by Skye Warren
“I don’t want him near Bailey.” I was babbling. “I can’t be near him, either, but it’s not just for me. He doesn’t care about her. He doesn’t even know her. What if he takes her away from me?”
“No. He’s not getting anywhere near you or Bailey.”
Colin held me while the threat of tears passed. The rhythm of our breathing synced, as if to steady us both.
The quietude was interrupted by the ringing of Colin’s cell phone. Without releasing me, he reached into his pocket.
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
The faint buzz of another person speaking.
“I can’t come now,” he said.
More buzzing, slightly louder this time.
“I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up.
“If you need to go…” I said. Hell, my problems had stewed for this long. It was hardly an emergency.
“It’s fine,” he said, stroking my hair.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” I said into his shirt. “Earlier today, some cops came by. Detectives, I mean. They were asking about you.”
His grip tightened to just this side of bruising before subsiding. “What did they say?”
They said I wasn’t safe. Bailey wasn’t safe here. “Nothing.”
“Don’t talk to them again.”
I should have bristled at the command, but I really had no desire to ever talk to them again. And I was drained. “Okay.”
Bailey’s soft cry crackled from the baby monitor. Up from her nap, and life goes on. I pulled away. Colin clung to me for a beat and then released me.
In that sort of dulled state that comes from falling apart, I retrieved Bailey from her bed and set her up with a bowl of watermelon chunks in the kitchen as I finished baking the cookies. Dinner was a quiet affair. Neither Colin nor I had any words left. Bailey seemed to take her cue from him, peppering the silence with subdued grunts and eating little. I regaled Bailey with outrageous stories, slapstick versions of her favorite books complete with silly voices, through dinner. I put her to bed early, which of course only made her stay up extra late, tossing restlessly in her bed until sleep overcame her.
Colin was somewhere in the house but not in his room. Our room, I reminded myself. Exhausted, I stripped down to my underwear and collapsed on the bed.
When I woke, it was dark in the room. Strong hands cradled me, and I cuddled up to a hard chest. I craved Colin for the reassurance that he was here, that he would stay. I trailed my hand down, but he caught it in his.
“Not tonight.”
“You don’t want me?”
“Always, Allie, but…it’s not right. Later.” Even though he was right, I felt the sting of rejection. He pulled me close to him, holding my hand. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
I didn’t have nightmares about what had happened with Andrew, not even right after it happened. Or maybe I did, but I never remembered any of my dreams. So I wasn’t really prepared for when Colin started tossing around in the middle of the night.
He jerked against the tangled sheets and mumbled, “No…leave her…”
I’d done this. I shook his shoulder firmly to wake him.
“Colin. It’s all right. Wake up. Everyone is fine.”
He blinked up at me blearily. “Allie?”
“Yeah, it’s me. You were dreaming.”
“Won’t let him hurt you again.”
“I know. I know. Shhh.”
Then he crushed me to him with both arms and slipped right back to sleep. I wasn’t sure he had woken at all, even though he spoke to me. My arms were trapped by my sides, and my neck was tilted awkwardly, but I held myself still. This was the way he’d put me. I needed to be able to do this small thing for him, have my body be the way he wanted it. I just closed my eyes and tried to will comfort from my body into his.
When I woke up again, it was still dark in the night that would never end. Colin thrust between my legs. He was inside me and over me and everywhere. It wasn’t fear or discomfort I felt, but relief. Gratitude that he was letting me do this for him. But he was muttering, “I’m sorry. Sorry.” I roused myself enough to mumble, “It’s okay,” and spread my legs wider, and he quieted. I understood why he was apologizing, though, because he didn’t even seem to have control of his own body. It was like his hips were thrusting of their own accord, and the rest of his body just had to go along with it. Each thrust was deep and strong, and with an unsteady but deliberate rhythm. It felt like being claimed, like being marked, protected, and I could hardly describe how that felt different from regular sex, except that I knew it when I felt it.
The irony is that I felt more owned, more controlled, than I ever had during the rough sex I’d craved with other men. He was telling me that I was his—that he couldn’t stop it and neither could I, so it was damned convenient that neither one of us wanted to. I don’t know how long he went on this way, but I could have taken him forever. My body was already relaxed and pliant from sleep, and I made no effort to change that.
When he came, he groaned my name and then shuddered over me, clutching me to him. I didn’t try to push into him, or away, just yielded completely to whatever shape he gave me.
Chapter Four
The light of the morning teased me, shadows dancing from behind my closed eyelids. Still feeling the lethargy from the night, I opened my eyes to…orange.
Orange fur.
“Goddamn it.” I bolted up from the bed, away from the orange hairball curled up on the pillow next to me. I was still gaping at the cat when Colin walked in and stroked my ass. Only then did I realize I was completely naked in the middle of the bedroom while Colin had dressed.
He fitted his body to mine, my back to his front, and nuzzled his face into my hair.
I pointed at the intruder. “The cat. It’s yours?”
Colin didn’t even look up before he murmured into the side of my neck. “Figured it was yours.”
“So, wait. Did you let it in?”
He nodded.
I pulled away from Colin, and he groaned in protest. “Sorry,” I said. “But this cat is leaving.”
