Our Crazy Little Thing Called Love

by Liz K. Lorde

  He’d filled more than just the hole between my legs, and that terrible realization crawled all over my skin. Sickly warmth, far different from the love previous, laced my insides and I found myself breathing faster.

  What if none of this was right?

  What if I’d never been born? Would Mom had turned out the way that she did?

  Leonardo, kidnapper, lover, vicar of sin. He was too many things to me way, way too fast. I found my heart tapping harder against my breastbone; all that was right with comforting him, that was right with intertwining with this wonderful, damaged man… it became replaced with that familiar, horrifying urge to self-destruct.

  It’s not self-destruction, I argued with myself. It’s self-preservation. Everyone in my life ends up miserable, and I’ll always be the source of their suffering. Between Leonardo’s breaths and the stabbing pain in my chest, I tried like hell to convince myself of there being a chance that things could go right. That, perhaps, if I’d listen to the world around me instead of fighting against the current, then maybe, just maybe everything would be alright. This isn’t crazy, I thought. It’s fate. It’s not Stockholm, it’s a connection.

  I closed my eyes and bottled up the pain, trying not to make too much noise.

  If what he’d told me was true. I mean, both of the brothers did seem to be pretty convinced of it… There was another father out there waiting for me.

  Just more family to ruin.

  No, I can’t stay here. I can’t continue this messed up… whatever there is between us. Cautiously, I slipped out of Leonardo’s grasp – I was almost free when I felt his hand on my wrist, forcing me to turn my head back and look at him.

  He’s still asleep, but he mutters something. “Don’t go.”

  Fiery pinpricks worked their way through me, and I swallowed the lump in my throat trying to force it down. I wasn’t ready to jump to conclusions, but for some reason it hurt all the same. Freeing my wrist from his touch, I gathered my clothes and dressed myself as quietly as I was capable. If what I was doing was right, why did I have to feel so damn guilty?

  Guilt. My constant companion.

  Silently, I made my way to the large window pane of the room. It really gave a spectacular view of the city below, in all its urban majesty. All colorful lights and dark, sprawling structure, it was like a series of neon rainbows as far as the eye could see. Looking down, down below, there was a gnawing fear in my stomach – an evil churning at the image of my falling body. To try something out of the movies would be suicide.

  Even still, I looked to the edge of the penthouse just beyond the window, trying to discern how narrow the ledge might be. I gathered that it wasn’t any thicker than a finger’s length.

  Definitely not happening. If I can’t balance my own bank account, I sure as hell am not gonna balance on that ledge. Turning around, I glanced towards Leonardo – whom was still fast asleep. At least there was that in my favor. Thinking about my next move, I contemplated going through the main room. Wouldn’t I need his keycard?

  Deciding that was the only way I’d be escaping tonight, I moved through the bedroom in search of Leonardo’s jacket. The panic in me was rising even as my mind turned on how best to handle all of this. Crouching down in the darkness, I found his jacket and started to look through it. Feeling something hard and thin, I grabbed it between my fingers – but I ceased my movement. What if Connifer or that other girl are still awake? Shit.

  I remained there for a short spell, hoping and trying to think of some clever excuse I could give.

  Nothing.

  Getting up from the floor, I pocketed the keycard and sidled over to the door. Just putting my hand on the door knob was enough to fill me with a sickly adrenaline. At this point I was just hoping beyond hope that I’d have just a little bit of luck on my side.

  Where the hell am I going to go? Home? The police? Oh, hello officer, I was kidnapped by underground royalty. Please keep me safe… Fee. I trust she’ll know what to do. Opening the door, as quietly as I was able, I peeked through the slit and out poured soft, blue light from the living room of the penthouse. All the drunks and floozies were asleep; the girl from before, M something, was fast asleep in a reclining chair by herself. It was hard to make too much else out. Connifer wasn’t to be found, though.

  Minor relief washed over me, and my insides began to settle in their rightful places, so I opened the door further.

