Unfiltered & Unlawful (The Unfiltered Series)

by Galvin, Payge

  “You haven’t been around much lately,” the barmaid said as she returned with his drink.

  “Work’s been good,” he said as a sort of excuse.

  She opened her mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by his cousin walking up behind her and patting her ass. She spun to face him. “What the hell?”

  “Bud and a glass of Jack and Coke,” Tommy said. He held out a twenty. “No change.”

  Whatever other complaints she was going to raise vanished as she took the crinkled bill out of his hand.

  Tommy pulled out a chair, spun it around, and straddled it. It was a leftover habit from their childhood that he never quite gave up as an adult. “Is she yours?”

  Adam sighed. “I may have gotten to know her at some point. I’m not sure.”

  “Not memorable then?” Tommy looked over toward the bar. “Shame. I’ve been feeling out of sorts without Sugar around.”

  At the mention of the girl Adam coveted, he tensed. He didn’t comment though. He was sure Tommy suspected Adam’s interest in Sasha, but he didn’t ever point it out. They were family, and that meant they had a tacit agreement to ignore uncomfortable things when necessary.

  If they weren’t family, Adam knew he and Tommy wouldn’t be sitting at a table together. Ever. They were opposites in both the obvious and less obvious ways. Adam was health conscious, believed in hard work, and vowed never to snort or shoot poison again. Tommy was a walking, schmoozing, bad habit. He liked a buffet of toxins—pot, cigarettes, coke, acid, X, speed. If he could turn a profit on it or have a good weekend using it, he was game. He settled into a town like he had roots ready to sprout, and it took a lot to untether him. They looked different enough that no one would mistake them for the family they were either. Tommy was wiry, and Adam had the sort of mass that came from weight training. They both had the family eyes, bright blue that people remarked on regularly. If not for that, there was no resemblance in their appearances.

  “Was Sugar working tonight?” Tommy asked in the tone that said he already knew the answer and knew that Adam had been by the Coffee Cave.

  “She was.”

  Tommy nodded. “She seem okay? Doing well?”

  And there was the one thing they did have in common: They both cared about Sasha. Tommy might be a louse, but he was a louse in love—or as close to it as he could get. Adam didn’t blame him—just the sight of Sasha with her tumble of dark curls and painfully thin frame got him so bothered that he was sitting here instead of home where he should be.

  “She seemed fine,” Adam said, sipping his whisky to keep from starting in on the old arguments. He swore sometimes that the more he suggested Tommy let Sasha alone, the more he clung to her.

  “It’s been weeks since she came around.” Tommy propped his feet on the table and rocked his chair back on two legs. “Did she mention anyone new?”

  Adam wanted to say that there was someone new—him—but that wasn’t true, despite his hopes. “I’m not your spy.”

  “You are my cousin,” Tommy said.

  “And Sasha’s friend.”

  “So did Sugar mention seeing anyone?” Tommy watched him, as if he was actually able to intimidate Adam. It might’ve worked on a lot of people, but Adam outweighed Tommy and had been fighting for a lot longer. He wasn’t intimidated by much of anyone at this point in his life.

  “No.”

  Tommy nodded. “Then she’ll be back. She’s like a feral cat. She needs some leash, and then she’ll come home.”

  Adam drained his whisky to keep himself from saying something ugly to his cousin.

  “She’s acting like we’re done, but she’s kept her sheets empty.” Tommy grinned. “It’s like a vacation sometimes when we take these breaks. I get to enjoy all the strange I want without guilt, and then she comes home. This time will be no different.”

  The words Adam wanted to say weren’t his right. Sasha was his friend. Despite his patience, she hadn’t acted on their obvious mutual interest. He’d thought she was finally going to admit it the last time she’d come in to get tattooed. Instead, she’d walked out afterward, and she’d dodged his attempts to even sit down for a conversation. No more after work drinks. No lunches. No stopping by the shop with a coffee for him. She had done the exact opposite of what he wanted. He was left feeling like a stalker stopping in the Coffee Cave to see if she was around. It was a business and he liked coffee, so it wasn’t a real surprise that he went there, but she had to have noticed that he came around more lately.