I wrapped the sheet around me and picked up the cat, who’d now gone deadweight. His heft proclaimed that this was no starving kitty. “Absolutely, positively no cats allowed,” I said as I carried him down the stairs. Then I set him down outside the door and shut it with a satisfying click.
My confessions weighed on me, but the important thing was that Colin was still here. He still wanted me, and that was enough. I’d make it enough. I’d make us a family if it fucking killed me.
Chapter Five
I peeked under the blanket draped over the stroller. A cherub with chubby cheeks and tawny curls slept peacefully, in direct contrast to the little devil who’d shattered my eardrums in the house earlier. Bailey had begun insisting, quite loudly, that she was finished with naps. Droopy eyelids at the dinner table and cranky bath times proved otherwise, though. The battles were epic until I found a secret weapon: the cracked, slanted sidewalks of Colin’s neighborhood. A few minutes in her stroller, and Bailey was out like…well, like a baby.
I didn’t mind the walks. I enjoyed them. Would have done them before, had I not been likely to pass a streetwalker and two drug dealers on a trip around the block. It was like a bad “three guys walked into a bar” joke, but with needles.
Here, there were houses instead of boarded-up storefronts and trees instead of broken streetlamps. I even passed the occasional jogger, a pastime that I’d never understand, or another mom pushing her kid. They’d wave, and I’d wave back. So neighborly.
But I missed my neighbor of almost two years. Shelly hadn’t come around since the revelation about Philip, when she’d said his last name unbidden, and I feared I knew exactly what that meant. Her client, the rich one, the one who liked to hurt her, the one she lived with, was Philip. I already disliked Philip for how he treated Colin—shitty—and how he treated me—like I was invisible. But if I we
re right, I’d despise him for what he did to Shelly.
I didn’t really understand it. She was beautiful, and she’d had long-term clients. With me and Bailey out of the woods financially, at least for now, she didn’t need a whole lot of money. So why would she live with him? Did he have something on her? Because he sure as hell held something over me. Oh, just my entire future. All because Colin trusted him, and so I had to by default. No biggie.
A cool breeze whistled through the trees. I leaned over to make sure the blanket was still in place, tenting Bailey in her own warmth. The blanket was fine, but from this angle, reflected sunlight glinted at me from the street. I glanced over.
A parked car, black, vaguely familiar. Was it possible that was the same car Shelly and I had watched from her apartment windows, watching us back?
It had to be a coincidence. I hadn’t been close enough to that car, or even this one, to get the exact model. The shape looked similar, but it was common. And so was the color and dark, tinted windows.
What were the odds?
I walked faster than before.
It was silly, I knew, but my heart raced. My body was always betraying me.
Could it be Andrew? He shouldn’t even know where we were. And if he did, would he really watch instead of just approaching us? Then again, it hadn’t worked so well for him before. Maybe he was waiting for something. Or gathering evidence to use against me.
I sped up.
As I reached Colin’s street, I heard the low rumble of an engine. I glanced back as I rounded the corner and saw the car moving away. Good.
I wished I could laugh it off, but my breath was still coming too fast. I paused only at the bigger bumps, not wanting to jar Bailey out of sleep but still needing to get home now. Home, yes. I’d be safe there.
Turning the stroller onto Colin’s driveway, I saw the same black sedan pull onto the street from the other side. It had circled the block in the opposite direction I’d gone. And arrived here. A handful of houses down from Colin’s house. Within viewing distance. Fuck.
No longer concerned for Bailey’s nap, I raced the stroller inside through the back door and slammed it shut. And locked it.
A quick glance; Bailey was still asleep. Normally I would push her into the dining room so she could finish her nap while I got dinner started, but the bay windows in the dining room didn’t have curtains. Neither did the cupboard window in the kitchen. None of the windows in this house did—goddamn bachelor pad—making me feel like a bug in a jar.
Who could they be?
Then I realized—cops.
Fucking cops. Of course. They knew about me and Bailey. They knew about Colin and Philip. And they wanted to know more. Stakeout seemed too strong a word, when the most dramatic thing that might happen on our walk was a poopy in Bailey’s diaper. Surveillance, though. That made sense. Learning our routines. Trying to get something on us. On Colin.
Protectiveness was a welcome feeling, anger even more so, but it didn’t distract from my discomfiture in this house. An hour ago it had been home. Now it was a goddamn evidence storage facility. What secrets did he hide here? Besides me and Bailey, that was.
I had to get out of here. I packed a still-sleeping Bailey into her car seat and drove to the grocery store. I’d put this trip off for a couple of days now, making meals that taxed my creativity with whatever I’d found in the pantry because I had eighteen dollars in my bank account. The credit card Colin had given me only two days after I moved in, all officially printed with my name, had rested unused in my purse. This day had loomed, of course, ever since I’d traded in my apartment and my job for this security. The day when I’d surrendered Bailey and myself completely to Colin’s care. Now it was here, when that very security was suspect.
Bailey woke up on the way and fussed. I sang to her from the limited selection of nursery rhymes I knew. She, thank goodness, turned a deaf ear to the tinny waver of my voice today and settled down.