  You can do this Tabs. Quick, precise movements, nothing more will be needed. Once I’m out, I’ll hail a cab and grab my stash from underneath my bed, pay the man, head to Fee’s place, and all will be well.

  Moving through the room, I made it about halfway before I heard a noise to my right; immediately I snapped to where I’d heard it, and I saw Connifer coming through the glass door leading towards the elegant terrace. The terrace itself was bathed in silver from the moon, and overgrowth spiraled and sewed itself around the wooden gating. If I had any breath left from earlier, being captivated by it would have taken it all away.

  Although I did my best to not let it show, on the inside, I froze up.

  “Looking to run?” Connifer asked in that nuanced accent, and a smile spread across his lips. That’s not good, he’s already sniffed out my intent. He stepped closer to me, enough to close the distance between us and put a hand on the side of my arm. “I’m kidding,” he insisted in a simplistically friendly manner. He squeezed gently, “can’t sleep?”

  I could’ve dedicated statues to my relief internally. “Yeah,” I said as leisurely as I could muster, “take it you weren’t having the easiest of times either.”

  “Never do,” the man let go of me, but his icy, lake blue eyes expressed such kindness that I wanted to drift away in them. “No, just keeping watch – not expecting much to happen.”

  “You mean with…” I have to think of some other way out of this.

  “Killaine. Leo expects he’ll be very busy for at least the next few days,” I could sense the anger and hurt in his voice. His eyes drifted away from me, “he hasn’t exactly told me where you fit in all of this now, but usually he doesn’t sleep with—“

  “Oh we didn’t,” I don’t know why I said this, sometimes my mouth worked faster than my brain on the rare occasion. Perhaps in denying, I could make it easier to process the pain of having made such a bizarre – and hopelessly human, connection.

  Connifer shared with me a playful, intimate laugh – that smile returning, his beard and moustache moving along with him. “Sure lass, sure you didn’t. And I don’t play golf with people’s skulls twice a week because they don’t know how to talk to the Boss right. I understand, we all have our pride.”

  I hadn’t a clue how to respond or feel about what the man just said, only that I didn’t want to imagine the grotesque display of which he was speaking.

  Too late.

  “Come,” he said with a deal of warmth to his tone, “have a drag with me outside,” he pointed with a nod of his head towards the terrace. “Sorry you do smoke, don’t you?”

  This won’t do. “Oh I’m actually trying to stay away from them,” there must be something I can say to create an opening. “My ex turned me on to them and I just can’t anymore.” Immediately I felt bad for lying, of course, spoilers, I felt bad for existing around people most of the time.

  “I understand,” Connifer nodded his head, “I’ll smoke away from you, and you can tell me in all the ways that you and my boy Leo didn’t do the dirty.”

  Pursing my lips into a smile, a small laugh escaped me. “I would but I’ve actually got to go and get something, you don’t think he’d mind if I slipped out to run to the store, do you?”

  The man’s smile remained, but a subtle change had come about now – his eyes narrowed some, and he shifted an inch closer towards me. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he admitted in a cautious, but non-threatening way. “Better to be safe than sorry.”

  This man was not going to make things easy for me tonight…
I cleared my throat, “Right, right, but I kind of have a – well, I have a problem.” Indecision began to gnaw away at my head and my heart, would I be safer with Leo? Or would I be safer with Fee?

  Would she even know what to do? I knew that she had ties with the government, she was always away and busy traveling the world… I wish my heart didn’t change like the waves.

  “Your perky tits and luscious lips cause us lads to hit on you incessantly?”

  Rolling my eyes, I said: “No, but thank you. It’s just you know – being kidnapped made it to where I couldn’t exactly pack all of my necessities.” Connifer stood there like a statue, clearly missing the point in which I was trying to hint at. Well, when the scalpel fails I suppose, you move to the hammer. I raised my eyebrows and leaned in closer, “that time of the month. Nature is kind of making itself know right now.”

  “Oh!” His brows shot up and his smiled leveled out in dumbfounded surprise. He stepped back a pace and laughed to himself, “sorry I’m not the brightest, even around these kind of fools. Myra’s probably got one,” he put up a hand that told me not to worry, man was here to handle all my earthly problems.

