attracted to him, as I had been back when I’d had my one-night fling with him. That blush wasn’t completely uncalled for. He had just looked me over as if I were a prime cut of meat that he planned to consume later.
I crossed my arms after setting my bag down beside the shoes I had taken off at the door. I’d deal with it later, but right now, I needed to set something straight. “Christian, can we go to the kitchen, maybe get our parents something to drink?”
Christian wasn’t stupid. If he had tried at school, he would have excelled and gotten more than just a GED that qualified him for working at McDonalds until he turned thirty and then switch over to Wal-Mart until he became like one of those old ladies that always called customers ‘Dear.’
Of course, that was if he didn’t become a drug ring leader or a member of some foreign mafia.
On that note, I followed Christian into the kitchen. He’d filled out since I’d last seen him; his shoulders were a touch broader than I remembered them ever being, and underneath that ridiculous jacket, I could see that his hips tapered down to a nice V shape that reminded me of fitness models I’d always seen in college hanging around the art department when I’d come for photography.
“So you have me,” Christian said, green eyes hard like glass. “What do you want?”
“What the hell do you think that you’re doing?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice low as to not alert Mom or Charlie to the fact that I was yelling at Christian. “Your father is marrying my mother.”
“If you think that I just got that, you must have wasted all of that psychology and watching people on something that I don’t remember,” Christian said lazily. “Why else would I be here?” He leaned against the counter, tilting his head back. The late afternoon sun hit his face and reflected even warmer tones than his natural dark skin. He had told me as I had traced my fingers along his arms and chest that he had Native American blood, Cherokee. I shook that mental picture out of my head before I could really even think about why I was thinking about it or what it meant. I couldn’t let him distract me, not like this.
“You can’t allow Charlie to marry my mother.”
Christian looked over at me, eyes flashing. “He’s happy. For the first time since Cheyenne died, he is actually truly happy.” I winced at the sound of his younger sister’s name. She had been another reason I had decided to go with him that night, and look how that turned out.
“I know that,” I snapped. “But I don’t give a damn about who’s happy about what if we’re all dead.”
“Look, Tara,” Christian said, turning to face me finally. I placed my hand against the handle of the fridge, trying not to lose my temper. I had to at least hear him out, hear what he had to say. The fact that he used my real name meant that he was being serious, at least. I released my grip on the fridge door handle and nodded. “I know that what happened that night was far from ideal, but not every run in with someone who doesn’t walk the straight and narrow path ends like that. Your mom obviously has good experiences with Charlie, and I think that you should give him a second chance.”
“I haven’t even given him a first chance,” I pointed out, and then realized that I had just incriminated myself. Christian gave me a pointed look and then turned back so that his face was in profile.
“My point exactly,” he said.
I sighed. “I just don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“Charlie is out of the life for good. He’s said that before, but this time there was something different in his eyes. There was this gleam I’ve never seen before. I think he finally wants to settle down and start a family,” Christian insisted.
I sighed. “It’s like stripping,” I said, using my earlier metaphor. “You think you can leave it, but you find that you miss the stage.”
“And how do you know this?” Christian said, looking over at me with obvious interest.
I winced. “Watched a documentary,” I mumbled, ducking my head in shame.
“Well that’s practically sneaking out and using a fake I.D. to get into a club in the next big city for you,” Christian said sarcastically. The urge to smack him returned with a vengeance. I glared over at him.
“How can you ensure her safety?” I asked. “Because if you don’t have a way, I will find a way to make this wedding stop.”
“Make this wedding stop,” Christian said, low and intense, “and I will find a way to end you.”
Those words sent a chill down my spine. That night that we had spent together when the gambling debt collector had burst into our hotel room, gun pointed at our faces, I had seen the lack of Christian’s hesitation as he had quickly pulled his own gun out from underneath the pillow and shot the man in the chest.
Christian had been a lot of my firsts. He had been my first man I had taken to bed, he had been my first wander off of the straight and narrow path. He had been my first secret large enough to get me in trouble with the law. He had been my first experience of death.
I swallowed. I had no doubt that he could find a way to make me disappear, and it wouldn’t matter if I was dead or alive, he wouldn’t care, just as long as I never came back and allowed him to sleep in peace knowing that his position in the family was safe.
“Fine,” I said softly, raising my chin and looking him in the eye. He blinked; he had expected me to crumble like a cookie underneath this pressure. There was something different between the me of now and the me he had taken my innocence from all those years ago. This new me was strong and wouldn’t bend, and wouldn’t break under pressure. “I’d like to see you try.”