At the store I distracted myself with price comparisons and Bailey with produce. Bell peppers in particular made excellent toy doubles with their stoplight colors, hardy shape, and ability to go into a stir-fry at the end.
We’d made it through the pantry aisles and were just approaching the dairy section when I heard my name in a hiss. Startled, I glanced behind a display of chocolate syrup to see Rick.
Christ, he’d scared me, huddled behind there like some sort of mugger of perishables. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
He glanced behind him, toward the meat counter, and then back at me. “Come here.”
“What? Why?”
“Just…come back here. I need to talk to you.” Then he turned and went down a fluorescent-lighted hallway.
Goddammit. Rick always brought the weird. But he was my friend, of a sort, and I couldn’t just continue shopping as if I hadn’t heard him. I backed up my cart and then pushed it after him. I caught sight of his boot just as some maroon loading doors swung shut. We shouldn’t be back here. And I had Bailey with me. I paused.
Rick poked his head out. “Come on.”
“All right, all right,” I grumbled. This had better be good.
Chapter Six
I pushed the cart through the doors into a large, shadowed room. Stacks of crates sprouted haphazardly from the cold, concrete floor.
The atmosphere of the room demanded I whisper. “What is it?”
“She’s so big,” Rick said, looking at Bailey.
Well, yeah. It’d been about a year since he’d last seen her, and then only for a brief hello one time when Shelly’d gotten an “emergency” call from a client and had dropped Bailey off at the bakery on her way. Which served to point out that the word “friends” was a bit of an exaggeration for the boss-employee relationship we’d had.
I cleared my throat and spoke normally. “We needed privacy for that?”
“Ah, no. It’s about your new guy.”
“Colin?” Damn. I had to stop volunteering information, especially with the cops nosing around.
“Yeah, Colin Murphy.”
I narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t even sure I’d said Colin’s first name when I told Rick about him, but I definitely wouldn’t have said his last. It hadn’t been a secret at the time, but it wasn’t Rick’s business.
“What about him?” I asked.
“I don’t know how much you know about him, but he runs some dirty shit. Anyway, he…” Rick trailed off.
“Spit it out,” I said.
“Well, I had some debts. You know, gambling, shit like that. Just around town, but he bought them up. Then he said I had to pay up.”
I glanced at Bailey, who’d managed to pull the stem off a red pepper, the use of swear words around her registering distantly in my mind. “Okay…did you want me to talk to him about it? Because I don’t really know if—”
“No, not like that,” he said. “He didn’t want the money.”
He looked at me expectantly. I didn’t get it. “But you just said…”
“He wanted the bakery shut down,” Rick said. “He wanted you out of a job.”
More crazy. Shouldn’t be surprised. “Why would Colin want me to be out of a job?”
He shook his head. “I’m not explaining this well. He wanted you out of a job so that you’d be dependent on him. For money. And since I was in a shitty situation, he could just make it go away. He knew I couldn’t pay up, but he didn’t care.”
“Wait. Colin came and said all this to you.”
“No, no. It was just one of their players. One of his brother’s guys.”
Yeah, Philip. It seemed as if everything circled back to him, and not in a good way. “But if it wasn’t Colin, then it could have just been…”
“He said I had to leave town,” Rick said. “And I wasn’t allowed to tell you why or give you anything or talk to you after that.”
I raised my eyebrows. Of course the thing I’d latched on to would be the useless piece of information, that he wasn’t ex
actly following the rules if he was talking to me now, was he?
Rick flushed. “I left, but I couldn’t stay away without you knowing what you’re getting yourself into with him.”
“Well, it’s a little late for warnings now. Jesus, Rick.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I was gratified that at least he did look sorry.
But fuck, I was still annoyed at him. To tell me this at all. To tell me this now, when it was clearly too late for caution. I was entirely moved in and financially dependent on Colin, I was a known associate of his and Philip’s according to the cops, and Philip and Colin were now, independent of me, it seemed, handling my situation with Andrew. The cart of groceries that Bailey sat in, the groceries I couldn’t pay for without Colin’s money, underlined the entirety of my dependence.
Bailey picked that moment to throw the stemless pepper at Rick. I wanted to do that too. He caught it and tossed it back, where it hit her in the chest with a soft thud and fell to her lap.
Her eyes widened, and her lips quivered.
Rick gave me a panicked look.
I stared back at him stonily.
“I’m so sorry,” he said with his hands up. “I thought she could catch.”
All I could think was that men really sucked. Bailey wailed her agreement.
* * * *
I slammed a jar of tomato sauce down, then rethought the object of my aggression when the shelf rattled ominously. From the living room Bailey banged her block down on the floor in solidarity.
The snick of the back door let me know Shelly had responded to my summons. I’d left a brief voice mail for her on the drive back from the grocery store. “We need to talk,” was all I’d said.
She paused to kiss Bailey on the forehead and then entered the kitchen with a rush of crisp winter air.
I pounced on her. “Who’s the guy, Shelly?”
“Okay.” She didn’t play dumb. “It’s Philip. Don’t be angry.”
“Don’t be angry? This guy is like…I don’t know! Something bad.”