  He was already in stride and halfway to her when I recognized that if I didn’t stop him right this damn second I’d lose my only shot of leaving. “Wait a second,” I called out, practically chasing in a hurry after him and grabbing his wrist, a rush of anxious heat filling me like wine to a glass. Connifer turned and stopped in his tracks, asking without moving his mouth: ‘What?’ “I need a particular item, it’s a specific brand.”

  “Really?” He squinted his eyes in disbelief, “I thought they were all just the same. You can’t use one of hers?”

  I smiled and tried to give him as smart a look as I could muster, hoping to make him feel so uneducated on the matter that he wouldn’t question my reasoning. “Right,” I told him, “I can’t use one of Myra’s because, and I mean, I can tell just by looking at her – but she’s a size two.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I don’t know for sure!” I whisper shouted, letting go of his hand, “but I know whatever she uses won’t work for me because I’m a four.”

  Connifer held an incredulous look, not speaking or moving for anything.

  I nodded my head, “You think you know anatomy, but it’s much more nuanced then you think.”

  Connifer’s eyes went down to his pants and then back to me, “I thought they fit to all sizes, you know, with how they do co—“

  “That’s, that’s completely different,” I asserted, heat kissing at my face. I was positive by now I was turning red, so I pushed my glasses up a bit. “Look I know, I know what size I am – got it? It’s… I’m already having a bad day, my dude.”

  “Alright, alright,” he conceded, sounding unsure of himself, “what’s the one I’m looking for? I’ll run out and grab it for you, I don’t mind.”

  This close to victory and he still manages to steal it from me. Necessity was the mother of concession. “No no,” I told him, “I’ll go with you. How’s that? I could tell you the brand name and I can already picture you there, standing in the aisle with your hands on your hips mentally scratching your head and getting looks by all the staff.”

  Connifer grunted, “Come on then, you’re a woman that knows what she wants, I’ll say that much.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DUPLICITY

  TABITHA

  For being known as a city that never sleeps, it was a surprisingly peaceful drive in Connifer’s much less expensive car. We drove smoothly down 12th street alongside sparse traffic. Connifer turned his head and asked, “You grow up here?”

  “No, not from here. Would you believe me if I told you that I grew up in Eurus, Illinois?”

  “Could have fooled me,” he grunted a quick noise from his chest. “Look more like a slick city girl with those glasses.”

  His company was surprisingly polite enough for boasting how he was a ruthless enforcer for a small, localized criminal empire. “Yep, it was all country for me.” I tried to keep my comments short, and my history private – he didn’t need to know anything more than that, and I didn’t need to be burdened with all of those heavy memories.

  Still, a few crept through the cracks of my mind.

  The morning sun poured through my old room’s window, and the summer heat clung to my body that day. I remember being soaked in my own sweat in that white nightgown; drinking cold water, some drops rolled down my chin and past my neck.

  Next was a door. Her door.

  Opening it I saw her there surrounded in tissues. Her eyes stained from crying desperately in the night – the sound of which pierced my thoughts.

  “Never did care for the country,” Connifer announced, cutting away the haze of old sorrows. “Too plain for my tastes.”

  “I feel the same way,” I smiled at the man, thinking back on one of the few good memories that I did have of my past – the library in the family attic where I’d hide away at night and read until the morning crept up on me.

  “Something I can’t quite wrap my head around,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Leo’s got a good heart,” he started, “somewhere in there. But I don’t see why he’s kept you around – he wants to keep you safe, that I get. Sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but why does he want to keep you safe?”

  “Well him and his brother think I’m worth something,” that statement would have hurt me if I hadn’t thought it in my head a thousand times in my life. Worthlessness. That was something I’d been long accustom to. “I think he does it because he’s responsible for this mess. Most of it, anyway.”

  We slowed at the light and Connifer glanced at me, “Could be. I wouldn’t blame him if it was something more than that.”