Christian looked at me for several more moments, eyes squinting and staring down into my very soul to where I knew that he could see that it was all bluff; that I didn’t have the actual guts to go up against someone with so little hesitation. He smirked and brushed past me, not even giving me the benefit of an answer.
###
That night, the moon streaming in through the window bugged me enough that I couldn’t sleep. Shortly after my conversation with Christian, I had pled that the drive over had caused me fatigue, and retired early. I had laid down on my bed without the intention of getting a wink of sleep only to find that five hours later, the bell was tolling midnight and I had fallen into a dreamless sleep.
However, as Christian’s words returned to me, along with memories of that night I had spent with him I had found t
hat the warm blanket of sleep was falling further and further away from my grasp.
With a sigh, I glanced up at my skylight. The moon was almost full, high in the sky and bright enough for it to be daylight. A nightly walk down the block might clear my head. I bundled myself into a sweatshirt and pulled the hood up around my face so that I was cast completely in shadow. If anyone saw me, they wouldn’t be able to tell if I was an average-sized girl or a skinny guy. I also slipped the pepper spray into the pocket of my sweatshirt, right alongside the leftover receipt for Chinese food I’d gotten a couple of weeks back.
As I walked out onto the deck, I didn’t notice Christian leaning against the far edge. He let me be completely ignorant the entire time I was fumbling for the keys to the lock. Right when I had picked the correct one, he decided to speak.
“Are you seriously going to lock me out?” I jumped, cursed and dropped my keychain onto the wood of the porch, making a loud rattling noise.
“You have absolutely no manners, do you?” I hissed, leaning over to search for my keys with one hand and keeping my grip on the pepper spray in my pocket with the other. “You could have scared me to death.”
“Something tells me that you aren’t quite that breakable,” Christian said, and his voice was much closer than I recalled it being the first time. I looked up to see him standing beside me, dangling my keys in front of my face.
How had he moved so quickly?
I decided not to question it, simply straightened and snatched my keys back. “Thank you,” I snapped.
“What are you doing?” Christian asked as I backed away a few steps.
“What do you mean what am I doing? What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I just asked a question. There’s no need for you to get so defensive. Unless, of course, you’re doing something—dramatic gasp—wrong,” Christian said. I gritted my teeth.
“I could ask you the very same thing. Why are you standing on my porch, scaring the occupants out of their wits?” I asked.
“You seem to have retained your wits just fine,” Christian said dryly.
“Only because they happen to be second nature for me.”
“Is that your new defense mechanism to keep the world at arm’s length? Snipe at it constantly?”
“Who said anything about arm’s length?” I asked incredulously. “I enjoy having life right in my face.” While it wasn’t true, Christian couldn’t search my soul for the lie in this light. It was still too dark, though it was light enough to look like a very cloudy day.
“Such an uptight do-gooder like you?” Christian asked, coming closer once again. I swallowed, realizing that we were alone for the first time since that night.
No. If it had been wrong the first time, it was doubly wrong this time. Our parents were getting married, and I couldn’t have these kinds of feelings towards my step brother. It shouldn’t happen. “Why am I even still here talking to you?” I asked, annoyed.
“That is a good question,” Christian said. There was only a foot of space between us now, and one more step would have me knocking into the rocking chair that sat in the corner of the porch, back banging against the house. It didn’t want to wake Mom or Charlie and have to explain what exactly I was doing out here. So I held perfectly still. “What are you doing here?”
“Christian,” I started, all intentions to tell him to get away or I’d spray him in the face with the Mace in my pocket, but the words faltered as his question became a breath of hot air against my cheek. He was much too close for comfort, much too close indeed. But I couldn’t find the energy or the will to make him back up.
I opened my mouth to say something else, but then his scent hit me. It was the exact same smell that I had smelled on my very first night with a man: a mixture of leather, old spice, and something uniquely masculine that I couldn’t place and most definitely couldn’t replicate. It was Christian’s specific smell, something that he would always have and that I would always secretly hope to smell in another man as I leaned forward to hug them or bury my face in their chests. I hadn’t in all of those years we had smelled apart.
That smell completely destroyed any residing tension, leaving me pliable and soft, ready for him to do anything. He could as me to strip and dance naked in the moonlight, and as long as that heady scent was in my nostrils, I would do so.
Luckily, all he did was reach forward and run a finger down my cheek, dragging it along the corner of my lip and then up my jaw to tuck a loose strand of curly hair behind my ear. “I’ve changed, Tara. If you’d take the time to notice, I’d let you see this side of me I only discovered months ago.”