  He’d hoped that she’d show up tonight even though she hadn’t agreed when he’d asked, but now that he was sitting here with Tommy, Adam was almost hoping she wouldn’t come. Not entirely. He’d prefer Tommy heading out, and then Sasha showing up. The last thing he wanted was to see them end up together again. They were like fire and oil. He’d had to talk bouncers out of calling the cops more than once when they fought. It was different now that Sasha had gotten clean, but she wouldn’t stay that way if she ended up back with Tommy for real. She was too good for him, too good for anyone he’d ever met, like an angel trapped in a human body. She made him want to remake the world just to get a smile from her.

  She made him think about things like a real home, roots and mortgages, all of those things that he was sure he’d never want. Even if he couldn’t have them with her, he sure as hell wasn’t going to watch her destroy herself with his cousin. Adam debated how to handle the jealousy and protectiveness that roiled inside him.

  “Are you still here?” Tommy asked.

  “Yeah. Long week. A bunch of things on my mind,” Adam said blandly. He sipped his drink and looked around the bar. “What’s up with you?”

  Tommy shrugged. “Just chillin’ and handling business.”

  “You know, Aunt Gracie worries. You should call her,” Adam suggested. “Or at least come up with better lies when you talk to her. She knows you’re not really taking any classes at the university. Why’d you tell her that?”

  “Slept with a few girls in business classes. They left textbooks on my table.” Tommy shook his head and then flashed a huge smile at Adam. “I wasn’t lying either. I said I was studying some things about business majors… I just didn’t say those things were girls.”

  “Well, be a little more realistic with her. You lie to her; she calls my mother, and she calls me.”

  The cocktail waitress came back around with another round of drinks. Tommy patted her ass again and over-tipped her. He didn’t need to tell Adam that he’d turned a deal of some sort. He always waved his money around when he did.

  Adam silently accepted the drink and pretended not to notice the way the waitress was cozying up to Tommy now. Maybe he’d leave early with her, and that way if Sasha showed up there wouldn’t be a scene. She and Tommy were on the outs, but with the way he was pouring drinks down his throat and the twitchy gestures, he was already jacked up. Coke, booze, and a willing girl were Tommy’s standard good night, but if he could mix in a jealous Sasha, he’d call it a great night—and she might very well walk out with him.

  “Lila,” Adam said, having heard her name called by another patron, “have you met my cousin, Tommy?”

  She smiled at Tommy. “Not officially.”

  “Tommy, this is Lila. Lila, Tommy.”

  The two exchanged appraising looks, and Adam figured that he could expect Tommy to leave whenever Lila was done for the night. He hoped that they’d leave before the bar closed. Hopefully, they’d go before Sasha showed up… if she was going to show at all.

  While Tommy and Lila bantered, Adam tuned them out and wondered what else he could do to make Sasha understand that he was interested in her. He’d never had to work for a girl’s attention, and he felt almost embarrassingly unsure of how to do so. He didn’t want to come on too strong because he knew she was still tentative after her back and forth with Tommy.

  Adam’s attention returned to the bar when he heard Lila say, “I can probably take off since we’re so dead.�
��

  Tommy dropped two more twenty dollar bills on the table. “Get us another round first.”

  Adam tried not to let his disdain show. Tommy wasn’t a bad guy. He just lacked common sense.

  When Lila returned a few minutes later, Tommy slammed his drink, looped an arm around her, and they left. They weren’t even out the door when Adam’s shoulders relaxed. Being around Tommy always made him tense. The boy drew trouble as easily as he breathed, and even when Adam was ready to smack his cousin up alongside the head, he wasn’t going to let anyone else do it. Family stuck together.

  Now that he was alone at his table with one more drink than he needed, he settled in to wait and hope.

  He knew that The Coffee Cave closed soon, but he figured it was crossing a line from friend to stalker if he went back there now. He glanced at the door furtively and scanned the bar again. If she didn’t come soon, he was going to have to admit defeat.

  For tonight.