  Stomach turning to warm knots, I narrowed my eyes, “I don’t understand.”

  Connifer shrugged those big, broad shoulders, “Neither do I. But I do know it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen ‘im with a soft spot for a woman.”

  He’s just in emotional distress, I told myself. That’s all it was. Some draught of the flesh to forget such scathing sorrows. “Maybe.”

  “Me and him used to get in quite a few scraps over a lady, stuff of legends between the crew. There was this one night,” he laughed, “I’ll never forget it. We and the boys were at Gallardo’s pub celebrating after – well, guess I shouldn’t say too much. That’d be telling,” Connifer chuckled and turned the wheel, our car smoothly moving along with it. By all means, tell me each and every detail – knowing things was the one and only thing outside of escaping that I enjoyed doing.

  I hated being lied to. It’s all that was ever done to me in the past.

  Connifer continued: “We were celebrating. This bombshell of a woman comes in and she’s actually bit of a renowned figure, you know her? Mistress Zobelle LeLouch.”

  “Never heard,” I turned my head to look out the window, butterflies kicking around in my belly as we neared Mercury’s drugstore.

  “Red hair, curls down to her ass. Just a firecracker of a woman,” Connifer hooted and smacked the leather of his wheel excitedly, “damn was she wild. We arm wrestled on who’d get the first go at approaching her, but when I beat Leo, the bastard did his two shots of fireball whiskey and told me that only losers play by the rules. Can you believe that?” He asked me with his eyebrows as much as he did his mouth. “Got up quicker than I could and scrambled towards her – didn’t even make it halfway to her before he introduced himself. Not that he needed one, of course.”

  Something was already bugging me about this story now. I turned my head and squinted, “If he’s the one talking to her,” I wasn’t sure why I felt slightly uncomfortable about hearing Leonardo’s previous sexual conquests, “then why do you sound so sure of how wild she is?”

  “Oh I’m getting to that, don’t you worry,” another turn and we were at the drugstore.

  “It’ll have to wait,” I touched his shoulder
as the vehicle pulled to the side of the road and came to a stop. He undid his buckle.

  “No worries I’ll pop in with you,” he asserted.

  “No, no,” I insisted, trying not to make it sound so forced, “I don’t want to get caught up in the store, if you talk and walk with me I’m going to take forever.”

  The man considered it for a moment, “Alright. Make it quick though. Take it you don’t have money on you?”

  “Sorry,” was it weird to feel bad for taking money from a criminal you never expected to pay back?

  Connifer fished inside his pants for his brown and thick leather wallet, producing a twenty and handing it to me. He deftly moved his hand to the radio and turned it to 98 Rock. “Leo’ll kill me if he wakes up and finds us gone,” he said as I was getting out the door, “I do enjoy being alive!” He shouted over the pounding drums and harsh cymbals from the radio.

  I think Leo will forgive him for being duped. Not like he made it easy for me.

  Still, I slammed door shut and smiled at the man. He didn’t seem like a bad person.

  Then again, most people don’t. Monsters tend to wear their masks well.

  Slipping into the drugstore, the door made a small ringing noise and the door shut behind me a few seconds later. Everything was horrendously, fresh out of a decadent dystopia white. The floors were the color of eggshells and they gleamed with a blue-white polish from the well-lit ceiling. Stepping forward, I felt like I was dirtying the place just by existing even though I was perfectly presentable.

  The clerk behind the front counter had his feet kicked up on a second stool and he was reading some newspaper. He brought it down for a second and the paper made a crumpling noise as he did; he was a kindly looking man of almond colored skin with dark olives for eyes and a great, thick moustache. Probably in the age range of thirty to thirty five. Still, even though the slight smile on his face pointed towards friendliness, he quickly made note of me and then moved back to his paper.

  Now that I was in here I found myself wholly unsure on just how the fuck I was going to get out. Beating feet, I moved beyond the aisles of various doodads, drinks, foodstuffs, alcohol, and over the counter items. I went to the end of the store and started moving alongside the wall, hoping to find some sort of back door that I could use.