“Changed?” I asked, and my voice was damnably breathy.
“I don’t want this life. I understand where Charlie is coming from when he says that he’s tired of being the big, bad biker. Riding has been my one and only dream; I saved up for months from my first job to buy my Harley Davidson, but now I find that it doesn’t bring me as much pleasure as it once did, riding alongside criminals who have always been against the law. I want to do something else, something that involves someone like you and a house and maybe in the future some kids.”
I was speechless. I knew that I should say something, correct him, but I couldn’t find the words. They were gone from my head, and I was left with only three: he wants me.
Before I could even respond, make logical sense of my own world, he was speaking again. “Let me show you how to fly.”
I knew he meant a ride on his bike, of course. He couldn’t get me to go on the thing for the night we had spent together. That had been my firm deal. I would go with him to wherever he wanted, just as long as I didn’t have to ride that disaster waiting to happen. All through the ride in the cab to the bar and restaurant he had taken me to for our date, I had recited the horror stories I’d heard about bikers falling off of their bikes and being unable to function properly ever again. I remembered how he had just laughed and told me to take a chill pill.
I should say no. That would be what I would always say, no questions asked. So why was I hesitating so much?
Christian reached out a hand, palm facing up. The contours and highlights of his fingers were turned into a foreign creature by the angle of the moonlight, flesh shifting into hills and valleys of nearly-colorless skin.
Before I could even logically tell my brain no, I found my own hand lifting and reaching forward. My fingertips brushed against his palm, rough and calloused from years of hard work and clamped around the bike, and doing God knows what else. They were also strong and sure, and something that I felt that I could trust.
What was with me tonight? Christian wasn’t safe, and he most definitely couldn’t be trusted. He’d get me killed just as soon as he would protect me.
Before I could yank my hand back and say that I’d changed my mind, Christian had pulled me forward. We went quickly down the porch steps to where Christian’s bike sat alongside Mom’s subdued sedan, gleaming like a thing of beauty and power.
He sat down on it, swinging a leg over as if it were as easy as sitting up in bed. I knew that it was a deceitful motion; balancing and making sure that everything was just right to avoid falling over was not stable or easy. He pulled me on before I could find my voice to protest, and I found that perhaps it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be in the first place.
When Christian wrapped my arms around his torso, I finally found my voice. “Is this a good idea?”
“If you want to stay alive and in one piece, then yes, this is wise.” He revved the engine at the end of that note, and I found myself clinging to him as the bike suddenly jumped forward like an overeager horse ready to go on a long gallop. “Lean against me,” he said as we pulled out of the driveway. “And lean into the turns so that I can make the full turn as easily as possible.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me and carefully laid my cheek against the cool material of his leather jacket.
After the initial fear, I relaxed into the
ride. He was right, with the wind against my face and the feeling of going much faster than we actually were, it felt akin to flying. I found myself closing my eyes, imagining that there wasn’t this metallic contraption of death underneath me, that it was only me and Christian. We flew through the night, lights flickering past like willow-the-wisps that grandma used to tell me about.
The miles were eaten away from his truck. I could feel the shift of Christian’s muscles as he turned the vehicle and adjusted slightly against my fingers every time he made a slight movement. He may not have had the carved-out muscles of a fitness model, but he was still well-built, and I could feel the sheer power contained in his body as he moved as if he and the bike were one.
We reached the city limits within no time and were speeding past, outside of the houses and the lights into the empty highway. No one was out so late and it felt eerie to be in the town that had always bustled with life my entire youth so utterly empty.
We must have ridden for an hour, though it could have been much longer or much shorter. I lost track of time after quite a while, simply appreciating the feel of the wind against my face, the whip of my hair behind me and the almost burning warmth Christian’s heat provided me.
However, the cold began seeping in as the night grew older, and the early morning crept closer. When Christian began feeling me shake, he turned around.
“I’ll get you back.”
His voice was a shock after the silence, and I remembered why I hadn’t wanted to come on his bike ever. The shaking intensified with my fear, and I think that I tightened my arms painfully around his midsection. “Please do,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut the entire way home.
My legs shook as I got off of the bike. Christian grinned at me as I turned around to face him. “How was it?”
“Terrifying,” I said flatly, though it wasn’t completely true.
“You enjoyed it for half of the time. That reminds me of our date.”
I felt whatever openness that had been left between us slam shut. “We do not talk about that night,” I hissed, stomping forward so that I could poke a finger into his chest. “Ever,” I added for emphasis, jabbing my finger into his sternum once more.