  Chapter 3

  The others handled the body and the car. I walked away with the cocaine and my share of the cash. It wasn’t the same sort of risk… but bodies and kilos of cocaine were both the sort of evidence that led to felony charges if the police noticed them. Time in prison orange wasn’t high on my list of life goals.

  It wasn’t any wonder then that I was shaking when I left The Coffee Cave. I was shaking a hell of a lot worse when I got to my place. I stashed the money and the coke, took a quick shower, and grabbed a few necessities. I left my hair hanging loose around my face and shoulders to hide the already forming bruise from when I was punched. In less than a half hour I was ready to walk back out my door. I knew Tommy was likely asleep, but I still hurried like he was awake and waiting. He wasn’t. We weren’t together anymore, but I needed him tonight.

  This was so far off the path I wanted to be on. I’d moved to Rio Verde because that’s where my money ran out, and I hadn’t really had a destination in mind beyond “not in Ohio.” My parents weren’t awful. They just drank and didn’t have much use for a kid. I could’ve stayed with them when I turned eighteen, but paying rent to live in nowhere, Ohio seemed stupid. There was nothing for me in Ohio. So I left. I stayed in touch some at first, but five years later, I was in my own dead-end life in Arizona and hearing my mother mock me sent me into spirals of bad moods, so I stopped calling.

  I wanted a better future, a little house, a good man, and maybe a bit of travel. I could even deal with a meaningless job if I had the house and the man. That’s all I really wanted out of life. It sounded so simple, but it seemed as elusive as a mansion in the sky.

  Or maybe I just didn’t know how to get it. What I knew was mostly things that were bad for me—like Tommy. He was like a big plate of dessert. I knew he was bad for me, but sometimes in the middle of the night, I still ended up wanting a piece more than anything.

  Not that my own actions tonight were the sort that were good for me. A man was killed. Twelve people were complicit in hiding the death of a drug dealer and theft of what was undoubtedly drug money. Oh, and I had what I thought was about fifty thousand dollars of cocaine in my possession. If I got caught by the cops, I would go to jail for a list of felonies, and if I were found by the owner of the drugs, I’d be dead by morning. In a few short hours, everything had changed. Now, it wasn’t Tommy that was the danger to my freedom and life. I was the problem.

  Which gave me a good excuse to ignore every reason I had to stay clear of Tommy. He was no good for me for so many reasons, but right now, I needed his help desperately. I didn’t love him, but I cared about him a lot, and I trusted him. There was no one else I could go to with what I had found tonight. I’d stashed it at my apartment before I came here—to him, to the apartment that used to be mine too.

  Right now I needed to see Tommy.

  I needed a friend tonight, so I could forget that terrible few minutes earlier. Having a pile of cash wouldn’t do anything to make me forget that just a couple of hours ago, I thought I might die. There was a man, a gun, and a fist. Cash, even over a hundred grand, didn’t make that okay with me. I wasn’t close to my parents, and the only friends I had were Tommy and Adam. I needed to be around someone I trusted, even if it was just for one night. Then, after I got rid of the coke, I needed to get out of town.

  I pounded on the door, not caring if anyone heard and pretty damn sure that the only way he’d bother answering was if he thought there was something in it for him. “Open up! It’s Sugar!”

  A few minutes of yelling and pounding on the door passed before I heard the locks slide and click. Then the door was open, and he stood there in front of me. He’d obviously been sleeping. No shirt. No shoes. Pants slung low on his hips. Nothing but dark tattoos, tight muscles, and bare skin—it didn’t help that he had the same deep blue eyes that lit up Adam’s face. Like I said, he was dessert I shouldn’t have. It took my few remaining threads of self-control not to launch myself at him.

  “What the fuck, Sugar? It’s the middle of the night and—”

  “Are you alone?”

  He ran his hand up his cheek and rubbed his face. “Yeah.”

  I pushed past him into his tiny apartment. A few empty longneck bottles rattled as they fell and rolled across the coffee table I must have bumped. Behind me, I could hear the door close, and the locks engage.

  “So you get an itch in the middle of the night and figure it don’t matter what I’ve got going on?” He flopped down on the battered sofa and grabbed a pack of Marlboro reds off the table.

  I didn’t answer. Not yet. I’d let him have his say before I told him how severely I’d fucked my life tonight.

  The familiar click of his lighter was followed by the glow of a cigarette he didn’t bother to offer me. “What if I had someone here? You say you’re done with me, but you still storm in here at all hours. Maybe you ought to take your key back if this is the way it’s going to be. There’s a hell of a lot nicer ways you could’ve woken me than banging on my door.”

  “I need to move something,” I blurted. “Big.”

  He stared at me silently then. The only noise was the soft crackle of burning tobacco and the quiet whoosh of him exhaling smoke.

  “Some guy left his bag in the shop and… I figured you could help me. I’ll give you as much a cut of the sale as you need.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Two bricks.”

  “Damn. How pure?”

  I shrugged.

  “That’s right. You’re ‘clean’ again.” He shook his head at that, but his voice was bitter. My decision to stay away from him was all tangled up in my decision to stay away from coke. Tommy wasn’t very happy about it. Every time I’d run into him the past few months, he’d mentioned it. It didn’t stop us from fucking like we’d die if we didn’t, and it didn’t stop him from offering me a taste of the coke he always had on hand. So far I’d always said no to the coke every time, but yes to the cock several times. I wanted both, but I was trying to stay quit of both.

  “I can’t sell what I can’t taste, Sugar Girl,” Tommy said.

  I pulled out the tiny bag that I’d shoved into my purse before I’d left my apartment and dropped it on the table in front of him. Neither of us mentioned the way my hands shook when I did so.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s much here.”

  “I hid most of it.” I shrugged. I wasn’t going to carry thousands of dollars worth of coke around if I could avoid it.

  He licked a bit of the cocaine from his fingertip, looked up at me, and then got to business. I watched him as he poured it out, lined it up, and inhaled. Somewhere in those few moments, I’d crossed my arms. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until I felt the edges of my fingernails dig into the skin of my arms.

  Tommy leaned back on his sofa and watched me. “Someone’s definitely going to be missing this.”

  “Will you sell it for me?”

  He nodded.

  I forced myself to stare only at him, not on the
remaining three lines he’d drawn on the table. I knew the smaller one off to the side was for me if I wanted it. I could say no, and he’d be fine with it. I also knew that tonight of all nights I wanted that bliss more than ever. Still, I reminded us both, “I quit.”

  He smiled at me. “You quit a lot of things, but you don’t stay quit.”

  “I quit,” I repeated.

  “You want it or not?” He nodded toward the table. “Say the word.”

  I swallowed. Of course, I wanted it. Tommy was one of those weird people who could do a bump here or there, but stop. He had a lot more control than I did.

  I swallowed again and shook my head. I couldn’t speak the lie aloud tonight.

  “I’ll help you get rid of it,” he promised. Then he was standing beside me, arm around my waist. He pushed my hair aside and, almost at the same moment, had his lips on that spot on the side of my throat that he knew I liked too much. I didn’t even try to say no. I might resist the line on the table, but I’d never even once resisted him when he touched my skin. One touch, and I was done. He was better than drugs.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “You can’t keep this very long, Tommy. It’s got to get gone as fast as you can.”

  “I want thirty percent for selling it.”

  “Done.” I glanced back at the line on the table. It was ridiculous that a tiny white line was that hard to look away from, but it was. I pulled away from Tommy. He needed to finish that before I gave in.

  He bent down and inhaled one of the remaining lines. “It’s barely cut. Purest I’ve tasted in a while.”

  “I quit.”

  “Your choice, Sugar Girl, but”—he yanked my shirt off—“I’m not going to be sleeping, not after that, so you aren’t going to be sleeping either.”

  “I didn’t come here for that.” I paused, met his eyes, and admitted, “I just needed a friend, someone I can trust.”

  “You can trust me, Sugar.” Tommy wasn’t one for wasting time or using words when actions would do better. He already had one hand pinching my bra open and the other unbuttoning my jeans. I didn’t protest. I should’ve. I knew it.